by jphilo | Aug 31, 2023 | Family
Labor Day weekend will be different this year. For as long as I can remember the holiday was more about celebrating my mother’s birthday than celebrating laborers. Then again she was born on September 3, which was Labor Day in her birth year of 1928. Which means her birthday was and will always be a celebration of labor, though not of laborers.
Because Mom’s birthday usually occurred during a three day weekend, it often coincided with gatherings of our extended family. Though Labor Day weekend will be different this year, that much will remain the same. Our annual cousins’ reunion––there are 39 of us, a number that swells quickly when you throw in our spouses and descendants–– will be held the day before Mom’s birthday.
This year will be quite different in other ways. Mom left this world on June 23 and will not be with us in body on her birthday. Then again, our memories of her and of her seven siblings who waited patiently for her to join them in heaven, will be present in full force. We will tell our family stories. We will share favorite memories of our parents. They were all farmers and housewives and teachers, remarkable people though not well-known outside our circle and never, never showy.
Since some of my cousins weren’t able to attend Mom’s celebration of life, I will take the memory book the funeral home compiled for them to see. I’ll also bring the scrapbook, filled with photos of our parents and their parents, which I made the year Mom turned 80. How can that be 15 years ago? I will also take the birthday cake she loved best, homemade German chocolate cake. Not the cupcake version on the chocolate bar pictured above, but the traditional version pictured below. The cake is delicious, moist and very big. A good thing in an extended family as large as ours.
My piece will probably be on the salty side, not because I have a heavy hand with that ingredient, but because I will be crying as I eat. My tears will be good. Sad. Joyful. Healthy. I expect them to flow freely as my cousins who knew and loved Mom teach me what they already know. She, like their parents who went before her, is alive and well in our hearts.
Happy birthday, Mom, from all of us.
In loving memory of Dorothea Lorraine Stratton
September 3, 1928-June 23, 2023
by jphilo | Sep 8, 2022 | Family
For Mom, another birthday means another chance to reinvent herself. For some people, that means claiming to be younger than they are. For Mom, it means the opposite. She began making such claims five years ago, about a month before her birthday.
“What do you want to do to celebrate turning 91?” I asked.
“I’ll be 95,” she replied.
“What year were you born?”
“1928,” she replied correctly without missing a beat.
“If that’s the case, you’re going to be 91.”
Faced with the math, which she could still compute at that time, she conceded the point. But not any more. For 2 years now, her insistence that she is 5 years older than her birth certificate claims has been remarkably consistent. I’ve been equally consistent about seeing if she’ll slip up.
“You’re going to be 94 on September 3,” I told her in late August. “What do you want to do to celebrate?”
“Nothing. And I’m going to be 99,” she shot back.
“Nothing at all? Not even cake and ice cream.”
“I could do that.”
“What kind of cake?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe homemade German Chocolate Cake?” I mentioned her favorite.
“That would be okay.”
The morning of her birthday, my brother and I served up cake and ice cream in her room at the care facility where she lives. My sister who lives out of state called and chatted with her.
After we sang Happy Birthday to her, I asked, “What’s it feel like to be 94?”
“I’m 99.” She handed my brother her half-eaten cake and ice cream. “I can’t eat any more.”
Soon after, my sister said good-bye, and Mom fell asleep. My brother and I packed up the food and went on our way.
“The only question now,” my brother said as we walked down the hall, “is whether she’ll be with us on her next birthday.”
“And if she is,” I added with her twinkle in my eye, “whether she’ll be 99 again or 100.”
by jphilo | Jul 26, 2016 | Top Ten Tuesday
Tomorrow’s my 60th birthday, and I’m looking forward to it. Really I am, and for these 10 good reasons.
10. Ordering off the 55+ menu at IHOP will be easier. Five years ago, doing so made me feel like an imposter. Now I feel like I’ve earned it.
9. The AARP has lowered their annual membership price to $12 in honor of my birthday. Thoughtful as the gesture is, I’m not taking them up on it.
