A great recipe!

When my children were really young, we lived for a couple of years in Grantsville, Utah. There are some really super people there, and we enjoyed our time there. One of the ladies in our ward (LDS church group) had a daughter coming home from her mission, and I volunteered to help her at the after-report reception. We don't do these any more, because they became a we-can-do-it-better-than-you kind of thing. but this was back in the day. Anyway, she served this wonderful dessert called Trifle, which I had never heard of. She got the recipe while she and her husband and family were in England, and she was more than willing to share it with me.

It's a beautiful, easy dessert. For my family, who eats this like it's going out of style, I use two small boxes of instant vanilla pudding, one yellow cake mix, two baskets of strawberries, 3-4 bananas, 1 pkg. frozen raspberries (or fresh, if you have them), 1 box Danish Dessert or 1 tub of strawberry glaze for making pies, and one large tub Cool Whip. Start by baking the cake in a 9x13 pan and letting it cool. While the cake is cooling, pick the tops from the strawberries and slice them. Add just about 1/4 cup sugar. Don't add too much because it will make the filling too juicy. Slice the bananas and add them, with the raspberries, to the strawberries. If you have Danish Desert, make it according to the instructions on the package. If you have strawberry glaze, us it as is. Add the glaze to the fruit and stir well.

 Last of all, make the pudding according to the directions on the package. Now break the cake up into small crumbles and start layering the ingredients in a straight-sided glass bowl, or Trifle dish. (They really do make dishes meant for trifle!)

Start with a little bit of the fruit mixture, just enough to moisten the bottom. Now your layers go like this: cake, fruit mixture, pudding and Cool Whip. The fruit should always go on top of the cake so that the juice will soak into it and not juice up the pudding. (My bottom layer is backwards, but the top layer is right :0 ) My trifle dish has disappeared, so I had to use more than one dish.

When you get it all layered, it will look really beautiful! Serve it to your family and listen to the compliments roll in. It makes a splash at parties and potlucks, too!  I hope you will try this recipe and let me know what you think. I like to have this for my birthday instead of a cake.

Until next time, think about this: Birthdays are good for you - the more you have, the longer you live! Happy summer and good eating!

Traditional Christmas Breakfast

Traditional Christmas breakfast in our house has been the same thing for years........German Pancakes! Never heard of German Pancakes? Well, you are missing out! They are really easy and don't take long to make and my family eats them like they are going out of style.

We get up in the morning and the first thing we do is let the kids out of their rooms. Sometimes we even have to wake up on or two of them! I know, that's an amazing phenomenon, but it happens.

Uncle Dale has to wake up Hannah, who isn't feeling well.

Next, they all gather by the tree to go through stockings. We line them up so they can be seen by the cameras that will be flashing, and let them go at it. My sister-in-law, darn her sweet heart, started a family tradition when my kids were little of wrapping everything that goes in the stockings, too, so it usually takes a while.( I've tried to quit this tradition, but my kids won't let me.)

After everyone is done with stockings, we make them put it all back in the stockings and then we start handing out presents. Uncle Dale played Santa this year, minus the hat, and he kept everything going pretty smoothly.

Of course, they don't stay all lined up for long, because it's just too dang exciting to sit still for too long! After the presents are open, breakfast gets started while kids and other adults pick up wrapping paper and packaging and try to organize the piles of loot. This year, we were all at my daughter Deseret's house, so she fixed the German Pancakes. So now, I'll show you how its done.

First, you will need, for each batch:

1 cup milk
1 cup flour
1 tsp salt
8 eggs
Butter

You need a blender and a 9x13" baking pan. Set your oven to 350 degrees. Slice at least half a stick of butter, yes, I said BUTTER, not margarine, into the pan. We usually use a lot of butter, but you can decide how much is good for you. Put the pan in the oven to melt the butter, but be sure to keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn! You will not like it burned, take my word for it.

While the butter is melting, get started on the pancakes. Pour the milk into the blender and add the salt. Put the lid on and turn it on high speed. Gradually add half of the flour, then add 4 eggs, then the other half of the flour and the other 4 eggs. Let it run on high for a minute or two so it is light and fluffy.

Oh! And don't try to double it, because it will come up and out of the blender! This is another thing you will have to take my word for. I have made these mistakes, so I know :).

This is only part of the eggs we used.

Open the oven and pour the mixture into the pan. You can just pull out the rack, pour it in, and push the rack back in. Don't take the pan out of the oven or it will cool off too much and your pancakes will be flat. Bake it for 15-25 minutes, or until it puffs up on the sides and in the middle.

See how they are puffed up? They were higher than that when they came out, but they go down fast, kind of like a souffle. At this point they are usually done, but you can test them with a knife. If it comes out clean, they're done! And sometimes, depending on the moisture content in the flour and a few other things, they won't puff hardly at all, and the knife will be the only way to know if they are done. That same moisture content in the flour is the reason for the disparity in the baking time. Dryer flour will cook faster and moister flour will take a little longer.

Anyway, cut them up, put them on plates, drench them with syrup, and serve to the family. They are so-o-o-o-o-o-o good!

