Makes 5 servings

2 tablespoons wine vinegar

6 tablespoons fine grade olive oil

1 teaspoon dry mustard

2 dashes Worcestershire sauce

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 heads of Romaine lettuce, well chilled

1 cup seasoned bread croutons

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 half can (about 3 ounces) anchovies, mashed

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Combine vinegar, oil, mustard and Worcestershire sauce with black pepper in a screw-top glass cruet and shake well.

2. In a large salad bowl, combine lettuce, croutons, garlic, anchovies and Parmesan cheese and toss.

3. Drizzle dressing over salad and toss well and then serve at once.

Mom made her annual large brimming pot of ham and navy bean soup last week, a kitchen tradition to start the new year, centered around the slow simmering of the holiday dinner ham bone we keep carefully preserved for this menu moment.

Sipping and savoring Mom’s ham and bean soup recipe, which is featured on page 50 of my second published cookbook “More From the Farm” released in 2007, has taken on a new and symbolic meaning since a fateful date 20 years ago this month in January 2005.

It was on Jan. 5, 2005 that my mom Peggy was in a horrible car accident near our farm. She was in a head-on collision and was flown by helicopter to Memorial Hospital in South Bend for treatment. She underwent several hours of surgery after suffering a fractured leg, hip, ankle, wrist and collar bone. But by that afternoon, she was alert and talking with family members.

The other driver was uninjured.

Prior to this head-on collision happening on that terrible afternoon, it was a routine day for our mom, which included her preparing to simmer the holiday ham bone after a short trip to our small town’s post office. My mom was wearing her seat belt and traveling by herself in her new 2004 Buick LeSabre on a road she has driven thousands of times in the past 60 years. The accident was just a few miles from our farm, and she had to be extricated since she was trapped in the crushed car, and firemen used a “jaws of life” cutting tool.

Amazingly, Mom stayed conscious and talking the entire time of this ordeal. When the neighbors in the homes adjacent to the crash heard the moment of impact, which they described as sounding like an explosion, they came from their houses to investigate. Mom was able to tell one of the neighbors, Barb Arndt, her home telephone number and asked her: “To please call Chester at home and tell him what happened.”

When my dad answered the kitchen phone and heard there had been an accident, he was anticipating a “fender-bender,” and he drove his truck over to the scene to see for himself and discovered the alarming aftermath, even arriving before any of the emergency crews.

I still get emails and recollections from readers about this horrific chapter in our family’s timeline. Recently, I received a message from reader Ashley Polomchak, of Valparaiso, sharing her memory of that afternoon.

“I read your columns, and it reminds me of how one time both your mom and you came to San Pierre Elementary School, and you talked to my class for career day about being a journalist,” Ashley wrote me.

“You likely don’t remember me, but I want to introduce myself. My maiden name is Dulin. I grew up in San Pierre. I’ve been a long time follower of your career, contributed mostly because of your mom. She was my favorite substitute teacher growing up. I was always so excited to see her in our classroom. She was also in the car crash when she broke her hip on the road right in front of my house. I feel like I should be shocked that it was 20 years ago. But I’m not really, because my son is now 20 years old. I’m glad your mom and dad are doing so well. I doubt your mom remembers me being there. But I recall running out of my house after we heard the crash. Seeing it was her, she even responded to me! I remember staying there with her and trying to comfort her in whatever way I could. I remember that the other guy saying she had hit him, but I didn’t believe him. He had to be traveling so fast to cause that much damage.”

When the accident happened on that Monday afternoon, I was at my desk in the newsroom typing up my weekly From the Farm column in time for the deadline for the Wednesday weekly food section when my oldest sister Carol called my desk phone and alerted me to hurry to the hospital in South Bend.

Mom spent most of the first week in the intensive care unit, after four surgeries in just that one week to begin mending compound fractures in her broken leg, a broken ankle, a shattered knee, broken shoulder, broken collar bone, broken hip on her left side and a broken wrist on her right arm. One of her main concerns she asked about? She wanted to make sure my oldest brother Tom’s wife Linda had taken the holiday ham bone from the kitchen counter and had finished making the ham and bean soup.

By many prayers, blessings and what was a miracle, my mom was amazingly on the road to recovery from the start. After a nearly five-month hospital stay, she was walking again and returning to her regular routines of driving, gardening, cooking and a busy church schedule and social life.

This is the same woman who had nearly 20 units of blood replaced, but fortunately, suffered no serious internal bleeding or trauma to her neck, head, face or spine.

As we read each day from all the headlines in this newspaper about the devastation and tragedies around the world, we have to remember our blessings and how important the gift of life is for each one of us.

I will always be grateful to the many readers for what were literally hundreds upon hundreds of prayers, cards, letters, emails, telephone calls and gifts month after month to brighten my mom’s days at the hospital and to encourage her recovery as my dad stayed by her bedside.

My mom also received many wonderful telephone calls and well wishes from some famous friends too, including a phone serenade by crooner Bobby Vinton and letters, cards and gifts from Donny Osmond, Phyllis Diller, Jim Nabors, June Lockhart, Betsy Palmer, Andy Williams and Shelley Winters.

Oscar winner Shelley Winters herself was in frail health at the time of Mom’s accident. Her Aug. 18 birthday is just one day after Mom’s birthday. I had visited Shelley at her home in Los Angeles following the months of Mom’s accident that spring, and she asked for the hospital address saying, “Because I want to mail your Mama a get-well card.”

Shelley died just six months later on Jan. 14, 2006 at age 85.

But before her passing, Shelley continued her annual tradition of hosting her own August 85th birthday party in the back courtyard of her home surrounded by her gardens and guests, including Jane Russell, Shirley Jones, Terry Moore, Martin Landau, Robert Blake, Nanette Fabray, Jackie Stallone and Rip Taylor, as well as a mini-reunion with her co-stars Red Buttons, Stella Stevens and Carol Lynley from the 1972 disaster film flick “The Poseidon Adventure.”

One of Shelley’s favorite recipes was for her homemade Caesar salad.

“I’ve had two Italian ex-husbands you know, so I had to learn how to make a true-honest-to-goodness Caesar salad,” Shelley said.

Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa@powershealth.org or mail your questions: From the Farm, PO Box 68, San Pierre, Ind. 46374.