0 Frozen Fruit Salad and Pumpkin Seed Roasting: Childhood Memories

Aside from a few seasonal fruits, including apples (which I adore and eat daily) the upcoming months of fresh fruit options do not compare with the BOUNTIFUL VARIETY of summer fruits!  That's when it's time to get creative.

this Jell-O ad is reminiscent of our
grandmother's creations

Growing up,  my grandmother made the most creative and interesting frozen and congealed salads. Some were delicious.  Others were frightening.  My sister and I were often a tad fearful of some of her frozen and gelatin creations.

However, my mom made this Frozen Fruit Salad as a staple in our house and we loved it.  She froze it in various sized and shaped molds and kept it on-hand in the freezer.  It is great for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  It is made from all canned ingredients (aside from the bananas) so, it's a good fruit salad to keep in mind for the months when there are not many good fresh fruits to choose from.

We called it "F.F" for short and requested it frequently.  I even had a friend in High School who would ask my mom, when he came over with youth group pals, if we had any F.F.  It was famous.

Frozen Fruit Salad

1 large can frozen orange juice concentrate (12 oz) 
1 (orange juice) can of water
1 large can apricots
1 large can crushed pineapple
1/4 cup lemon juice
6 ripe (but not overly ripe) bananas

Mash bananas and put lemon juice over them. 
Mash apricots and add all over ingredients. 
Pour into muffin tins or individual molds. Freeze until solid.
Pop them out of the pans and place in large ziploc bags or plastic containers.
(If they don't easily come out, run a table knife around the edge and/or pour room temperature water over the back side of the pans. I flip muffin pans over on top of a baking sheet and pour water over, so that if one falls, it falls on the pan.) You can also use paper cupcake liners. 

Makes 30-32 cup cake sized cups. 

It's so simple and easy and is tangy and delicious.  I love that it has apricots in it- a fruit that is so delicious. (You can certainly alter the recipe anyway you would like.)
Here is the original recipe:

And speaking of foods from my childhood, we roasted pumpkin seeds this weekend. It's a childhood tradition that I have continued. When we carved a pumpkin at a neighborhood party last weekend, we scooped out the seeds and brought them home.  My kids were anxious to roast them and snack on them immediately. We decided to do 1/2 salty and 1/2 sweet.  (We all voted that we liked the salty best.)
I love that my kids know that if it's pumpkin carving time, then seed roasting is part of the fun.

Salty Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

1 1/2 cups pumpkin seeds

2 tablespoons melted butter (or olive oil)

2 teaspoon kosher salt

Preheat oven to 350°F.





Scoop out the inside of your pumpkin, and separate seeds from pulp. Don't worry if there's a little pulp left on the seeds when you roast them—it only adds flavor. Just remove the biggest pieces so that the seeds are easy to toss.





In a bowl, toss the seeds with the melted butter, coating thoroughly.  Add salt and seasonings.





Spread seeds in one even layer across a greased baking sheet (or you can use a cookie sheet covered in aluminum foil).





Bake for 30 minutes, or until the seeds are golden brown. Stir the seeds every so often while

they're baking, so that they toast evenly.

(For the sweet ones, we substituted cinnamon/sugar mixture for the salt.  It might have been better to put a little salt with the sweet ingredients). 

These next few months are a great chance to carry on a family tradition or try a new recipe!  It adds zest to life and gives us fun things to break up the sometimes mundane grind of life.

Detail: Frozen Fruit Salad and Pumpkin Seed Roasting: Childhood Memories

0 Cobbler Crumb Bars

It's September but these days are still feeling like summer here in Tennessee.  I am ready for fall weather and so are my kids!  We can't wait for relief. 

One benefit, however, to these ever-lasting hot days is the good produce we are still getting.  

Corn on the cob, tomatoes, cucumbers, fruit.  My neighbors have blessed us with a steady stream of amazing tomatoes this summer.  What a gift! 

Last week I found these beautiful artichokes at Trader Joe's and had to buy them and make them the main dish. 

Isn't this beautiful?

It's like a flower. 

Summer on a plate

I will be sad to say goodbye to peaches! I wish they had been more bountiful and affordable in my life this summer.  They are one of my very favorite foods.

We had a picnic lunch gathering and I was to bring a dessert to share.  I thought it should be a bar or cookie for ease of serving and eating.  But I really was wishing for something like COBBLER! That's when I thought of these bars.  I had never made them but the recipe is from an old Everyday Food magazine that I had looked at many times.  It seemed like the best of both worlds.

