This past week has certainly been a great week, which ushered out February and got us ready for March.  There were several twists and turns to the weather, but there were several beautiful days which reminded us that Spring is on its way. 

 

I did watch a couple red birds visit my bird feeder, but I kind of feel like that they may have been there all winter.  I also was thrilled to look out the other day and see two squirrels running up and down the tree, which must have been their winter home.  It is very uplifting to think that soon Spring will be here and maybe some of the restrictions of COVID will be gone.

 

Last year when I planted my garden on my patio, I fixed a raised bed and planted my peppers and tomatoes in it.  I used planters for my spices.  At the end of the season, I brought the planter with the basil in the house and it has remained healthy all winter and has grown to a height of over two feet.  I have used basil from it for all my winter cooking and especially for my whole canned tomato salads.  I see that it is getting kind of weepy and may not last much longer, but in the mean-time I found a pack of basil seeds with my gardening supplies and I planted them in a vase on my sink and they have started coming up.  So, hopefully as I use the last of the basil from last year my new basil will be ready.

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This past week I spent the day with my Godchild Cheryl Mehaulic, and after an afternoon of reliving our wonderful past, we met up with her husband, John and had dinner at Minards. 

 

I was fortunate enough to run into the former Raygina Booth, her husband and children.  They are some of my friends from East View.  Ray’s husband told me that while searching for a recipe he ran across my cookbook and used the tiella recipe.  If you have a copy you will find all those great Italian recipes that we grew up on, especially in East View. 

 

Now that Easter is on its way, most of us will be mixing up a batch of Easter Bread.  This recipe is in the book and there is an Easter Pie recipe that was submitted by Nicky Epstein, that was a family recipe of her grandmothers.  You might want to start a tradition with this recipe.  It also contains several recipes using zucchini, which should be abundant in the very near future.  There are several dandelion recipes in it, which will be a good excuse to take a nice walk in a meadow where there will be an abundance of dandelions.  Remember to use the greens as well as the flowers.  I am sorry to say that I am out of the cookbooks, but hopefully Tomorrow’s Bakery may still have a few.  It is hard to believe that I sold about 10,000.  All proceeds went to scholarships in my mother and dad’s memory and the last donation went to Bonnie’s Bus for mammograms.

 

Speaking of Easter Bread, the PWA will be selling Easter Bread the weekend before Easter.  As there will be a limited supply please call 304-624-6881 to reserve your order.  We will also be selling peanut butter eggs nested in a Fiesta bowl which will make a nice gift.

 

Stephanie Sumpter was the speaker at the PWA luncheon meeting.  She informed the membership of the housing available through the Housing Development Corp.  She also passed out flyers listing information for seniors interested in securing housing.

 

Do not forget that this is Lent, and we should all be making Lenten sacrifices for this season. Take care, stay healthy and until next week “Now You Have Heard It Through The Grapevine.”