REDONDOWRITER'S SACRED ORDINARY

Sharing Recipes: Rosie's Oriental Chicken Casserole

When one grows older, there are a variety of ways to leave a legacy. Family recipes are one of them. In my own case, my mom wasn't the greatest cook in the world, although I can taste her big yeast rolls with dripping butter and her cornstarch gravy was the best I've ever tasted. What I've started to do is type in the favorite recipes, mostly shared by friends over the years, and I hope to make a little cookbook for my kids one of these days.

Since I actually made this today, I'm sharing my friend Rosie's Oriental Casserole which originally appeared in the St. Catherine Laboure cookbook in the 1970s. It rests on my dining table Lazy Susan which long-ago belonged to my mother-in-law. She died in 1973, but I've used it ever since. I hope you will occasionally share recipes, too. Here's Rosie's recipe:

Rosie’s Oriental Chicken Casserole

3 cups cubed cooked chicken
2 tsp. lemon juice
2 tbs. soy sauce
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1 cup chopped celery
1 can water chestnuts, drained and sliced
1 lb. bean sprouts (canned or fresh)
1 cup mushrooms
1/2 tsp. salt
Dash of pepper
3/4 cup mayonnaise (I used reduced fat)
1 can or pkg. of chow mein noodles

Combine lemon juice and soy sauce. Pour over chicken and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Mix remaining items and combine with chicken mixture.

Pour into 1 1/2 qt. lightly oiled pan. Sprinkle chow mein noodles on top.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes, uncovered. Serves six.

Waiting for the E-Mail Man

This cartoon was in the newsletter my vet sends out. Cookie, thank heavens, doesn't do this--yet.

By the way, I don't remember how or when I tripped across this blog, but it has excellent information for dog owners: Happy Doggies.

SoulCollage: Persephone, Goddess of Spring

It has taken me several weeks to finish this SoulCollage card for some reason I haven’t really thought about. I had the background pasted down and had chosen the primary image, but I played with the other elements. Tonight it came together. Though it has grown cool again, the sun has been consistently shining so I trust that my psyche is ready to come out of hibernation.

I am Persephone, the goddess of spring growth. I am the one who was once a maiden playing in the fertile fields with my friends, but I was seized by Haides and carried to the underworld to be his bride. My father, Zeus, conspired in my abduction, but my mother Demeter sought me tirelessly and refused to let the earth bear fruit until I was returned home. I am the one whose father had mood swings I never could understand, but so did my mother. She never gave up on me even when I periodically abandoned or ignored her. Unfortunately, I am the one who learned to love pomegranate seeds in hell and that craving has resulted in having to spend part of the year going back to my husband. When I am back in the underworld with Haides winter fallowness prevails in the upperworld. When I return, everything greens and grows, flowers bloom, creatures mate and the world regenerates. But I am the one who admittedly wants things both ways.

The question I would ask Persephone would be, “How can I hold the memory of the good times even when the season is dark and cold?” 

Are You Addicted to Blogging?

57%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Judy at Imagine What I'm Leaving Out posted this and she reported in at 70% addicted. Hey, I'm only 57% addicted. How about you?

The Gift of a Lifetime, Lucille Scolini Style

By the time you get to be my age, surprises are rare and most gifts, though lovely and deeply appreciated, are fairly predictable because the people who love me best know my interests and foibles. I love each one but yesterday was the frosting on the cake when I was totally surprised by my friend of some 40 years, Lucille Scolini. Lucille has a very playful sense of humor and loves intrigue, so for several months she has been telling that sometime in the spring she had a surprise for me. She would remind me every time we saw one another that it wouldn't be too much longer. To say I was curious was an understatement.

The reminders got more detailed and complex. There were other people involved, she said, and she called them "the powers that be." They would be an integral part of the surprise when it finally happened. A few weeks back Lu said the time had come for the "event". I could choose whether it would be at breakfast, lunch or dinner, but all the participants would have to have their schedules synched. I began to grow apprehensive. I asked her if someone was going to try and sell us a time share. She assured me it was nothing like that; she wouldn’t do that to a friend. "Well," I sighed, "Will 'the powers that be' at least pay for our meal?" Frugal Fran is always thinking. "Of course," she replied graciously. She kept assuring me to relax. I was going to love it.  I'll admit that I like to ideally "let go and let God" but there is another part that likes to have a semblance of control.

Lucille and the "powers that be" were to arrive yesterday at 10 a.m. and then we would walk to a local breakfast hangout in Redondo called CJ's. My imagination had gone totally hog wild by this time. Were they people from our long ago past as young wives and mothers we had lost track of? Was it some kind of little tribute troupe helping me to celebrate a belated 70th birthday?

The knock came on the door and Cookie went hog wild with barking and I prepared to meet a passel of people in the courtyard. Cookie shot out the door and began leaping with joy and Lu reached around the corner and brought out this oil painting of two of my grandsons, Henry and Fritz. I was literally speechless and began to weep, of course, as I do when happy or sad.

"It was all a ruse," she admitted with her ever-so-dear-and-familiar giggle. "I have been working on this painting for you since my art class started last September." This scene had come from a photo my son and daughter-in-law had sent out two years ago as a Christmas card and Lucille loved the image. Thus, an idea was born, with love and creativity bringing it to reality.

I am still in a state of shock; I haven’t even properly thanked her as yet. She did call me to tell me the details of having a giclee made should Tony and Gret want one, too, though they will ultimately get the original a very long time from now.

