Can we pretend today is January 2nd?

Can we pretend this is the day after New Year's Day 2024 and I'm publishing this blog post in a timely fashion? 

Only two days before, on New Year's Eve 2023, my pretty Karen Adams calendar was posing for a picture for the last time that year.

December's page was almost too pretty to say goodbye to and I still hadn't opened that green tube holding "Stress Away" that was a Christmas gift from my daughter-in-law, a roll on essential oil product that I've used for at least 8 years. 

Boy, was I going to need it along about January 20th when this happened in our front yard...

That's right, a big salt truck slipped backwards into our yard and wasn't able to get back on the icy road. 

After watching vehicle after vehicle slide into the ditch  of our long road frontage that afternoon we were first very happy to see the salt truck come to the rescue. That is, until he slid backward into our yard and broke our water meter and line and we were not only without water but water began spewing out into the yard, soon giving us an ice rink. Oh, and the white car is where someone in the neighborhood abandoned his car there and walked home. 

The good ending to that night was that three trucks and four supermen from our local utility district came and worked in the dark to restore our water. And as far as we know, in all the vehicles up and down our street that landed in the ditch that day, no one was hurt. 

Now, back to pretending it's January 2nd! I'm going to attempt to embed a video of our family Christmas party on December 23rd hosted by daughter-in-law Court in our old Valley View.

I hope that works! It was a wonderful night with everyone there except for our dear daughter Christy and son-in-law Bryan who now live in northern Florida. But her sons Luke and Alex were there with Alex's family. In fact, we had four generations of our family there including our four great-grandchildren! 

It was such a joy to join together as a family at the house that was our home for over 26 years. While there I couldn't help remembering all the Christmases and Thanksgivings and birthdays that were celelbrated and all the good times in the kitchen cooking and eating together. I'm so grateful to Court for hosting all of us!

Now, on to New Year's Eve. Let's have dessert first, shall we? Last post I told you I was going to make a Boston Cream Pie so I must show you that, but don't expect a cake where the chocolate glaze just drips down the edges because if a little chocolate is good, more is better.

A homemade cake deserves a pretty presentation so my Boston Cream Pie went on my milk glass cake stand and called for damask napkins and my wedding silver and wedding china. The television is set on YouTube's Hobbit House fireplace.

The cake was the best Boston Cream Pie I've ever eaten, including the first piece I ever had, in a Miami Beach restaurant when I was 18.

We did share our cake with our firstborn son and his family but RH and I looked forward all day to our slice at night until it was gone. 

This was a Cook's Illustrated recipe back when my dear Christopher Kimbell was Cook's Illustrated and I subscribed to the magazine for years. If you search for Wicked Good Boston Cream Pie you can find where food bloggers have the recipe for it. I now find Christopher Kimbell on his podcast, Milk Street. 

I did end up making braised salmon with caramelized onions from my Mediterranean cookbook by Nancy Harmon Jenkins.

And made potato salad to go with it. I froze individual portions of the salmon that make delicious lunches.

 That's pickled green beans on the plate too, part of a big gift box from Court.

On New Year's Day we got busy in the kitchen early. RH washed and cut two large bunches of collard greens for me. They do quickly cook down.

I also had black-eyed peas cooking early, soaking them overnight first, and Rancho Gordo's are the only dried beans I buy. Here's my last order from them of dried beans and their wonderful spices. I even gave Rancho Gordo products for Christmas gifts! 

After getting the collards and black-eyed peas cooking, I started on the pork loin roast.

That's prunes and apricots in the final gravy.

 I begged for a break in football games while we ate and got to watch a favorite Christmas movie.

Do you recognize it? I should have cropped out our red sofa. 

I'll end with a quotation that was the inspiration for my pork roast recipe, even though mine did not end up as beautiful as the one in the quotation from a favorite old 1975 book.

The Omars always ate dinner by candlelight. It was restful, provided a cozy atmosphere, and seemed right in the old house in which they lived. Barbara Omar was an expert in bringing forth the beauty from everything she touched, and she never minded the extra work. She was an excellent cook and the dishes she served often resembled magazine displays. He was a lucky man to have such a wife...He turned his attention back to their meal--the pork roast was almost too pretty to carve, he joked, so beautifully decorated with apricots, stuffed prunes, and parsley. This was the life he loved--a dear family which showed its love, good food, and the warmth of home.

                         From The Golden Acre by Thyra Ferre Bjorn 

I want to be Barbara Omar when I grow up! 

I'd like to sincerely thank those who read this terribly long post--even if you just scrolled through, which I wouldn't blame you for doing! 

RH and I wish you a safe and blessed 2024,

Dewena

Ca. 1970, Our Firstborn's Bedroom

 

I don't remember if the orange walls were my idea or his but I do remember that his bedroom even then reflected his many interests: science, model airplanes, Lego masterpieces, hermit crabs and guinea pigs. At two he was taking apart his robots and putting them together again. 

