Lynelle's Butter Cream Icing

When Bill and I first got married and moved to Huntsville, AL, he went off to school/Army Basic Officers course every day and I sat at our little aartment and didn't have a lot going on, so... I singed up for a couple of classes.

One was a quilting class.  It was hand piecing quilting.  Ever since then, even though I know many people machine piece, in my head and heart somewhere I have to only do handpiecing, as it's nearly a lost art.  Now to say that, I have NEVER finished even ONE thing I started in that very first class back over 25 years ago now!!!  It's beautiful, but wow!  I need to just give in and so machine quilting if ever I might want a chance at finishing A project!

The other class I signed up for was a cake decorating class at Lynelle's Cakes and Decorating Supplies 3055 Leeman Ferry Rd SW Huntsville, AL 35801, United States‎
 https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lynelles-cake-decorating/277271099036328

If I remember correctly the class was about 8 weeks long and I had to bake a cake and bring it ready to decorate each week.  That is a LOT of cake for newlyweds... So I would have some of Bill's classmates over for dinner and desert.  most of the weeks had a theme and she showed us what to do as we learned skills.  I remember a couple of the cakes I learned to decorate.  Chantilly Lace - That one was one of my favorites.  We learned how to make flowers, and different things.  The last class was more just for fun, and we got to bring our already decorated cake (anything we wanted) to class to show.  We had friends of ours from Bill's West Point days that were down in S. AL going to flight training school, coming for the weekend.  I had a little fun with it, and iced the cake in light blue then decorated it with a helicopter and big white fluffy clouds.  I remember thinking it was cute.  I took pic's of all of my cakes, but alas, I don't know where to find them, and the one's at the end I THOUGHT I had taken pic's.  We also went to lookout mountain that weekend with our friends, and to some caverns, and all those pic's were NO point, because it turned out there was actually NO FILM in my camera!!!!!  Back in the olden days when you actually had to buy film and you didn't tend to just snap away at everything, since you didn't really know how good the pic was going to turn out (if it was blurry, etc.) until after you got it developed at the store once the whole roll of 26 pic's was all taken.  Anyway, I have thought over the years about how I was sad to have 'lost' those cake pic's (and the one's of our friends over the weekend).

Since that time I have made cakes mostly just out of LOVE for my own children.  I have been asked if I'd make them for other people, but the reality is that I have only ever made them for my own family, and for a couple of baby showers along the way that I was co-hosting. I will say that the first ever birthday cake I made for Rebekah was one that I had a recipe from a magazine for, and I don't know if I used Lynelle's butter cream icing or not.

Over the years, Rebekah has decided her favorite birthday treat/cake is actually a Chocolate Raspberry Torte. So not so much cake decorating went into that one.  And one year Hannah just wanted her cake to be the one from Chuck E. Cheese where we were having her party (at first I will admit I was almost a little hurt, but it turned out to be a blessing, since Bill ended up having to have surgery that morning to have a large kidney stone removed and then I went straight upstairs to a labor/birth that took 16 hours, so I would have had not time to finish a cake.  A good friend of ours from Bill's work came and picked Bill up from the hospital and took him in his drugged state to sit at the birthday party, and Rebekah was able to drive the rest of the kids to the birthday party!).  The only other cake I specifically remember being a store bought cake was for Liam's 2nd Birthday.  Again I was at a birth, and so a friend watched him during the day.  The sisters all wanted to celebrate his birthday ON his Birth DAY, so Bill stopped and got a store bought cake from the store on his way home after he picked him up after work.

In recent years with the popularity of fondant I have done more and more cakes with fondant (once I finally gave in and stopped resisting that and learned how to use it). Some people don't like fondant all that much, Marissa LOVES it! she specifically requests it on her cakes now.

One year for Liam's birthday, I had begun the process of making the various fondant decorations for Liam's birthday cake several days (a week or so) in advance. I had baked the cake the day of all the crazy Tornado's (on April 27th 2011) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_25%E2%80%9328,_2011_tornado_outbreak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNTCFN7yfgQ
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndh-sBuEnKw    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyd_B2mEcFY   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xSp33GTxs4   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwfD1hRZ1Qw   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM7FD_9XEj8  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIFFBQykxsc   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unz6Cz2sFPI

It's Thanksgiving time again... and Traditions abound

I love Thanksgiving dinner!  My family loves Thanksgiving dinner. We generally have Thanksgiving dinner, Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, the whole works, a couple of times a year.

