Not waiting for life to begin: I am right smack in the middle of it. And life is exciting again.
In the 1960’s, my mother and her sisters were on a mission. The ESSO gas stations in Baton Rouge were giving away a punch cup with a fill up. After 24 full tanks of gas, the punch bowl and stand were free. Working together, Mama and my aunts pooled their punch cups and boom! The family now had a community punch bowl, which has been used for countless wedding and baby showers.
Baby blessings from the Exile’s Kitchen.
I said back in December, when I unpacked my cookie jar collection, that I would do a cookie of the month. Well, here goes the first recipe four months late:
Cake Mix Cookies
1 yellow cake mix ($1 aisle
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup Greek yogurt (all I had on hand was flavored)
1/4 cup corn oil
8 Hershey’s Miniatures broken up into small pieces
What to do:
Preheat your oven to 350°. Spray muffin top pans with vegetable spray and set aside.
In a large bowl mix all of the ingredients. Form dough into balls (about 1 inch or so) and place one in each muffin space.
Place in your preheated oven and bake for 10 to 12 minutes.
Cool cookies in the pan for a couple of minutes, so they set up. These cookies are crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Cool completely on wire wracks and then place in your favorite cookie jar. This recipe makes 2 1/2 dozen.
Parker is having a baby sister in June. I have been sewing every spare minute I can scrape together. Wednesday evening my 32 year old Dial and Sew sewing machine bit the dust. A trip to the store with the W on it, netted me a new Singer. Wow! is all I can say. Such a difference. I love the new machine and won’t miss the old one.
The see through bobbin cover is great; no more sewing nothing, when you’ve run out of bobbin thread, but didn’t know it. It also has many decorative and monograming stitches to play with. The price was around $200. I am very pleased with it.
Grandmotherly blessings from the Exile’s Kitchen.
I decided this morning that we would have breakfast for supper. Waffles and sausage patties. Still have a big bowl of fresh Louisiana strawberries. Cool Whip.
What about you? Do you ever have breakfast for supper? And if so, what do you fix?
Breakfast Supper blessings from the Exile’s Kitchen .
On Good Friday, my mother and I drove to Baton Rouge to continue a tradition begun decades ago. Backseat loaded with Easter lilies, we visited family grave sites in three different cemeteries.
First, my father’s grave in Resthaven.
George L. Ellison was the last of the good guys. Period.
Roselawn is a very old cemetery near downtown Baton Rouge. The church bells in the neighborhood chimed on the hour and then rang out hymns, while we worked our way through the different plots. The baby’s grave first. Great Aunts and Uncles. Great Grandmother. Cousins. Finally my Grandmother’s.
How I loved her! Such a strong lady.
We meandered our way back to Mississippi, but first went to Ponchatoula for fresh Louisiana strawberries. Yum!
I deposited Mama at her house, picked up Marigold and headed to the country. The shelves are finally finished in the media room/ parlor, so I dug out my library. It warmed up the space. The front facing books are by my favorite illustrator (award winning, btw). He happens to be my brother Chris Ellison. King of the Stable by Melody Carlson features my middle son at age 6 years old. In M is for Mom by Mary Ann McCabe Riehle there is a painting of my mother and nephew picking flowers in her Magnolia, MS garden. This book would be a great gift for Mother’s Day. You can find all of the books illustrated by Chris Ellison on Amazon.
Holy Saturday brought lots of sunshine and my middle son. All of those seeds I’ve been wanting to plant were, finally.
Twenty-one rows, 125 feet long. Makes me chuckle. Now. In June I might not be smiling. Yeah, I will. I have longed to play in the dirt and grow my own food. Someone said that at the end of the day you should smell like sunshine and dirt. It was wonderful.
This year this Exile will be cooking home grown goodness.
Blessings
I am practicing character development. Will you give me some sexy male names? A name you’ve heard or from a book you’ve read, perhaps. Musicians, maybe. Race car drivers. Ray LaMontagne and Bobby Labonte come to mind; musician and racer respectfully. Their names are just fun to say.
Help, please.
Thanks in advance,
Amanda from the Exiles Kitchen.
