Old Family Recipes & Holiday Memories

 Old family recipes serve a number of purposes. These recipes, which are passed from generation to generation, not only provide food that taste wonderful, but the spirit of multiple generations is put into those recipes. The result is not just food, but memories of times long ago.

In my family, the recipe that is most associated with the holidays is called 24 hour salad. This recipe goes back five generations to my grandmothers family. The story goes that many years ago a recipe was provided to allow for families to make a fruit salad that was effectively ambrosia. The key was that it was chilled for 24 hours and once ready for eating, the salad could last for several days.

As a young kid, I watched my mom make the salad for Thanksgiving day, and for Christmas Day. As I grew older, I started becoming involved in the making of the salad to a point that, when I finally moved to Maryland, I was ready to make the family fruit salad on my own.

Making the salad over the years brings back a lot of memories that I had growing up. But two of my favorite memories occurred about 25 and 19 years ago. In late December of 1998, my whole family gathered for Christmas at my sister Sheri‘s house. It was rare for my family to gather together for Christmas once my sisters and I became adults. But earlier in 1998, my sisters and I agreed that we should spend Christmas with Sheri‘s family, and that we should get my parents up there as well. Everyone agreed and so we gathered for Christmas in Illinois that year.

A lot of good memories occurred that Christmas, but my favorite was on Christmas Eve morning when the adults of the family gathered in the kitchen for cooking and making dinner for the following day. My job was to make the 24 hour salad but no less than six adults were in the kitchen at one time … Talking and remembering the past as we were cooking. I stopped now and then to just listen and take in the moment because I knew how special that Christmas Eve morning was. My sisters with their significant others, my parents, and I all working together while the kids mostly slept upstairs.

The second memory occurred on Thanksgiving day in 2004. I had been dating my future wife for about six months when her family invited me to Thanksgiving dinner. I told him I would come under the condition that I brought a dish. By then, I had mastered making the 24 hour salad, so I knew it would turn out well. The question was would my girlfriend’s family like the salad? The answer came pretty quickly. They loved it, and my future mother-in-law asked me for the recipe. Ultimately that recipe was put in our church cookbook in 2008, and it was credited to my grandmother and her family.

This year I will be making the salad again, but there are two changes that have occurred this year to make it more poignant. This will be the first holiday season without my parents. My sisters and I are now the keepers of this recipe. The second change, is that one of the main ingredients of the salad is no longer being made, and as a result, I am forced to find substitutes. Nevertheless, I have all the ingredients ready to make the salad on the day before Thanksgiving. As I am making the salad, I’m sure a lot of memories of holidays past will come flowing back. And that’s the point of these old recipes. Not only are you making good food for family and friends, but you’re also remembering wonderful times of the past. Soon, I will pass that recipe to Joshua & Lydia… and the tradition will continue.

Not this year…

I’m too tired. 

I’m too tired to be angry. 

I’m too tired to “never forget“. 

I’m just emotionally drained. 

For the last 22 years, I’ve had to live with the failure that happened on that day. It’s my job. The only people that have had it worse than I have are those who lost loved ones on that terrible day, and those who served our country in uniform during that time and spent months away from their families... either to defend our country from another attack or having to go halfway across the world to confront those responsible.

But the last 3 1/2 years have drained me to a breaking point. I need to rest. 

Those who planned that day are dead. Their organization is a shell of what it once was. They never launched the next phase… the bigger punch against us (like a dirty bomb) that we feared they were going to.

To be fair, we still keep an eye out. One horrible day is one horrible day too many. 

But seeing the same picture, over and over and over again, and being reminded to never forget… 

You don’t have your own personal picture of those buildings before they fell? You haven’t taken a picture of the spotlight beams going up into the sky where the buildings once stood? You haven’t gone to New York or PA and visited at least one of the Memorials? 

I remember the day I visited the towers. It was a cold March day. We had to take multiple elevators just to get up to the observation deck on the 107th floor. I remember trying to go up to the rooftop, but it was closed off. I took picture facing South, East, & North. It was a wonderful memory.

