Throughout the two decades I’ve penned this farm column feature, I’ve been blessed to be able to chronicle and share about many of my dad Chester’s birthdays.
My first time mentioning one of his milestone celebrations in print was a 2004 column which included the fun fact that my dad and Popeye the Sailor were born the same year in 1929. Spinach-adoring Popeye is about six months older than Dad, since his newspaper comic strip debut was Jan. 17, 1929, as dreamed up by cartoonist E.C. Segar for Hearst King Features Syndicate. (Segar, who died in 1938 at age 43, was born in Chester, Illinois.)
It’s 20 years later, and now Dad and Popeye are celebrating their 95th birthday.
My mom Peggy, myself, and my two brothers and two sisters hosted a Saturday afternoon open house earlier this month with family, friends, neighbors and readers joining us for the special day.
We even had Dad hop on his beloved 1948 John Deere Model B tractor and start it up for guests to hear the thrill of the engine.
Our menu highlight for the party boasted Chicago-style Italian beef sandwiches catered by Portillo’s Restaurant and intended to be a nod to the Italian beef sandwiches which used to be a claim-to-fame for our small farming town North Judson.
Travelers from near and far were familiar with our restaurant landmark for half a century. Originally opened in 1973 as Patterson’s, in later years it was rebranded as Brantwood Restaurant, while still retaining its folksy charm as a roadside diner and pub on Indiana 10 and as signage indicated: “Home of the Famous Italian Beef Sandwich.”
It was brothers and husband-and-wife-teams Jerry and Lois Patterson and Bobby and Barbara Gumz Patterson who started the restaurant, building the menu around Jerry and Bobby’s mom Reba Mae’s specialties. Reba, who died in 1991 at age 66, served as the kitchen cook, and it was she who created the restaurant’s original recipe for the signature Italian Beef Sandwich. In 1985, the restaurant’s new owners, Jerry and Sue Jonas, changed the restaurant name and operated the business for 35 years before retiring and closing it in 2018.
Earlier this month, we lost one of the Patterson brothers, Robert, at age 77 when he died on July 19.
Robert Patterson was born in 1946, the same year our town’s other delicious claim-to-fame Fingerhut Bakery opened in North Judson. It was Fingerhut Bakery that originally baked all of the crusty French bread that the Pattersons paired with their beef for sandwiches. I’m told that in later years, the amount of bread needed for weekly orders surpassed what was practical for Fingerhut Bakery to provide, becoming the catalyst for the restaurant to bake its own bread.
Fingerhut Bakery created the custom sheet cake we served at Dad’s birthday party, which was alongside free-flowing champagne served from a vintage “champagne fountain.” The idea for having the champagne fountain in the kitchen to welcome arriving guests harkens back to a favorite restaurant where our family celebrated so many of our special occasions when I was growing up in the 1970s.
Morris Bryant Swedish Smorgasbord in West Lafayette was our favorite place to toast special memories in the making. The restaurant was first recommended to my mom by the Spenner Family, our strawberry farmer neighbors from down the road. They discovered Morris Bryant, which opened in 1951 after their daughter Cheryl attended Purdue University in the late 1970s.
Once my older brother David started at Purdue in 1980, Morris Bryant became a bonus advantage when we’d visit him on campus. The restaurant’s Sunday Champagne Brunch featured a towering champagne fountain, an image that is forever etched in my mind from when I was that imagination-filled 11-year-old. The restaurant closed after a fire in 1994.
After a column I published earlier this month about blueberries referenced Dee, and the passing of husband Jerry, our family was alerted with sad news that Dee passed away last month in June at age 92 near their retirement home in Holiday, Florida.
While we didn’t serve any blueberry recipes during my dad’s birthday open house, guests did talk about another birthday just down the road connected with our other blueberry farming neighbors who continued long after the Spenners retired. The blueberry patch owned and operated by Wanda and Cliff Bonnell in North Judson is celebrating a half-century birthday. Now a 10-acre picking patch, with the help of their daughter Donna and her husband Steve Osborne, the family continues to maintain all operations of the farm they purchased 50 years ago from the Adams Family.
In 1986, Wanda Bonnell shared a delicious crumb-topping blueberry muffin recipe that is almost as good as birthday cake. Moist and scrumptious, it consists of few needed ingredients yet bakes a generous batch of 18 muffins to share.
Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa@comhs.org or mail your questions: From the Farm, PO Box 68, San Pierre, Ind. 46374.
Blueberry Streusel Muffins
Makes 18 muffins
Streusel topping Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup butter
Muffin batter Ingredients:
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 egg
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon and teaspoon baking powder
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries
Directions:
1. Make streusel topping by combining sugar, flour and cinnamon in a small bowl.
2. Cut in butter with dry ingredients until the mixture resembles crumbly bits. Set aside.
3. Heat oven to 375 degrees and prepare muffin batter by combining sugar and butter, creaming together until light.
4. Add in eggs to creamed sugar mixture and blend well.
5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder and add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture alternately with the milk, stirring well after each addition.
6. Stir in vanilla and fold in blueberries.
7. Spoon mixture into muffin pans lined with muffin cups, filling each two-thirds full.
8. Sprinkle streusel topping over muffins.
9. Bake for 25 minutes or until muffins test done.