Did he love orange or did I, which is a possibility as I still do. Here's a current picture of his old bedroom found on Zillow showing that the original Armstrong flooring I chose is still there on the floor over 50 years later. This was not a flat printed pattern; you could run your finger around each raised embossed circle. 

You're probably thinking "What was she thinking?" but I still think it was kind of cool and the homeowners did leave it all these years. Our little boy loved it.

He grew up to be my next-door neighbor at Valley View for sixteen years and repaired and mended anything I needed fixing and came down the hill for coffee almost every morning. You better believe I miss that!

Today his interests are still many and varied, from collecting and repairing vintage classic radios to his own geiger counter virtual museum channel on YouTube. Instead of hermit crabs, a passel of Chihuahuas share the home. 

Every year for his birthday he asked for a Hershey Bar Cake, a dense chocolate cake that needs no icing other than a little powdered sugar. 

The recipe is here, straight from Hershey land itself.

For some reason I made the cake this summer for him instead of waiting until his birthday and he came and picked it up.

This time I used a tube pan instead of my bundt pan.

Here's a family trivia note, over the years I collected vintage Hershey cocoa tins and one year I received a Hershey Christmas house from my dear neighbors that proudly was displayed each Christmas. When RH and I downsized and moved, we passed on all my Christmas houses to various family members and naturally all my Hershey collection went to my neighbors. We just don't have room for my Christmas villages here at Home Hill but I still miss arranging all of them.

When my firstborn's birthday came up this fall I wasn't in the mood to make another Hershey Bar Cake so I asked him what I could fix instead and the request was for Chicken Tetrazzini. I forgot to take a picture but I always make at least two from my old Southern Sideboard cookbook when I make it so here's a picture from another time.

And then the following week I decided I just had to bake some kind of cake for my boy and made a fall favorite, Mrs. Collins' Sweet Potato Cake from an old newspaper recipe. He generously shared half the cake with me and his dad.

No link for the delicious recipe but here's a picture of the recipe. I used my favorite Greek olive oil instead of the vegetable oil it called for and liked it even better.

I have to admit that even though the orange floor in our firstborn's bedroom remained through the years, the orange walls did not. I'll close by showing a picture of its change when he was a few years older.

It probably fitted in more with the current style then but looking back at it now it doesn't seem nearly as much fun as those orange walls. 

That boy though? Now he and our daughter-in-law have grandchildren themselves and he still scores two F's. 

Fun and Fascinating! 

Coconut Cake, Top of the List, Almost

 

No, we haven't had snow yet. I made this coconut cake when we had a beautiful snowfall on January 3, 2022 because it just didn't get made before Christmas of 2021.

But I'm thinking back to November of 2020--you remember that year, don't you? The year the world shut down and many of us had Thanksgiving in our house, alone?

That November I started watching every new Hallmark Christmas movie premier. Religiously. It had been that kind of a year.

 

I even kept a pen and notebook nearby and titled a list--"What Hallmark Movies Taught Me About Christmas."

Top of the list was...Baking is good!

Fruitcake is top of my baking list (my White Fruitcake with no citron posted here "Stir Up Sunday") 

Coconut Cake is not far behind. 

 One of my favorite childhood Christmas memories is of Mama making her Coconut Cake with lemon filling on Christmas Eve and it being refrigerated overnight and eaten cold on Christmas Day.

It was a serious project requiring Daddy's help in poking an ice pick into the eyes of the fresh coconut to save the coconut water to pour over the warm cake layers, tediously removing the shell from the meat, and finally grating the coconut meat, sometimes resulting in scraped knuckles. 

 

It was a cake straight from heaven!

Foolishly neglecting to secure Mama's recipe before she left us for her heavenly home, I've tried several recipes. One was very good and also very time consuming:

See my post Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal here!

I finally found a recipe that was very close to Mama's in Eugene Walters, American Cooking: Southern Style, a Time Life book and a fascinating history of Southern cooking.

I have four cookbooks from the Alabama author, who I "met" through Pat Conroy's cookbook. He taught me never to use the black dust that you put in salt and pepper shakers, that the essential oils in peppercorns help with digestion when freshly ground. Although RH still demands his black dust.

I wish I could link to Mr. Walter's recipe for Coconut Cake with Lemon Filling but it's not online. I will link to a recipe I substituted for his frosting recipe that required me to boil to 239 degrees. I found one at addapinch.com. It was delicious even though not like Mama's. Maybe hers was whipped cream based?  But I did make Eugene's recipe for cake instead of the one at add a pinch--those 8 eggs separated won me over--and I am going to put his recipe for lemon filling at the bottom of the post because it's become my foolproof go-to recipe for that. 

 

Full Disclaimer: I did not buy a fresh coconut and poke out his eyes! Despite using Baker's coconut flakes the frosting was excellent. It was one of those times when we didn't see any family to share my baking with so eventually the remains went to the birds. 

