Banana Bread

Mom must’ve had a thing for banana bread.  In her journal, particularly the college years, she records trying various banana bread recipes in search of the perfect one.  She even has several of the recipes recorded and her notes on what needed to be changed.  Here (as she wrote it) is mom’s final Banana Bread recipe that she developed over the years and was her perfect version of banana bread.

3 c. Bisquick

2/3 c. sugar

2 eggs

1/2 c. milk

1 c. mashed bananas (about 2)

3/4 c. chopped nuts

Mix together.  Beat 30 seconds on low.  Beat 3 minutes at medium.  Stir in nuts.  Pour into greased & floured loaf pan.  Bake 55-60 minutes- until wooden pick comes out clean.  Cool 10 minutes.

Oven 350

Mom in her early years- from Grandma Douglas

David’s wedding- July 1998

1969

1961

Mom, age 6, with her dad

Mom and Dawn with Chuck Norris- 1980

Mom and Dad’s 2nd date

December 1980

I was pleasantly surprised today to open my mail and find these pictures and this letter from Grandma Douglas.  It was so neat to see these as most of them are pictures that I have never seen.  Here is what Grandma wrote.

Here are some pictures I found that I thought were kind of special.  The one of Pam as a baby was in Grandpa Dick’s scrapbook, and there are more of all ages if you need them.  Enclosed is one of her at age 6 with her Dad, and then the one of her with him when she got married.  It was hard to find pictures of just the two of them together.

The one of Dawn and Pam with Chuck Norris was taken at his house in Rolling Hills, CA in 1980.  Pam had great legs, didn’t she?  Pam and David went with us to the lake one time when we took Chuck out.  I like the picture of Pam with her back to the camera…I think it is sexy!  She is taking a picture of Chuck skiing.  When Dick was Secretary/Treasurer of Chuck’s UFAF organization, Pam was very instrumental in doing a lot of the paperwork and organizing the conventions.  Even though we were no longer with Chuck at the time of Pam’s passing, he was very saddened and sent beautiful flowers.

Then I found that cute picture of Pam in earlier years out at the lake.

The one of the four siblings was taken at David’s wedding reception and is probably the last picture I have of Pam.  What beautiful children!!

Love, Grandma

Grandma, thank you so much! 

And mom was indeed known for those legs of hers.  Her friends still talk about them.

Remembrance- Karma Earl

Karma was one of mom’s friends who was in her book club.  Incidentally, she is also Lori Nelson’s sister.  This is what she remembers about mom:

The night I remember most was when we read,”Bridges of Madison County”.  We were sitting there discussing the book and your Dad came in imitating the main character of the book with Camera’s around his neck.  He said he was looking at Fridges of Clark County.  It was so funny we all laughed till we cried.  You will have to ask your Dad but I remember They were so unique because they were savvy enough to email eachother back then. 
Your Mom always had am impish smile and a laugh.  What a gift.
Sincerely, Karma Earl

I think it’s funny she mentions the emailing too because I remember mom was so excited about email.  Then she would get all bummed or upset when she’d get on AOL and find that she didn’t have any new mail.  She said it made her feel important or something.  She’d bug me about it and as a result she and I emailed each other regularly.  Can I blame her for my own obsession with checking my email then?

Taco Salad

I’ve found that a lot of mom’s recipes were not written out very well.  Either she winged it a lot or her friends that she got the recipes from did.  In any case, there is many a one written like this one.  This recipe came from her friend Jean Santiago- who was in the old ward when we lived by Mitchells (the first time).

Taco Salad

1 head lettuce
1 1/2 lbs hamburger
3/4 lb cheddar cheese
1 bag tortilla chips
1 soup can size Ranch Style beans (with juice)
1 can diced green chiles
Picante Sauce
1 bottle Ranch dressing
—– (optional)
black olives
purple onions
avacadoes
tomatoes
celery
mushrooms

Brown hamburger. Shred cheese. Rip lettuce into bite-sized pieces. Break up chips. Mix all together and add any additional toppings desired.

