Well ... I was thinking about my mom this last couple of weeks, and on my birthday she would make me stuffed cabbage rolls, this was her way of saying she loved me.

She told me the story about moving to Gary, Indiana as a young woman, during World War 2 to work in the steel mills running a crane. All of the men were overseas fighting. She was one of the "Rosey the Riveters" that kept the nation going. She was from a very small town in southern Illinois. Oblong, Illinois. She told me that she met some old Polish lady in Gary, and the woman taught her how to make stuffed cabbage rolls. The dish is simple, times were different then.

I have my mom's handwritten recipe. I wanted to be able to make them "just like Mom's" for our family. When we had them growing up in Indiana, they were called "pigs in the blanket". When I came to Kansas I was somewhere and saw "pigs in a blanket" on the menu, and thought WOW!!! They brought me a hot dog with a biscuit wrapped around it. What a culture shock!!

This Christmas Eve we planned on having prime rib as the main dish. I always try to add something extra that is different. I just knew it would be stuffed cabbage. Well, I followed the recipe and brought them to dinner. Christine must have told my son Josh, because when I arrived he said right off, did you bring the stuffed cabbage? He came out to the car and brought them in. We had to reheat them, but that was ok.... they get better after blending flavors for awhile.

Christine had been working all day making dinner for everyone to enjoy this Christmas Eve night. She had the prime rib, baked potatoes, vegetables and a plated salad that looked fantastic, with the pears she had sliced so perfectly, gorgonzola cheese and pecans. For dessert, coconut cake and pecan pie.

My brother Pat, and his wife Linda came from Arizona, Christine's son Mark and fiance Toshia, my son Josh and his son Eric, Michael his new wife Stephanie and son Jesse came for dinner. As soon my family found out about the stuffed cabbage they all started telling stories about mom making it specially for THEM!!! Around 7:30pm, dinner was ready. The prime rib and "Pigs in the Blanket " went well together.

Christine and I talked about starting our own traditions for holidays, and I think this one just got added.
Here is Mom's recipe: Pigs in the Blanket or Stuffed Cabbage
Rolls 1 lb of hamburger
1 head of cabbage
1 box of Uncle Bens rice w/ herbs 6oz
1 egg
3/4 cup of onions
2 to 3 cloves of garlic
ketchup
1 lg can of tomatoes
Mix together hamburger,rice ,egg,onion,garlic and ketchup.
Steam cabbage and peel back 1 leaf at a time. Save water to use in the cooking. Trim each leaf so it will roll easily when the mixture is inside. Lay leaf on board and add mixture to size of leaf,need to be able to fold over leaf and roll to encase all mixture. Use toothpick to hold in place. Place in pot. (We use a roaster with a lid.) Add cabbage water about an inch on bottom . Pour can of tomatoes on top. Cook at 350 for about and hour.
You have to cook this with Lots of Love.
Merry Christmas to all
Christine and Mike

Casa Somerset Progress

Well it keeps moving along. It is now December 15th. It is cold today, no one worked because it was too cold.

We have 2 furnaces installed and most of the windows. (Three are on back-order.) We have many of the lights installed. We are purchasing the CFL floodlights for the canned lights.... Yikes! And we have a LOT of canned lights! Most of the arches are built, and we hope to begin the stuccoing soon. They have the scaffoldings set up for it as you can see in the pictures.

I am so anxious to move in for many reasons. Just for Christine and I to sit on the porch and share each other's time and thoughts, drinking some vino. Even better when we have our first glass of Norton Cabernet labeled Casa Somerset. We do enjoy our time together.

Hurricane Wilma

This brings back memories. I was going through pictures on my SD cards today.

Christine says that if I ever say "Let's fly in early, so we can see the hurricane", she will ignore me.

That is what we did. We had booked a cruise with our singles group for Halloween week, flying into Ft. Lauderdale. Well, our flight was supposed to arrive on Sunday, but we found out they were closing the airport on Saturday due to Hurricane Wilma. In all of my wisdom, I called Christine and said, "Let's move the flight up to Friday, so as not to miss the cruise".

She agreed.

Well, Friday came and we flew into Ft. Lauderdale. It was a beautiful day. We spent it on the Atlantic Ocean, our hotel was only about 50 yards from the ocean. Saturday and most of Sunday were just as wonderful. Hot sun, beautiful ocean. We got to know many of our cruiser friends. There were many people in our hotel. We walked up and down the beach and went to many of the clubs in the evening with friends.

I had never been to Ft.Lauderdale, but had heard of it from all of the times as far back as high school. The stories were all about beaches and parties.

We kept getting updates on Hurricane Wilma. It was supposed to hit Key West, the southern tip of Florida. Earlier it showed pictures of the damage it caused in the Caribbean; it was tearing up many of my favorite islands.

Sunday evening, the wind picked up. We could feel the sand stinging our legs when we walked back to the hotel from an organized party we attended. We went to bed Sunday night, and the next morning, even with my poor hearing, I could hear the wind whirling around our hotel . It was like the worst rain storm you had ever been in, and it was circling our hotel at 100 miles per hour for 6 hours. The noise was overwelming at times. Christine told me to get up. So, I did as she always says. We went downstairs, the elevators were out by now. We were on the 4th floor, good exercise.

Everyone there was visiting and talking about the storm. It was so cool to watch from inside the safe hotel. We ate breakfast and visited with many of our cruising friends. You can see pictures of the storm behind Christine.

