Some entertaining recipes

I wrote the Recipe Corner for this week's issue of The Citizen. Jean (Carter) had surgery. She submitted four columns so she'd be covered.

Last Wednesday night I attended my book group with a growly tummy. Don and I had run to Pocatello and arrived home in the late afternoon. There was time for me to attend book group or eat, not both. Luckily Don was cooking

Reading is as necessary to me as breathing. Discussing books with a group of other serious readers is something I enjoy.

I recently read an article from families.com online titled “Protect Your Friendships After Marriage.”

This piece of advice should be given to all newlyweds, “When you become Mister and Missus, it should not be at the expense of whom the two of you were before you were married.”

People live longer if they have hobbies. It’s nice to do things together as a couple, but … it’s healthy to have your own hobbies.

Back to the book group. The book we were discussing that evening was “The House at Riverton” by Australian author Kate Morton. For a book that wasn’t very well liked, a lively discussion was held.

I walked into the home where we were holding the meeting to the most tantalizing smell. I thought the discussion would never end. Luckily my chair wasn’t too close to anyone for them to hear my tummy rumbling.

The refreshments were delicious. I asked if I could use the recipe for the Recipe Corner this week. Yes, but she didn't want her name used. I gleaned another recipe that evening also.

The Let’s Talk About It program held at the Larsen-Sant Library has also yielded some amazing refreshments.

GRAHAM-CRACKER BARS

By Cindy Harris

1/2 C butter
1 1/2 C graham cracker crumbs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 (6 oz.) pkg. chocolate chips
1 1/3 C flaked coconut
1 C chopped nuts

Preheat oven to 350°. Melt butter in 9x13-inch pan in the oven. When the butter is melted, sprinkle graham cracker crumbs evenly over butter. Pour milk evenly over crumbs. Top with chocolate chips, coconut and nuts. Press down gently and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

DUMP CAKE

 By Beverly Morris

1 can crushed pineapple, undrained
1 can pie filling (any kind)
1 pkg. Yellow cake mix
1/2 C butter
1 C flaked coconut
1 C chopped nuts, any kind

Pour pineapple and pie filling into a 9x13-inch pan. Crumble cake mix over the top of the fruit mixture. Melt butter and drizzle over the top of the cake mix. Sprinkle coconut and chopped nuts over the top. Bake at 350° for 1 hour. Check it at 45 minutes so it doesn’t get too brown.

This is also really good in a Dutch oven.

SPARKLING GREEN TEA LEMONADE

2 C very hot water
3 (2 g) bags green tea
3 Tbsp. white sugar
2 C chilled seltzer water
2 tsp. lime juice
1 lime, sliced (optional)

Pour the hot water into a glass pitcher. Submerge the green tea bags in the hot water and allow to steep for 5 minutes; remove and discard the tea bags. Stir the sugar  into the tea until completely dissolved. Chill in refrigerator for 35 minutes.

Pour the seltzer water and lime  juice into the tea. Float the lime slices atop the mixture.

Based on a beverage Thedora Petterborg
served at Let's Talk About It

Now, the rest of the story is either the "misplaced" article was deleted from the email or I'm just confused. I swear I only counted 2 more articles & I KNOW Jean sent 4 articles. The editor said we couldn't use the recipes because they were from copyrighted cookbooks & put the blame on the publisher. When I confronted the publisher he said it was the first he'd heard of it. But he agreed with the editor. I said the recipes for last week's article were not from a copyrighted cookbook. So, we used them.

I did this week's article & am working on recipes for the next 2 weeks based on Jean's articles. I'll just substitute recipes from local people, or at least real people.

**Edited**

Recipe Corner blunder

So, I failed to say what the 4th recipe was supposed to be in the Recipe Corner. It was Turkey and Cranberry Salad. Now, it looked really good & I was quite intrigued with it. If there's room I'll make a correction this coming week & run it. Of course, no one caught it, so I may just let it go. If we run a correction, we will draw attention to the fact that a mistake was made.

I spent a couple of hours tonight researching & doing an itinerary for our Disneyland trip for the week of Thanksgiving . Don-Mike still thinks a Disneyland package is the way to go. I didn't even take that into consideration. That's $1,500 without gas, groceries & lodging to & from!!!!! Maybe Mother & I will stay home.

Faux pas

Oops, I made a faux pas (foe paw) in The Citizen this week.

Faux (pronounced /ˈfoʊ/, like "foe") is a French word for false or fake. It is often used in English phrases such as faux pearls, and faux news.
~ Wikipedia

I posted this on Facebook last night:

Ok Preston residents, tell me what glaring mistake you find in The Preston Citizen tomorrow when it comes in the mail. I was SOOOOO embarrassed. I didn't catch it until I was archiving.

To which Pat Hansen replied:

They probably won't even notice ya think? That obvious? I'd proably miss you.

Kristy Nelson replied:

Well, now I'm going to have to read it all over again.

Janelle Bartlomé asked:

Is it Jay Leno worthy? If so you could be famous. One time the company I worked for (American Stores- private label department) made a label for Parmesan Cheeese. The first person to catch it was the person putting the cheese into the canister.