Though the original recipe called for fresh blackberries, I made it with fresh blueberries and diced fresh peaches.  It was so delicious and easy for picnicking.  I love that it has a cake bottom, fruity filling and crumbly, but not too crumbly top.  It's like a hand held cobbler!

Cobbler Crumb Bars

borrowed from Martha Stewart Everyday Food Magazine

6 Tbsp. butter, melted; and ½ cup (1 stick) butter at room temperature

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan

½ cup packed light-brown sugar

½ tsp. salt

½ tsp. baking powder

1 cup confectioner’s sugar (powdered sugar)

½ tsp. vanilla extract

2 large eggs

10 ounces (or enough to make a layer in the pan) of fruit (blackberries, raspberries, peaches, strawberries)

Preheat oven to 350˚

Butter (or spray with cooking spray) an 8-inch square baking pan.  Line bottom with parchment paper, leaving an overhand on two sides; butter and flour paper, tapping out excess.

Make topping:  In a medium bowl, whisk together melted butter, brown sugar, and ¼ tsp. salt; add 1 cup flour, and mix with a fork until large moist crumbs form.  Refrigerate topping until ready to use.

In a medium bowl, whisk together remaining ¾ cup flour, baking powder, and remaining ¼ tsp. salt; set aside.  In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat room-temperature butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy; add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Reduce speed to low; mix in flour mixture. 

Spread batter evenly in pan; sprinkle with fruit, then chilled topping.  

Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted in center comes out with moist crumbs attached, 40 minutes. 

Cool completely in pan.  

Using paper overhang, lift cake onto work surface; cut into squares. (To store, keep in an airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days.)

The recipe doubles well.  

This is a little trick I use when I am needing to transport a dish and either it is too warm to
cover with wrap, for fear of wetness from condensation forming;
or if it is too awkward to get foil or saran to stay put.
I just use one of my largest tea towels and tie it by corners in the middle to
create a covered "package' for transporting.

I made the bars a second time when we were celebrating my Dave and our friend David's birthday.  I cut large slices and served it with vanilla ice cream (so it can be a plated dessert as well).   I made it with fresh raspberries that we found on sale at the grocery that week.  It was also a great variation. I haven't yet tried using frozen fruit, but I imagine it would work fine.  I'll let you know.

October is just around the corner, as hard as that is to believe.  Soon it will be time for pumpkin spice everything.  So, quick, grab some fruit and make some Cobbler Crumb Bars!

Detail: Cobbler Crumb Bars

0 Ice Cream Churnin'

Triple Berry Homemade Ice Cream in a mug (one of my favorite ways to eat ice cream)

Homemade Ice Cream.  There is nothing like it. I compare making homemade ice cream to roasting a turkey at Thanksgiving.  I rarely do it, but when I do, I think, "this is so simple and so great! Why don't we do this ALL the time?"

I have many fond memories from childhood of Homemade Ice Cream.
My mom would make the mixture and dad would man the ice cream maker with the layering of rock salt and ice.  It was a loud and messy adventure that always signaled summertime.

There are a couple of specific ice cream making stories in my memory:
The Fruit Dilemma and The Missing Cork.
I love how a moment in time can be memorialized in a way that then becomes a "story to be told" for the next 30 or 40 years.  (I think of this at times with my children in our home.  Wondering which moments, out of the millions in their childhoods, will become THE memorable moments – the ones that will be legendary to them.  And what makes them so?  Is it the moment itself?  The significance of the event?  Whether the story is subsequently told, or is it more about the perspective of the person?)  I wrote more about this HERE.

The Fruit Dilemma:  My parents would often make strawberry ice cream OR banana ice cream.  One evening, they realized that they didn't have 4 cups (the required amount for their recipe) of either, but they had 2 cups of each.  Mom was stressed about this and was thinking she needed to run to the store to get some more fruit.   Then my dad creatively suggested that they go with what they had and put them together and see what happened.  What happened was that a new favorite ice cream was born.  So Strawberry/Banana became the family's signature ice cream flavor.

The Missing Cork is a story about the day when friends came over and ice cream was scooped into bowls.  After serving, mom realized that the cork (that was always placed in the lid of the ice cream canister after the paddle was removed), was missing.  It didn't take long to realize that it must have fallen into someone's bowl of ice cream.  And so... a playful announcement was made that some lucky person had a hidden cork buried in their bowl of ice cream.  This lucky cork-finder would be the prize winner.

