OWAV:)...05/30/11...5am...40°...Cloudy, Rainy

Stormy, cold, wind, slivers of sun...that was yesterday...Looks like more of the same today..  Herb did laundry...after starting a fire downstairs to dry the sheets...I basically did nothing but fix pork chops and salad for dinner...Almost forgot...made banana bread using a jar of old apple butter and applesauce, instead of so much sugar...decided to use butter instead of oil...
                              Banana Nut Bread

1 cube butter (softened)                       3 or 4 black bananas                    

1/2 cup sugar                                      3 eggs

1 cup apple butter                               4 cups flour (scant)

  (I think any kind of old preserves       1 1/2 tsp baking soda 

    would work)                                   2 tsp salt

1 cup applesauce                                 2 tsp vanilla

This recipe is very forgiving, try different combinations of fruit to suit your tastes... I put softened butter in bowl, mixed in sugar, added preserves and applesauce, bananas, eggs...  then added small amounts of flour, salt and soda mixture, stirring after each addition...  chopped walnuts and vanilla went in last...Spooned into 5 small aluminum loaf pans...put them on a large cookie sheet and baked at 350° for 30 minutes...checked, 5 more minutes.

Lake Fork Idaho summer of 1960...Our ranch sold, an auction was held to liquidate machinery and raise enough money to start building the "log house" of my Mother's dreams...The site on another acreage had already been picked and plans drawn up...The auction didn't go well, basically giving stuff away...Daddy refused to sell his machinery for nothing...In the end, the machinery was taken as a down payment on a 10 x 60 trailer house that was placed on a basement...A new home with a beautiful view of Jug Handle and the valley...Not at all what they had envisioned, but Mom and Dad were soon hard at work, finishing the basement and landscaping the property...Late fall of 1960, Daddy was having more than his usual indigestion and stomach pain, treatment for ulcers didn't help,  gall bladder surgery was scheduled...Daddy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the age of 53, six months to live...He waged a courageous fight against this deadly disease, for the next year he and Mom continued working hard on the new place...
Christmas came and went that year, everyone knowing it would be our last one together...all of us putting on a brave front...in the spring of 1961, Mom and Daddy worked and played, on the Salmon River, where they were employed by one of the fishing guides as cook and handy man...rototilled and planted a new garden spot... By then Daddy was in continual pain...He walked down the aisle of the Community Church, June 10, with me on his arm and tears in his eyes, he gave me away as I married Herb Allen...A bitter sweet day...In and out of the hospital all summer...Mom was his caregiver, learning to give him shots for pain, so he could spend time with her at home, instead of in the hospital...Death came on October 15 a year after the diagnosis, Daddy was 54 years old...had fathered six children and was grandfather to fourteen...Maybe I can finish this tomorrow...too many tears... OWAV:)☹