That horrible day made me find the pictures of the wonderful day. I’ve posted the memory of the wonderful day over the years as a counterbalance… a positive remembrance.

But I also remember how we got to that horrible day. That horrible day did not happen as an isolated moment.

I remember those we lost in Mogadishu.

I remember those we lost in the Khobar Towers.

I remember those we lost in Kenya & Tanzania.

I remember those we lost aboard the USS Cole.

I remember Madrid & London which happened after.

I remember the day we finally removed the mastermind of all of it… and the day we removed the other one.

I choose to “Remember”… what the buildings once were & who the people we lost on that day were… & not to “Never Forget” the pain & anger I felt on that day. 

I haven’t had a good night sleep in a long time. For too long, I was driven by what I was seeing on the “news”. And it made me angry… as it was designed to do. No more. It’s too much.

Not this year… not after I lost both my parents. Not after I have lost dear friends. 

If you want to be angry at me because my words hit too close, it’s your prerogative… but know that I’m not the real reason you are angry.

Maybe we all need to get 50 miles outside our comfort zones. Maybe we need to close our mouths & open our ears & hearts again to hear our neighbors, coworkers, & friends. Maybe we need to celebrate even the little happy moments more… moments that truly unite us. Because happiness rejuvenates us. Joy is a powerful force.

Reliving the same pain over & over won’t move us forward. 

Never forget? How about Remembering those we lost on that day & strive to be better people in their memory? How about just showing kindness again? That is when we are at our best.

But for now… maybe I can catch up on sleep. I’m just too tired. Not. This. Year.

The COVID Pandemic... 3 years later.

Saturday marks three years since the World Health Organization declared a Global Pandemic for COVID-19.  Three years since the world began to shut down.  Three years since the world was forever changed.  Three years almost to the day that I came face-to-face with the Apocalypse.

As of March 5th, 2023, the number of confirmed Covid cases in the US alone has totaled over 103 million, while the confirmed death toll in the US now exceeds 1.12 million.  Based on 2 separate conservative estimates, the actual death toll from Covid is probably an additional 200-400 thousand deaths higher.  Millions continue to suffer from symptoms of Long Covid.

We are likely approaching the endemic state of Covid across the globe.  In the US, the Covid Emergency will officially end on May 11... 38 months after the Global Pandemic was declared.  Numbers indicate that the number of new Covid cases and Covid deaths are nowhere at the levels they were a year ago during the Omnicron wave or even 2 years ago, when the US was beginning to come out of the worst portion of the pandemic.

What this post will do tonight is take a look at which parts of this country have done the best in fighting Covid, and which have not.

I mentioned the actual Covid numbers above, but if you look at those same numbers of per 100k people, the numbers tell an equally devastating picture.  In the US, the number of confirmed cases per 100k people currently stand at 31577, and the number of deaths per 100k people stands at 342.  That means the number of confirmed cases that have ended in death are about 1.083%.  Compare those numbers to the 1918-1920 Spanish Flu Pandemic in the US, where the per capita rate for Positive Flu cases were 28000, the death rate per 100k was 642 (est), and the percentage of confirmed flu cases that ended in death was estimated at 2.25%.  You would be tempted to say the Spanish Flu Pandemic was worse, but keep in mind, the Covid pandemic had better means of treatment than the flu pandemic had.  Plenty of ventilators, experimental treatments, and vaccines were things those treating the Covid pandemic had that those treating the flu pandemic did not.

So how do you determine which states have done well and which have not?  Let's take a look at California, for example.  California has had the most number of confirmed cases total over 12 million and the most number of deaths as that number exceeds 100k (these number are taken from statistics compiled by Johns Hopkins University from all 50 states' Dept. of Health COVID Sites).  Looks bad, right?  Well, not as bad as you think.  Keep in mind, California has just under 40 million people living in the state.  That means the number of cases per 100k people is at 30651, the number of deaths per 100k people is at 256, and the percentage of cases that have ended in death is about 0.835%... all three categories of measurement being below the national averages by significant margins.  

