DELUXE CARROT CAKE

Long ago, before the internet, when I was a young 21-year-old trying to figure out how to walk the path of wife and mother, I bought a cookbook from the Junior League of Upstate New York. We were living in Rochester NY at the time. That cookbook has some of my favorite recipes. One of them is this really moist and yummy carrot cake. 4 cups of raw carrots makes it really moist. And though I am a firm believer that butter makes everything better, this recipe needs oil to make it right. Resist the urge to replace it with butter.

DELUXE CARROT CAKE

2 c flour

2 c sugar

2 t baking soda

2 t cinnamon

1 t salt

4 eggs

1 c vegetable oil

4 c raw grated carrots

3/4 c chopped walnuts (optional)

Mix flour, sugar, soda, salt, cinnamon together in a separate bowl. Grate carrot to equal 4 cups. In large mixing bowl beat 4 eggs until foamy. Drizzle oil into eggs as you continue to beat. Add dry ingredients, then carrots. Add nuts.

Bake at 350 in greased and floured 9x13 cake pan for 35 minutes or until done.

or in 3 cake pans for a layered cake, 25 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Beat 8 oz softened cream cheese with 2 T soft butter until creamy. Add approx 4 -5 c powdered sugar and beat. Add 2 T vanilla and beat. If its too runny, add more powdered sugar.

Frost cooled cake then sprinkle crushed nuts on top if you've used nuts in the cake.

PAGE TURNING DAYS (the month of May-hem)

The oldest children of our oldest children graduated from high school last week. The week before that, the youngest child of our youngest child graduated from pre-school. The week before that, Dave attended the 50th reunion of his high school graduating class in Bethel Park PA. And the week before that, one of my dearest friends graduated from life on earth. I have Pomp and Circumstance running as the soundtrack for the month of May. Plus there were are lot of important and memorable in-betweens in there as well. I  am currently caught in a swirl of reminiscence that makes me feel like I am slammed against the wall of a spinning Tilt-a-Whirl and I have absolutely no power to save myself from the forces being hurled at my heart right now. I am a mess of laughter and tears, realizing that my self-definition is once again shifting and I don't feel prepared. Change is hard. Even good change is hard.

When Timo and Sophie, my first grandchildren, were born I was 45 years old, relatively young to start redefining myself as a grandparent. My kids had all grown and flown by the time I was in my early forties. At the same time I got really sick with Guillain Barre Syndrome. There was a mighty shift in my life then. I’ve adjusted, but it sure took a while. Now I feel a little panic rising in the center of me, a sort of PTSD. I have to catch myself and tell myself to release the tension, to relax my legs from digging in my heels to try and stop all of this, to verbally talk myself down: “It is perfectly normal for you to feel this way. You will get through it. Just breathe and try to enjoy the process as you actually DO move into old age!”

I recall that long-ago day when we were with friends at Lake Powell and I decided to try hang gliding. Because I was heavy, I thought I should start back further on the rock structure bordering the lake. When the boat took off and I was running behind it on the rocky shore. The air lifted me up then dipped me down, dragging me across the rocks instead of the water before it took me high above the reservoir. I floated up there, my legs and feet throbbing, tears streaming into my hair against the thrust of the wind. I told myself to enjoy the ride. “Isn’t this so beautiful? (Ow ow ow ow) What a view! (Ow ow ow ow) You’d better enjoy this because you are never going to do this again.” I shouted this to myself up there as I looked down at my blood dripping into the lake far below me. Some processes are just painful regardless of how beautiful they appear to be.

Looking back, I realize that life, by nature, comes in segments. There are chapters that are pretty universal. That day you go to kindergarten, the day you get your driver’s license, the day you graduate… and so on. At least that’s how it seems to roll in my first-world culture. Pretty much every woman, regardless of their cultural or economic status, can tell you about the day she started her period, though for some reason in our culture we have attached unnecessary shame to it. Most people can recall their first inklings of romantic love and to whom those feelings were connected. I call these page turning days; pivotal moments that had a well-defined before and after that are separated by that event. Frankly, I don’t remember that feeling of first going to kindergarten, but I can recall with clarity of emotion the first day each of my own children went to school for the first time. I was handing them off, like the baton in a relay race, to people I frankly did not know. Handing-off your kids takes a whole bushelful of trust. You feel your legs stop pumping beneath you, despite the momentum you’ve gained. It’s a sudden shift, and you feel pain and relief at the very same time. It feels like, with graduation, I am floating above my life and watching my heart drip life-blood into the reservoir of memory. It sounds dramatic. And it is.

