Sunday, March 20, 2011

Happy 100th Helen!

Today, March 20, 2011, would have been Helen's 100th birthday. She was 17 when her mother built Foxcroft in 1928, and she started as a freshman at the University of Iowa. Here they are in 1929:



To celebrate we invited Ann, Helen's cousin, over for dinner. It had been far too long since she had been here, she didn't come at Thanksgiving because due to my Dad being hospitalized we didn't have a celebration. At Christmas time Ann was not feeling well so she wasn't here for that get together either.

We had our "Irish" dinner of corned beef and cabbage. After eating the girls excused themselves and Lisa, Ann and I visited for quite a while.



Ann said it still felt like home here at Foxcroft, and it should, considering that not only had she visited here her entire life, but had lived her for two and half years as Helen's caretaker before her passing in December of 2004. Ann had many reminisces about Helen and Bess.

We made a special cake for tonight, from one of Helen's cookbooks: Walnut cake with caramel icing.



The walnuts we used were from the black walnut tree in the backyard. Here is a picture of Helen posing with the tree in 1932, above the recipe:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a wonderful, thoughtful idea. I'm glad that everyone was finally able to get together again and catch up. I particularly love the special touch of including a sweet treat from Helen's recipes.

StuccoHouse said...

It's cool that you have such a direct connection to Helen & Bess. That cake looks very good....

Speedfit Push Fittings said...

It's cool that you have such a direct connection to Helen & Bess..
Thank you for Sharing..