Pickles & Ice Cream

My Dad passed away May 25th. I seem to pause every time I say or write that to see if I believe it's really true. And, no, I don't. Not yet.

Family and friends spent the week after his death sitting around the kitchen table he and my Mom bought shortly after they married 60+ years ago, sharing stories, and eating. Not that we were having to cook -- friends brought more to us than 10 families could eat. I don't know about other places, but that's what we do in the South, and I'm grateful.

A covered dish means that there are people who care enough about you to make something special and put it in their very own dishes and take it to your house for you to eat without even the slightest expectation that they will stay and share it with you. It's for you and your family because you need to think about other things at this time besides cooking but you still need to eat.

And every single plate, napkin, bag of chips or ice, cup, pie, cookie, sandwich, salad, and casserole says, "I love you and I'm sorry for your loss and I'm here to help you get through it," because the words are just too hard when everything is fresh and raw.

I don't know where Dad got the recipe, but Grandad's Pickles are extremely popular with his grandsons. The ice cream recipe was one of his favorites, too.

And, oh yeah, he mixed a mean Jack and Coke. Easy recipe -- half and half.

Grandad's Pickles

Take 1 jar of whole dill pickles (do not use kosher dills), drain them, slice them into 1/2" rounds or quarter the rounds, and place the chopped pickles back in the jar. Cover the pickles with sugar. Make sure the pickles are completely covered. Add Louisiana hot sauce to taste. I like them hot, so I add a couple of tablespoons. I've also added whole cloves of garlic. Refrigerate several days until the sugar has completely dissolved. You may need to turn the jar a few times to get all the sugar dissolved. These are sweet, hot, crunchy, and wonderful.

Ice Cream
2 cans sweetened condensed milk
2 tall cans evaporated milk or 1 quart heavy cream
fruit (see note below)
milk
1 - 2 teaspoons vanilla

Mix the sweetened condensed milk and the evaporated milk with the fruit. Add vanilla and put in the freezing container of an ice cream maker. You need an ice cream freezer with a 1 to 1-1/2 gallon capacity. Add milk to the fill line. Freeze according to manufacturers directions.

Fruit note: Measuring the fruit is not an exact science. Peach ice cream requires a blender-full of peach puree. Pineapple takes two tall cans of crushed pineapple undrained. Add 1 can of coconut milk to the pineapple for pina colada ice cream. Four or five jars of stemless maraschino cherries drained and run through the food processor with some extra vanilla makes cherry vanilla.

Cherry vanilla was quite a hit at the Greenbrier First United Methodist 4th of July celebration this past Sunday.

If you're going to make this recipe in a counter top ice cream freezer, use 1 can Eagle Brand, 1 cup of fruit, a splash of vanilla, and cream or evaporated milk to the fill line. It's just me, but that just seems like such a sad little bit of ice cream.

Save the Recipes!

I have this cookbook that I put together 30 some-odd years ago. Some of it is typed (yes, on a type writer), some of it is hand-written, and some of it is pasted from magazines and newspapers. Some of the recipes are classic family favorites, and some I look at now and wonder, "What was I thinking? That sounds terrible!" I will probably try to save some of the original copies of the recipes in some sort of scrapbooky- mixed-media format not only from this book but also from some other sources; in that way I can to save the memories of typewriters and the handwriting of my mom, myself, and others and even the memories of all that cooking reflected in the dirty pages and the scribbled notes. But mainly I want to save and pass on the recipes, the ones that still make me want to run to the kitchen and preheat the oven just because I've thought about them again. Maybe if I put those recipes in several formats in several safe places, some of them will survive and live on. Pound Cake is what my mother made whenever people she didn't know very well were coming over. Pound Cake is safe; who doesn't like butter, sugar, and vanilla? And look at the ingredients? Any cook worth his or her salt doesn't even have to go the grocery store before making this cake. You could even get up in the middle of a sleepless night and bake this cake. But it doesn't have to stay plain. My daddy loved it hot out of the oven spread with butter. That is a delicious treat. I love is as the base in Strawberry Shortcake. It will hold up to any flavor of ice cream. Cut it warm and spread it with butter -- that's great for breakfast! It travels well so it's great for potlucks and it freezes like a dream.

Pound Cake 1 cup butter 1 2/3 cups sugar 5 eggs 2 cups flour, sifted 5 times 1 teaspoon vanilla Cream butter with sugar in electric mixer. Add 1 egg and beat until no egg can be seen. Add another egg until all five have been added. Beat very hard and long. Add flour; beat to a creamy mass. Add vanilla. Bake in a slow oven for 50 min. or longer. Notes: You don't really have to sift the flour at all if you don't want to. This is an old recipe and flour is a more consistent product these days. "Beat very hard and long" means to beat until the batter is very smooth and the eggs have had the chance to do their leavening work. I usually mix it about 5 minutes. We're not doing this beating by hand any more either. Treat the phrase "creamy mass" the same way. When the flour is fully incorporated, you're fine. I usually bake this in a bundt pan. I really like it in my new fancy one. It works in a loaf pan, too. Spray whatever pan you use, even a non-stick one, with cooking spray. I use the one for baking. I set my oven on 350 degrees and I set the timer for 40 minutes. Then I test with a toothpick every 5 - 10 minutes until it comes out clean. It's 2023 and my mom, now 92, has lived with us since COVID erupted. I'm making a pound cake on a sloppy, post-snowfall day. I told her and commented on the directions. She said, "I remember where I got that recipe. Jack and Ruth Jeans were stationed in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he was working on an atomic project. Ruth met an Italian woman there for similar reasons and she shared the recipe with Ruth." I have never heard that story before. These scientists were working on projects to save the world on a grand, powerful scale while their wives were doing the same one pound cake at a time.

Paula's Tea Cakes

Paula and Louie are good friends of my parents. Paula makes these "tea cakes" that are actually cut-out sugar cookies. My dad and my husband think they are the best cookies ever made. Mom and I think cut-out cookies are a pain in the butt, but this recipe makes a bunch and our guys like them and we like them, too, so we bake them occasionally. Not nearly often enough, say Dad and Terry. They are probably right.



Paula's Tea Cakes

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 lb. butter

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

6 cups flour

1 teaspoon soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 teaspoon almond extract (lemon, maple, and butter are also good flavors to use)



Cream sugar and butter. Add eggs and flavorings. Mix well. Combine dry ingredients and add to butter and egg mixture. Roll out on a floured dough board. Dip cutter in butter then sugar. Cut cookies. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 10 minutes or less or until lightly brown.



Notes:

If you have a wimpy mixer, you will probably want to half this recipe.

For Valentine's Day this recipe made 32 large heart-shaped cookies.

I roll my cookies on parchment paper between 1/4" spacer bars made from a stick of balsa wood from Hobby Lobby. It was a 3' stick that I broke in half.

I also used parchment paper to line the cookie sheets for baking.

I sugar the board rather than flour it if I'm not going to ice the cookies.