BETHANY, Pa. — Every morning, a group of residents at Bethany Village Senior Living Community wake up and exercise, but it's not just to stay healthy. It's also because after, they get a sweet treat: A dessert.
"Anything chocolate. It can be candy, it can be cake, it can be pudding, it could be anything, but I'm a chocoholic," said resident Carolyn Funk.
"Rhubarb pie," said Lee Benjamin.
"Ice cream," laughed Jean Theobald.
"Just about everything. Pie mostly. I love pie with ice cream," said resident Judy Warren.
Residents love their desserts, and they're asking people from all over to send them dessert recipes for a cookbook called Bethany Village Just Desserts.
"We don't care if we get 30 apple pie recipes because everyone could taste different," said Kim Erickson, the activities director at Bethany Village Senior Living Community.
Enjoying and learning new sweet treats is only part of it. Employees at Bethany Village say they hope the new recipes will help jog good memories about baking in their younger years.
"Most people remember having that flour everywhere, and their hands into the dough and just having a great time, and it brings back those old memories, and they might not have all the new memories that can remember, but they remember that," said Erickson.
"We used to have a lot of apple trees, so we had a lot of apples, so we used to have apple pie, especially my mother's. She made the most delicious crust you could ever taste," said resident Dolores Zaltuskey.
The idea of a cookbook sits well with residents.
"They're classic," Funk said. "You go back throughout the ages and look at recipes and people that you knew with those recipes."
Last March, residents received over 1,200 postcards for their Postcards Across America project.
Employees hope to get even more this time around for their cookbook project.
You can send your postcards to:
Bethany Village Residents
150 Noble Lane
Bethany, PA 18431