Muriel said, > Hi Barbara and Vee, > I sure I have seen liver in the Shurfine store in Newfane. Might even > have it in the Lakeside one in Wilson also. > > Happy hunting. > > Muriel Dear Muriel, I'm glad you mentioned that. Surefine is now the brand name of the Market Place in Youngstown which used to be B-Kwik. I'll check it out the next time I go into the village. vee > >

Vee & group: Okay, you guys, all this talk about food is making me hungry for a midnight snack, but we could exclude the liver. My mom used to make liver and onions, but hard as she tried to make it more tasty, I still hated it! But I do have to admit the onion pie sounds pretty good, although I have never heard of it before. Here's one for you, does anyone have a recipe for "pasties"? I used to have them when I lived in Michigan and I loved them, but for the life of me, I can't remember the ingredients. Vee, your popovers sound delightful! Kim

Dear Folks, Now that I've gone through a few pans of delicious baked biscuits, I'm ready to move on to a more sophisticated baked bread sort of thingy. And that's popovers. Back in 1972 I baked up my first batch of popovers and I've never forgotten how delicious and spectacular they were. So tall and so light and so delicious that I'm determined to bake up another batch of them ASAP. Now that my mixer bowls are sparkling clean and my old mixer is up on my counter top and my muffin tin is also newly cleaned, I'm ready to tackle the simple recipe. The only thing I'll have to dig up is my flour sifter (and oh how I hate to sift flour!) but if you want perfection, you go by the recipe. All that's called for is eggs, milk, flour and salt. After mixing, pour it all into very hot greased custard cups or iron popover pans and bake in a hot oven at 425 degrees for 40 minutes. But hold the phone here. I thought that I was left with only my muffin tin and only a few custard cups that would accommodate the recipe. But guess what? I found the rest of the Pyrex custard cups in the cupboard and all that I need to do is to give them a good hot soapy water cleaning. Oh you wouldn't believe how they turn out. They look like the hat that the Pillsbury Doughboy wears, they're so tall and moist and tender and in addition they heat up nicely. Now if only I can find my flour sifter. vee

Hi Barbara and Vee, I sure I have seen liver in the Shurfine store in Newfane. Might even have it in the Lakeside one in Wilson also. Happy hunting. Muriel

Barbara said, > Vee, I have never had onion pie but that sounds really good. Barbara, trust me, preparing the onion pie was a bit more work than I really wanted to go through but tonight's end results were so delicious that I scoffed down 1/4th of it! I'll never complain again about the little bit of extra effort that goes into the preparation of it. You can't buy anything that delicious in the frozen food section. vee

Dear Folks, Nona Goodrich sent me the following URL regarding the old Crystal Beach amusement park in Canada across Lake Erie from Buffalo and I just had to share it with the list in the event that you might have experienced it yourselves. http://www.pbase.com/kjosker/crystal_beach&page=all The pictures brought back memories of my own but my memories weren't as a young child, they were more of when I was around 16 years old and staying with my high school sorority girls in a cottage at Crystal Beach that summer of 1948. Although I certainly remember the midway and all of the rides that were there, most of my memories centered around the memories of the high school fraternity boys who "pestered" us (bless their hearts!), dancing in the ballroom and trying to look sexy in our bathing suits on the beach. Several years later in the mid 50s, I had a couple of dates who took me back to Crystal Beach and we danced away to Harry James' orchestra, and to Sauter and Finnegan, the popular band at the time, who played the "Doodletown Fifers." I could name my date's names but as far as I know they're either happily married and/or deceased by now! Do you remember Crystal Beach? vee

There are a couple of restaurants that serve Liver and Onions here in Tucson but I can't find liver in the meat markets; either here or in Lewiston. Why? I used to make it frequently years ago. It is so good. Next time I am in the grocery store I will have to ask the meat manager. Vee, I have never had onion pie but that sounds really good. Barbara Moll

Dear Folks, I have a confession to make. I had indicated that I would add caraway seeds into the filling instead of the pie crust. Well I did just that. But it left me with only a small amount of caraway seeds left in the metal can I've had for years. How many years? Well, when I checked the price stamped on the top of the Schilling can, it reads $.13!!!!! Now why do I have the feeling that most of my spices are waaayyyy beyond their expiration dates? But hey, they still work for me and you can't knock that. You just have to adjust to it and add a little more than what the recipe calls for. You don't throw out anything that's still good just because it might be a bit stale. Work with it and you'll still get the same results in spite of what Julia Child might have insisted on. But I have to admit that I was totally surprised that the price of the can of caraway seeds was only $.13. Good grief, we must be talking about WELL over 20 years ago! vee