Several years ago when Rebekah was going to College in Niagra New York, we took the opportunity to go to NY and spend the Thanksgiving Holiday with my cousin Robyn Sherwood Drey at their home near Palmyra.  My other cousin Mini Sherwood Packer and her family would come over from Kirtland, Ohio as well.  It was great fun spending time with family and Robyn LOVES to cook and makes the most wonderful food!

My cousin's lived in the Islands for many years - Samoa and Hawaii, and they make some delicious island foods that they have incorporated into their Thanksgiving meals. Along with that, with Rebekah having lactose issues, Robyn spent time during the year Rebekah was there coming up with recipes and substitutions to help her and it was rolled into things like Coconut milk in the pumpkin pie and a sweet potato souffle with Coconut milk.  http://www.sherwoodohana.com/SweetPotato.html
What yummy treats! Along with those Robyn's husband Mark makes kalua pig (in a crockpot or on the grill overnight, not a whole roasted pig in the ground, but it's pretty darn close!). http://www.sherwoodohana.com/Kalua%20Pig.html

He also makes pans and pans of pot stickers, or gyoza as my kids know them. There is baked taro in coconut milk - very tasty, and I've been trying to figure out if there is somewhere local I could find some taro...http://www.sherwoodohana.com/taro.html  we make a pan or two of Pani Popo, which are rolls in sweetened coconut milk.  http://www.sherwoodohana.com/RobynsPanipopo.html

Pani Popo
1 can coconut milk (pe'epe'e) 1 pkg. frozen bread rolls (Rhodes brand is good) ½ C. Sugar (or more to taste) Spray baking pan (lasagna pans work well for this) with Pam. Place frozen rolls 2 inches apart and let rise. It will take 3-4 hours for the rolls to rise. 30 minutes before baking, rolls will have risen and you can pour pe'epe'e over rolls, it will seep through the pukas between the rolls and pool under the rolls. Bake at 350° for 25 to 30 minutes. Take out and let cool before eating.

Along with those foods and many more, are many of the traditional thanksgiving foods. We spend two or three days cooking morning till night.  We all loved helping make all the fun food, and of course eating it for days afterward as well!

Along the years I have picked up a few recipes that are must haves during thanksgiving for our family.  The first one came along when we lived in Germany. Bill was deployed to Saudi Arabia, and I spent Christmas week with a good friend of ours.  While I was there (a couple of hours away from where I lived), we made a thanksgiving Christmas meal for some of his soldiers.  He had some foods that were 'must haves' from his childhood and called his mom in the states to get a recipe that he tells me all these years later written on the napkin or envelope that he wrote it on that day.  I have had to call him or write him a time or two over the years to get the recipe again, when my stuff was in storage, or we were on vacation over the holidays... It has become a must have for Bill and I as well.  Last year I found it on cooks.com and had it bookmarked in a recipe file.  I'm sure glad, since today I couldn't find it online anywhere, then thought to look under the recipe tab of book marks, and I had saved it, yay!

CRANBERRY JELLO SALAD WITH TOPPING

1 (13 oz.) can crushed pineapple 2 (3 oz.) pkg. lemon Jello 1 (7 oz.) bottle ginger ale 1 (1 lb.) can jellied cranberry sauce 2 oz. pkg. Dream Whip 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened 1/2 c. chopped nuts Drain pineapple, reserve syrup and add water to make 1 cup. Heat liquid to boiling and add Jello to dissolve. Gently stir in ginger ale. Chill to partially set.Blend cranberry sauce and crushed pineapple and fold into Jello mixture. Pour into 9x9 inch pan and refrigerate to set. Prepare topping, fold in softened cream cheese. Toast nuts in 1 teaspoon butter for 10 minutes at 350 degrees. Spread topping over set Jello, then sprinkle nuts over top.

Another must have for our Thanksgiving table is a sweet potato casserole.  When I was growing up we had sweet potatoes straight out of the can poured into a pan topped with marshmallows and cooked. That was it. I hated them!  Sometime along the way I someone made this delicious sweet potato casserole.  It was a hit!  I was a fan!  (I have made it pretty much every time we've had turkey for more than 20 years.  I don't honestly even use a recipe anymore, and don't know where it is at.) I may not know exact amounts, but it isn't rocket science... I use more if I'm making it for a bigger crowd, a bit less if it's just a small family affair.

