“There is always in February some one day, at least, when one smells the yet distant, but surely coming summer.”

— Gertrude Jekyll

A dozen red roses for our 52nd anniversary

This week we had our Maine version of that day. If you didn’t look at the mixture of slush and snow and ice on the ground and only watched the sunrise, felt the warm breeze on your face as you walked along, you could almost picture, or at least almost hope that spring was around the corner. This week marks the 52nd year of the marriage of Jean Felsberg (me) and Don Feldeisen. Don and my relationship with him have been featured in my writing this week. Today we bought a dozen red roses for our table and are planning a special celebration on Monday. It is surprising that so many years have passed so quickly. We are game for some more. They keep getting more and more interesting as we age.

This week in cooking

Bone Broth and Bone Broth Soup

My husband Don was responsible for making the most delicious bone broth this week and then I made an easy soup out of some of it. I wanted to share it with you.

We happened to have access to a lot of bones this week and he filled our biggest pot with them, He filled the pot with water to cover, a few onions, a head of garlic, salt, pepper, a few tablespoons of vinegar (for leaching nutrients from the bones) and set the pot to cook for two days. In the end, we came away with about 8 quarts of beef bone broth. It was savory and beefy. It made our house smell wonderful for two days and also put some much-needed moisture into the dry air. All in all a big win.


You Will Definitely Miss Out if You Never Get to Know This Legendary South Jersey Bayman, One of a Kind, Nicknamed Hodaddy

Would you want your husband called “ho” for short?

First, about the name

I never paid much attention to this strange nickname. Some of his clammer friends, men Don worked with in the bay, began calling him Hodaddy and I figured it was just some form of male bonding weirdness. Probably thinking it was related to a hoe, just another tool for digging clams? Who knows? I didn’t really care what he was called by his male friends — locker room talk, right? Besides, I rarely worried about his morals. Don was and is a good person. And I loved him.

Published by Jean Anne Feldeisen

I was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey to Mildred Shropshire and Theodore Felsberg Jr. I was raised in Galloway Township and graduated from Oakcrest High School in southern New Jersey in the Sigma 67 Class in 1967. I attended Cedar Crest College in Allentown, PA, and graduated from Stockton University in Galloway, NJ, in 1974 with degrees in Philosophy, English Literature, and (almost) music. After that, I taught piano to local children and adults in the 70s and 80s, had a catering business, "Jean's in the Kitchen," from 1980 to 1992, then went to graduate school at Rutgers Camden to obtain my Masters's Degree in Social Work. Since 1996 I have worked as a therapist and counselor, first in New Jersey for five years and then, when our family moved to Maine, in Augusta, Maine, for five years. For the past 17 years, I have had a private psychotherapy practice in Gardiner, Maine, During the pandemic, I packed up and moved my office home to Washington, Maine. On the year of my seventieth birthday, I decided to write and self-publish a memoir about our parents' World War II romance, Dear Milly. I began blogging on Medium in earnest in 2020 and have posted more than 265 stories, including a block of stories about my catering career which I hope to turn into a book in the next year. I have been writing and collecting poetry since childhood but never showed it to anyone. Recently, I learned how valuable it could be to join a group for feedback and support for my writing. I have taken several courses and written many poems, and recently had several poems accepted for publication. Off in a new direction, again.

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