Hello Fellow CDM, CFPPs!
I hope this finds everyone healthy and trying to find a doable “work/life balance” and a great hobby to keep your mind in a quiet place each day!
In the past few weeks during this pandemic, my thoughts have gone out to all the states and counties that are having to cancel their state and county fairs this summer. I grew up in rural Nebraska as a 4H kid who learned many talents through this wonderful program! I can proudly say many of the talented “Blue Ribbon” bakers back home could work circles around Martha Stewart, and we were lucky to have them share their wonderful farm life skills with us as small kids. We were all in it together; every summer we prepared our fair projects. Some of the projects such as knitting started early in the year and was always a time management exercise to be sure it was completed on time. Like my mother lovingly reminded me, “GOD only gave us 24 hours in a day, and it is up to us to use them wisely!” I remember visiting with my Grandmother about her recipes and past blue ribbon entries in the fair, she always was good to help me pick the perfect cookie/cake recipe from her many “scraps of paper” she’d stuffed in her kitchen drawer. She never bothered with recipe cards and her local church, and women’s club cookbooks were always well-worn and marked up!
“Food is the ultimate connector, bringing friends, families and communities together.” I so agree with this statement. That special recipe…the one everyone asked for after tasting it at church socials, potlucks, or club meetings. As strange as it may sound, funeral food was always something discussed during and long after the celebration of life. My hometown had seven churches and 500 people, so we had plenty of Sundays filled with great social hours and brunches. We had Monday mornings at the local café and grocery store; discussions began over the wonderful foods shared at church and the recipe grapevine continued.
My grandmother worked as the secretary in the family-owned auto shop, so she was the gatherer of many recipe tidbits that came her way. She wrote them on old scraps of paper, cardboard, used envelopes, etc. Whatever she had at her desk! I never saw a single “post it” note used in the 45 years they had the shop. We had a local fair and rodeo, so those recipes that were jotted down quite often became the blue-ribbon winners, with the various enhancements the “grapevine” had added in.
Old local cookbooks to this day are still a hot commodity at local garage sales or estate auctions in my hometown and are very treasured in the many families handing them down to the younger generations. 4H is still a thriving club and they have their own local cookbook that gets routinely updated with the Fair blue-ribbon entries for their families and friends to purchase to help support this wonderful group.
My grandfather passed away last fall at 103, five months and five days young, he was canning his favorite beet pickles up past 100 as a widower, doing it in the assisted living kitchen at the end with some help of the “ladies” who came to visit. I have his recipe as well as many of my grandmother’s scraps of paper that I have lovingly framed. I bless my mother who found some of my 4H blue ribbons to make the picture even more special.
Care communities are filled with wonderful “blue ribbon” bakers! Just ask around and you will see these treasures exist in your facility. I always enjoy hearing and having residents share their recipes for us to fix for special occasions. Fair foods are also a special treat to help bring the local county or state fair flavors right to your doorstep. Iowa is known for our many creations ‘on a stick’. We liked to have a resident competition each summer to see who could guess the new item created for that year’s fair ‘food on a stick’! Imagine our delight when we were able, with the help of a local food purveyor, to get the Iowa Pork Producers Pork Chop on a Stick (a huge pork chop with its own built in stick, the long bone)! I still remember the gentlemen in our community’s eyes when they took their first look and bite out of that hog! Priceless!
DO NOT LET COVID-19 cheat your residents out of their fair experiences or those wonderful “blue ribbon” recipes that you can create and share!
Please note that even though it is said we eat with our eyes, this will not work as a virtual bake off Zoom event! Smelling is believing!!! So, make some deep fat fried fair food, fresh baked cinnamon rolls or funnel cakes, deliciousness to fill the halls of your communities! Check out this
blue-ribbon cookbook and inspirational baker from the heartland - Minnesotan Marjorie Johnson at 100 years young!
Stay healthy and sane everyone!
#CDMsMatter