Tommy True's Cream Dreams

Another night, another chance to make a recipe from the stack of Helen's treasures. I wanted something quick and easy as it's Saturday night and I need to get to bed on time because I have church tomorrow. As I culled through the whole box, I found this interesting one. It is labeled (2nd grade) Tommy True's Cream Dreams.

I have to say, I wonder who Tommy True is to Helen? Is he real or is it just a cute name for the recipe? I guess I will never know.

Here is what you need to do:

(6) ounces of cream cheese (okay, Helen says you need two packages of three ounce cream cheese but I don't think they sell it that way anymore, at least I have never seen it. But you are in luck! The very smart people at Philadelphia Cream Cheese have their eight ounce packages of cream cheese marked in ounces on the package)

(4) cups of powdered sugar, sifted
(3) 1 ounce square of unsweetened chocolate
(1/2) teaspoon of vanilla
dash of salt
(1/2) c. chopped walnuts

Let the cream cheese soften and then beat well in your mixer (I used my Kitchen Aid and beat it until it was smooth)

Sift your powdered sugar. This is an important step. It gets all the lumps out of the sugar and makes it light as snow.

Add the powdered sugar to the cream cheese two cups at a time and beat well. DO NOT forget to scrape the bowl so that all the sugar and cream cheese gets mixed together. It will develop into a rather stiff dough.

Don't worry, keep on mixing and keep on making sure you scrape down to get all the sugar and cream cheese well blended.

Next melt the chocolate. I have a confession. I did not use the unsweetened chocolate squares Helen called for. It is not an ingredient I keep readily at home. I used three ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips instead. (1/2 cup of chocolate chips is equal to 3 ounces). I melted it in my microwave (I bet Helen did not!)

Add the chocolate and the vanilla to the cream cheese mixture and blend well. Scrape down again to make sure you combine all the ingredients together. It was at this point I tossed in the pinch of salt. I have no idea when the right time to add the salt was, but this was when I added it.

Additionally I did not add the walnuts. My family is pretty weird about added nuts in their desserts, so no nuts for us! (At least no nuts in the dessert! Trust me, there are plenty of nuts in the house!)

Butter a dish and spread the finished mixture in it and then place in the refrigerator to chill. Do not use cooking spray, use BUTTER.

This dessert is very, very sweet. I have not decided what it really should be used for. I think it would make an excellent filling for something, not sure what yet? It is pretty close to a cannoli filling if it were not so thick.

Tommy, wherever you are, this 2nd grade dessert of yours is quite the sweet little bit of joy. I am glad I found it in Helen's recipes.  I wonder what you are doing now?

Cleaning recipe as seen on Facebook

I would very much like to say FIRST that I can take no credit for the formula I am about to share with you.  It was seen as originally posted on Facebook by Melissa Hartzog. One of my friends follows her and reposted this amazing potion! Here is the link to her page:

Melissa Hartzog

She posted a "miracle kitchen cleaner" and I decided I must give it a try as I could not get my favorite cookie sheet all the way clean no matter what I did.  The recipe is simple:

1/4 cup of baking soda
Hydrogen peroxide

Put the baking soda in a glass bowl and add just enough of the peroxide to form a smooth paste. Rub it on the stain and either use your fingers or a sponge to scrub away the stain.

To be perfectly honest, I really did not think it would work.  Boy was I ever wrong!  Take a look:

This is my favorite cookie sheet with the edges seemingly forever stained by getting sprayed with cooking spray and baking on it over and over again.  I really do love this cookie sheet.  That is why I decided to give it a try.  Take a look at my after photo from trying Melissa's secret formula:

Pretty impressive, huh? It really did work.  I am so happy! My cookie sheet almost looks brand new!
Thanks Melissa! You are awesome!

Billieanne's Pizza Pockets!

My oldest daughter, Billieanne, posted a recipe titled "Pizza Balls" on my Facebook page a few days ago.  I did not really feel like making dinner so I decided to stop on the way home and pick up the ingredients for the recipe she posted and let HER make dinner.

The ingredients are pretty simple:

(3) cans of buttermilk biscuits (eight in each can)
(1) package of pepperoni slices
(1) block of cheese (we used mozzarella)
(1) can/jar of pizza sauce
(1) beaten egg
garlic powder, dried basil

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.  Slice the block of cheese into squares as shown.  Open biscuits.  Smash one biscuit flat, put on a piece of cheese with a piece of pepperoni on each side of it.

Weird camera angle! Sorry!  That is one flattened biscuit with one piece of cheese and two pieces of pepperoni.  Wrap biscuit around the cheese and seal.  Put the sealed side down into a pan sprayed lightly with cooking spray.

Repeat until you have used up all three cans of biscuits (or however many you choose to make!).  Brush the beaten egg on top of the biscuits.  Sprinkle afterwards with garlic powder and dried basil.  Bake for approximately 18 minutes and serve with warm pizza sauce.