Dear Folks, As I mentioned, two evenings ago I peeled and sliced 7 smaller-than-medium onions looking forward to fixing liver and onions the next day. But when the supermarket was out of liver, I decided to make Zweibel Kuchen (Onion Pie) instead and use the rest of the sliced onions for my favorite potato soup just like Mother used to make. Yesterday it seems that I spent most of my time planning the logistics of Zweibel Kuchen. Before I went to bed last night at least I had the sliced onions pre-cooked in the microwave and put them into the refrigerator. But this evening was the showdown. The onions needed to be browned to a golden color in a frying pan AND the rest of the ingredients had to be mixed together. I knew that if I didn't do all of it tonight, I wouldn't be able to mix the other ingredients tomorrow AND wait for the end result to bake for 30 minutes in the oven. Let's face it, I no longer spend hours in the kitchen to prepare the evening meal just for myself. So I dragged my aching bones out to the kitchen, browned the onions and then was faced with having to use my trusty Hamilton Beach mixer that was given to me as a wedding present way back in 1950. Hey, don't knock it. It may be heavy but that's because there isn't a piece of plastic in it and it still works like a dream! However, it had been so long since I had used the bowls and beaters that came with it, that I had to wash them all thoroughly with hot soapy water. After I dried the smaller of the bowls I started to add the ingredients. With the first few I had no problem (well not REALLY) but when it came to mixing 3 tablespoons flour into 1/4 cup sour cream (mayonnaise in my case), that's when it got to be a bit much and my patience was wearing a bit thin. But I just couldn't give up and quit just then. The recipe called for a 10" pastry shell (which I didn't make) but I had to dig out my 10" Pyrex pie plate and also wash it with hot soapy water because I hadn't used it in years either. Eventually the onions were placed in the bottom of the pie plate and the rest of the ingredients was poured over them. I slapped a lid over the whole thing and stuck it in the refrigerator. Hopefully tomorrow I'll at least have sense enough to bring it out of the refrigerator long before dinner time so that it won't take more than 30 minutes to bake it in a slow oven. Going through all of those shenanigans just about wore my patience out. However, it's getting late tonight and I have a sink full of dirty dishes and if I don't wash them this evening I'm going to hate myself in the morning. Now why do I have the urge to call Marie Calender's hot line and beg her to ship me all of her delicious frozen dinners without my even going out of the house. Have chest freezer, can store! vee

Not to be picky but, the title of the first song should have the word Blossom after Apple and before White. The first song I had to learn and sign for company was "Pennies from Heaven". I still sing the old songs as I find them much better then what we now have. Does anyone recall "China Doll"? I could go on and on with titles. Charles

Hey Vee: You can teach me the Cha Cha Cha anytime! How about the twist? Now there is one dance I knew how to do!! Speaking of "Cherry Pink and Apple White", do you remember the song, "I Got a Gal in Kalamazoo?" You sure had great friends, I would have loved to have known them! Reminds me of my times in the early 60's before Kennedy was shot. Our neighborhood was the best ever and we used to hang out at everybody else's house instead of our own! It's nice to have friends to fall back on when times were tough, those are the days you remember most. ;-) Kim

Kim commented: > I had to chuckle at your story, you see, I'm one of those "younguns" who was a little kid in 1957, in fact, I was only three years old, too little to whirl the hoola hoops! But when I got older, I sure knew how to whirl a hula hoop! Well, Kim, now you know what sort of "drinking, dancing and carousing" was going on at the time with the over-20s crowd! But at the same time smoking or snorting drugs were totally unheard of. We were still of the Great Depression Era and on the whole were still pretty much the "innocents." We were trying to stretch our wings and some times our wings got clipped. Nonetheless we had understanding friends to fall back on. But I'll tell you this. We would have welcomed a little girl who could have taught us how to whirl a hoola hoop alongside the pool so that all of us could look cool! Who knows but what we could have taught you to dance the Cha Cha Cha to "Cherry Pink and Apple White??" Those were the days my friends. vee

Vee, You write GREAT stories!! Your life, present & past is full of adventure & fun. I sure hope I get back to Niagara Falls one day, and get to meet you. I was looking at the emails, I copied, that we exchanged about my grandfather, Peter Sczepczenski in Dec. of 2001. I appreciate the lengths you took trying to help me solve the mystery of his disappearance. I don't know if you ever heard from the missing persons division from the police dept. I suppose that's one big mystery that will never be solved. Just keep on writing your wonderful stories and I'll keep reading. Your friend, Janey Sczepczenski Wolfe

