Bena Mae’s Kitchen: In Your Dreams

In your dreams

Are your dreams so vivid that you wake up thinking that they were real?  
Mine usually are.  Sometime Freddie Kreuger is standing over my bed with a large knife in his hand.  He is so real that I could reach out and touch him. 
It takes me a good 30 minutes to settle my nerves.  Where this comes from, I don’t know.  I don’t watch Friday the 13th or Murder on Elm Street.  But somehow they snuck into my subconscious.
This is the mystery about dreams.  Where do they come from?
I know I’m a worrier and this may determine the pattern of my dreams.  I come from the Elizabeth Rowlette Estep School of Worrying.  I graduated Magna cum Laude with a phd in worrying.  My thesis was “How to keep on Worrying When There’s Nothing to Worry About.”  Mama was a good teacher.
Sometimes my dreams are pure fantasy.  They make no sense at all and are forgotten the moment I wake up.  But I have a recurring dream that has haunted me for years.
I am in a strange city and can’t find my home.  I ask everyone I meet if they can help me.  But I get no help from anybody.  I keep wandering the streets looking for my house but I never find it.  I wake up wondering what this means.  Was I ‘left behind’ when the family moved away?  Was I the unwanted child?
Hey, I knew I was adopted all along.
Some dreams stay in my mind for days.  If it is a dream about a member of my family being harmed, I stay on high alert for days until the memory fades away.  Many times my dreams are about bizarre situations where people I haven’t seen for years pop up in crazy scenarios.  I can only  theorize that everything that ever happened to me has stayed in my subconscious all my life.  That teacher that opened my eyes to the beauty of literature some 65 years ago?  She was there, but where did she come from?
I had a dream recently that I remember with a feeling of peace and contentment.  I’m sitting with a friend in a beautiful pristine setting watching little baby ducks paddle around in a clear pond.  We are relaxing on the porch of a  lodge, far from the hustle and bustle of the city. Our eyes stay on the ducks so effortlessly making circles in the crystal clear water.  Such innocence.  Such calm disregard for the chaos happening around the world.
The serene beauty of the moment was so overpowering that I felt a surge of contentment that I had never felt before.
I cannot analyze the dream nor do I want to.  I only want to hold on to that moment forever.

COMFORTING AND WARMING
 GRANDMA’S COUNTRY CHICKEN
 
Ingredients for Potato Layer
2.5 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes,
    cubed – not peeled, boiled and mashed
1 cup sour cream
1 cup shredded, cheddar cheese
1 2.8 oz. can french-fried onions
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. coarse ground pepper

Directions for Potato Layer
Combine ingredients and spread into the bottom of a baking dish or comparable oval baking dish.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
 
Ingredients for Topping
 1.5# – 2.0# boneless, skinless chicken breasts
    – poached and shredded
1 26-oz. can cream of mushroom soup
1 16 oz. bag frozen, mixed vegetables
    – thawed and drained
1 c. sour cream
2 tsp. ground mustard
1 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. pepper
1 c. shredded, cheddar cheese
    – for sprinkling on top

Directions for Topping
Combine ingredients and spread over potoato mixture.  Sprinkle with additional cup of shredded cheddar cheese.  Bake in oven for 45 minutes until cheese is melted and bubbly, serve and enjoy.