This is what the end result looks like! It was SOOO YUMMY!!  Billieanne did a great job making it and we all did a great job eating it!  I think this was quite a successful recipe find and I am proud of Billieanne for making it!

Momma's Potato Salad

I made my momma's potato salad for my Sunday School class tomorrow.  It is a bittersweet thing to make.  It was one of my mom's favorite dishes and she made it for all occasions.  It was always present at Thanksgiving.  It makes me sad that my kids dont really like it.  Well...Paulina likes it but that is about it.

She told me to write the recipe down but how do you define taste? There are no measurements just a typical Crystal method of throwing things together in the bowl.  I start with a 5 pound bag russet potatoes.  I peel them, chop them into chunks and boil until slightly tender.  Do not boil until mushy!!  Drain and throw into a bowl with 2 medium or 1 large chopped onion.  Add 1 dozen eggs that have been hardboiled, peeled and chopped (true confession? I never really chop them, I crush them up in my hand right over the bowl...laziness I guess).  Add Duke's mayonaise.  Yes, Duke's.  It is a true Southern treasure and any substitute will mean less taste and quality.  I also add Sauer's yellow mustard and a generous amount of sweet pickle relish.  I add all the above until it tastes like Momma's.  I don't know how to define the right balance of Duke's mayo, mustard and relish.  The eggs are an important componet. 

Oh well, maybe one day when they are missing their mom, they will make it to and remember how it tastes and be successful at it.  I hope so.  I would hate for this simple yet good recipe to fade away with me.

No Recipe Concoction!

I scoured through some of my cookbooks and looked at an online recipe site but did not see anything that tripped my trigger!  So I just decided to go into the kitchen and let inspiration drive me.

I opened a can of tomatos and poured them in my baking dish and sprinkled them with some basil and oregano.

I have preheated the oven to 350 degrees.  In a saucepan I added olive oil and a diced yellow onion with about four cloves of minced garlic.  I softened the onion a little then threw some boneless chicken thighs on top.  I just wanted to get a little saute action on the chicken.  After a few minutes I poured the chicken, garlic and onion mixture on top of the tomatos and put them in the oven to bake.  I will let you know how it turns out!  I think I am going to make some garlic butter pasta for the side. Hopefully it will be juicy and tasty.

From low calorie to WOW

I found a second recipe that I just had to try in this Patriots cookbook.  It is called "Apple-Cranberry Casserole" by Susan Chewning.  It calls for 3 cups of raw apple, sliced, 2 cups of fresh raw cranberries, 3/4 cup sugar, 1 stick of butter, 1 cup uncooked oatmeal, 1 1/3 cup of flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup pecans. 

I used 2 granny smith apples, 1 yellow delicious apple and 1 fiji apple.  I left the peel on and sliced them up thin and layered in a 9 x 13 cake pan.  I could not find my measuring cups so I used a coffee cup and put a whole cup of sugar on top of the apples and cranberries.  I melted two sticks of butter and put a (2) coffee cups of brown sugar, oatmeal and flour in a pan.  Let it get all melted and mixed well.  I spread that over the cranberries and apples and threw it in a 350 degree oven.  I will take a picture when it comes out! It is supposed to bake for an hour!!  That should give me time to get together the dinner I was going to make two nights ago!  It will definately be fried okra and fried chicken tonight!  Its not the traditional new year's menu but it works for us!

PS....just in case you are wondering, I did not add any nuts to this recipe as my oldest child has an aversion to the yummy things....if I want her to eat it, I have to always leave out the nuts!!

Thrift store score!

The girls and I went to the local thrift store after going out to eat for lunch.  I found an awesome cookbook called "Patriots Delicious Delights".  It was put out by the Stenography II class at First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach.  There is no date but as it is from a stenography class I am guessing it is at least from the early 1970's?  It has some water damage to it but otherwise it is in good shape.  I think I am going to dig through it and find a sweet recipe to try!

The first recipe is called "Alaskan Sandwiches" by Lynn Bolduc. It lists using a package of Pillsbury Plus Devil's Food Chocolate or Chocolate Mint cake mix. I don't think I have ever heard of a Chocolate Mint cake mix! This definately must be from the 1970's. I will have to go to good ole' Mr. Google and see what comes up when I look for chocolate mint cake mix! It sounds interesting. I wonder how it bakes up, if the mint is over powering or not. The recipe says to bake the cake in jelly roll pans and then is cut into squares. A 1/2 gallon of Neapolitan ice cream is then cut into squares and put between two slices of cake. It sounds yummy!

I went to www.pillsburybaking.com and checked out the cake mixes.  I did not see any chocolate mint! I guess that was a long time ago. Anyway! I am going to keep reading this cookbook and will update when I find some more interesting recipes.