A Recipe For Ignoring the Lingering Post-Flood Repairs

If you take a close look - you will find the snowman in this photo, my daughter built him bright and early last Monday morning.

As soon as our school day had begun, she started worrying "All the great snowman snow will be gone before lunchtime!" I caved-in and let her have an early morning break to build that snowman - instead of doing her spelling lesson.

I knew she'd never concentrate on schooling as long as the lovely fresh snow was calling her name. As it turned out, she aced her spelling test as usual and we finished the day right on time anyway.

The snowman lasted all of two days, and then rain came and washed him away. The candy corn she'd made his eyes with melted too and for a short time the snowman had a bright orange face.

I've been busy this past week - tying up loose ends and making lists of things needing to be done. The list I'm making is the 'to do' list for that 22 year old son of mine - he'll be holding down the fort when my daughter and I fly off to spend the holidays with his older brother.

I've also been busy working on a Christmas gift for my children, one that I know will please at least two out of the three. My daughter is the exception - she'll appreciate it later, when she's older.

Several years ago as the holidays rolled around, I knew it was not the time to go into debt buying gifts. It was a 'lean' year so to speak. Instead of racing out to shop, I sat down at the computer and wrote a cookbook for my children.

I gathered up all their favorite food recipes and started typing. I added my mother's recipes and their other grandma's recipes. The pages grew and grew, as I added other family favorites from relatives, aunts and grandpas, close neighbors too. Everyone we knew had shared a great cooking creation over the years and they were willing to allow their recipes to be added to this cookbook creation of mine.

By the time the cookbook was typed and printed out, it had become all of 110 pages long. It was filled with all those meals and cookies and great dessert items we all think of as 'comfort food.' It was our family history of food.

My children loved their gift that Christmas and they actually use that cookbook too. That's the best part for me - that it's treasured and well used. My daughter's copy sits on the kitchen shelf with all my other cookbooks, waiting for her to grow up and have a kitchen of her own. In the meantime - she checks on it now and then - to make sure it's sitting where it belongs.

Page 110 of the cookbook announced "To Be Continued" and that is what I've been busy doing lately - the 'continuing part.'

I'm already up to page 132 and I've just started typing. In a blink of an eye 22 pages have piled up. So many great recipes were overlooked in the 'first issue' - I know because my sons have told me to make sure I add this and that recipe next time I revise "The Cookbook."

Over the past 4 years we've also collected and/or invented several new 'cookbook worthy' culinary creations. Those need inclusion as well. One evening my son's lovely girlfriend and I spent quality 'kitchen time' together - our mission was to create the best chicken panini sandwich on earth.

That 22 year old son of mine thinks we hit the mark, just the other evening he was reminiscing about those great sandwiches and telling me that the two of us had outdone ourselves with their creation. I get the hint - he's hoping we'll make them again soon.

My daughter and I are 'champion' gingerbread house builders - among all those other talents we thrive on believing we actually have. Our first year in this flood haven of a home - we created a replica of our home - complete with the front porch and Santa on the rooftop.

I dug around in the photo archives and found this photo to show of our handiwork that year.

We've joked a few times that we should make a new version of the house next - showing what it looked like during the Invisible Flood of 06. We could use chocolate pudding as the floodwater - it would be a close color match.

When we made this gingerbread house, it was 6 months prior to the flood - we had no idea what was in store for us a half-year later. We only knew - as we created this lovely sweet version of our home - that we loved this house and home and we were happy living here. Oddly - we still feel the same way even after finding out what was to happen the following lousy June of 2006.

I thought it would be a nice touch - cookbook-wise - to include our great gingerbread house making recipes too. I figure someday a grandchild might want to make a gingerbread house and wouldn't it be great to flip open 'mom's cookbook' and find it waiting.

Maybe I'll categorize that particular section as "Fun Things To Do With Food" - after all, you can find Grandpa's "Shit on a Shingle" listed under "Specialty" in the original cookbook. It's actually the only "Specialty" item in the original cookbook - with that name nothing else comes close to the standard of a true 'specialty' in our family, unless of course I were to add grandpa's "Frogoo" - that too deserves the 'Specialty' ranking.

I may not leave my children a written family history of events and memories - but they will have all the great foods that were served and that alone will surely trigger their own memories of happy times spent together.

A bonus to this entire endeavor of mine is that any daughter-in-laws I am, or may be, blessed with will never have to hear a word about 'That's not how my mom made it." Those daughters-in-laws will have every single 'my mom' recipe right at her fingertips - without a single ingredient left out to trip her up. Just to be safe though - the cookbook does come with a disclaimer right at the start: "Mom Is Not Responsible For Typographical Errors."

This is what I've been doing and let me tell you it beats working on the flood victim of a Family Room any day. I haven't even bothered ordering the new wallboard - what's the point of doing that until my wrist mends and is usable again - right?

It feels wonderful to be able to pretend for a short time that we don't have any flood repair work left to do. I just close my eyes when I walk through the Family Room on my way to the car sitting in the garage. If I don't look, I don't have to think about what a set-back this broken wrist is to those recovery plans.

Besides - if I had that wallboard sitting and waiting - it's possible another flood could come along unexpectedly and ruin it all before we ever have a chance to install it. It's better doing it my way - waiting for the wrist to heal and then buy the new wallboard.

In the meantime - I'm preserving what counts most anyway - family memories. Floodwater can't ever destroy memories - they are sealed up water-tight in our hearts.

Today's thought: It's almost a year and a half since our flood and there are still folks struggling to regain their homes and a bit of normalcy. This holiday season consider giving a gift - either of your time or monetarily - to help ease the on-going burden they are living with daily.

'Til next time, Pam