To which I replied:

No, Janelle, it isn't Leno worthy, but our front page was in September. It was SOOOOOO good. I hope someone did send that one to Leno. The front page top story was that H1N1 had hit Franklin County. Second story was the hospital is soo old that you can't get proper care there. Third story was that the Preston Cemetery is now full & the land owners around the cemetery won't sell. So, you get sick, you can't get health care & when you die, you can't be buried in the cemetery because they are out of room, LOL.

Kristy, it's like Reiman publications where they hide a needle or a carrot, only this is much more blatant. It went through the other copy editor, BOTH editors (& the pages were laying side by side when they saw them) & through the photo editor.

Rod consoled me that no one would even notice when I went flying into his office with the pages. He didn't notice it even then. I had to point it out & read it to him, LOL

Kristy answered:

Now I'm really gonna have to look again!

 To which I replied:

Pat that last paragraph was in answer to your post. Kristy, here's a hint, it's a jump.

Denise Ericksen commented:

RaNae, you make me laugh!!!! And that is a good thing.

I didn't reply to Denise. What could I say??

But Pat replied to my reference to the Sept. 23rd issue's  front page with:

This really is one of the funniest things I've heard, oh my!! It went through the editors etc.. lol---how ironic though. H1N1-death and no place to be buried? I have a gallows sense of humor (blame nursing)...

I replied:

Me too, Pat. The only thing I can say in my own defense is that I was having gall bladder surgery that day.

The kicker this week is: "Mr. PHS crowned at Saturday's faux pageant." I told the editors to read the kicker carefully. I wanted their opinion.

One of them said, "fox pageant?" You spelled fox wrong. I said it's pronouced "foe" and means fake. His answer? "Sure, leave it."

High school senior boys do a spoof on a beauty pageant & are judged in talent, poise & 3 other things.

The original mistake was in the Recipe Corner. Jean Carter had taken FOUR recipes from an online site that supplies newspapers with filler articles. She has had a really hard time getting "real" people to interview & share their recipes. It's really a shame, because that is one of my favorite columns in the whole paper. We usually only have 3 recipes. There is really only room for 3 recipes on the social page, page 5, so I was going to have to jump a recipe.

There was one recipe that was going to be a real bugger to set & I saved it for page 7. I knew I could spread that baby out if I had to on that page. I worked really hard on it, too. Not as hard as I thought I would have to, for which I thanked the Lord fervently. Tuesday mornings are real adrenalin rushes. Some are more so than others.

We made it just a few minutes past our deadline & I took a few minutes to unwind. I started cleaning up the work for this week, getting ready for next week. Filing proof pages & paper copy, moving documents & photos from the working folder into a file to be archived on CD, emptying the email inbox & trash.

This week I needed to do tear sheets for FamilyFeatures, the online site that we had used the recipes from. I printed out those 2 pages & there it was, as big as life!!! Two separate recipes for Mexi-Meatball Kabobs. It was too late to do anything. The paper was on the press clear across town in a totally different facility. But, as Rod said, no one's gonna notice. And I really don't think anyone will. They are on 2 separate pages.

A beautiful day

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood. We have finally had some yellow & green burn days. It is so nice to see the sunlight.

Today, instead of enjoying the beautiful day, I spent the afternoon at Mother's curled up on the couch, sleeping the day away. Our visiting teacher came & after she left, the fatigue just crashed down on me like an avalanche. I laid on the left side & it hurt, but I was too tired to change sides. The left side is the side where I had the partial mastectomy & all the lymph nodes are gone. I have lymphedema on that side & shouldn't lay on that arm.

I found this picture of our house with icicles on it, but as I look at it, I realize it must have been taken last winter. The shepherd's hook is in front of the bedroom window, the metal storm door is still on the front door & the large front porch is not there. This year, the shepherd's hook is still out on the north side of the house with my bucket garden hanging on it.

The Recipe Corner for this week featured a recipe for Ravioli Soup. I thought it was in last week's paper, so I didn't bother to copy the recipe. I've been planning on making that today because Tuesday is soup day. I kind of winged it. Nick hasn't told me he didn't like it. Next month I'll have to use the real recipe. I get so confused over which week something was published (in The Preston Citizen). Sometimes I'm sure something was published & either it was pulled or it was something that came in & was never published.

Today, I can't remember what the front page story is, sigh, or the front page picture. I'll remember tomorrow when I see it, LOL. I do remember that the Bear River Massacre was lower right hand corner of the front page. I hate reading the story of the massacre every year. I didn't get the page until late & we were really close to deadline, so I didn't read it. I hope there were no mistakes. The anniversary of the massacre is Jan. 29, so there will be a memorial Thursday at 11 a.m. I wonder if my ancestors had to put members of the calvary up that night in 1863 in Franklin. I hope not. I have a hard time going through those river bottoms because I can feel the unhappiness. I've also learned not to look up at the mural in the post office showing the "battle" of Bear River.

EDITED TO ADD: Nick told me tonight that supper was not good & there wasn't enough of it. He didn't get full.