Herewith, since words are failing me at the moment, are thousands of words caught in picture, because May 2022 was a page turning month:

My girl and her boy.
(Timothy Petersen)

My boy and his girl.
(Sophie Connors)

My girl and her girl.
(Tessa Merrill)

 

This is Timothy Petersen, our oldest grandchild.
Timo is a drummer, percussionist, vocalist, 
pianist and composer. He played in Lyceum Orchestra, Caleb Chapman's 
Jazz bands and Mountain Ridge High bands and Jazz Band. 
His compositions have been performed in Abravanel Hall, Utah Arts Festival,
Lyceum Spotlight Concert and Mountain Ridge Band Concerts.
If you have been to my Christmas Concerts you've also heard him, first as
a little boy in my Heavenly Choir, then last year as the drummer in my band.

He also sang in the Jazz Choir and Madrigals under
the tutelage of the amazing Kelly DeHaan.

He was Mountain Ridge High's recipient of the Louis Armstrong Jazz Award.
He was offered scholarships to Boston Conservatory,  Berklee College of Music,
BYU, U of U, and BYU I. He chose to attend University of Utah.

He was super stoked to receive the score to the film
How to Train Your Dragon as a graduation gift. 
(He's unapologetically nerdy like that)

Timo has been blessed...

 

... with really great friends and mentors.

He was captain of the Mountain Ridge Drum Line
and lettered in choral and band music,
with eleven additional bars. He was an honors graduate
with distinction in band and choral music.

This is our Sophie...

...Sophie Hannah Connors. Sophanna Banana.

She was part of the Farmington High Golf Team.

This year she was Team Captain.

Yesterday she got back from a fun Senior trip
with her friends and a few of their moms.

She has also been blessed with dynamic friends...

... and mentors.

Sophie was a beautiful dancer
before CRPS told her body not to dance.
She has learned to deal with chronic pain
with grace, elegance and good humor.
She now uses her strength and energy
to help people with their physical therapy,
and she teaches swimming. 

She is one of the most well-balanced people I know.
She is smart, kind, selfless but also has measured confidence.
She will be attending Utah State University studying nursing.

This is Tessa Jane Merrill.
She graduated from Farmington High Pre-school.
She is kind and sassy and talented and funny.
I love her.

She turned five years old
two days after graduation.
She got to hold a baby lamb
on her birthday...

... and ride a pony. Yee Haw!

Gratefully, this grad
still likes to play with me.

That guy in the middle is His Honor, 
my Dave, with his best friend Karl Kern
at their high school reunion.

Karl, Dave and their pal, Bizzy.
No friends like old friends. Karl is a heart surgeon in Tucson AZ.
He bestowed Doctoral robes on his son Matt this May, as he
graduated from the med school where Karl teaches.

And lastly, the close of the graduation ceremony for
my dear friend Marsha Bradbury.
She was goodness personified.

All these humans have altered my life, every one of them for good! I love them more than they could ever imagine!

(I need a nap.) 

(We all need a nap.)

CORN CHOWDER and CRUSTY BREAD

Cold day - hot soup – warm bread.

Corn chowder is a family favorite, the kind of soup you like to smell on a day when your skin is chilled and you walk into a warm house.

Here's how I make it.

Ingredients:

1 lb bacon, cut in ½” pieces (one package, sometimes 12 oz, is fine)

1 yellow or sweet onion, chopped

4-6 Russet potatoes (4 small, 6 large or thereabouts. Other spuds will work too.) peeled and chopped into ½” cubes

2 cans sweet corn or 1 16 oz bag of frozen corn

1 can creamed corn

Celery innards (the bitter ribs and leaves in the middle of a stalk of celery) chopped (about 3 T chopped)

1- 2 cans Evaporated milk (not sweetened condensed!) cream will do, too

Salt and pepper

Cook chopped bacon in a heavy pot until crisp. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and add chopped onion to the hot bacon fat. Cook till tender. Add chopped potatoes and just barely cover with water, maybe ¼” above the top of the spuds, so they are covered. return cooked bacon to pot. Salt and pepper water (roughly 2 T salt, depending on how salty the bacon is) Your best tool is your taste buds. Boil until spuds are tender, maybe 12-16 minutes. If you are using frozen corn, add the corn after boiling ten minutes and continue to cook till spuds and corn are tender. Turn off heat and add creamed corn and evaporated milk (or cream) and stir. Taste to see if it needs more salt or pepper.

