Happy Thanksgiving!

Today we will visit with friends and eat good food and remember to be thankful for all of our many blessings.  I am thankful for those of you who come here and share my ramblings and for those who have become 'friends'.  Thanksgiving comes in different times and manners in different places but this year especially with the world in such a turmoil I will stop and give thanks for my blessings and pray for the same for all of you!      Happy Thanksgiving!!

I am so thankful that I got to see and spend time with my grandmother this year.  Knowing that she would never get to hold Miss Lily in person we took a picture of her holding a picture on the laptop of Matthew, Amber and Lily, this photo then shows the 5 generations of the family alive at one time!

It is NOT winter yet!

So this week is Thanksgiving and we all think of things we are thankful for and we feel blessed and we gather with friends and family and it is a warm holiday for us.  I have decided this year I am thankful I don't live in BUFFALO, NY!  Yikes they got 7-8 feet of snow in 2 or 3 days, that is just frightening!  People there are worried about flooding and roof collapses!  Seriously we are praying for all of those in danger due to the freak weather system that moved through. 

That spider was really thinking positive yes?

We had 8 inches which is much easier to deal with!










 I got to hitch a ride to California with my friend Anita and we had a great time.  We got back the day after the big snow and the only place we had bad roads was between the freeway and our houses!

It seemed bigger when I was a kid!  :)

 We did the 'trip down memory lane' thing and went to our old schools.

Salute to WWII vets from the hometown!

We did the tourist thing in Exeter, CA.  They have around 30 murals all over the community and have been featured in several travel magazines.










We searched for family members in local cemeteries, we went on veterans day so we got to see the tail end of the ceremony and all the flags around the cemetery. (very moving)







And of course I got to see Miss Lily!!!, who is 6 months old now and just starting to crawl and ever so cute!

I got to babysit and spend lots of time with her.

It was a wonderful trip and much fun and we may do it again sometime!

Tribute...

Grandma went home to be with the Lord 11/8/2014 at the age of 102! She was an amazing woman and an inspiring one as well. She said she never didn't eat what she wanted and she was well known for never uttering a word of gossip. She painted and quilted, cooked and farmed, if the tin on the barn roof was blown off she got up there and repaired it-she was amazing. She loved all of us, her family unconditionally and never saw our faults. We will miss her but I am so glad she is finally home and finally reunited with grandad. Thank you grandma - for all of it - walks and talks and spray painted macaroni covered cigar boxes!  So happy that she was able to be home til the end and that I got to see her recently and spend some more time with her.  It is never enough is it?

This was her official Obituary.  She was Awesome!!

Nellie Corine Medlin
(September 20, 1912 - November 8, 2014)

Nellie Medlin

Nellie Corine (Quint) Medlin left this world behind and went to her heavenly home on November 8, 2014. She was 102 years old and was able to live at her home under the loving care of her daughters until her passing.

Nellie was born September 20, 1912 in Sullivan County, MO to Walter and Charlotte (Hamilton) Quint, the seventh of nine children. On April 8, 1931 she married George William Medlin. To this union three daughters were born: Irma, Evelyn, and Ramah. They lived on a farm southeast of Unionville before moving in 1943 to their farm north of Omaha. They enjoyed 53 years together before George’s passing. Nellie then moved to Unionville, MO.

Nellie spent her life serving others. She worked side by side on the farm with George, raised very large gardens, sewed clothes for her family, played music with her family at local churches, taught Sunday School and VBS at the Mount Hermon Church and Omaha Baptist Church, played the accordion at church and at nursing homes, made quilts and paintings for family members, and shared her many talents with others. Nellie was a self-taught natural musician and could play the accordion, piano, guitar, banjo, and mandolin. She was always willing to try new things and proved that age was not going to hold her back. She started oil painting at the age of 69, went white water rafting at 80, traveled to Alaska at 85, rode an ultra-light glider at 90, shot a crossbow at 95, and learned to Skype at 100.

Nellie was a Christian example to everyone she met, being kind and compassionate, forgiving, slow to anger, joyful always, and giving thanks in all circumstances. The lessons she taught her family and the memories she created will be greatly cherished.

