Your neighbor's recipe: A Medora Christmas

Teresa Kiser has lived in an old farmhouse in the Medora bottoms for most of her life.

“I wouldn’t trade any of this for the world,” she said Tuesday afternoon while sitting in her dining room. “This is home.”

Having lived in Medora for so long, Kiser has fond memories of the town’s annual Christmas parade, which traditionally kicks off the holiday season for Medora residents. The parade is held the first Saturday in December, but this year organizers decided to extend the event an extra day.

“It’s good for the community to come together like that,” Kiser said.

For the first time, the festivities also included a pie baking contest, which brought out some of the town’s best cooks with their best pie recipes.

The winner? Kiser, with her oatmeal pie recipe.

“It’s just delicious, everyone loves it,” she said. “It’s kind of like a pecan pie made with oatmeal.”

But oatmeal pie wasn’t the only sweet treat Kiser baked for the event; she also made 12 other pies to donate for the cake walk and a raffle to benefit the town.

“I just like to help out wherever I can,” she said.

Helping out has become a way of life for Kiser. With a big heart and compassion for others, she is a friend and caretaker to many. One thing she does around the holidays is make gift baskets featuring some of her home-baked goods for elderly people of the community.

She spent years taking care of her parents before they died and also spent eight years working in the Lutheran Community Home in Seymour and also worked at Schneck Medical Center.

Now, she looks after her 3-year-old grandson Donovan, who likes to help her in the kitchen.

“He’s a big help to grandma,” she said, lovingly kissing Donovan on the cheek.

One of Donovan’s favorite things to do is help ice cookies and roll out dough for homemade noodles, Kiser said.

“We’ll have a big Christmas dinner,” she said. “There aren’t too many of us, but I still cook a whole lot of food. It’s just following tradition, like my mom did.”

Kiser said she learned to cook when she was just a little girl, because even back then, she was taking care of her mother.

“Mom was sickly, so I stood up on a stepstool and just learned how to cook right away,” she said. “I also was a young wife, so I had to learn the cleaning, the cooking and everything else, because there wasn’t anyone to do it for me.”

To help keep all her favorite recipes together and within quick reach, Kiser decided to tape them inside the doors of her cabinets.

“That way I don’t have to go hunting through cookbooks,” she said. “I have them all right here and all I have to do is just open the cabinet.”

Another of Kiser’s favorite recipes to make during the holidays is peanut butter fudge and buckeyes.

“I always have people calling me to make buckeyes for them,” she said.

Kiser is married to Larry Kiser, who works at the Jay C Foods Warehouse in Seymour, and has a daughter, Tammi Christopher, who lives just up the road from them. She also has two stepdaughters, three other grandsons and a granddaughter. Her grandmother, 93-year-old Myrtle Weddel, also lives in Medora.

Besides cooking and taking care of people, Kiser also enjoys going to tractor shows and flea markets with Larry.

“Before I met him, I had no interest in tractors, but now it’s something we like to do together,” she said.

Kiser likes tractors so much that this year Larry bought her a Minneapolis Moline for Christmas.

“Tractors are something we can enjoy together and with our grandkids,” she said. “Donovan got to ride one of our tractors in the Christmas parade this year with grandpa.”

Oatmeal Pie

2 eggs, beaten

½ cup lite corn syrup

¾ cup shredded coconut

¼ cup oleo (margarine)

1 cup sugar

¾ cup oats

½ cup Milnot

1 unbaked shell

Put ingredients in this order: eggs, sugar, syrup, oats, coconut, milk, oleo; pour into shell. Turn oven to 400 degrees for 15 minutes, then to 200 degrees for 30 minutes.

Peanut Butter Fudge

1 1-pound box powdered sugar (about 3½ cups)

½ can Milnot

1 7-ounce jar marshmallow crème

1 13-ounce jar peanut butter

Mix milk and powdered sugar in saucepan. Bring to boil. Boil about 4 minutes. Take off stove and add crème and peanut butter. Pour in a buttered pan. Cool and cut into squares.

Buckeyes

3 cups powdered sugar

1 stick oleo (margarine)

1 12-ounce jar peanut butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix ingredients with fork and knead until creamy. Spoon out and roll into balls and dip in chocolate bark. Put on wax paper. Cool. Makes about 40-50 2-inch balls.

Noodles

2 well-beaten eggs

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons oleo (margarine), warm

½ teaspoon baking power

2 tablespoons cream (Milnot)

Add enough flour to make a very stiff dough. Roll onto a well-floured surface very thin; dust with flour. Roll up and cut with a sharp knife. Toss noodles in flour. Freeze up to 2-3 months in freezer.