Irene Courtney

I didn't talk about this at all on here at the time, but last August 24th, my Grammie passed away.  Today would have been her 97th birthday, so I thought it might be nice to write a bit about her.

Grammie was born June 22, 1916 in Dickinson Center, New York to Edgar Newland Aiken and Agnes Effie Stacy Aiken.

Edgar and Effie and KITTIES!!!!

Edgar and Effie also later had a son, Newland. 

I think this picture's kind of adorable

At some point, she met my Grandpa, John Courtney, through a mutual friend while he was working as a mechanic at a garage in Malone, NY.  They got married on September 7, 1943.

What a nice looking couple!

The had three kids: my Uncle John and later my mom and Aunt Mindy.

D'awwwwww!

Sadly, Grandpa died on May 29, 1967.

Grammie had a few different secretarial jobs in her life.  During World War II, she worked for Alcoa.  Later, she worked for a place called Adirondack Commercial in Malone, and finally for St. Regis Falls Central School.  She retired from the school in 1977 for health reasons.  She had a tumor removed that ended up with her losing half of her stomach.  Grammie wasn't expected to live very long after that.  It wouldn't be the only time she defied such predictions; much later she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and, since she decided not to subject herself to going through the painful treatments she'd seen other go through, she was expected to live just a very short time.  It was more than a decade later that she passed away.

In 1990, she moved in with my family.  I, of course, thought this was absolutely great!  Now instead of having to go visit Grammie to get pies and cookies and things, she would be able to make them for me all the time (I was 9 at the time)!  And, for the most part, it was pretty great.  I got a great appreciation and some skill at baking tasty things.  She also helped me with learning how to drive, at least until she decided she was really too old to renew her license and let it lapse (seriously, as great as my parents are, they were NOT helpful at teaching me to drive.  Mom's method involved a great deal of screaming as if we were about to die and Dad is the most nit-picky passenger in the world.  To this day I am still very nervous when I have other people in the car when I'm driving).

Of course, Grammie didn't spend all of her time doing Grammie-type things.  She was a member of a couple of different clubs, such as the 4 River Valleys Historical Society, which she visited Italy with.  She also had a couple of close friends that she would go out and spend a lot of time with, especially Mrs. Anna Scott and Mrs. Dorothy Murphy.  She outlived both of them, and I think their deaths were a real blow to Grammie.

In order to alleviate that sad thought, here's Grammie with an umbrella hat

While I was in college, Grammie, Aunt Mindy and I all took a trip out to Arizona to visit Uncle John and his family.  It was a whole lot of fun and I'm mentioning it pretty much just so I have an excuse to add in this picture of Grammie and Aunt Mindy at the arboretum we went to.

Cacti!

The last few years of her life were pretty rough for Grammie, I think.  She could neither hear nor see very well.  She did become close with a couple more friends, though, and they would come and visit and the three of them would have cake or cookies and chat.  But her health did take a sharp decline.  Here's a picture from a few year ago with my sister's new puppy:

That dog has since gotten much bigger

And here's one some time later with her other new puppy:

That dog has not gotten any bigger

After several years of declining health, Grammie passed away in her sleep at home on August 24, 2012.  My parents were in Florida earlier that month and when my aunt called and told them to come home right away, the picked me up on the way north and we got there on the 23rd.  She never wanted to be put in a nursing home and I have so much respect for my parents and my aunt for being able to ensure that she never had to be.  I am also very grateful for Hospice of Jefferson County.  They helped take care of Grammie for quite a long time and when she died made things easier for the family. 

Grammie's funeral was quite nice.  We had the funeral mass at St. James Church in Carthage, and then loaded the old lady up in the hearse to bury her at St. Ann's cemetery in St. Regis Falls.  The funeral director followed my dad's car to the cemetery since he wasn't sure just where it was (Carthage and St. Regis Falls are about 100 miles apart).  He told dad that he could go as fast as he wanted, but I don't think he was expecting all the windy and bumpy roads that dad zoomed down going about 70 mph.  Grammie did not go bouncing out of the hearse, though, so it couldn't have been that bad.  I think the man was further scandalized by the priest who performed the burial service who came strolling through the cemetery wearing a cap and black jeans with a pouch of what looked like chewing tobacco in his back pocket (I think he might have ridden there on his motorcycle).  And you know what?  Grammie would have loved it.

