Claudia's Winning Recipe

My sister Claudia was forever experimenting in her kitchen. She loved digging into cookbooks, especially classic ones-(Julia Child), to find just the right recipe to test. She often re-adjusted recipes substituting healthier options  to please her own–or husband Jim's palate.

So it wasn't a surprise when she won  a recipe contest held by a national magazine for her Creamy Pesto Alfredo Pasta dish, a recipe she based on an older recipe but changed around ingredients to put her own stamp on the dish. Claudia and Jim included the recipe in their cookbook that they created one Christmas and gifted to family and friends. Below is Claudia's  winning recipe appropriately titled "$200 Pesto Alfredo Pasta" as this was her prize amount. Try it out tonight! You won't be sorry it's a winner!

$200 PESTO ALFREDO PASTA

Time Factor:    30 minutes easily, including tossing a green salad.
Major Equipment:    Pasta pot, large non-stick skillet, pasta serving bowl.
Serves:    2 – 4, depending what else is served.

Ingredients:

½ lb. pasta, any shape
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons dried basil
1 large clove garlic, minced
4 oz. reduced fat (Neufchatel) cream cheese
½ cup (liquid measure) reduced fat cottage cheese
1/3 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
½ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf (Italian) parsley leaves
½ cup dry white wine

Start warming the pasta serving bowl and heat pasta water.  Cook the pasta according to package directions, coordinating the time to finish cooking at the same time as the sauce.

In the large non-stick skillet, heat olive oil over medium low heat and sauté dried basil and garlic slowly, without browning, about 5 - 7 minutes, to soften the basil. 

Add cheeses and parsley, mixing well, turning heat to medium.  Add wine to thin sauce.  Heat well and cook down to desired thickness, about 5 minutes.  Add another tablespoon of wine if it is too thick.

Drain pasta, toss with sauce in warmed pasta bowl.  Or, toss pasta with sauce in skillet.  Serve immediately.

Origin:  The late great Marsha Scott Gori used to make this laden with full fat cream cheese and butter.  I overhauled it and added the wine.  I submitted it to a 1992 Better Homes and Gardens magazine contest and won, earning $200, which I spent on a cast iron floor lamp and the cost of a replacement glass shade necessitated when cats broke it a week after it arrived.  I have, alas, lost my copy of the magazine in which the recipe was published. 

Letter and Poem from Maggie Belisle

I am sending the small bit of writing I did in the close, resounding moments after hearing the very sad news. Writing is the instinct I developed over the years for attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible. Sometimes it helps, lends a sense of closure or completion and other times it just helps me ‘manage’ the sense of helplessness that accompanies so much of what Life offers.

In the days since then, I have been enlightened by the recognition of how much of “who I am now” is a direct result of the unique way in which Cloudy touched my life. The example she was to me as she shared her life and her friendship with me. Always the same, always with great compassion and wisdom. Always without reservation or judgment.  She was a stalwart friend. A true friend. I am so blessed to have had her in my life. Me and everyone else.

We both had been directed to one another’s attention by Dr. Toole. And when we connected it was love at first sight.

I was taken by her poise and reserve and delighted by her wit and unfailing instinct for joy and laughter. Soft spoken, intelligent, beautiful, gentle, womanly Claudia and me-a Calamity Jane cowgirl who always saw myself as a feral stray cat, attempting to cope with my particular version ‘freedom’. An Odd Couple.

We had many things in common, writing, books, our mother’s and high school in Europe. Thus the name “Cloudy”… because that pronunciation of her name just stuck in my mind after Italy.

The friendship was an instant success also-because as a hardcore goof-ball ham- I loved discovering that I could make her laugh. And as my life became overtaken by a collection of devastating events over many years, sharing laughter with my gentle, caring friend became an oasis of refreshment in a sea of troubles.

That stormy sea, I eventually attempted to navigate with the help of antidepressants and alcohol—predictably, a dreadful combo.  And when at last I had at last managed the first year of sobriety, she gave me a memento of toy devil sluggin it out with an angel …and the reminder that I had won the first year of what would become many more to come. Her love again. A lighthouse at sea and a beacon on dry land. No matter what… she believed in me.

It was always so clear to me that Claudia was safe. A safe harbor of deep wisdom and compassionate insight. She could listen to me tell of the things that needed saying and reflect back to me that the grace I needed was truly within me. She believed in me when I was most at odds with any ability to believe in myself. And as I told Suzanne, she was a mentor and an inspiration because “she always saw the rose before the bloom appeared.”

