June 2023 Newsletter

“People who love to eat are always the best people.”

Julia Child

“Cooking is at once child’s play and adult joy.

And cooking done with care is an act of love.”

Craig Claiborne

If you love to cook, or eat…

This smells like good news

By Dale Dauten

Resort resident Cheri Streeter had a sweet idea: Let’s do a book of Resort residents’ favorite recipes and donate the profits to one of the park’s worthy causes.

 

This was no idle thought; in fact, Cheri has done a recipe book once before and it was such a hit that it raised a lot of money for charity. So we got Cheri on the phone – she’s back in Minnesota for the summer – to get details and we started by asking what gave her the idea: “People bring such wonderful food to happy hour at the park and I started thinking about how great it would be to have a collection of everyone’s favorite recipes, all tried and true.”

 

Sure, sounds like a terrific idea, but publishing a book also sounds like a terrific amount of work. Cheri isn’t intimidated, telling us, “I’ve done one before. I worked for the Post Office for 30 years in Minnesota, delivering mail, and the USPS had an annual campaign to raise money for charity. We did a recipe book at my post office.”

 

One of the first issues Cheri encountered as she started to map out her plan for a Resort cookbook was figuring out where the proceeds would go. After a number of conversations with leaders of the park and its charities, the plan is to split the profits between La Mesita (that’s the homeless shelter that has a long connection with The Resort’s Crafty Ladies) and the park’s Veterans group.

 

Here’s what Cheri wrote about how she sees the book coming together…

 

If you would like to participate and include your favorite recipes, we would love to have them. There are going to be categories just like a recipe book would have. However, I am going to include a section on favorite drinks. (It doesn’t have to include alcoholic beverages, but you sure can put them in there.)

 

I think the sections that would appeal to most people are:

 

Breakfast

Lunch

Meals for One

Meals for Two

Beverages

Appetizers

Soups

Salads

Main Dishes: Beef, Poultry, Pork, Seafood, Vegetarian

Side Dishes: Vegetables, Other

Low Sodium

Desserts

Breads

Holidays

Entertaining

 

You can email me your recipes at cjs1wolf@yahoo.com

 

Cheri told us that she hopes residents will include recipes from friends or relatives, and she hopes people send multiple entries: “Send one for every category,” Cheri encouraged, “or send ten for one category. The more the better.”

 

Although she’s planning to send a postcard to every Resort resident to make sure everyone knows the plan, she’s ready to get started over the summer, so please start emailing her. (Cheri also hopes a person or two might help with addressing postcards – please let her know.)

“No one who cooks, cooks alone.

Even at her most solitary,

a cook in the kitchen is surrounded

by generations of cooks past,

the advice and menus of cooks present,

and the wisdom of cookbook writers.”

Laurie Colwin

A BIT ABOUT CHERI STREETER

We always like to include a little about the people who appear in The Resorter and we of course wanted to hear more about Cheri’s career as a mail carrier. (She found a photo from those days, shown below.) “I delivered mail in Minnesota for 30 years,” she said, “and I’d still be doing it except for five back surgeries,” adding, “I once broke my ankle but finished the route. Then I went to the doctor.”

While Cheri’s back problems forced her into retirement, her husband, Patrick Osmonson, is still a CPA, practicing in Minnesota. They’d vacationed in Mesa to visit Patrick’s relatives and that’s when the old Resort magic happened: they came in 2014, happened to spot a unit for sale, and said to each other, “Let’s buy it!” So Cheri comes for the winter and Patrick flies down every couple of weeks… except for tax season, when he’s buried in work and Cheri’s son and daughter visit.

 

A recent photo of Cheri and Patrick

You might spot Cheri out walking her pug and/or her German shepherd. She’s rehabilitated a series of German shepherds over the years, working with a veterinarian friend, but the current dog came to her with the advice, “This one you need to rehab and keep.” Cheri tells us that park residents have gone out of their way to help, saying, “Everyone in the park is so wonderful.”

 

Besides the dogs and the cooking, Cheri has another passion – she is developing a website that will include a cataloging of every plant on the planet, over a million of them. Impossible? She’s already entered over 300,000.

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NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:

If you’d like to volunteer to be the subject of an article, or have someone you’d like to learn more about, please let me know.

 

Or, if you have photos you’ll like to share in upcoming newsletters, please send them.

 

Dale Dauten, Editor

Email: ddauten@gmail.com

Text: 480-297-6244

 

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