It’s time to present something for the letter B at Jenny’s Alphabe-Thursday. I was scratching my head wondering what to post and then I thought why not bore all of you with some brief bullet points about ellen b. I hope by now you’ve noticed the letter b‘s in this post are highlighted in blue!

I’ve always been ellen b. My maiden name and married name begin with the letter B. Here I am in my predominately blue apron doing a cooking demonstration with some of the Mennonite Girls Can Cook at Lepp Farm Market in British Columbia.

I’m not Mennonite but the Mennonite Girls adopted me because many of our recipes are similar since my heritage is 100% Russian. We started with a blog together and now we have our very own cookbook!

This is one of my recipes in the book from my mother Nadia Bagdanov for Blintzes! You can order the book at Amazon! Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d have some recipes in a published cookbook but blogging has a way of taking you to places you never dreamed of.

Speaking of being published, another brief story I wrote was published in this book…

It’s the story of my father coming to Christ at the Billy Graham Crusades in Los Angeles in 1963 and the impact that had on the Bagdanov family. You can read my post about that here.

After my father came to Christ we stayed in a church he was raised in until he decided to be baptized. At that point the group we were part of ostracized him and we joined the Russian Baptist Church where my Babushka attended. Babushka is the name for grandmother in Russian. My maternal grandmother was a wonderful lady who raised 3 children and was an amazing embroiderer even though she only had one hand. She lost one of her arms from the elbow down when she was a little girl in Russia. My mother had been raised Baptist but left the church when she married my dad and then we all ended up rejoining the Baptist church. Here’s a photo of my little maternal Babushka. We all really loved her!

Funny side note: There was a rumor in the Persian Village where my parents were married that my father could not have children. Well that rumor was put to rest when my parents ended up having 9 children. You might be wondering how my parents ended up in Persia since they are Russian. Both of their families fled Russia separately in the early 1930’s because of religious persecution. They traveled on foot into Iran and settled in villages outside of Tehran.

Russian Baptists can sometimes be quite legalistic. No dancing, drinking, smoking, playing cards, or going to movies. Thankfully my parents weren’t strict Legalists. They even took us to the drive-in theater to see all the great Walt Disney Movies growing up. But they’d still be surprised to know their daughter enjoys one of these every now and then.

A Bloody Mary. Maybe I’m on the carefree, wild side because of my birth order. I was #4. I have 2 older sisters and an older brother. The fact that I was the baby of the family for 7 years before 3 more brothers and a sister were born into our family might have something to do with my “who cares” attitude!

Before I stop my babbling I wanted to share that we are planning a wedding for our daughter and her Marine husband Andrew in January of 2012, after Andrew returns from his first deployment. We booked the wedding venue today. We chose Blue Ribbon on Lake Union in Seattle because of their total package weddings and the fact that they have a military clause that will allow us to change the date if we have to. Andrew and Katie got married in a civil ceremony on March 11th of this year in North Carolina. Our friends and family will come together to celebrate that union at a wedding ceremony to offer belated witness to their vows. One of my younger brothers who is a pastor will perform the ceremony next January.

Hope you made it to the end of my bullet point post. I’ll be coming around before you know it to see what you’ve been up to with the letter B! Thank you Jenny for hosting this meme!

Photobucket replaced all my photos with blurred out versions and they are holding my photos hostage until I pay them lots of money. I’m slowly going through all my posts and trying to clean them up and replacing some photos. Such a bother.