8. Tomorrow morning, I will be grateful for the ability to walk 6 miles pain free…even at my age.
7. German Chocolate Birthday Cake! Need I say more?
6. When people inquire about my age, and I tell them, with suitable self-effacement that I am 60, they will have all the more reason to respond, “You certainly don’t look your age.” (And this would be your cue to type something similar in the comment box.)
5. Being 60 makes the fact that my mystery novel, set in the decade when I was in my 20s, is considered historical fiction a little easier to swallow. Mainly because I can wash it down with birthday cake. (See #7)
4. On my official birthday, all those early Facebook birthday wishes will no longer feel like being pushed into old age.
3. Once I’m 60, the Man of Steel, who hit the same milestone waaaay back in March, will no longer feel as though he robbed the cradle.
2. The day will remind me of Mom’s 60th in 1988. Our son was 6, and our daughter was a newborn when the sibs and I hosted a gigantic surprise birthday shindig at her church in Le Mars. She was clueless, and the many friends and family members who gathered to honor her, was a glorious tribute.
1. I’ll be celebrating my birthday with my family. What could be better?
I’d love to hear bout your 60th birthday memories in the comment box. If you don’t have any, see #6.
by jphilo | Jan 29, 2014 | Recipes
What’s been cooking in our kitchen this January? Mostly old winter favorites and not many new recipes because of some nose-to-the-grindstone writing deadlines that leave little time to test new recipes. In lieu of something new, today’s post points to the five recipes Gravel Road readers visited the most in the last 30 days. Here goes:
5. Downton Abbey Dairy-Free Scones
4. Fabulous Franklin Chex Mix
3. Best Non-Dairy Egg Bake Ever
2. Dairy-Free Spinach Dip
1. German Chocolate Cake: Dairy Free Version
So, what’s cooking at your house this month? Leave a comment and a link to the recipe!
by jphilo | Sep 6, 2011 | Recipes
This past weekend, we hosted the Labor Day Family Reunion at our house. Because Mom’s birthday is September 3, we always celebrate her big day with the traditional family birthday cake, German Chocolate. In honor of that event (and because today I’m busy with the annual poking, prodding, and boob squishing also known as a yearly physical and mammogram), today’s recycled post features the birthday cake recipe. This is, by the way, the recipe, originally posted in September of 2008, was the first recipe entry on this blog.
BTW, we also celebrated my cousin’s son’s birthday over the weekend with the yummiest carrot cake ever. Stay tuned for it’s posting in a week or two!
German Chocolate Cake
Whew, I meant to get to this entry last Friday, but the day got away from me as I packed and baked for our annual Labor Day Reunion. The reunion participants include my mom, her kids and their families, along with Mom’s sister and her husband, their kids and their families – usually somewhere between twenty and thirty people each year. The two older generations visit, play games and eat while the younger generation films their annual version of S.O. Weird Cousins TV. More on that production in another post.
We celebrate Mom’s birthday during the weekend as she was born on September 3, which was Labor Day the year she made her appearance. The birthday cake is always homemade German chocolate cake, which is only made at our house when requested by the birthday boy or girl. It makes a moist, rich, dense cake able to feed the masses when covered with coconut-pecan frosting.
The cake recipe is inside each box of Baker’s German sweet chocolate, along with one for the frosting. But years ago, Mom copied an easier, just as tasty recipe from a magazine. I’ve never seen it anywhere else, so here it is – in honor of Mom’s 80th birthday this coming Wednesday.
Easy Coconut-Pecan Filling and Frosting
3/4 cup evaporated milk 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar 1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla 3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 1/3 cups shredded coconut 1 cup chopped pecans
Combine milk, sugars, butter and vanilla in a sauce pan. Bring to a full boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. (Mixture may appear curdled.) Quickly stir a small amount of hot mixture into the egg yolks; then pour that mixture back into sauce pan. Return to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add coconut and pecans. Cool to spreading consistency, stirring occasionally.
*Cookbooks tell you to frost between the layers and on the top of a German chocolate cake, but not on its sides. Mom always frosted the sides (it’s a little tricky) to keep the cake moist.