What an incredible gift she was to us all. And just how much my life has been enriched for knowing her is before me every day. It is astonishing for me to think that I went from two packs of cigarettes a day, 3 beers and four white Russians with Prozac and a microwaved mummified hot dog for dinner to a sober, married life of organic farming, yoga, meditation and a sense of peace-which I hope in some way resembles the light she showed me.

It was a fitting tribute that every single person who gathered to remember Claudia, continues to share the same vision of the same unique person who touched their lives by the simple and beautiful essence of who she truly was.

This was a replication of the logo image that Claudia drew-

often added to her letters and gift labels to me signed "Cloud."

I took it that morning in the garden at her farewell.

Claudia Ebeling was my friend.

The very heart of grace.

Kindness came naturally to her.

In every encounter

she led from the heart

and demonstrated her belief in

the undeniable efficacy of Love

to transform and transcend

Everything.

My life, still

touched by her love

changed by her friendship and

her unfailing belief in me.

She saw my light

despite my many shades of shadow.

So I came to know the value of my worth

because she chose to show me love.

One life made more vibrant

by her hand and her willingness to share her heart.

She was my teacher. A writer and a soul who possessed

an unhesitating generosity

of spirit

of joy

of love.

She sparkled in her laughter and her wit

and magically

magnified joy

in the world around her.

What she lived

continues

to thrive and

flourish here

because she was wise.

Wise and kind and loving.

Now it is our time

to take this gift

and do the same.  

To

Be the Light

and

quietly, beautifully

Shine

as

One

with

Claudia.

maggie belisle 7-30-14

My Sister Claudia's Library

Many women dream of having their own home library, not a reality for those with rooms given to off-spring and other family necessities. But my sister Claudia was fortunate. Along with husband Jim, her library was built early into their central PA Victorian town house with sky-high ceilings.

Claudia inherited my mother's love of reading early in life. When Claudia moved to central PA to be with then boyfriend Jim, she'd call mom on Sundays and they'd go over favorite reads of the week, New York Times book reviews and ended the conversation with shared reading recommendations.

These two women were never at a loss to talk about books.

Our mother didn't have a room dedicated to a library, but Claudia's library has bookshelves spanning up to the ceiling and spilling over to a beautiful wood bookcase. Whimsically perched around her beloved books are a collection of wood artist mannequins serving as bookends.

This room was my sister's sanctuary, and I'm so grateful that she enjoyed if for many years. It is here that she wrote copious notes in her journal on recently read books, or scoured recipes, and wrote in long-hand first– book reviews that garnered her a much followed reviewer on Amazon, and even earned her a prize, if not emails from authors.  I personally was amazed at my sister's intellectual capacity to grasp such arcane concepts and difficult reads, this I think is when I realized what a true intellect she was.

Although Brother-in-Law Jim shared some of Claudia's reviews here, I wanted to share one more, and by all means, feel free to search her on Amazon, as my sister not only covered fiction and non-fiction–but her consumer instincts-finely tuned by our mother and especially husband Jim, she also shared some good house-hold buys for the discerning homeowner. Enjoy:

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Humanity in a Major Key, August 17, 2011

By 

C. Ebeling "ctlpareader"

Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Comedy in a Minor Key: A Novel (Paperback)

Hans Keilson, who died on 31 May 2011 at the age of 101, escaped Hitler and was helped by the Dutch resistance. Though a doctor, he was also an accomplished writer. The novella Comedy in a Minor Key was published after the war and tells the story of a young Dutch couple, Wim and Marie, who are quickly persuaded by arguments of doing the humane thing, Christian charity and Dutch patriotism, to hide a Jewish man, Nico, in their home. As the story opens, Wim, Marie and their doctor are standing by Nico's bed, stunned that he has died of pneumonia. The story cycles in and out of their existence together, but also addresses the suspense of disposing of the body, very risky business. There is a plot turn at this point that I won't get into, but suffice to say there is more suspense.

This is also a terrific character study of the human condition, tackling risk, fear, the problem of being saved yet imprisoned, the satisfaction of doing the right thing and, ultimately, disappointment. Marie had always envisioned she, Wim and Nico triumphantly dancing out of the house together on Liberation Day and his death cheats her of that satisfaction. And it's the irony of it all that leads the author to call this a comedy, however in the key of sad music, because it's like that gimmick in a stage comedy where the audience is expecting a character to emerge from the curtains on one side of the stage and is looking over there when he suddenly appears out of the other.

Keilson gets emotion down right and his characters are charmingly, wryly human. He's a natural storyteller. Though I don't speak the language in which it was written, the translation offers up a strong sense of authenticity. The book flows swiftly and can be read in an evening. This reissue, published in America for the first time, was on the shortlist for the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award.