Memories of a Midwestern Family

Some Pics from the Garden

| fobafam

On my primary blog, I sometimes update readers about The Meadow Project. I am allowing a part of my yard to go semi-natural, with wild grasses and flowers. It all started with (aside from too much lawn to mow), noticing how few bees and butterflies I was seeing. Even the dandelions in the grass that always had one honeybee per flower, were just sitting empty. Here are some early to mid-spring shots of the latest developments.

This Red-tailed Hawk’s nest in the oak tree is why the squirrels are agog.

The paths I’m making with surplus leaves.

The pear tree, especially pretty in flower this year.

My seedlings, that I started late March. We keep having cold spells, so only the perennials can go into the garden.




The Foster Family

| fobafam
(Jared’s headstone has him born 1805.)

Grave marker for Jared Foster, Opdyke Cemetery, Jefferson Co. IL

Mr. Perrin, above, has a couple of conflations in his piece. John Foster, who may be called Sr., though it isn’t clear he used this himself, was great-great-great-grandfather to the Jonathan who was Jared’s father. In between were Samuel and two Williams. John, born 1618, was the original immigrant, and settled in Salem, Massachusetts, the state in which the Fosters lived for several generations.

Nostalgic Pics

| fobafam
Old-time soft drink brands, and the bottles they came in.
My Barker grandparents’ kitchen in their Mt. Vernon, IL bungalow.
Another view. The door to the right went to the basement. The house had a sort of front and back parlor design; a little room behind a French door that you can see just on the left, was used for a bedroom/sewing room, but could have been used as a dining room. There were two “true” bedrooms, at either end of a little hall, and a front porch with a swing, the steps painted red.
A school project from the 1960s, East Elementary, Athens, OH.

Ramsey Ancestors

| fobafam

While given the reminder in New Zealand this week, of the tragic reach of religious intolerance and hatred, those of us descended from religious refugees can bear the American promise in mind, and strenghten it, when we find it within our power to do so.

The Wilhite group featured here arrived when Virginia was a possession of the British empire, probably from the Baden-Wurttemberg region of Germany.

***

More Sweet Stuff

| fobafam

Chocolate Chunk Blondies

Chocolate Chunk Blondies recipe
See Recipes page

1/3 cup butter, melted                                                                

1/3 cup sour cream                                                                        

4 eggs                                                                                                  

1 tsp vanilla

2/3 cup white sugar

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 cup flour

1 cup walnuts ground into meal

24 pcs Hershey Nuggets

1 cup white chocolate chips

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

***

Instructions:

Mix butter, sour cream, eggs, vanilla, and sugar. 

Make walnut meal by coarsely grinding English walnuts in the blender.

Add flour, baking powder, salt and walnut meal.

Pulse Hershey nuggets to various size chunks about 4 or 5 times, processing a handful at a time.  Add to batter.

Add white chocolate chips. 

Butter and flour a 13 x 9 baking pan and spread batter into it.

Bake at 350 degrees.  Because ovens vary, begin checking for doneness at about 20 minutes.  When golden brown and when a toothpick comes cleanly out of the center, remove from oven.