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A Recipe For Life And For The Holidays

photo by Ginger Armell Grandma Bea's family meals, recipes and lessons on life were the glue for generations of the Dike clan.

photo by provided Bea Dike loved Christmas and any season or reason to gather all the family together.

photo by provided The 1000 acre farm in Charlotte was the center of her life and her place to raise her family.

Tuesday December 13, 2016

By Cookie Steponaitis

When Bea Dike was interviewed for the Valley Voice in 2012 she was getting ready to celebrate her 99th birthday. Bea was not one to focus on what was not important in life and quickly directed the conversation to the recipes for life and love that were important to her. Bea was born in Middlebury in 1913 and had grown up around the garage and witnessed her father being a partner and founder of Foster Motors with Edgar Foster. While autos had put food on her family’s table, Bea’s life revolved around the farm, animals and lessons learned in life.
    Bea fell in love with her life-long partner Henry Dike when she was only sixteen capturing his heart but it took patience she shared. The couple married in 1929 taking great pride in the 1000 acre Dike farm in Charlotte and Bea took great pleasure in sharing memories of working hard and wondering how they got it all in. Bea had three children Ralph, Ron and Roberta and also cooked three meals a day for the family, the hired men, tended the garden, drove a tractor during hay season and never settled “for a sandwich” but gave her family fresh food every day. Bea shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “We were self-sufficient,” she added with a grin. “We didn’t go to the store, we had our own vegetables, our own meat, and our own milk and if something broke we fixed it. I guess you could simply say we were farm people.”
    With somewhere around forty or so grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren, Bea’s kitchen was the favorite place for the very best snacks whether it was home cooked treats, pizza or fresh milk and was the place to recharge and bask in love, warmth and recipes of all sorts. “I am so blessed to have a family that supports me being in my own home and having people with me. Just look at this view. Since I don’t have to shovel anymore, this is a window to the four seasons of nature at its most beautiful. I truly am blessed,” shared Bea at the end of the 2012 interview.
    Seasons have come and gone on the Dike farm since that interview and Grandma Bea is no longer with the family, having passed on. But just the other day a special message from Bea surfaced in the family and was shared via Facebook to generations of Dike family members and friends alike. In her own hand writing was a recipe for a pie of thanksgiving and a message to all of us on how to measure a holiday season and a life well lived. “I always recall,” shared granddaughter Selena Dike Paquette, “growing up we would go to the farm for the holidays and there would always be grandma’s pies and her tradition. Before we could sit at the meal we would gather around in a circle and hold hands and say a prayer. Over the years the circle got bigger, but the prayer and the message was always the same. We counted our family and our blessings as Grandma Dike taught us to.”
    Accompanying the recipe was a message from granddaughter Tracy Shackett Dike. “Grandma Dike lives on in each of us,” she wrote and indeed she does. From the Valley Voice a sincere thanks to all of you for your part in the continued blessings of being a part of life in the Champlain Valley and a thought and a wish. May your holiday recipes be rich in the ingredients suggested by Grandma Bea Dike. Add love, family, food, faith and a lot of hand holding and hugging until your holidays are picture perfect.

Grandma Bea’s Recipe for a Thanksgiving Pie or a Pie of Thanksgiving
2 Cups of Counting Your Blessings. Thank God.
1 ½ cups of correcting your mistakes, good and bad.
1 ½ cups of forgiveness.
2 cups of saying kind words to others little or big.
2 ½ cups of prayer each day.
5 cups of God’s word read daily.
5 ½ cups of service for God.
2 tablespoons of smiles for seasoning.
1/3 of a teaspoon of tears.

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