Apple Pie

I’d like to include recipes from our childhood that mom made often.  I remember how hard she worked to get this pie crust just right.  Mom was in charge of the pie every Thanksgiving.  I just dared to make this for the first time ever.  I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since I’ve had it!  Maybe I’ll try her pecan pie soon.

Pam Alger’s Apple Pie

Source: The crust was my mom’s recipe and the pie filling was Grandma Douglas’

Flaky Pie Crust (makes a 9′ or 10′ double crust):

2 c. sifted flour
1 tsp. salt
2/3 c. shortening
6-7 Tbsp. cold water

Sift together flour and salt. Cut in shortening with pastry blender till pieces are the size of small peas. Add water, a tablespoon at a time, and mix with fork. Split dough in half and roll out to make two crusts.

Apple Pie:

4 c. prepared apples (4 or 5 apples, peeled and sliced)
3/4 to 1 c. sugar (amount depends on tartness of apples)
1 Tbsp. flour
dash salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
2 Tbsp. butter

Prepare pastry and apples. Sprinkle some sugar on bottom pastry. Add apple slices. Mix sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Sprinkle over apples then dot with butter. Put top crust on, moistening edge of bottom crust with water to seal edges. Flute edges, trim, and cut slits in top crust. Bake at 450 for 15 minutes, then decrease to 350 and bake for 30 minutes.

Remembrance- Annette Earl

Thanks so much Annette for sending this memory of mom.  I especially appreciate it because it is so me.   I am not a good housekeeper by any means and I feel the same way about having a friend over- just sit and be my friend.  In fact, it’s one of the few things I feel pretty strongly about and I see it also in my simply sitting and visiting when at other friends or families homes.  It’s nice to put a background to it.  I remember you picking at that fern and it making her so mad but eventually I think she picked at it just as much.  I know I would.  Oh, and those pigs… I asked her about that once.  How could someone love pigs?  She claimed she didn’t really.  That it started as a passing comment or joke or something and just sort of spiraled out of control and people just wouldn’t stop giving them to her.  I had to laugh at that.

I loved your mom. I still do. She used to make me laugh so much. We’d get together and start talking and all of a sudden she’d start laughing about something and her laugh was so honest and so deep it would make me feel so good.

She was not a good house keeper, but when she needed to she would clean up and she was a great hostess. She was a good cook and made everyone feel comfortable. She used to get mad at me because I’d come in and take the dead leaves off that big fern of hers in the living room or I’d ask if I could put away something in the kitchen. She’d tell me to leave her fern alone, quit putting stuff away and just be her friend.

She was a good mother. She loved her kids so much and wanted to be there for them. She really wanted to be involved in their lives.

She loved her pigs, they were everywhere. People knew she loved pigs and were always giving her them. After that I never told people I collect unicorns because I didn’t want 10,000 unicorns.

I’ll never forget the hike we took to Havasupai with the Nelsons. That dang knee of hers’ gave her fits and Dave had to carry her pack, but she was a trooper. I thought she might have to ride a horse out but she made it the whole way and it is a hard hike. It’s about 22 miles. We stayed at hotel near the top after we finished the hike. She went in the bathroom that night and let out this blood curdling scream. We came running only to find her doubled over in pain from laughing over the size of Lori Nelson’s bra. I think she put it on her head. She said she’d never seen anything like that. I loved being her friend and I still consider her my friend. She’s just moved away for a while. Love, Annette

What happened

The short story, in Jimmy’s words.  Written for an English assignment:

I awoke from a midday nap very alert, an unusual occurrence for me.  Walking downstairs toward the kitchen for a snack, I smelled the sharp bite of ammonia.  The house was silent as I rounded the corner to see my mother lying on the cold tile, gasping for air.  A mop and bucket were beside her, the obvious source of the strong smell.  The fumes must have been overpowering, and my immediate thought was to open the two nearby windows.  Moving quickly, I felt very lucky to have had first aid training in Boy Scouts, and remembered that the first thing to do is keep calm.  I grabbed the phone from above the mop bucket, and dialed 911, turning my attention to doing what I could for her.  As I gently rolled my mom onto her back, I realized this was more than a simple breathing problem.  Her eyes were rolling backward, and she was convulsing slightly.  Just then I heard the front door open around the corner.  Two of my younger siblings were just getting home from school.  “Michael, take Jill and run and get the neighbors!” I relayed to my brother.  He took one wide-eyed look at mom on the floor and dashed back out the door to the next house.  When the ambulance arrived, the woman on the phone said “You did a good job.”, and left me to go with the EMT crew.  The ambulance driver echoed the words of the 911 operator and assured me I had done exactly what I should have done.  Riding in silence to the hospital, I continually looked backward to check on mom’s condition.  The shock of the situation still hadn’t set in.  The rest of the evening was a blur as the family waited for word from the doctors.  Eventually, my dad sent all of the kids home to try and get some sleep, including myself.  As soon as I hit the pillow, the flood-gates opened and the emotions of the day flushed out of me.  I didn’t sleep at all, lying face down in my bed.  I cried and I prayed, knowing that my life may never be the same.  It wasn’t long after that my father called to let us know she hadn’t made it through the night.

New York with mom

Me and Mom in New York

I had the fortunate opportunity of going with mom to her 20-year class reunion in Aug 98.  I thought it was so cool of her to take me and so cool of dad to let me go.  

It’s funny what things you remember from trips.  The thing I remember is the shaky ride on the little airplane to Rome, NY.  I had never seen such a small airport.  It was raining when we got there.  There wasn’t much to listen to on the radio and that was when we first discovered Delilah.  Weird to think we had never heard her before since she’s on every night out here now.  We thought she was just a New York thing and maybe she was then.  But boy, mom could not stop going off about how dumb and cheesy she was.  “Oh, gimmie a break!”, she’d say.  But we still listened.  If nothing else for a laugh at all the cheese.

I was able to see mom’s old house in Woodstock, visit the town, tour Saugerties High School, meet some of grandma’s friends (help me Dawn, I’m blanking on their names- but the first pic is in their backyard), and go to the reunion with her.  We were also able to visit Dixie and Grandma Leake, a favorite treat of mine.

I fell in love with Woodstock.  I have more pictures from the trip but they will require scanning in first.  I had to have been difficult to be an LDS teenager in Woodstock, NY during the 70’s. 

Mom’s friends were great.  I even kept in touch with a couple after the reunion but have lost touch since.  It was pretty obvious how well-loved she was by them and how excited they were to see her.  They all laughed just as much as she and you would never have known they’d been apart for so long.  Alan still doted on mom like the long-lost crush she was.  I was also touched at how they all just welcomed me into their group as one of them.  It was so easy to be at ease with them all.   It was fun to hear their stories too.  I was touched when, less than a year later, many of them made the trip out to Vegas to attend mom’s funeral.  Her best girlfriend’s blew all their money on a suite at the Bellagio so they could party it up in style because they said that’s what mom would have wanted them to do.  I had no doubt they were absolutely right.

Mom with two of her best high school friends- Joy Ricks (McCune?) and Alan Gardeski

Aunt Dixie, Grandma Leake, and mom

10 years ago

Miss You

I should put up a cleaner picture but all the other ones have my kids in it as well.  Thinking about you today mom.  Ten years sounds like so long ago.  Sometimes it feels like an eternity has passed already.  Sometimes it seems like just yesterday.

Here is what I wrote last year about that day.

That darn knee and that darn family reunion

Ha. ha.  Do you remember this?  This would be mom’s last Thornton family reunion she would attend here on earth.  It was like everything possible went wrong.  I think she threw her knee out this time just bending over to pick up something and twisting wrong.  She was so ticked, but look, she has a smile here.  Eventually you just have to laugh at everything or it will all get the best of you.  I’m pretty sure that’s how she saw things.  I would say this has something to do with why she was so anxious to get out of going to the reunion the next year.  It wasn’t lost on Jimmy and I.  We immediately said “well, I guess she got her wish.”  The nerve. =)