Serve with crusty bread.

Super easy crusty bread.
It steams in the heavy cast iron pot
to give it the crispy crust.

Crusty bread:

6 ½ c flour

2 t. salt

1 ½ T dry yeast

3 C very warm water

Mix all dry ingredients then add warm water. Stir till well blended. Cover with towel and let rise a few hours.

Put one large or two small covered heavy cast iron pots in the oven and heat to 425. Meanwhile, turn out dough onto floured surface and either form into a round or into 2 rounds, depending on your pot.

Sprinkle corn meal (or flour) onto a piece of parchment paper.

Set dough round on parchment, cover with a towel, and let rise while pots are heating up in oven.

When oven has reached temperature, with the pots in it, slice the top of the dough with a serrated knife.

Lift dough by the edges of the parchment paper and set into hot pot. 

Cover with hot lid and place in oven. Set timer for ½ hour at 425.

In ½ hour remove lid and let cook an additional 10-15 minutes until crispy golden.

Carefully remove the hot pot and turn the bread onto a cooling rack. Do not cover or put hot bread in a bag as it will lose its crispy crust. (But if you don't eat all of it, put the cold leftovers in a plastic bag or the whole thing will end up dry.)

Cool enough to slice easily.

 

 

MARSHA BRADBURY - TRIED AND TRUE

There’s an image fixed in my mind where I am sitting in our old green mission style recliner back in the room that used to be our TV room. My arms and legs are swarming with freezing hot electric teeny tiny worms… at least it feels this way… and I am exhausted and scared. My friend Marsha Bradbury (affectionately known as Mush) sits on the couch across the room. I doze in and out, wrapped in a warm blanket, until the jerking of my electric legs wakes me. Sometimes there’s conversation. Sometimes not. Mush grabs a blanket and flops over on the couch. Time does its thing, and we endure it. That was years ago now. My arms and most of my legs have recovered full function.

There’s something magical about a friend who can sit with you for long stretches of time and say nothing. Her presence is a balm. 

Mush helped me through my bout with Guillain Barre Syndrome, and I helped her through her deep dive into Pancreatic Cancer, which she miraculously survived, and the residual ripples that floated around her for nearly two full decades after her diagnosis. Something transformative happens when people walk hand in hand through scary things.

While we both saw the door to the Hereafter creaking open before us, that’s not necessarily where we dwelt. I mean, really, who wants to stay there? We both had lots to do with what remained of our human capabilities. What started as an almost co-dependent need to be together evolved into fairly sweet autonomous lives. We both started having grandchildren. Our kids moved to faraway places and we found other demands pulling at us. She found energy when her hands were in the dirt. Her gardens became her haven. Her husband Rob built her a fabulous henhouse, and she became Mother Hen to a whole roost of chickens. A couple weeks ago when I stopped by for a visit she lamented that she had 9 dozen chicken eggs out in the kitchen with nowhere to go. Beautiful, multicolored eggs from happy hens. 

Marsha knew that the product of her labors was less important that the labor itself. Not that she did not celebrate the bounty. The evidence of this eternal philosophy sat on the counter, and on the table in her front yard at harvest time with a sign: FREE FOOD. Gorgeous, organic, fresh produce for the taking from a master gardener. In the most divine way Mush was no respecter of persons. If you were hungry, she fed you.

Marsha Bradbury, before I knew her, was an athlete, a high school coach, and a renowned Special Ed teacher. She literally saved people. I’m talking “for real”! Kids who had frustrated the compassion out of pretty much every other adult in their lives found safety in Mrs. Bradbury. Her room was a haven, especially for misfits. Everyone fit in her space. Everyone fit in her massive heart. She had been blessed with an ability to see beyond what is socially appropriate and into the ancient spirits of kids who were troubled. She lived with outstanding success the commandment “Judge not.” She understood that when someone’s brain, or body, does not function in an average way, they needed us to help them, full faced and unapologetically, navigate society.

Yesterday a friend texted my sister Libby with a frantic sentence: “Did Marsha die????!!!” Marsha had literally taken her hand and walked her through to graduation from high school. This scenario was repeated so many times no-one, but God, would know. Her gift as an educator was a rare and beautiful thing. She used that gift for nearly four decades. That’s almost two full generations.

