Half Way to 110

I am celebrating my birthday today. I went out to a restaurant for my birthday last night with Elaine, Janice, Mike and Nicole.

At supper Mike said "Happy birthday Dad. You are half way to 110."

I have made it this far. But I guess I have quite a way to go.

Inspirational Doctor's Office

A few years ago when I was having a lot of back pain I was referred to one of the top neurosurgeons in the city for a consultation. I was told the pressure on my spinal cord could increase to the point I would be paralyzed from the waist down, and anything they could do would only make it worse.

In this doctor's waiting room around the walls there were framed photographs he had taken. Each picture had an inspirational verse on it, mostly scriptures. One of them really stood out to me. "All things are possible to him that believeth" Mark 9:23

I was prayed for at church and I improved until I have been completely free from the back pain I was having.

All's Quiet On The Home Front

Mary and Chris left for home on Tuesday with the convoy of movers and travellers to the left coast. It has been great having them here this summer. Last summer Mary was here but Chris was not able to come.

It seems that a lot of the visiting while Mary and Chris were here involved special meals. They both seem to like cooking. They made sushi for us one meal which I had not had before. And they made a stir fry with tofu and other items left from making the sushi. Actually the tofu was better than I expected. And then they made us a special supper with roast duck which was excellent. When they were looking for something to make with the left over duck I suggested Duck Smoothies. I told them "If it ever becomes popular remember you heard it here first!"

We had a good time with Mary and Chris and other visiting as well as the trips we were able to make this summer. Now the next event to look forward to is attending Matt and Christine's wedding in September.

Historic Cook Book

We have been amused looking at an old cook book that my mother had. It is the Blue Ribbon Cook Book 19th Edition. It is copyright by the Blue Ribbon Manufacturing Company, Winnipeg in 1905. It does not show the year this 19th edition would have been printed. Some advertisements in the back have 3 colours of ink (red, yellow, blue) which was not used until the 1930s.

There are chapters on various types of cooking and baking. A chapter on Gruels has a recipe for Cracker Gruel: "Use 1/4 cup plain or Graham cracker crumbs. Cook a few minutes in a cup of boiling water; add 1 cup hot milk, and a little salt"

In the chapter on Poultry and Game there is a section titled Restoring Tainted Game. "If game becomes slightly tainted, it should at once be picked clean and put into milk for a full day (24 hours), keeping it entirely covered. This will sweeten it, and it should be cooked at once." This was before the days of refrigeration or concern about salmonella.

We have been amused by a chapter titled Invalid Cookery. Toast and barley water seemed to be primary treatments for illness. Barley water is made by boiling 1 cup barley in 6 cups water. There is a recipe for Toast Water: "Cut 2 slices of bread thin, toast. Break in pieces, pour over them 1 cup boiling water, cool and strain. It may be flavoured with a little lemon juice."

Then it has something called Koumiss which was made by putting milk, sugar, and yeast in a bottle and letting it sit for 3 to 5 days to ferment. It says "tie the corks down securely." With some of these recipes for invalids I am not sure if it would cure them or kill them.

I am not sure if we would try anything from this cook book but it is interesting to look at.

Pictures of My Father

This summer when Darlene was here we were going through old pictures of our mother and father. Mary scanned some of the pictures and linked to them on her blog. I stitched together three of the pictures of my father as shown here.

These pictures would have been taken when my father was in his twenties. He came to Canada at age 30 and had already lost his hair by that time. In the right hand picture he was starting to look more how I knew him. One of my father's sayings was "I used to have wavy hair but it waved goodbye"