Comfort Cooking

I love to tease my mom about the food she made when I was growing up. I know. It's not nice. She still loves me. Truth be told I'm like most kids who have a dish or two that no one makes as well as Mom did. This soup (her favorite thing to make) is slightly green (my favorite color), creamy and perfect for a cold day (and by that I mean anything under 65 degrees here in SoCal). She's made it twice for activities at church recently and both time people asked me to ask her for the recipe (not because she's intimidating... I'm just available on line more often).

This is my Christmas gift to you. Make it. Share it. Claim it as your own. I won't tell.

J.R.'s Mulligatawny Soup

3 T butter
2 bunches chopped green onions
3/4 C chopped onion
saute until onions are clear then add
4 T flour
stir & add
2 Qts Chicken broth
2 T curry
1 1/4 C raw rice
1/2 pint cream
2 med Granny Smith apples (peeled & diced)
2 C diced cooked chicken
Salt & Pepper to taste
Cook on low until rice is cooked stirring frequently.

Differences

I carefully planned my last trip to Barnes & Noble. The boys were camping. Emma was at a friend's house. (Free time! No one to chase!) I had a $25 gift card to spend and no idea what I wanted to buy. After 3 hours (yes, three!) of wandering the stacks (none of which were in the children's section), leafing through books and sampling CDs in their music department I decided on this book (a sequel to this book which I read last summer) and a CD by this girl who I'd never heard of before but thought I'd like. There were probably 3 or 4 more books I would've liked and a CD or 2 that would've quickly been ripped and added to my MP3 player, but I stayed within my budget and still had some fantastic alone time.

Yesterday, my mom came home from a day out with Papa and a Don (family friend from AZ). Among the grocery bags I noticed the familiar Barnes & Noble bags. 2 bags! I was instantly jealous and went to peek at what treasures she'd found. I opened the first bag and was a little confused, so I checked the second bag, too. Sure enough it was identical to the first. Harry & David chocolate and chocolate covered popcorn. 6 boxes. So I ask my mom, "You went to B&N and all you bought was chocolate?"

Her immediate response, "IT WAS ON SALE! HALF OFF!"

sigh

Best Friends Forever

Back in the late 60s Anna travelled from Australia to Santa Clarita to be a high school foreign exchange student. She very quickly became besties with a local native girl, J.R. They had many things in common. Both only had younger brothers (and needed a sister), their birthdays were only days apart & the list goes on. The two were practically inseparable and could frequently be found cruising Hollywood in a convertible Cadillac (proclaiming when smart alec boys would ask if they were driving Daddy's car, "Daddy does not drive. Daddy is driven!").

At the end of the year Anna went home, but they stayed close despite the ocean between them. Anna came back every couple of years to visit. When J.R. and her husband, Michael, had their first child (yours truly) Anna returned to meet her little namesake. She came to the U.S. again when J.R.'s second child was born, found love and moved to the Mid-West.

Over the course of the next decades of life (divorces, marriage, deaths, births and eventually becoming grandmothers) they used phone calls, cards, letters, and occasionally, precious visits to love, comfort & celebrate with each other.

In recent years, much to the delight of J.R. (and me!), Anna has found a special "friendship" with Michael (J.R.'s ex / my dad). Other than their beautiful children, J.R. & Michael's love for Anna is one of the few things they have in common. He lives in California, she in Kansas, but they speak almost nightly on the phone.

Saturday, Michael did something very nice for his ex-wife when he surprised her with a visit from Anna whom she hadn't seen in a few years. Here's how it went...