At the Walthall County Co-op the other afternoon, I picked out more seed for my garden. Someone looked at the packages and said they saw a lot of hard work.
“Well, I see supper,” I replied.
The seedlings of squash and peppers, started a few weeks ago, needed repotting. With them, I see squash casserole, zucchini bread, stuffed bell pepper, and jars of pepper jelly.
And finally, the big shelves in the palor/media room are finished and ready for books. I see big family gatherings happening in this room; game nights, football watching, reading bedtime stories.
Blessings from the Exile’s Kitchen.
Happy Saturday. Dont forget to set your clocks forward an hour; Daylight Savings Time starts tomorrow. We will see how many get to church on time Sunday.
This mornings breakfast is scrambled eggs and jelly tarts. Jelly Tarts sounds like a British put down. “She’s no lady. She’s nothing more than a jelly tart!”
Here’s how to make the lady in question:
Ingredients:
1 box of roll out pie crust- 2 in a box
1/2 cup of your favorite jelly (I used homemade mayhaw)
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 Land-O-Lakes Mini Moo’s half and half creamer cup
What to do:
Preheat oven to 400°. Roll out 1 pie crust and using a pizza cutter, square off the round of dough, just a little. These will be rustic tarts, not so perfect you’re afraid to eat them. With the pizza cutter, cut dough into 8 equal as you can make them rectangles.
In a small dish, mix jelly and flour. Spoon and spread a dollop of jelly mixture onto 4 of the rectangles. Top with the remaining dough rectangles and crimp the edges with a fork. Place on a parchment lined parking sheet. Repeat with remaining pie crust and jelly mixture. Bake till lightly brown, about 10 to 12 minutes.
While the tarts are baking, in another small dish mix together powdered sugar and a Mini Moo to make the icing. When the tarts are cool, spread their tops with the icing. If you want to gild that lily, uh, I mean tart, sprinkle the tops with your choice of sanding sugar.
Enjoy and don’t forget to set your clocks forward.
Blessings from the Exiles Kitchen.
I did no work at my house today. We were celebrating; it was my grandson’s birthday. He is now a big 2 years old.
The daffodils in the backyard are up and cheerfully blooming. Camellias of every color are opening, even though some cold nights have bitten them back. A bouquet for my daughter-in-law was picked.
I have a countertop full of seeds. Vegetable packets from Johnny’s and flower seeds from Wildseed Farms are yearly harbingers of Spring. Now, if only the pecan trees would bud out, I could plant them.
Blessings from the Exiles Kitchen.
The Mardi Gras creep has hit our part of Mississippi. It used to be that if you wanted to celebrate, New Orleans, Louisiana or Mobile, Alabama was your party destination. Now the once Catholic-only observance has crept into small towns all over our area. I said all that, because getting to my farmhouse this morning meant taking the long way ’round. Magnolia has become part of the Mardi Gras creep, offering not just a family friendly parade, but also a carnival. Shutting down the streets for the parade made navigating through town and out to the country difficult. A thirty minute drive wound up taking twice as long.
Clean up around the barn has started. We’re turning an old garden spot into an area to raise bottle calves – for the freezer – not for pets. Won’t be giving them names… Unless we christen it Barbie for barbecue!
While I waited for my helpers to arrive, I put together the following recipe: Chocolate Coffee Cake. Super simple.
Chocolate Coffee Cake
Ingredients:
1 small boxed chocolate cake mix (I found the mix I used today on the $1 aisle of the Piggly Wiggly. Pick up a couple. They’re great for a quick mix-up.)
1/2 cup of water
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons white sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
What to do:
Preheat your oven to 350°. Spray a 9″ cake pan with vegetable spray. In a medium bowl, mix the first 4 ingredients together and pour into prepared cake pan. In a small bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon. Shake the cinnamon sugar evenly over the top of the cake batter. Place cake pan in the center of the oven, baking about 30 minutes or until the cake pulls away from the sides of the pan or a knife, inserted into the center, pulls out clean. Cool in the pan and then transfer to a pretty plate.
After stringing fence, we went inside and enjoyed coffee and cake on a drizzly, February Saturday afternoon.
Blessings from the Exile’s Kitchen .