We went back upstairs, watched the storm, and took pictures. I told Christine that I was going to lay down, nothing I could do. That did not fly, you can't be in bed..... what if!!!! It isn't safe. I had to get up, and we walked down the stairs; just as we hit the bottom floor, the window blew out at Christine's feet. I didn't even know she could move that fast!! The storm had really picked up, we were in the center of Wilma, it had changed course and was coming directly at Ft. Lauderdale.

Then, we had no power. Luckily our hotel had a generator. It ran limited things. It didn't run elevators or bathrooms. We found out what it is like not to have regular bathrooms. You had to take your trash can and fill it with water out of the pool to flush. No showers. After the storm stopped, the next two days I would go into the ocean to bathe. The reason we were there for two additional days was that there was Marshall Law on the strand, and we could leave, but we could not come back. The port was damaged and shut down, so our cruise ship could not come in. Two days of living without power was interesting. We got to know our cruising friends quite well. There was nothing to do but walk around during the day to look at the devastation, and sit around and talk at night (and party).

Finally, two days after we were supposed to leave on the cruise, we were taken on a bus to Miami and that is where we embarked. We all laughed that the water level on the ship went down when we got on... all of us needed a shower! Strangely enough, we have been on many cruises since then....

My Friend Steve's 60th Birthday

I knew he looked so much older than me.

I just didn't remember how many women were still chasing him. I know he ran slow for a reason:):)

His wonderful wife Brenda had a surprise birthday party Friday night at the Paola Country Club. Many guests were there waiting for the man of the night to arrrive.

He arrived with Brenda and his in-laws, thinking they were going there for dinner. He was shocked! We all sang Happy Birthday and Steve stood there speechless....that lasted about 10 seconds. Steve talked and talked all evening! His brother-in- law Charles had to had to stick his tongue out for the crowd.

You can see Steve in the pictures dancing with his granddaughter. Steve would dance with women his age,but there aren't any left:) Brenda was so proud of herself pulling this off and making Steve happy ,they love each other so much.

Artie Studerville, our mayor, catered the event, a great meal.

It was a great evening of family and friends. Chrisitne and I are so lucky to have such great friends..

Love

Christine and Mike

Happy Birthday Steve.

Casa Somerset

Casa Somerset keeps growing. The night picture is from last night, they just hooked up the electricity. It was on December 2nd.

The blue house is the house that was there a year ago.

How a year changes so many things!

We have added a yineyard of 400 vines, and ordered yesterday another 300 vines to plant next year. I believe this house is going to be a dream for Christine and me. I think of all of the friends we will share time with here. The first harvest will be so special. We can't thank Dennis and Cindy Reynolds from Somerset Ridge Winery enough.

Stuffing versus Dressing

Since Thanksgiving was just a week ago, I was just thinking about the little "situation" my new husband and I had with this dinner.

As we all know, Thanksgiving is a day about family and traditions. Sometimes those traditions can clash! Just like ours did last week. And the whole big issue was ...
Stuffing versus Dressing!

Mike's family has always "stuffed" their turkey with bread and other ingredients. My parents started out that way, but because we lived in California and the weather was so warm in November, we started cooking our turkey on the grill, and fixed our dressing in a casserole dish. So-o-o-o when it came time to discuss the Thanksgiving day menu, we realized we had a dilemma!

After the menu discussion with Mike, I spoke with my son Mark about it. His only comment was "Don't even think that I will eat something that was shoved up a turkey's _ _ _ !

So, on Thanksgiving day, we had stuffing and dressing, and neither side of the family would eat the other's dish! It wasn't as bad as the North vs. the South, but almost!

We also had regular mashed potatoes (my side of the family), and sweet potatoes (Mike likes those), but that is another story!!!!
Christine!!!!!!!!!!!!

The other side of the story.................

Stuffing is when you put it in the turkey, dressing is when you put it in a pan.

Let me tell you about this. I know I will get the comments about it not being safe food to cook in the turkey, but there is sooooo much love it is wonderful.


The way you do it with all of the "Love", is you get the giblets, liver, and neck out and add your trinity which is onions, carrots, and celery. Pour water over it and let it simmer. Add some fresh sage leaves. After it has slowly simmered, you chop up your giblets and liver. Add them back to the rich broth, made from love. Take the neck out.

Then you pour it over your breadcubes that you dried yourself. Be sure to add in both white and pumpernickle bread.

After that you take your turkey and mix sage and lots of rich butter and run your hand between the skin and meat of the turkey and put this mixture in. This adds so much flavor to to the stuffing.

Then start the dressing; dump a couple of bags of store bought cubes in a pan, pour some chicken broth over it, add any vegetables that you like, sprinkle some dry herbs on it and stuff both ends of the turkey. Then pop it in the oven, covered.


With Christine's method there is No Love. They love making it so much they had to do it twice:):) to get it dry enough. But that is another story.....They could only wish it tasted as good as what came out of a Turkey's behind.


Yes, the potatoes are a different story.
Mike

NFL, Top 5 winningest teams

I asked Christine if she knew who the top 5 All-Time winningest professional football teams were. I was amazed that she knew every single one of the all time winners in Professional football history. I mean for a "Girl"... ( This will get me killed:)

Who really knows, without googling.??? Email your guess. Interesting.

E-mail at casasomerset@kc.rr.com Or you can post on our blog.

Mike the husband in trouble..........

(What Mike doesn't appreciate is that I really love football and have watched it for many, many years!) Christine