Tag Archives: Birthdays

Lemon Thyme Tea Bread

21 Friday Oct 2011

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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This Lemon Thyme Tea Bread — a recipe I’ve made for years — will become a fine if unconventional birthday cake tomorrow.

My husband helped make it because he staunchly believes in one life absolute:  NO ONE should have to make their own birthday cake.  But really, I don’t mind making my cake.  And with a preference to NOT be the center of attention — ever — I also don’t mind the absence of the usual big family gathering held in my honor.

Just as well since my two middle children are out-of-town and my endearing youngest is almost always out in left field, especially when it comes to knowing who’s on first and the important what’s, where’s and when’s of life.

On the other hand, my oldest will be in town and is always on top of her game.  However, she has a very important O.U. football game to attend with her husband, which in Oklahoma, don’t you know, is the sacred cow that trumps all else going on during game day.  This is absolutely true no matter how punk or sorry the competition is expected  to be.

Like all addicts, come hell or high water, a Sooner fan MUST have their fix of O.U. football every time the team plays.  Heaven knows I learned this from the cradle —  about an hour after my birth, in fact  —  from my dear daddy who left my mother and me to rush to the radio to find out whether O.U. would continue its winning streak by beating Colorado on October 22, 1955.  In case you’re wondering, they did.  And also — in case you’re wondering — my father never thought he had his priorities out-of-order.

I will not tune into tomorrow night’s game.  But surely if heaven is as good as its name, they will have subscribed to the Sooner Football Network so Daddy can.

Other than knowing THE game will not be part of my celebration, I’ve no plans yet.  Where possible, I prefer to live life without a game plan.   But I’m pretty sure I’ll be enjoying some of this lovely Lemon Thyme Tea Bread.  And of course, since my husband IS a Sooner football fan, I can’t help but think I’ll be hearing the sounds of O.U.’s fight song playing over and over, beginning around 7 pm or so, courtesy of The Pride of Oklahoma, which in case you’re wondering, is O.U.’s band rather than its football team.

How in heaven did THAT happen I wonder.

Go figure.

go o.u.

Lemon Thyme Tea Bread

3/4 cup milk
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Combine first three ingredients in a saucepan — bring to a boil, then remove from heat.  Cover and let stand for 5 minutes.  Then cool.

Beat butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.  Gradually add sugar, beating well.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.

Combine dry ingredients and, alternating with milk mixture, add to butter mixture, beginning and ending with dry ingredients.  Mix after each addition.  Stir in lemon rind.

Pour batter in a greased and floured 9×5 loaf pan.  Bake at 325 for 50  minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool in pan on a wire rack 10 minutes; remove from pan, Pour glaze over bread and cool completely.

Lemon Glaze

1 cup sifted powdered sugar

2 Tbsp lemon juice

Combine and stir until smooth.

Standing by Sis

03 Thursday Feb 2011

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care

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I was six and a half when Sis was born.

Counting “the half” was important then; this I know for fact.  But what I don’t know and can’t recall is how I felt about having a baby sister.

I do remember the baby shower though, where I helped Mom unwrap many gifts.  The party was held at Edith Marshall’s house I believe, located just up the hill, west of the church where Mom and Dad married.   I remember Mom wearing a yellow corsage made from baby socks — which reminded me of soft baby chicks — fashioned into rosebuds held together by diaper pins.  The pins and socks, perhaps, were a nod to practicality, both intended for the new baby’s use.

I don’t remember Mom going to the hospital.  Or Mom being at the hospital.  Or Mom coming home from the hospital.  But I do remember seeing my baby sister lying in her used but freshly gussied up bassinet.  I whispered a promise to not wake the baby so I could watch her sleep.  I stood as close as I could get.  And looking in past the new lace ruffles adorning the wicker hood, I found her small.  No bigger than a baby doll.

Christi was the only one of us Dad named.  He chose to name her for his best childhood friend, Chris Alexopoulous.  He and Chris met in 1943 in Cohoes, New York, a few years after Dad’s mother died in a  tragic auto accident.  Dad may have lived there a year — and, while longer than many places Dad called home as a child, I wonder now, how Chris became so important to Daddy, in so brief an interlude, that Daddy would name a child for him.

I don’t imagine Chris knows Daddy honored him in this way.  Nor do I imagine Chris ever realized the regard Dad held for him, that so many years after knowing him, Dad would find a way to ensure he never forgot Chris and the friendship extended to the shy boy my father was.

But as I sat here and write, I realize many regard my dear sister in just this way — in the same way Daddy regarded his best friend Chris.  So while Dad may have initiated the honor to his good friend through his act of naming, Christi has extended Dad’s honor through the way she lives her life, as she stands by friends through trials and joys.

I don’t imagine Sis knows the good she does through her simple gift of friendship.  But then, perhaps there’s nothing simple about friendship.   If there were, wouldn’t we have more friends?  Fewer acquaintances?

— Happy birthday, Sis.

Yes and No

12 Wednesday May 2010

Posted by in Life at Home

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Another day, another celebratory meal, another pretty table.

No, not really.  Yesterday’s birthday dinner was more than just another whatever.  Yesterday, my newest granddaughter Tayler, turned eleven years old.  Yesterday, I worked my fingers, if not to the bone, at least to dry chapped wrinkly skin, to make a meal perfect for a young girl whose name I barely knew two years ago.

How is it that this young  lady can already have claimed a place in my heart?  Is it because, no matter what or when, she always wants to spend the night at her new Nana’s house?  Is it because she has the wisdom to know, at such an early age, how sisters truly make the best of friends — even when they are young kid sisters who have a bent to tell sibling tales to parents with wagging tongues — wisdom it took both her mother and me years — or should I say decades?  —  to realize about our own wonderful sisters?

Pensive one moment, giggly the next, Tayler is a “good egg”, to borrow a favorite expression of my mother-in-law Janice.  Tayler is not afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve.  She asks for what she wants, come what may.  When she goes down in defeat with a circle of ‘no’s’, she bounces right back with a smile and a new plan.

We enjoyed a red banner evening together — spaghetti with red sauce, red velvet cake and her favorite cookies, swirled with red food coloring, that I bake, whenever a grandchild is promised to be in sight.  With two dozen cookies left over, Tayler asked if she could carry them to school today to share with her classmates.  “Of course,” I said.  Mostly, it’s easy to say ‘yes’ to Tayler.

Grandmother’s are better at saying ‘yes’ than ‘no.’  As a parent, I said ‘no’ too many times.  No. No. No.  Sometimes in a string, just like that.  My new grandson Ryan — Tayler’s older brother — wanted another piece of cake.  “Yes,” I said.  His new mother — my daughter, Kate — said “No.”  If I had been Kate, I, more than likely, would have said “No” too.  But I’m thinking the world is filled with too many “no’s”, that it’s up to families to speak the much-needed “yes, yes, yes.”

Of course, my final word last night was “No.”  Predictably, Tayler asked to spend the night.  After a rough night of sleeping, after working all day to make her birthday dinner grand, and with my husband, the disciplinarian, out-of-town, I spoke the safe and sorry ‘No’.

I wish I had said “Yes.”  I wish I had thrown common sense out the window and remembered what it was like to be eleven and spend the night at my Aunt Jo’s or my Aunt Carol’s.   Then maybe I would have said “Yes.”