Sweet Potato Casserole

2 lg cans of sweet potatoes (or more)

1 can crushed pineapple (I think the original recipe calls for a small can) drained

1/2 - 1 Cup of chopped pecans

1/4 C melted butter

1/4 C brown sugar

Mini Marshmallows.

Mash drained sweet potatoes. Add  melted butter and brown sugar and mix. Mix in crushed pineapple and pecans. put in a casserole dish. Bake at 400 for 25 minutes  Top with mini marshmallows. Bake for abt. 10 minutes or until top is lightly browned. 

Well, there you have it. Our family's favorite Thanksgiving recipes.  We had a pumpkin desert pie That Rebekah got from a classmate at a class party in kindergarten.  We generally don't love regular pumpkin pie all that much, so I don't make it. We did make this desert pie for quite a few years also.  

Bill also makes apple pie. We call it a frumpy apple pie as it is stuffed to the gills! (we got that idea from eating at Robyn's years ago when we lived at Ft. Irwin Calif and we would drive down to Robyn's house when the kids were small.  Robyn made an apple pie that was over stuffed and I believe she called it a Fred pie, since it reminded her of someone their family used to know named Fred who had a bald bumpy head and the pie reminded her of that. ;)  

We aren't big fans of the 'traditional' green bean casserole, so we just have regular green beans, and as a kid growing up my mom always served creamed corn.  I didn't like gravy when I was young, and I used to use the creamed corn like gravy on top of my mashed potatoes.

I also remember my mom serving black olives and small pickles (sweet gherkins I think). Sometimes I remember this little thing and want to add this to my thanksgiving dinner as well for the sake of tradition

Patio Potato Salad

This Recipe is from Taste of Home
     But the recipe was passed to us by our friend Jennifer Derby.

  It is Delish!!!!!

A sweet and creamy cooked dressing lends old-fashioned goodness to this side dish that goes well with any entree. Since the flavors need time to blend, this is a nice make-ahead salad for family barbecues, potlucks and picnice. -Romaine Wetzel, Ronks, Pennsylvnia

8-10 ServingsPrep: 30 min. + chilling

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 to 1-1/2 teaspoons ground mustard
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/4 cup butter, cubed
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 1/4 cup Hellmann's® Real Mayonnaise
• 7 medium red potatoes, cubed and cooked
• 3 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
• Lettuce leaves and paprika, optional

Directions

• In a saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, mustard, salt and celery
• seed. Stir in the milk, vinegar and egg until smooth. Add butter.
• Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened and
• bubbly. Cool. Stir in onion and mayonnaise. In a large bowl, combine
• potatoes and hard-cooked eggs. Add dressing and toss gently to coat.
• Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. If desired, serve in a
• lettuce-lined bowl and sprinkle with paprika. Yield: 8-10 servings.

Crockpot Garlic Rosemary Chicken

Crockpot Garlic-Rosemary Chicken
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Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 6:44pm
A nice recipe originally from Weight WatchersIngredients1 (5 lb) roasting chicken2 (5 inch) fresh rosemary sprigs2 celery stalks, each cut into 4 pieces2 small onions, quartered16 garlic cloves1 Tbsp. lemon juice1/2 tsp. salt (I prefer garlic salt)1/2 tsp. black pepper1/2 tsp. paprikaDirectionsRemove and discard giblets and neck from chicken. Rinse chicken under cold water; pat dry. Trim excess fat and remove skin. [In addition to the spices listed above, I liberally apply garlic salt and black pepper in the cavity of the chicken at this point.] Place rosemary sprigs, celery, 4 onion wedges, and 4 garlic cloves in cavity of chicken, and tie legs together with twine. Place chicken, breast side up, in crockpot, then add remaining onion and garlic. Drizzle lemon juice over chicken, then sprinkle with salt, black pepper, and paprika. Cover with lid and cook on high for 1 hour. Reduce to low heat and cook 6 hours or until chicken is tender. Discard rosemary. Serve chicken with vegetables and garlic.
Chloe Raum
For Chicken Breasts: rub the lemon juice on both sides, salt/pepper as you like and then throw it all in the crockpot. You might need to check on it and add a little more moisture if it seems dry while cooking. (For Rebekah)

Adding to another suggestion of putting fresh rosemary under the skin, since its going in the crockpot it wont dry so i actually use a knife and pierce small slit on the chicken along the breast and thighs and insert crushed cloves of garlic in the holes along with the rosemary. its good on a roast too if you cover it with foil and then darken under a broiler for 12-15 mins.

