Look What I Got!

Warning (to my sister): This post is likely to cause severe homesickness. View at your own risk!

After church today we set out to enjoy the full colors of the autumn trees. I wanted to take pictures because it's been several years since the tree have been this vibrant. Earlier I'd seen a map on the news that seemed to show everything within driving distance to be in peak season. We packed the camera, the tripod, and the kids and headed west - toward the mountains.

Sidenote: We got gas for $1.89 a gallon!

Anyway, about a half hour outside of town we started to notice that the yellow trees looked more brown than yellow. Ten minutes more and we noticed that many of the trees didn't have any leaves left at all. Finally, about forty-five minutes into our trip, we decided to turn back. Who wants pictures of bare trees?

The fact that Daniel was in the back seat hollering, " I wanna go home!" had no effect on the decision whatsoever.

Wanting to save the otherwise disappointing day, I called my parents to see if they were up for company. When we arrived at their house, the kids bounded out of the car and straight to the swing set. I went inside to get warm - and spotted Mom's large round mixing bowl on the counter. With a towel over it.

The towel meant dough was rising. Rising for what? As we visited, I tried to figure out what she might be making. Bread? not likely. Pepperoni Roll? maybe. But then she called it a treat and I knew for sure and for certain that the day would end in pleasant bliss. My dreams had come true.

Oh yes. She heard I was acomin' and she made those blessedly sweet cinnamon rolls. We ate them warm, right out of the oven drizzled with vanilla icing. And I enjoyed every bite, drip, and crumb.

Mom wrapped up a section for us to take home, so I put one in Brenna's lunch for tomorrow. Can you even imagine the envy at her lunch table? I might have to pack her a stick to fight off the crowds.

Sugar Overload

There's no doubt sugar has a hold on me. I'm well aware of it, occasionally try to fight it, but usually surrender in blessed happiness. (especially if it's in mom's cinnamon rolls...hint, hint, hint)

It might be a good thing for me if sugar were rationed. I would miss the cobblers, and chocolate cakes, and sweet tea, and ice cream, and apple crisp, and sugar cookies, and Nana's strawberry jam, and....

I probably take in more sugar than I realize, but my true weakness is yummy desserts. I enjoy baking, but more than that, I enjoy the smiles, happiness, and satisfaction that comes when I make a dessert that everyone loves. And in that way, I'm probably forever addicted to sugar. Because what kind of dessert would it be if it didn't call for sugar? right?

Last Friday night, after Brenna had left with her Gramma Pemmy for the weekend, Daniel and I made No Bake Cookies together. Mostly he watched and mostly I measured and stirred, but we did it together, and they turned out well. Especially in comparison to the black bottomed chocolate chip cookies I made earlier in the week and had to throw directly into the trash can.

Sunday was my dad's birthday. Way back in July, I bought a black raspberry pie filling at an Amish store in Ohio. I'd saved it all this time so I could surprise him. I quickly mixed up the pie dough, added the filling and popped it in the over. When Dad came to the door thirty minutes later, I was still cleaning up. But he was carrying a pie plate!

Apparently mom made apple pies for his birthday and sent half of one to us. When the black raspberry pie finished baking, I sent part of it home with dad. If you're keeping track, we now had cookies and two kinds of pie on the counter.

An hour later, Brenna arrived home from her birthday weekend with Pop and Pemmy....carrying the remains of a yummy birthday cake and a bag of Halloween candy. Yep - that's cookies, two pies, a bag of candy, and a birthday cake. Our kitchen counter started to resemble a pastry shop display case. (Well, one that someone had sabotaged, since only the candy was whole!)

Even for a dessert addict like me, that was too much sugar! Someone finished the birthday cake last night while I was gone. The cookies are dried out and crumbling. The black raspberry pie filling wasn't all I thought it would be, and I don't think anyone has touched it. Which leaves us with Mom's apple pie and the candy. And truth be told, I'm not big on pie or candy.

It's nice to know I can have a whole counter full of sugar and not eat a bite. Well...maybe a few of the cookie crumbles, but nothing else, I swear...

I have twenty minutes to sit here and wait. Twenty minutes while the brownies bake. Brownies that are supposed to be blueberry muffins. Blueberry muffins that were supposed to be Brenna's birthday treat to take to school tomorrow. It's been a bad night in the kitchen.

I had a blueberry muffin mix from a bulk store in Amish country that made 36 muffins. Thirty-six awful muffins. I burned three fingers on my right hand trying to make those muffins. The first 24 came out of the oven and I, thankfully, decided to try one. Oh, how do I tell you how bad they were? Cardboard, pepper, and stale air must've been a part of the mix. And purple food coloring. I threw them all away.

Plan B was supposed to be Rice Krispie treats, but guess what? I didn't really think we'd need a Plan B, so I didn't buy any Rice Krispies. Yea.