Banana scooped up

I guess both of these legends follow the theme of making lemonades out of the lemons that life deals you.  Which is in keeping with my mom's outlook on life.  (Which I have talked about HERE, and HERE, oh, and HERE.)

We have had a simple RIVAL ice cream freezer (the salt and ice kind) forever.  We were given one as a wedding present by my dad's co-worker, and we have loved it.  We had to replace it a few years ago when ours petered out.  And last year for Dave's birthday, my mom gave him a countertop ice cream maker.  It's special.  It's makes a much smaller batch than the traditional one, but it is so easy and accessible.  It invites frequent ice cream making.

As far as recipes go, they are varied and Dave and I have been debating on a great basic recipe.  He prefers rich, creamy (and fatty); and I have wanted to lighten it up.  We made sorbet a while back and it was AMAZING and "healthy", but super expensive, as it requires so much fruit.  We wonder if it even makes sense to make sorbet when you could more easily and possibly more affordably buy it at the grocery.

So, I called my mom to ask for her favorite ice cream recipe and she sent me "Grover's Ice Cream".
I texted her, "Who's Grover?"  I wasn't sure if it was a restaurant or a friend or a furry, lovable monster.

the recipe with my grandmother's alteration – circa 1950's

She called me to explain that this recipe was from Grover, a man from her church when she was growing up.  He was a very generous man, a friend of her parents and always hosted meals for people.  This was his recipe.  So it's vintage, we could say.  It's from the '50s. I love the directions on this typed recipe card.  It's so dated. Mom said she always liked this recipe because it is eggless and therefore, you don't have to cook it and then cool it before freezing it.

I made it last week and used my bunch of ripe bananas, just to give it a try and we were very pleased.  The recipe is versatile, and is actually a base for whatever ice cream you want to make with it.  I wanted to try it again...in order to honestly tell you that it is versatile.  We used a frozen berry medley. And it is super tasty.  I tried it with 1% milk instead of 2% just to see how it fared.  Ice cream made with skinnier milk is a little icier and a little harder when frozen, but equally delicious! Even Dave agrees.

Chocolate topped with slivered almonds

Then my 8 year old begged for chocolate, her favorite flavor.  I used Grover's recipe and adapted it to chocolate by melting 1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips with some of the milk in a saucepan and using unflavored gelatin in place of the jello.  (we learned the hard way the second time making it, that you need to dissolve gelatin in the cold milk, not in the warm chocolate-melted milk.)  I finely chopped another handful of chocolate chips to stir into the ice cream. I wasn't sure what I was doing, but it is super tasty! I think it would be great with raspberries...or swirls of peanut butter...or marshmallows.









THE SCOOP 
I also have to tell you about the greatest ice cream scoop that I've met to date.  I have tried many, many ice cream scoops trying to find the perfect one.  I won't detail all of the styles and kinds of scoops I've tried... you probably have done the same.  But when my mom was on a business trip with my dad to France last year, she bought this scoop at a cooking shop there.  It's our kind of souvenir - a kitchen gadget! After getting home and trying it she wished she had gotten a few more to give my sister and me and friends as gifts.  Lucky for us, she then found them at a grocery store in the states. This was great news... and yet, it makes her French-Imported-Scoop a little less novel.  Now you can buy it on Amazon online for $15!  You squeeze it and scoop and then release your hand and the scoop pops out.  Brilliant.
(If you want to see some of my other favorite kitchen gadgets go to the Kitchen Wish List post. )

Grover's Ice Cream (with my grandmother's substitution, and my updates)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 (3 oz.) pkg. Jello gelatin (lemon for vanilla...or a corresponding flavor of your choice)
1 quart (4 cups) milk, divided
1 cup (1/2 pint, that is) whipping cream
4 cups of fruit (bananas, berries, peaches, etc.)
     or flavoring- vanilla, chocolate:

fold in whipped cream

Set 1 cup of milk out on counter to reach room temperature (to help the jello dissolve).
Mix Jello and sugar together.
Add 1 cup of room temperature milk.  Stir well until sugar/jello are dissolved.

Add remaining milk.

Use wooden spoon (not quite sure about the significance of this, but I'm following Grover's lead).

Whip 1 cup of cream in a separate bowl with mixer.

add chopped fruit

Fold in whipped cream.

Add fruit (and/or flavorings).
Stir together well.

Freeze ice cream according to Ice Cream Freezer directions.

Banana ice cream

Triple Berry packed and ready to eat

Detail: Ice Cream Churnin'