 

Take my word for it, RH had hardly turned around and all our resident crows and bluejays were fighting over their dessert of the day. 

Eugene Walters Lemon Filling:

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 cup cornstarch

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 tablespoons butter, cut into 1/4 inch bits

2 tablespoons finely grated fresh lemon peel

2/3 cup strained fresh lemon juice [I did not strain it]

1 cup water

Combine the sugar, cornstarch, salt and 2 beaten eggs in a heavy 2 quart saucepan and mix well with a wire whisk or wooden spoon. Stir in the butter bits, lemon peel, lemon juice, and water. When all ingredients are well blended, set pan over high heat.

Stirring the filling mixture constantly, bring to a boil over high heat. Immediately reduce heat to low and continue to stir until the filling is smooth and thick enough to coat the spoon heavily. Scrape the filling into a bowl with a spatula, and let it cool to room temperature.

What's top of your baking list for Christmas?

 

 

 

 

 

Roses and Cake and A Gardener

I was a mere 17 years old here in my father's rose garden, celebrating my birthday, even if I do appear to be a serious matron.

Is it the hairstyle or the dress or that I'm scowling into the sun? At least I had a waistline back then and the only one I'm willing to share here now on the www. 

That didn't keep me from wanting a birthday cake recently and this lemon bundt cake from Cook's Illustrated was yummy, even if I still miss the strawberry shortcakes that Mama made me every year on my big day. 

I still prop my birthday cards up somewhere for the whole month to enjoy as long as possible.

And RH gave me a rosebush for my birthday.

 We were surprised that there were no roses planted at this 1935 house when we moved here except for this huge wild one growing in the hedgerow with honeysuckle and blackberries.

Deer nibble on almost everything in our front yard so we haven't been able to decide where to plant roses since the back garden is pretty full now. 

I'll always love roses and associate them with my birthday and with my father who always had rose gardens.

RH reminded me recently about the time each spring when my father would have a special rose sale at his two garden centers. 

He ordered so many each year from a Texas grower that after they had filled all orders they'd offer Daddy a tractor trailer load of leftover bare root roses free if he'd pay the $250 freight bill.

RH remembers unloading them when they came in on Friday and on Saturday Daddy would have our local WENO country music radio station (now a gospel station) send out their mobile unit and it would broadcast live from the garden center, advertising 10 cent roses. 

 [newspaper photo with my father in the center,

my uncle on the left, brother-in-law on right,

and RH kneeling]

Cars would line up all up and down the road with customers for our traditional annual sale. Obviously there was no profit on the bare root roses but most people ended up buying so much else that it was well worth it, plus a lot of fun. 

Until the very end of his life my father always gardened. He had since he was a small boy helping his mother work in her flower and vegetable gardens while his older siblings helped his father on the farm, and he never let old age or illness stop him.

I know he's beautifying heaven's gardens today and making sure there will be plenty of roses there for my mother who loves them.

My father and I share birthday months and so I always think of roses on both our birthdays and birthday cakes--strawberry shortcake for me and sometimes German chocolate cake for him.

But mostly on his birthday I think of the best father four daughters ever had and the best gardener I ever knew.

 [more about this gardener here]

Garden on, Daddy!

No Excuses Needed for Cake

I was comforted when I read Simeon Zahl's entry in my daily devotion book where he wrote about the account of Elijah from First Kings, Chapter 19.

Zahl said that Elijah was "doing his very best to have a Thelma & Louise moment." Elijah was so low that he asked God to end his life. 

God didn't do that and instead of bawling him out, God had compassion on him and said, "The journey is too great for you."

God doesn't tell Elijah to put on his big boy pants and get back to the great job appointed him, and he doesn't guilt trip him, either. 

Instead, Zahl says, "God just gives him cake. And lets him sleep. And then gives him cake again."

I could put the rest in my own words but why try when Zahl says it so very well:

It is humiliating to hear that sometimes, when we think we are wrestling with angels, we are mainly just tired and hungry...The worst attack of anxiety we can experience is, in the end, mainly the product of a couple of temporary chemical reactions in the chest and stomach.

Simeon Zahl in the

Mockingbird Devotional

So take heart, dear friends, if we're having a really rough day, maybe what we most need is a piece of homemade cake and a good night's sleep.

But then we should never have to look for an excuse to bake a cake, should we? And here's a scrumptious recipe from the Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham, Alabama for Sorghum Spice Cake.

It's our new favorite cake for winter and please take their advice and serve it with Rum Raisin ice cream for an amazing combination.

You may not need an excuse for cake but I admit to always looking for a Biblical excuse to eat something wonderful, even posting about it here in Hannah Ate and Her Face Was No Longer Sad. 

So don't underestimate the power of a good meal followed by a good dessert if things are looking down. And be sure to follow it up with a good winter night's sleep!

Don't even think about trying this--

I promise you, cake is a much better choice!