Anna sent me the following comment regarding my memories of living in an apartment complex in the 1950s. I'm responding to all of you. > Today you would be paid an astronomical sum of money to star in this sitcom! > Smiles, > Anna Although I didn't think of it that way, there's no doubt but it had sitcom written all over it. The era was a number of years beyond "Happy Days" but not by that much. All of us were definitely well out of high school and some well out of college. And we all had several years' experience living on our own. But maybe the more recent sitcoms such as "Seinfeld" or "Friends" or other current sitcoms that I haven't really watched and barely have a clue what they're all about gives an indication that today's platonic friends aren't anything new. Many of us in the apartment complex were really friends. As I indicated before, we all had our own social lives (read that as "sex!") but we didn't discuss it and no one asked questions. We just enjoyed each other's company on an occasional evening and once in awhile we got together for a bang-up B-B-Q alongside the pool just for the joy of it. But when the chips were down we were all there for each other. In 1958 I had to take emergency leave to go to Texas because my father's death was iminent. I told them of the situation and when I eventually returned back from leave they supported me when I needed it the most. Yes, we were Just Friends, the best kind. Note: if you think about it, my memories have little to nothing to do with genealogy but they do have something to do with oral history. Especially with you younguns who were only little kids at the time. You know who you are. You're the ones who knew how to whirl the hoola hoops!! :-) vee

Vee: I had to chuckle at your story, you see, I'm one of those "younguns" who was a little kid in 1957, in fact, I was only three years old, too little to whirl the hoola hoops! But when I got older, I sure knew how to whirl a hula hoop! Kim

Dear Folks, All day yesterday I had a craving for liver and onions to the point where I got started on the onions last night. The recipe that I've used for years calls for 5 medium onions, peeled and sliced. Well I didn't have 5 medium onions so I used 7 smaller-than-medium onions. It seemed to take forever to slice that many onions and when I was finished it was too late last night for me to pre-cook them in my microwave. No problem, I covered the bowl of sliced onions and stored it in the refrigerator. Today I went to the super market to buy a number of things I needed and, of course, one of them was the pound of beef liver. I looked all over the meat case but no liver. I asked one of the butcher assistants where the liver was and she couldn't find it either. She even went into the back to see if there was any there. Nope. Now, there is no way that I'm going out to the store again tomorrow in search of liver. Today was cold and rainy and raw and tomorrow doesn't promise to be any better. So forget liver and onions. But what am I going to do with all those onions? My first thought was to freeze them and use them in a nice potato soup but the total quantity of them is 5 cups and that's waaaayyy too many onions for potato soup. I racked my brain and remembered a delightful onion dish I haven't prepared in years and years. It's Onion Pie (actually an old German recipe, Zweibel Kuchen). Note: the recipe calls for a pie crust base but I don't do pie crusts and I just bake the filling. I got out the recipe for it and checked the quantity of onions it calls for. Three cups sounded like I was on the right track. But as I read the recipe ingredients further I came across 1-1/2 cups sour cream which I'd have to go to the grocery store to buy. Again nooooo waaayyy! I was disappointed until I decided to substitute the same quantity of mayonnaise. I can only hope that it will work but I don't see why not. It isn't all that different in consistency or taste for that matter and I think I can live with the end results. So now that I have earmarked 3 cups of the sliced onions in my refrigerator, I'm still left with 2 cups. I checked my potato soup recipe and it calls for only one sliced onion. (sigh!) But no problem, I'll just double the soup recipe and everything should come out about even. The whole scenario has mentally exhausted me for two days but don't tell anybody that I didn't spend the past two days in scholarly research or study or something along those lines. I need to keep up my image! :-) vee

Dear Folks, I hope you don't mind my writing down the memories that are coming back to me regarding the Doolittle Apartments back in 1957-58 but this evening I remembered another tenant with whom I had become friends. He lived in one of the end apartments and I recall several of us used to congregate in his apartment in the evening just to watch TV together. In fact I recall that during a commercial for McDonalds at one particular time, we all got hungry, piled into one car and went out for hamburgers together. But there was another time when we had made serious plans to have a Japanese dinner together in San Francisco over the Bay. When we met at his apartment I had to let the group know that because of my "cramps" I had taken an amphetamine-based pill that the Navy doctor had prescribed for me for severe cramps and I warned them that although it took care of the cramps, the side effects were that I tended to talk non-stop. It was just a warning. As I recall the four, five or six of us had a delicious Japanese dinner together and were liberally served with warm Sake wine in tiny Sake cups. "Compai!" is what I recall the Japanese toast is. And we repeated that a number of times. But somewhere along the line the alcohol of the Sake caught up with me (possibly due to the amphetamine) but there was one thing that it didn't numb. From beginning to end I talked non-stop and at the end of the evening the entire group voted that at no time in the future would I be invited along with them when I had the cramps! Hey, that sounded fair to me! vee