Based on a formula I used from Microsoft Excel, where I use Normal Statistical Distribution curves comparing California's numbers to the US mean numbers and the Standard Deviation of all 50 states (weighted with Confirmed Cases per 100k accounting for 33% of the total score, deaths per 100k accounting for 50% of the score, and Percent of cases ending in death accounting for 17% of the score), California's score on a scale from 0 to 100 (0 being no Covid cases or deaths and 100 meaning the pandemic was a disaster) is 24.382... and good enough for 11th best out of 50 states.

So which 10 states are doing a better job of dealing with the pandemic than California?  Here they are, with their respective scores as of March 5th, 2023:

10. Maryland - 22.807

9.  Virginia - 22.787

8.  Colorado - 22.327

7.  Nebraska - 20.732

6.  New Hampshire - 12.251

5.  Oregon - 10.262

4.  Maine - 8.986

3.  Washington - 7.642

2.  Hawaii - 5.106

1.  Vermont - 2.555

A couple of notes here... Vermont has not updated their numbers in over 2 weeks, so Vermont's score is probably going to have to be adjusted higher.  But, those adjusted number are unlikely to change Vermont's status as the state that has handled the Pandemic best of all.  Secondly, Washington DC does not count in these rankings, but if they did, DC's score of 7.186 would be good enough to place it 3rd best.

Now we go the other side of the ledger and point out the 10 worst states dealing with the pandemic.  Early on in this pandemic, New Jersey and New York were the two worst states overall.  But times have changed and those two states no longer even rank in the bottom 10 of states that have dealt with the pandemic.  New York current ranks 38th with a score of 72.375 and New Jersey ranks 40th with a score of 73.759.  That's not to say that New York and New Jersey have turned it around as much as it says other states failed to learn from their lessons and have made the same or even worse mistakes.

So here are the 10 worst states going from 41st to 50th place with their respective scores as of March 5th, 2023:

41. New Mexico - 74.824

42. Florida - 74.956

43. Kentucky - 77.359

44. Alabama - 77.505

45. Arkansas - 77.765

46. Oklahoma - 79.445

47. Mississippi - 80.664

48. Tennessee - 81.994

49. Arizona - 82.028

50. West Virginia - 84.294

Some other states of notes... Texas is 17th with a score of 38.956, Illinois is 21st with a score of 46.492, Ohio is 23rd with a score of 49.857, Georgia is 33rd with a score of 61.291, and Indiana is 34th with a score of 61.425. 

This pandemic has generally affected more rural areas than urban ones.  For example, Georgia's big 5 Metro Atlanta Area counties have accounted for 20% of the deaths, but since they account for 33% of the population, it means those 5 counties are generally doing better at saving lives than the rest of the state.  Johns Hopkins stats allow for counties to be compared with each other, so let's look at a metro Atlanta county (Gwinnett) and compare it with a exurban/rural county to its east (Walton).  The number of confirmed positive cases per 100k in each county is roughly the same, but the death rate per 100k is more than double in Walton as compared with Gwinnett.  Similar findings occur in other counties and while a few rural counties in GA buck the trend (Forsyth County is a good example), every county that is above GA's average of 400 deaths per 100k people is a rural or metro Atlanta exurban county.  Many metro areas across this country have hospitals that have been stressed to the limit in this pandemic... and those are the hospitals that have actually been able to save hundreds of thousands of lives.  If a rural county does have a hospital, many across this country have been exposed in this pandemic as being broken and, with many in rural areas having mistrust of medicine and doctors, it appears rural hospitals may take a long time to recover from this pandemic... if they ever do.

A new kind of normal is beginning to emerge and things will never be the way they once were.  Covid will never disappear.  It is here to stay.  Whether via vaccine or by getting the virus, humans genetics will evolve to fight Covid and, one day, getting Covid will be no different than getting the flu or a cold.  It may take some time, however.