It's true that if you leave all the skin on, you can make the slits and insert all sorts of succulent flavors and that would retain even more moisture. But I was happy that even with most of the skin removed, the whole chicken was still swimming in juice according to the original recipe. But if using just chicken breasts, that's when I think it might get too dry and need some extra liquids. CR

Patio Potato Salad - Jennifer Derby

1/3 C sugar
1 TBSP cornstarch
1 - 1 1/2 tsp ground mustard
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Celery Seed
1/2 C milk
1/4 C vinegar
1 egg, beaten
1/4 C butter or margerine, cubed
1/4 C onion, Finely chopped
1/4 C Mayonnaise
7 med/lg red potatoes, cooked, cubed
3 hard boiled eggs, finely chopped
Lettuce leaves and paprika,, optional

Boil potatoes, with skin on, (Boil them WHOLE) then chill in fridge for several hours - or over night. the potatoes are very easy to cut into cubes when cold.

Dressing:
In a saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, mustard, salt and celery seed.
Stir in the milk, vinegar, and egg until smooth. Add Butter. Bring to boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened and bubbly. Cool. Stir in onion and mayonnaise.

In large bowl, combine potatoes and hard cooked eggs. Add dressing and toss gently to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
If desired, serve in lettuce-lined bowl, and sprinkle with Paprika.

yield: 8-10 servings.

Party Punch - Tandy Stephens

This is a yummy punch, fun for party's, baby showers, etc.

Ingredients:
2 C. Sugar
6 C. Water
2 10 oz pkg's frozen sliced strawberries, sweetened, Thawed
1/2 c. lemon juice
4 c. canned pineapple juice (we generally just use the whole big can)
2 1/2 c. Orange Juice.

2 liters of Sprite, or other lemon lime soda.

Add sugar to warm water, to melt. Mix in fruit and juice.
Freeze in cute ring mold, or a bundt pan will work. Freeze the extra in a bowl or freezer zip lock bag.

To Serve: set the bowl or bag of juice mixture out for a while before you are ready to serve so it will thaw a little bit and make a nice slushy mixture. Loosen the fruit juice ring from the mold/bundt pan, and put in a puch bowl. Pour lemon lime soda over it. (add more fruit juice slush, and soda to stretch the punch).

Black Bean Casserole - Chloe/Shannon

Black Bean Casserole

A vegetarian main dish adapted from Shannon Burdeshaw
Ingredients:
2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed
3/4 cup salsafresh cilantro, chopped
green onions, chopped
1 can corn, drained
2 cups Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
3/4 cup corn meal
1 egg, beaten
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Combine beans, salsa, cilantro, green onions, and corn.
Season to taste with Mexican seasonings of your choice (maybe cumin, chili powder, garlic, salt, etc). Spread into the bottom of a 9"x13" dish. Layer shredded cheese on top.
In another bowl, mix remaining ingredients to form a cornbread topping. Spread cornbread mixture over bean mixture and smooth.
Bake until brown on top ... approx. 20 minutes.
Notes:
Feel free to serve with your favorite condiments ... more salsa, sour cream, or guacamole. You'll notice that the quantities in this recipe are not precise. :-) Sorry about that. This is one of those "kitchen sink" recipes where you just throw in whatever ingredients you have and it will turn out just fine, yet subtly different each time. I don't think I actually measured anything when I made it. I prefer to use dried black beans and properly soak and cook them first. I opted to use a Bob's Red Mill Cornbread mix (instead of doing that part from scratch) and baked it according to the package directions. The amount of cornbread (intended for a 8"x8" pan) seemed a bit too thick compared to the depth of the bean mixture. So if I go that route again, I will probably double the bean mixture ingredients and make two casseroles at the same time, and put half of the cornbread mixture on each.
Shannon says this casserole freezes well!