Dear Folks, I know that this correction of an error I made in my recent message isn't important to any of you. But I just had to set the record straight. I had said that most of us living in the apartment complex in 1957 were in our 30s. But I was wrong. When I moved into my apartment I was 25 and I would venture to say that the majority of the tenants were also in their late 20s. I really can't believe we were that young but picture this. Several of us had gathered around the pool one evening and someone had a new-fangled hoola hoop. We all tried it out but we couldn't get the durned thing to work! I guess that's why I thought we must have been in our 30s! vee

Dear Folks, While I was on active duty in the Navy at Naval Air Station, Oakland, CA, by 1957 they had closed the WAVES barracks aboard the station and I had to find a nearby apartment to move into. About the nicest apartment complex near the station was the Doolittle Apartments. In fact it was just about perfect. It was two-storied stucco with all the apartments looking out over the swimming pool. The apartments were furnished adequately, I had my own dishes, pots, pans, etc. to live comfortably with and I could afford the rent. After I had settled into my three room apartment--living room, little kitchenette with table and chairs, one bedroom and one bathroom, I got to know some of my neighbors. On one side of me were two commercial airline pilots sharing an apartment who were rarely home but we got to know each other and they were fun guys for neighbors. Immediately below me (I was on the second floor) were two Navy nurses who were stationed at Oaknoll Hospital in Oakland. Almost all of the tenants were single people in their 30s and all of us pretty much lead our own social lives. But there were two other tenants that I got to know REAL well. One was Bill, who was a crusty retired Navy Chief, and the other was Jay, a civilian with a good job. I don't know how the three of us got together but once a week the three of us would enjoy having dinner together in one of our apartments. We took turns and each one of us had to cook the entire dinner. Not only that but the rules were that whoever cooked dinner had to wash the dishes! Well, when it was Bill's turn and he asked us what we would like him to cook, it didn't need to be said that the other two of us wanted Bill's famous liver and onions. When it was Jay's turn, well Bill and I both wanted him to fix what I seem to recall as being along the lines of Hamburger Stroganoff. However, Jay had a warped sense of humor and he called it Bat Guano! Bill and I easily learned to live with that title! Frankly I forget what they always requested that I cook. I wouldn't doubt but it was my delicious simple "macaroni soup." I seem to recall that when we joined each other for dinner we brought our own bottle of whatever and after we finished eating, the three of us would sit in the living room, turn on the black and white TV and then there was another hard and fast rule that had been laid down. Whoever cooked dinner got to pick what TV program we watched. I believe that Bill always chose a Western along the lines of "Have Gun, Will Travel." And Jay always chose a cop show along the lines of "Dragnet." I didn't mind watching either of their choices but when it came to my choice of watching "December Bride" starring Spring Byington, they always groaned and complained loudly but nonetheless the three of us watched it together. All three of us looked forward to our weekly dinner get-togethers. We got to eat delicious home cooked food, we had a lot of laughs together and we sat and watched TV together. We were certainly good friends. But by late 1958 we started drifting apart for various reasons but in looking back on that one year of our friendship, I treasure it. We were just three single people living in an apartment complex who felt comfortable with each other. It can't get much better than that. vee

In a message dated 3/30/04 11:20:37 AM Central Standard Time, [email protected] writes: Kathy, How about putting the student nurse's journal on here in installments like Kim did with Phoebe's diary? hint, hint. Ruth Hi Ruth, I would, but it isn't pertaining to Niagara Co. at all. The girl was in Kane, PA., when she was going to nursing school. Besides, unlike Phoebe, the girl wrote two or three pages of a composition book for each day! From the work she did each day (making beds to changing bandages), to when she got up and when she went to bed. She wrote who was on which shift, and who got in trouble for not completing their work. Some of the more interesting things - Her and another nurse snuck down one night to get a snack, and discovered one of the doctors operating on the kitchen table. Almost every class she was suppose to attend was cancelled, due to the teacher being busy. The nurses took turns sleeping with each other because it was too cold in the attics to be alone. She got horribly sick, with what sounded like strep. They made her stay in bed and take salts, until her temperature was almost normal. Then she went back to work. Even though her throat was so sore, she could barely talk. One nurse mistakenly put soda in the wash, instead of soap, and burned her hands so badly, they had to be bandaged. I'm so glad I live now! Kathy