My favorite thing about Grammie's funeral was something the priest said at the funeral mass.  "Irene was very sharp.  She managed to catch just about everything.  And whatever she didn't catch, she made up."  Yup.  I think that sums things up pretty well.

Christmas Day, 2003

Chicken Tetrazzini (and other stuff)

Wow, it's really been a while since I've posted.  It's not that I haven't wanted to write about anything, but since I went to Montreal I've gotten a new boss at work, and it's been, in a word, exhausting.  Don't get me wrong, the new boss is great, but he's also pretty much the exact opposite of my old boss and so it's taking a lot of getting used to.  My workload has also increased exponentially since we had a couple of higher-ups quit not too long before he started.  I did, however, get a temporary promotion to Interim Branch Manager (with a temporary pay raise!), which is great!  But there's no Interim-My-Old-Position, so I'm still doing all that work, too (or at least trying to).  Add to that the fact that it's the end of our fiscal year when things are extra crazy anyway, plus time for employee evaluations, which made me want to hide under my desk when I had to write up two of them (I now have to do eleven), and yeah, I'm stressed.  And stress makes me not eat and have trouble sleeping.  Which makes me depressed and adds to the stress.  Things will get straightened out eventually, though.  I just need to hang in there for a few more weeks until I get to go on vacation again (10 year college reunion!).  But you didn't come here to read about me being all "Waah waah, life is hard!", you came for a chicken recipe!  And here you go:

A while ago, I decided I really wanted chicken tetrazzini for dinner, but alas!  None of my cookbooks had a recipe!  After looking at a few recipes on the internet, I decided to try Martha Stewart's since I already had a lot of the ingredients.  I did change a couple things, though: 1. I still don't have any dry white wine, so I used extra chicken broth instead; and 2. My grocery store had lost power the morning I made this and I couldn't get any frozen peas, so they got left out, too.  Here are the ingredients for how I actually made this:

6 Tbsp butter; 1 lb. white mushrooms, sliced; 1/2 C flour; 3 C milk; 1 14.5 oz. can, plus 3/4 C chicken broth; 3 C grated Parmesan cheese; 1/2 tsp. thyme; 1 lb. angel hair pasta; 1 rotisserie chicken, skin removed and meat shredded; salt and pepper.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  In a large pan, melt 2 Tbsp butter over high heat and add the mushrooms, seasoned with some salt and pepper.  This will look like an awful lot of mushrooms:

Before

But you will cook them for about 10 minutes, stirring them around frequently, until they get kind of browned, and they'll lose a lot of volume:

After

Transfer the mushrooms to a bowl and set aside.  In the same pan, this time over medium heat, melt the rest of the butter and whisk in the flour.  Stirring constantly, add in the milk and chicken broth.  Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat so it's simmering and add in two cups of the Parmesan cheese and season with some salt and pepper, stirring until it's all melted.

So cheesy!

Cook the pasta in a big pot so it's al dente, drain, and put it back in the pot.  Stir in the mushroom, chicken, and sauce until it's all well mixed.  Divide it up between two 2-quart baking pans and put the remaining one cup of Parmesan cheese on top.

Now, you can cook both of these.  Or, if you don't think you could possible eat that much chicken tetrazzini before you either get sick of it or it goes bad, cover one of the dishes with foil and put it in the freezer for up to three months.  For the one you're going to eat right away, bake it at 400 degrees for about thirty minutes, or until it's nicely browned.  (And for the frozen one, if it's going straight from the freezer, bake it covered with foil at 400 degrees for about 2 hours, then uncover and bake another 20 minutes until browned or, if you've thawed it in the fridge first, bake covered with foil at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, then uncover and bake another 20 minutes until browned.)

I thought this recipe turned out pretty well, if a little bland.  I think if I make it again, I'll definitely have to add some kind of vegetable.  Maybe not peas, maybe broccoli or something (I like broccoli much better than peas).  And maybe I'll substitute a more flavorful cheese for some of the Parmesan.  I don't know.  This warms up really well, though, so that helps my opinion of it quite a bit.