On to Plan C. Mom's emergency brownies made from scratch. She bailed me out tonight. I called and got the recipe - an easy one, made of things I always have on hand. They are right now in the oven, transforming into the perfect birthday treat for Brenna's kindergarten class.

And they better be perfect. Because I'm one step shy of tears and a full fledged temper tantrum. It's late and I'm tired.

And I'm intentionally not thinking about what brownies at 9AM snack time will do to a bunch of 5 year old bodies....

What's In Your Closet?

About ten or eleven years ago I bought Michael a bread machine for Christmas. Seems like a strange gift now - may have seemed like a strange gift then - but he wanted one so I saved up and bought it. I don't remember if he used it much at first, but I know we did once we got married. I say 'we', but I really mean 'he'. I never touched it. Didn't even know how to use it.

After a few years, it became cumbersome to use. We don't have the counter space to keep it out, so we stored it on a shelf in the pantry. For a while it was at eye level. Then it dropped a shelf or two and got hidden behind table cloths and paper plates. More recently, Michael has begun to gently ask if we could part ways with our seldom used bread machine. My answer has been no, not yet.

Yesterday, an unnamed tropical storm rolled into our area, somehow bringing with it cold air, rain, and wind. Otherwise known as soup weather. On the way home from the library, Daniel and I picked up the two ingredients we didn't have on hand for vegetable soup. As I diced up the beef, I remembered that when I was a kid my mom often baked a fresh loaf of bread whenever she made this soup. I don't have that recipe, but, hey, we do have a bread maker!

I located the bread machine at the bottom of the pantry closet, on the floor. It was in the back and getting to it required moving so many things that I almost didn't bother. Right on top was a box of bread mixes. Lucky me. I have no idea where the instruction book is, so I just guessed. I made an Italian herb bread and then searched the internet for a white bread recipe. Both came out great.

So well, in fact, that it has spawned a bread making extravaganza at our house. I've already made a second loaf of the white bread to go with the leftover soup and put 'whole wheat flour' on the grocery list. Somehow one really nice bread machine cookbook survived many a cookbook sifting over the years. I spent a good deal of time this morning pouring over the recipes and picking out a few to try this week.

Who knew baking bread could be so much fun! Don't you wish you were here?

Yeah, just wait till I make the cinnamon bread!

Pizza Tip

I think it's Maya Angelou who said, "When you know better, you do better." Well, let me tell you: I now know better.

I will never microwave my leftover pizza again. I will not reheat day-old pizza in the toaster oven. I will not wait for it to warm up in the oven. I won't even eat it cold.

I will always reheat my pizza in a pan on the stove. Because, oh my word, it is so much better that way! The bottom becomes so crisp and good. The crust doesn't transform into some kind of tough rubber. All the cheese and toppings heat through and stay in place. It is by far the best way to reheat a piece of pizza.

I will do better because I know better.

Cookie Day

Ever since I was 6 months old my mom and I have made Christmas sugar cookies. When I was little and we lived in Ohio, the neighbor boys would sometimes come over to do the cut outs and help with icing. Mom would set up a kid sized table in the kitchen and put us all to work. When we moved to Virginia the tradition continued. Aprons. Flour. Cookie Cutters. Icing. Cookies. It's a fun day and it means Christmas is almost here.


Brenna was too young her first Christmas (2 months) to join in. She sat in her bouncy seat and watched. Daniel, though, was 6 months old at his and he had his first sugar cookie that day. My mom reasoned that she had given me one at 6 months and she could give Daniel one at 6 months. It didn't have any icing on it and he had to gum it down, but he loved it.


Uncle Stephen (my brother) was around to help out this year. He sat at the kiddie table and decorated lots of cookies with Daniel. I suspect he might have also taught Daniel how to sneak a taste of the icing by dipping a finger in the bowl.

This year we waited to do cookie day until my sister arrived home from SC. Mom and I had an ambitious plan for baking. 5 different kinds. We made sugar cookies, peanut butter with Hershey kisses, snickerdoodles, cherry cheesecake cookies, and frosted brown sugar cookies. We got all five kinds made, including Kristin's (Stephen's girlfriend) variation on the peanut butter cookies...to use a peanut butter cup instead of a Hershey kiss. They were actually really good. The frosted brown sugar cookies, though....not so much. : )

Aunt Becca and Daniel

Uncle Chris (Rebecca's husband) and Brenna with a finished cookie

Daniel sneaking a cookie before they were iced

Easy Truffles

Last year I discovered an easy recipe for Oreo Truffles in the back of my Kraft Food and Family magazine. Brenna and I made up a batch tonight. Here's what we did:

1 package of Oreos
1 8oz. package of cream cheese - softened
2 boxes of semi-sweet baking chocolate
wax paper - optional

Pull out about 9 cookies and crush them in a plastic bag. You'll use these crumbs for topping later on. Crush the rest of the cookies to fine crumbles. We used the food processor, but you could use a plastic bag and a rolling pin. Mix the crumbles with the cream cheese. (mix it well)

Heat all the chocolate over low heat, until it's melted. (stir regularly) Make the cream cheese mixture into balls. Drop them into the chocolate to coat. Lift out with two forks. We set ours on a plate covered with wax paper. Drizzle the tops with the reserved crumbs from the bag. Refrigerate until firm.