Libby’s thumbs quivered when she texted back: “Yes. She was a miracle to us, but she finally got to go Home.”

One of the ripples of that Pancreatic Cancer was diabetes, which is a natural effect of removing the pancreas. Her body stopped processing food, which I find ironic since she grew and raised the most healthy food possible. In the end there was not much left of her in the flesh. But the spirit, that’s the thing. The sprit remained true. Luckily, she was never not “her”. She remained hopeful until her body said, “Hey, let’s be done now.” And even then, it took sheer physical exhaustion to make her say uncle and let go. Our super-strong athletic girl held out until the body could no longer survive. Then she finally exhaled, surrounded by the people to whom she gave life and who shared her life with her. Rob, her husband of 42 years, redefined himself in the last few years. Because of Covid he retired from his job so he would not risk bringing illness to Marsha. His gentle ways were easy on her and comforting for her and for us who cared about her daily existence. He is currently trying to exhaust himself with work, trying to process what just happened.

Marsha was like a cat with nine lives. Over and over again she triumphed when it was completely expected no-one could survive. Pancreatic cancer, diabetes, liver cancer, endocrine issues…so many enemies that any other human I know would have pulled out the white flag and surrendered. It’s not that she did not trust God. She understood his will prevails. But she also knew that if she had any say in it, she was going to fight. We were so accustomed to her overcoming, and bouncing back, that it wasn’t until the very end that we ourselves surrendered her to the Lord she loved.

It's a great comfort to me that she loved the Lord. Like the rest of us, she didn’t fully understand Him, but in her soul of souls she trusted him. 

So do I.

A few years ago, before Covid hit, there was a little red-headed girl who stood directly in front of me in the Heavenly Choir of children who sang at my Christmas concert. She sort of stole the show, throwing her whole heart into singing in a charmingly animated yet reverent way. I stood from my vantage point on the stage and looked out into the audience as the children sang. The light from one of the spots reflected off my guitar and onto the face of that little girl’s grandmother, my friend Marsha. It felt like that same warm light bounced back off Mush’s face onto her little Millie, the child of her child. I recognized in that flash of time, before I started singing along with the kids, that we were in the heart of a miracle.

Millie, the mini-Mush.

There was a time, when Mush and I sat quite still, hours on end, in the space where we shared our worries and pain, back when we were both sick, when the greatest wish of her heart was to be able to live long enough to see her first grandchild born. That child, Jack, is now 17. She was here when Charlie came. Then Lillie, and Millie and darling caboose Ryker. They have all been held in her arms. They have all gathered eggs with her. They have felt the wind and waves of Flaming Gorge in their hair, then returned to their cabin for a warm meal and some games, all with their grandmother. When Mush and Millie walked through a store, people smiled at the image of a “before and after” manifest in the two of them. She has been able to see all her children become skilled in their educated professions, All three of her children have become professional therapists in various forms. Becky is a gifted Occupational Therapist. Robby does psych evaluations in the ER in Portland and leads troubled youth and their families on wilderness adventures. Her youngest, Laura, is currently earning her doctorate after having directed programs on grief therapy for years. We are going to need her help this next little while. It is perfectly fitting that all three of Marsha and Rob’s kids chose professions that aim at helping individuals understand themselves in relation to the world and the people who inhabit it. They learned at the knees of the best.

We are trying to process the thought of her not being here. Its almost unfathomable. But there is evidence that part of her remains with us. She is in the people and places she loved. She is in the songs and stories that will be repeated through generations. And she is in the earth; the soft brown earth, starting now, at her passing, to burst with life. Seeds she planted are just about to awaken. At least there’s that.

It's hard to imagine this world without her in it. Heaven, on the other hand, is getting lovelier every day.  

Marsha celebrated more than most
the privilege of being a grandparent

Four generations of Limburg women.
Marsha and Rob cared for her mother until her dying day.

The Bradbury girls.

The Bradbury clan.

Marsha with her grand-daughters.

All the Bradbury women were swim teachers and coaches.
Marsha also coached gymnastics and tennis.

Last summer's bounty preserved.

Marsha was a young teenager when her father died
unexpectedly at the age of 42.

Such a cute couple.

Her favorite spot to be.

