Donna

 Sue Blomgren, Donna's lifelong friend, shared this scrap of conversation with me. Donna said she had great reverence for food. Anyone fortunate enough to have shared a meal prepared by Donna will recognize the validity of this statement. During our years together she used her expertise and enthusiasm to bring the very best recipes to our table. Sometimes I would assist her in the procurement and preparation of the ingredients. On other occasions, Donna worked as the sole chef in the kitchen. In either case, one would find Donna's reverence in each dish. In celebration of her reverence for food, I am sharing Donna's recipe books: -- The Orange Binder . --  The Spiral Notebook . --  The Blank Book . -- The Black Binder . -- The Zipper Document Folder . -- The Green Metal Index Card Box . Here are some recipes that were missed during the original blog post: -- Don Curto's Tomato Basil Cream Soup . Thanks to Sue Blomgren for sharing this recipe. Also, we often turned to...

 Tony was the family dog when Donna was a young girl. Donna shared several Tony stories with me (I'd ask her to tell them to me again and again. She was a great storyteller). Here's one of my favorites. During a visit to her grandfather's home, Tony went into the barn and got into a fight with a rat. Donna ran to her grandfather and urgently told him about this terrible thing. Her grandfather said, "He knows what he's doing." This is Donna's favorite photo of Tony because her grandfather's beautiful gardens are visible in the background. She loved walking around these gardens with her Grandfather Peter Michels. He would tell her about each plant as they strolled along. This is a color tinted black & white photo of Tony. Some of the tinting has faded away. Some of the spots are Tony's. Some of the spots are splashes of spaghetti sauce accidentally placed there by one of Donna's children. For this photo Fred Michels, Donna's father, pl...