Lucille, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have never had a gift anything like this ever and I am so deeply appreciative. She did pay for breakfast in spite of me practically begging to treat us both. Aren’t my little guys cute? Isn't Lucille the kind of friend all of us should be blessed with? What is one of the most precious gifts you have received in your lifetime?

Called or Not Called, God is Present

At Sacred Ordinary on February 4, 2008 I wrote a post headed, "Bidden or Not Bidden, God is Present." My friend Rev. Ann at One Wild and Precious Life commented that she had received nearly the same quote on a plaque when she graduated from the Haden Institute. She hung it over her office door. I've long been percolating a sign I want to make for over my own home office/studio door, and nothing seemed right. Then all of a sudden, the quote Carl Jung attributes to Desiderius Erasmus leaped out and this is what I made to hang over my office/studio door.

Malaga Cove's Arches From Two Artists Perspectives

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. -- Carl Jung

My dear friend Orma Hammond is an artist and I love her work. On March 29, 2006 at Sacred Ordinary I posted photos and a story about a site in Malaga Cove I call "The Arches." I have photographed it often over the years. I purchased her painting and it hangs in my dining room. In the March 29 post I included a photo of the art and the photo she took that she worked from. Here is a replica minus its frame.

Some weeks back I attended a local craft fair and to my great delight, I saw prints of a different view of the same scene in a booth local artist Carlos Lopez and his daughter were hosting. Again, I was utterly captivated. I bought an 8 x 10 copy of it which I am in the process of framing today.

Jung's quote at the beginning of the post seemed particularly apropos when looking at Orma and Carlos's way of viewing a site I personally love so much. Like I tell people who come to journal in my groups, "No judgments, no comparisons, give up our need to understand."

When a Meme Becomes the Teacher

On March 1, Cate at Beyond the Fields We Know, posted “A Meme For Booklovers.” Because I rarely respond to memes, when she tagged me, I guess I back-burnered her challenge. I should have politely responded no thanks for the tag, but I didn’t. Today, while cleaning out my mailbox, there was Cate’s challenge—and it captured my imagination. When the pupil is ready, the teacher comes. This exercise is a little like what I used to call Bible cracking.

So, these were the rules that Cate posted:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Since I have hundreds of books in several bookcases, I didn’t know where to start. The first five I grabbed actually had either a blank page or a photo on that page. I was about to abandon the project until I pulled out Marianne Williamson’s Illuminata: Thoughts, Prayers, Rites of Passage.

Synchronicity begs that I share this with you:

“Where there is total love, there is no guilt. Where there is no guilt, there is no obstruction to true and honest communication. What truly serves one person’s good serves the good of all.”

A Course in Miracles has been important to me since I originally read it in the early 1980s, but like so many things in life, I not only back-burnered Cate, I also carelessly toss aside favorite authors after I gorge on them.

So, thanks, Cate. And I am not going to tag anyone, but if you feel so inclined, try this writing exercise for yourself, but let me know if you do, if you don't mind.   

Thoughts on Easter and Gratitude

For me personally, Easter is not only the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but the season when I resurrect myself from the dark winter. It is the holiday that brings me yet another chance to choose again. This morning at church, some people were given signs to hold up saying "Alleluia" every time the word was sung or spoken. These were the people in front of me. After church was over, there was an Easter egg hunt for the little ones on the church lawn. It was a gorgeous Southern California day, actually in the 80s at the beach. When I got home, my daughter Christy, my 19-year-old grandson Anthony, 21-year-old Whitney, and the kids dad came over and made a nice breakfast brunch. It was so very, very nice to be with family today.
This is grandma with Whitney, Anthony and my dear, dear Cookie.

GRATEFUL FOR:

• The incredible weather, at last, although when I spoke to my son in Port Angeles, WA, he said it was snowing.
• Finding a church home only a block from my house where I'm becoming a part of the community.
• My daughter, two sons, daughters-in-law, Whitney and Anthony's dad, all my grandchildren.
• Abundant food prepared by someone else and they even did the clean-up!
• Time to both continue the office/studio organization, and snooze and book time.
• A surprise visit from an old friend from school, now retired. We advised the school newspaper together for six years.
• An opportunity to watch "The Jane Austen Book Club" on DVD. I loved the book, and though the film did poorly at the box office, I thought it was delightful.
• A balmy evening, but when I walked Cookie the last time and put out the trash, we could smell a skunk nearby. Ah, duality in everything.

I hope your own Easter was a joy to you!

Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

What a beautiful day this was--the sun was shining and it felt like spring was really here. I went to a few yard sales, grocery shopped, did some clean up and cooking, spent an hour doing yard work, then began reorganizing my office/art room once again. Spring must be here when I get in this mood.

This evening I went to dinner with friends Mary, Don and Jennifer before we went to El Camino College to see the twins, Elena and Emily, in Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Mary and Don are the twin's grandparents. Several friends and their grandkids also attended. Here's the girls after the performance. When the TV series Providence first began, the twins played Joanie's baby, two seasons, I think. Then they were replaced with another set of twins. Twins are often used to play one baby or child. Both of them sing beautifully in a local children's choir and it looks like they might be hooked on theater.

Joseph runs for several more performances. If you live in Los Angeles, I'd sure check out this company doing a masterful Joseph. It actually is amazing. I saw this one other time, probably in the late 1970s, but I'm older now, more appreciative, I think. And I have a hunch I'll be able to say in not too many years that I knew Elena and Emily when----