VIEW MARSHA'S OBITUARY HERE,

4-16-22 REPEAT - REPEAT - REPEAT

First thing this morning I made fifty cupcakes for Easter Dinner tomorrow. The recipe I use for the cupcakes is an old family chocolate cake recipe. A bit of family lore has given the cake a beloved name: Garbage Cake. No, its not one of those dump-a-bunch-of-ingredients-in-at-once recipes. It's called garbage cake because its good enough to eat out of the garbage. (You can find the story and recipe HERE.)

Garbage cake is one of those recipes that I no longer need to look up. I have it locked in my memory, and it sort of falls out without thinking when I need it. It's so natural, in fact, that I instinctively set the butter and eggs out the night before to let them come to room temperature.

Bunny ear Garbage Cake cupcakes.

Recipes, for me, are evidence of the power of repetition. We not only remember what we repeat, we also begin to own it in a strangely autonomous way, like we have a responsibility to each part, like the eggs and butter and bitter cocoa are letting themselves be used in a pleasing way. It feels, and I know this sounds weird, like the ingredients and I are in sync with each other and we all agree to work toward the same delicious goal.

I just realized this might make me
a piece of Garbage cake.

Today marks the end of Lent, the 40 days before Easter. I can now take a rest from my daily writing exercise. I have to admit I look forward to not thinking for a minute. During the Lenten season, because I have committed to writing something that takes effort, my brain tends to go into overdrive. Every. Day. Symbols swirl around me, concepts consume my thoughts, any spare moment that isn't taken up with demands for my attention is swept up in what I might write about that day. It wasn't quite this hard 14 years ago. But sometimes I feel like I'm running out of things to say. I am certain there are topics I've addressed repeatedly, and stories I've re-told multiple times in all these years of Lent writing. But the real reason I set out to do this is two-fold. When I pause and think about it, I feel satisfied that my efforts have fulfilled those reasons.I began writing every day of Lent for these reasons:

1. I recognized that the Lord blessed me with a love for the power of words. While the religion I embrace does not officially observe Lenten practices, I felt there was value in sacrificing "easy time" and committing myself to stop, think, and write. I sincerely consider this daily exercise a form of sacrifice. But I am also a believer that few sacrifices are purely selfless. There are inevitably benefits that come to everyone because of sacrifice. It often takes divine vision to see them. Because I shamelessly practice my religion, my writing comes out spiritually based. This is a natural byproduct of trying to align myself with my power source, whom I believe to be my Savior, Jesus Christ. (Thus, pre-Easter prep happens fairy organically.)

2. In my quest to become a better songwriter, I believed I needed to become a better thinker, and user of words in general. Daily writing helps me feel safe with words. The biggest problem I see is that I tend to overwrite. That probably comes from my propensity to overthink. I've tried to talk myself out of this, but my brain does not listen. If I want to become a wordsmith then I'd better learn how to wrangle words. Songwriting is an exercise in chipping away and boiling down words. These Lenten essays free me up.

When you've lived enough decades that it starts taking two hands to count them, you start realizing that repetition is what brings all of us to our end. We become what we repeat. I repeat this practice every year, for over forty days in a row, except for the Sabbath, which is not counted as a day of Lent since the day is already set apart. This observance feels to me like a sacrament for the year. I feel blessed by it in ways I may not logically comprehend.

Speaking of repetition, I hope to get better at repeating a lot of skills I have not yet honed. I will resist, however, spilling my thoughts here, like milk on the kitchen table. There is no need right now for me to beat myself up for the things I am not doing, that I should be doing. Just as it will not serve me well at 1 a.m. to reprimand myself for repeatedly doing things that are not good for me.

What this daily Lenten practice has done for me is made me use my mind and marry it to my heart, even when I haven't felt like doing it. It's sort of like gym for my brain. There are days you just plain don't feel like going to the gym. But in the end, the muscle is better for it. (not that I would know this in a literal "gym" sense.) 

The ingredients in my recipe for life lay out on my proverbial counter and wait for me to combine them. Sometimes we work together to create something wonderful. Sometimes, not so much. But I figure anything that leads me to love more deeply, have more compassion and less judgment, to sustain kindness, to motivate to positive action, and to direct me toward what will eventually be my eternal home... these are the things I want to know so well I do not need to look up a recipe. I will only need the whisperings of the One who journeys with me to tell me how and when to use them. I pray I have the courage, the intrinsic motivation, and the wherewithal to do my part... repeatedly.

A blessed Easter to all.