Savor Life Daily
I am the first to admit it: every week I start out with the best of intentions. I make my grocery list, stick to it about 95% (sometimes a stray bag of chips or carton of ice cream makes it in the cart… sneaky snack food…), and fill up my various food storage spots with mostly healthy foods. One of those foods is bananas in the fruit basket.
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Let’s talk marshmallows for a moment or two, shall we? I’m sure these little squares of heavenly deliciousness don’t exactly come up in daily conversation very often, but really… they should. When I was a kid, I thought the be-all-end-all in the marshmallow world was those giant things you get in a bag at the grocery store. That was before I tried homemade marshmallows. My eyes were open to new levels of yum that I just can’t describe. I found this recipe for homemade marshmallows several years ago, have been fiddling with it ever since, and I think it’s finally perfected.
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Time to come clean: Up until a few months ago, I had never been able to make a pretty pie. I was one of those people that my dad (a professional chef, that taught me how to make my first pie from scratch when I was about 6…) would make fun of. Yup. I’d go out an buy a pie crust from the freezer section of the supermarket. I just figured that pie crusts were super finniky, and frankly, I just didn’t have the time or patience to make them pretty. And honestly, I had run across so many pie crust recipes that called for ingredients to be super cold, or don’t handle much, or… just. No. As the meme goes, “I ain’t got time for that!”
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I’ll be honest with y’all here… until a couple of years ago, I’d never even heard of this pie. When you think about it, though, this pie actually makes a lot of sense. I imagine that back in the “good old days” before modern refrigeration and grocery stores with produce sections as big as a modern house, getting creative with fruit pie fillings was kind of the norm. I can just imagine a housewife in the ’20s wanting to make an apple pie for her family, having no fresh apples on hand, but instead having all that applesauce she processed and canned the previous fall. A little creativity, and bing-bang-boom, the applesauce pie was born.
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As most of you know, I’m originally from Iowa. Until I moved to the Deep South ten years ago, I had never heard of Hummingbird Cake. But after trying a slice at a church potluck (yup, they still do those down here!), I was hooked. I had to put my own spin on a recipe for Southern Hummingbird Cake. And after a few attempts, I think you’ll agree… I’ve hit the nail on the head.
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There are times in today’s fast-paced world when the simpler pleasures of the “good old days” seem to be the only thing to keep us going. That’s totally the case with me and baked rice pudding. Sure, I could go out to a diner and get a scoop, or even go to the store and buy the premade stuff, but what’s the fun in that?
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I have to admit that when my husband first requested I make him a Milk Pie, I was completely in the dark as to what the heck it even was. I’m pretty sure my exact words were, “You want me to make you a whuuuut??” See, my hubby grew up at the Milton Hershey School in Hershey, PA, and one of the things he looked most forward to there was the occasional slice of Milk Pie that was baked up for the student homes. By the time I met him, he’d been away from the MHS for twenty years and was really wanting a slice… I think more for reminiscing than anything else. So, I told him that if he could dig up the recipe, I’d do my best to make him his Milk Pie.
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The holidays are here, and so is cookie baking season… at least in my house! Each year I make a list of roughly a dozen different cookies and candies to make, go out and get all of my ingredients, and pick out the perfect cookie tins from my local dollar store. It takes me about a week of doing two cookies/candies each day, but at the end of the week, I line everything up assembly-line style, and create gift boxes to share with family and friends. This has been a tradition in my family for as long as I can remember. And these Peanut Butter Blossoms are always a well-requested item!
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It is currently summer in the South, and strawberries are super-inexpensive. I walked into my local Publix the other day (for something completely unrelated) and my senses were immediately bombarded with all things strawberry. I don’t have any experience in selling groceries, but I’m pretty sure that the powers-that-be put extra-delicious and extra-wonderful smelling things in the very front of the store. It makes people want to buy them. Well, I guess I can’t speak for all people, but it makes me want to buy them. And on this particular trip into my local Publix, I ended up buying four pints of strawberries. They weren’t on my list. I had no plans for them. But they ended up in my refrigerator an hour later.
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I’ve been making these cookies for as long as I can remember. Like, the recipe card that I have is so old and kitchen-worn (you know… faded, water-spots, a bit worn around the edges…) that it’s almost impossible to read. Thankfully, I memorized it when I was younger, so I’ve been able to keep making these awesome brown sugar cookies as much as I want.
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