My Life, My Child and My Food

Cooking book for sale,

Erie had a cold summer this year. I remembered wearing my coat most of the time during the summer. Then autumn came with a dust of snow. However recently, the weather has been nice to us and gave us some sunny days.

I found these vintage glass jars at a second-hand store in Erie and I found out that they were actually designed to hold coffee. These vintage glass jars were used in Your Host family restaurant which located in many cities in NY state. The back of the jars lists the chain's locations as : Amherst, Buffalo, Cleve-Hill Plaza, Dunkirk-Fredonia, East Aurora, Hamburg, Kenmore, Lancaster, Williamsville, Rochester,The Tonawandas, Wanaka and West Seneca.
Source :straubted

According to straubted, a member of Flickr who has the same glass jar as the picture, he believed that Your Host Restaurants might have started up in the late 50s. He thought that this chain became extinct by the early 70s at the latest. People's preference for "fast food" did them in.

If you are interested in these jars, you can buy them at ebay

Well, that is a little information about the glass jars. Now let me tell you what I put in it. In the first jar, I put onion sour spicy pickle. This pickle is very easy to make. You need one big yellow onion, diced them;green chillies, sliced thinly; cherry tomatoes, cut into half, the same amount of salt, sugar and vinegar ( I put about 1 tbsp of each ingredients). And in the second jar was fried shallots.
The cherry tomatoes and the green chillies were from my small garden in the back yard.
I harvested lots of cherry tomatoes this season and I could not finish them. Any idea how to finish them? :)

After Buffalo, NY, we drove to Amie's house in Dansville, NY. I got to know Amie while I was living in Rochester, NY. She was my classmate at Monroe Community college in Rochester, NY. She is the kindest person I've known. Amie would not hesitate to help me when I needed help communicating with other people. Mind you, I had just arrived in the US for a few months before I enrolled in the MCC. I was not fluent in English at all and it was hard to adjust myself to a new environment. I got to know Amie more now and it is an honor to be a good friend of her husband and her two good-looking sons.

For your information, Dansville is a small town about 45 minutes from Rochester. Amie lived about 5 minutes away from Dansville downtown. She owns a farm house with acres of land. I loved the peacefulness I experienced in Amie's house. No sound of police siren, no sound of cars passing by, no sound of neighbor's dogs and no pollution. I also loved that she dried her clothes by hanging them in the back yard. Nowadays, it is so difficult to find the below view, everybody seems like to use the convenience of washers and dyers.


We saw lots of Queen Anne's lace while walking Fancy, Amie's poodle. It was so abundance that it filled the whole empty field next to Amie's home.

What is Queen Anne's Lace? Queen Anne's Lace, also called "Wild Carrot," is a common plant in dry fields, ditches, and open areas. It was introduced from Europe, and the carrots that we eat today were once cultivated from this plant.
Queen Anne's Lace grows up to four feet tall. Its leaves are two to eight inches long and fern-like. This plant is best known for its flowers, which are tiny and white, blooming in lacy, flat-topped clusters. Each little flower has a dark, purplish center.
Source : Fairfax County Public Schools


ASIDE- I realized I haven't blogged about my cooking recently. Almost every summer, my desire to cook goes with the wind. The same thing with the desire to blog and to photograph. Fortunately, I have some left-over food pictures from early summer.

This time, the recipe belongs to Mrs. Petrus and has been tasted many times.


Recipe for Banana muffins

Ingredients :

3 ripe bananas
1 cup of cooking oil
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp of baking soda
2 tsps of baking powder
1 3/4 cups of granulated sugar
1 3/3 cups of all-purpose flour
3 large eggs

Directions :

Mashed the bananas. Set aside. Beat the eggs, also set aside. In a deep bowl, cream oil and sugar, add in eggs, mix well. Add in the rest of the ingredients. Bake for 20-30 minutes until they are brown at 350 F. Serve.

Summer is almost over but it does not mean the holiday is over. Since my husband has to teach for 6 weeks in the summer, we only have less than 1 month holiday before he has to start teaching again. So going on a trip needs to be planned quickly.
For us, traveling is a big deal. We usually planned and organized places and routes we want to visit. However last week, we decided to have a spontaneous trip to Buffalo, NY; Dansville, NY and Elmira, NY.
Fortunately, we have some good friends who can provide us with lodging and food. The weather was on our side too, it was sunny all the way. Tuesday night, we were off to Buffalo and stayed a night before venturing Buffalo.

I have been reading about the Buffalo Botanical Gardens and have been wanting to visit it. The botanical garden is not big but it has variety of places from all over the world. Amanda was very happy to see koi fish, banana tress and some water fountains and a water fall. And the good news is this place is only a mile away from my friend's house.

Since the place was small, we let Amanda played by herself while we were clicking our camera to capture some exotic flowers.

I forgot to write down the name of the flowers. Anyone know the name of this flower?


We stayed for a long while in the botanical garden and enjoying the tropical plants and flowers. I am so thrilled to see some of the tropical plants I used to see back in Indonesia. It was also a great adventure for Amanda to be able to view and learn about tropical and desert plants.

Summer is one of my favorite seasons. I got to enjoy sunny sky which is rare in the winter and my garden. Summer is also a time to travel and since we can not go home to our home countries, we decided to travel within the US. Many times, our travels were planned but this particular travel was spontaneous. Since I moved to the US, I began to love lavender and what a thrilled when I found a lavender farm not very far from my city. So one Thursday, we drove to Daybreak lavender farm. It is located in Streetsboro, Ohio, which is about 2 hours from Erie, PA. The excitement of seeing rows of lavender disappeared when I saw a not to big lavender farm snuggle among residential houses. Do not get me wrong! the farm has many rows of lavender but not as many as I expected. However since I was there, I thought, I had better enjoyed my time. I asked Amanda to cut the lavender while I snapped some pictures of the farm and Amanda.



The farm provided us with a place to picnic but the weather did not permit us to picnic. The sunny sky changed to a cloudy one and we ended up eating in the car. I love the pond and the small house view below. I was a little dissapointed that we did not get to picnic by the pond.


And what do you drink in the summer? something cool I believed! Our favorite is watermelon juice. I used my old blender to chop and mix the watermelon. For this juice, I included the rind of the watermelon without the skins. Serve it cold! Enjoy!