Nellie was preceded in death by her parents, her husband, two son-in-laws, Niel Kiehn and Richard Morgan, one grandson, Courtney Dean Morgan, six brothers (Carl, Ross, Victor, Alva, Harry, and Glen Quint) and two sisters, Carmoleta Minear and Pauline Lewis.

Nellie is survived by her daughters Irma Kiehn of Exeter, CA; Evelyn Morgan of Pollock, MO; and Ramah (Richard) Dias of Hollister, CA. She is also survived by nine grandchildren: Kathy (Dave) Gates, Shawn (Edna) Kiehn, Rhonda (Steve) Rios, Nancy (R.G.) Lowry, Tonja (Ronnie) Wessel, Kym Jones, Chris Dias, Terry Jackson, and Shelly (Gary) Mort, 20 great-grandchildren, and 14 great-great-grandchildren. She is also survived by two sister-in-laws, Uarda Quint and Mary Pickett. 

This was Grandma at her 100th Birthday Party!

 

It's a Chicken Soup day!

It is rainy and kind of windy and pretty cold, about 40 degrees, so this is what I think of as chicken noodle soup weather.  I'm really not a snob of any kind including food, but I confess to being something of a chicken soup purist.  All that is in my soup is chicken, bay leaf, salt, a stick of celery and just a little onion.  I like using chicken thighs as the dark meat seems to make the best broth, I'm sure it is the fat content or something.  I put all the ingredients in a pot in the morning and bring to a boil, it then gets turned down to low and left there to simmer for several hours.  (The house smells wonderful in an hour or two)

When I think it is done I take out the big pieces with a slotted spoon or strainer, just depends on how much work I want to put into it. (if we are having company I use the strainer, just for us the slotted spoon is fine)







I like to leave the fat on the broth, mmmmm...good!
It is, by the way, the fat that contains the substance that scientists have pointed to as helping with a cold, which our grandmothers knew already!  :)







Now you can use any noodle you like - if you buy them I like a kosher egg noodle.  My favorite noodles however are the homemade ones, the soup and the noodles are my paternal grandmothers recipe.  She was a good German cook!

Noodles - 
Mix together about 4 cups flour and  4 or 5 eggs, a dash (1/4 tsp) of salt and rub a little oil on your hands when you get ready to turn it out on the rolling surface.  Since eggs come in different sizes I add 4 then if it is not moist enough I add another.  This is an incredibly stiff dough and quite honestly if I did not have the pasta maker my thumbs couldn't do this anymore.

I cut it into little balls and start putting it through the
pasta machine

  I put it through 2 or three times to get the texture I like.  If you do it by hand (rolling it out) it should be very thin.











Let this dry for awhile, ideally for several hours, however if you don't decide what to have for dinner till the last minute like me you can let dry just a little while, you just have to be more careful when cutting as the pieces will stick together more.  So while the noodles dry I will tell you how my grandma told me how she learned to make noodles.  My grandfathers mother was blind, but she made the best noodles, so grandma learned from her, she would take the rolled out noodle dough in to mother-in-law and she would feel it and say "No it needs to be a little thinner, or yes it is perfect!"  Grandma would lay the rounds out on tea towels on the bed and  let them dry,  then she would roll them up like a burrito and cut them thin as paper.  I never got my noodles that thin.  Apparently a good German girl of the day had thin noodles!  I use the lovely pasta machine that grandma had as she got older and it works for me! 

 It is a hand crank and the noodle cutter is an add on, they make different cutter add-ons for different noodles.

I cut the pieces of dough to length desired for noodles and then run them through the machine.  If you choose to do them by hand and you like thick noodles a pizza cutter is another good tool to use.  My family likes noodles of all kinds and we have used them all!

When the noodles have dried for a half hour or so we turn up the broth and turn them in.  The thin noodles cook quickly, if they are thick you will need to bite into one or two and see if the center is cooked!







A little homemade bread and the chicken meat either in the bowl or on the side and this is a guaranteed warming meal!  If you make a lot of noodles they can be dried and kept, I always put them in a bag in the freezer.

During the depression grandma used to feed threshing crews, so if there was not enough chicken to flavor the broth she would add ketchup.  To this day I eat my chicken soup this way because my dad liked it this way!  Only homemade though!  The ketchup is added individually as the people who marry into the family think this is horrible!  :)

Enjoy!