Cookbook Giveaway

There's a giveaway at Molly-Coddled. It's The Taste of Home Cookbook. Over 1200 recipes!! Oh my, that would keep me busy for a long while. And that's just while I look at all the pictures!

Anyway, if you're interested, go HERE and leave her a comment. She's going to close the comments Friday night at 9 and draw a name on Saturday.

Whoopie Pies

I thought I loved Whoopie Pies. They are a treat I remember from my childhood. Two chocolate cakes with yummy icing in the middle. Messy. Sweet. And sooooo good. At least in my memory.

Several months ago I was telling my friend Molly about the Whoopie Festival my mom had discovered in Pennsylvania. I was hoping to go and for some reason thought Molly cared. (I'm sure Molly would tell you that she cared a lot, but really....whoopie pies?) It was right about then that I discovered a most awful secret.

Molly didn't know what a whoopie pie was. She actually confused it with a Moon pie. Oh horror!

I knew right then that I would just have to correct this terrible injustice! (How could her parents have done this to her, I wondered?)

So last week I bought the stuff to make whoopie pies. When the first batch of cakes came out of the oven, I knew something had gone terribly wrong. They were small and much more cookie-like than cake-like. Determined to finish, I sandwiched them with icing and passed them out. They were actually pretty good, but they weren't real whoopie pies. Turns out I had copied the recipe wrong 18 or 19 years ago when I made my recipe box for Missionettes.

Not willing to take my new creation over to Molly, I decided to try again, this time using a recipe from my Mennonite cookbook. So Saturday I started over. When the first buzzer went off and I opened the oven, I was so disappointed. Oh so very disappointed. My cakes had spread out into each other and filled the whole pan. They were pretty flat. It was so sad. I salvaged what I could and made the rest smaller, but the honest truth is that my whoopie pies failed a second time.

Here's a picture of what I managed to come up with:

The recipe was supposed to make 5 dozen pies. I couldn't even complete 2 dozen.

Even though they weren't quite right, I took one to Molly anyway. I couldn't have her mixing up whoopie pies and moon pies any longer!

Wikipedia has a good description and a much better picture of whoopie pies if you find yourself wondering about the difference too. And just so you know, I won't get to go to the Whoopie Pie festival after all. We already have a commitment for that weekend. : (

Corn and Strawberries

There are lots of things that remind me of Nana's house, but two at the top of the list are frozen sweet corn and strawberry jam. Today I tackled both. After a call to Nana, of course. I couldn't quite remember the process for freezing corn so I had to call up north and verify the steps. I think she likes it when I do that anyway.

First up: Freezing Sweet Corn

The most important thing about freezing sweet corn is that it must be done the day it is picked. This morning Michael bought 6 dozen ears of corn from our local farmer's market, Tom Leonards. After we cleaned up the kitchen, we started shucking corn...with a little help from Daniel.


Once the corn is shucked, it needs to be boiled for about 2 minutes. Our pans are small so we cooked about 3 or 4 ears at a time.


When they come out of the boiling water, they must be dropped in ice water to stop the cooking. Then we stood them up to dry.


Finally we cut the corn off the cob and packed 3 ears worth of corn in a freezer bag. Squished the air out and sealed it shut.
Here's our 23 bags of corn, stacked in the freezer! That's enough for fresh corn once or twice a month all year long!


Strawberry Freezer Jam:

Nana also makes the best strawberry freezer jam. I've been wanting to try this out for a couple of years, but just never got around to it. I actually bought strawberries earlier in the week, but some unexpected things happened and I didn't get to it until it was too late. Michael had to toss them. So today I started over, with a new batch of strawberries.

First I cut the tops off the strawberries and dropped them in my very favorite kitchen appliance, my food processor. : ) A few quick pulses and I had chopped strawberries. I mixed them with the sugar and let it sit for 10 minutes while I boiled 3/4 cup of water and a package of sure-gel.

After the sure-gel boiled, I combined it with the fruit and poured it into pint sized jars. All done! Easy enough. Now they sit for 24 hours and then go into the freezer.


As I was putting the extra lids away, I noticed a recipe for salsa on the back of the box. As much as Michael loves salsa, I may have to try that next. Although, I'm quickly running out of room in the freezer!