All the family will always ask for seconds, and some for thirds! We have these a few time a year, but not too often, because it takes so many eggs, and because I want them to feel special on Christmas morning when they are served their "most favorite breakfast", as one little grandson told me. As you can see, we had to eat in shifts, which gave Dez time to make more for everybody else. She made six batches in all, I believe, or maybe it was eight. It was a lot, and it was good!

So that's our traditional Christmas breakfast. What's yours? Leave a comment and let me know. And remember that the only jewels any of have that are worth the world, are our family. Never let them grow dim. Love to all,

Yummy Lemon Cookies

Sorry about the lack of posts this week. I have been so busy trying to get projects done that I totally spaced everything else. I'm trying to get my Relief Society 6 Sundays of Christmas done and out of my hair, along with gifts for the grandchildren, 16 of them, most of which I'll actually be seeing this year, and working on my 12 Days of Christmas for this blog. That doesn't count the cooking and cleaning and taking care of kids in between. But I'm not complaining....I'd rather be busy than bored!

This is going to be short, because I have to get to work on my Friday Friends! post for tomorrow. I really try to have it done on Thursday night because it makes it so much easier than getting up at the crack of dawn to do it. The last couple of weeks it's been late, but I'm trying to get back on track. So what you're going to get today is a recipe for the best and easiest lemon cookies you'll ever make! I got this recipe from my sister-in-law many years ago and it is still one of my favorites.

Quick Delicious Lemon Cookies

1 lemon cake mix (without the pudding)
4 oz. Cool Whip
1 egg, beaten

Mix ingredients together by hand and drop by spoonfuls into a bowl of powdered sugar and roll around until well coated. Place on ungreased cookie sheets and bake 10-15 minutes on 325. Do NOT let them get brown! They will crack and look very pretty.

I hope you enjoy the cookies, and I'll be back tomorrow.

A new month...

November heralds the beginning of the end. We all start to look at our lives, our families and all the things we're grateful for. Its a time for reflection on the past year, on the good and the bad, and even more on the in-between. My life has taken a few unexpected turns since this time last year, and I've decided that I need to take a lot closer look at how it has affected me and how I've handled it. Or maybe NOT handled it. I think I may have stuffed some things in my mental closet so I wouldn't have to face the end results. I know I have been having to force myself to go to church every Sunday, and that doesn't happen to me very often. I love my church and my religion. I love my Savior and I'm very grateful for everything he did for me, so that I might have the opportunity to make my own choices, good or bad. My week is just not the same when I don't go to church, but lately I've had a hard time going. I'm going to have to take a good, long look inside me and find out what the problem is.

My husband's heart attack opened my eyes to something else.... my horrible lifestyle. Maybe not horrible, but not great, that's for sure. I eat too much fried food, too many chips and too many snacks. I snack way too late at night. I stay up too late and I don't get enough hours of sleep. I don't get even a smidgen of the exercise I need, and I spend too much time on the computer (Imagine that!). There is a lot more I could add to the list, but you get the idea.

So, what am I going to do about these things? And how am I going to express my thanks to my Heavenly Father for all the good things in my life? (And there are plenty of them!) I am going to keep a gratitude journal for the month of November. I realize I'm a few days behind, but I'll catch up. I am going to recognize and list and discuss and doodle and glue and rearrange, whatever my little heart needs to do to be able to express my thanks for my life and all the blessings I receive everyday. I am going to focus more on the positive and less on the negative. I will keep you posted (no pun intended) on my progress, and if this works for me, I may do it for the whole year, starting in January. We could make this a regular thing. How does Talk to Me Tuesday sound? I'm going to think about this and maybe we'll start a new feature. But for now....

Spider S'mores

Its time to move on to other things. I know Halloween is over, but I have just one more idea to show you. I found these on the Rhodes Bake-N-Serve weekly recipe email. I thought they were so cute that I just had to make them. They were super easy and my family loved them. Just one little secret....don't use those new HUGE campfire-roasting-size marshmallows. They take so long to melt, that my mixture turned to caramel! So here's the recipe, and if you want more really good recipes and fun things to make, go to rhodesbread.com and check it out. And sign up for the weekly email, while you're at it. You'll love the ideas and recipes.

Spider S'mores

Ingredients

6 Rhodes Warm-N-Serv™ Soft Dinner Rolls
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
marshmallows
1/2 cup coarsely crushed graham crackers
chocolate frosting
chocolate sprinkles
M &M’s
licorice laces cut into 4-inch lengths

Instructions
Bake rolls following instructions on package. Place on rack to cool. When cool, slice off tops and hollow out to make a small bowl. Place butter in a saucepan and melt. Add 40 marshmallows and continue cooking on low until completely melted*. Add graham crackers and combine well. Quickly fill each hollowed out roll with the marshmallow filling while it is warm (over fill just a little). Replace the roll tops. Frost each one with chocolate frosting and cover with chocolate sprinkles. To make the eyes, cut slices off of a marshmallow, using a hot, wet, sharp knife. Add M&M’s to each eye and one for a nose. Make holes with a wooden skewer where legs attach and poke in the licorice pieces.

*Can be melted in the microwave using a large microwave safe bowl. Use 20 second intervals until completely melted and then add your graham cracker crumbs.

We had very colorful spiders. I couldn't find black string licorice, so our
 spiders had red legs. And I ran out of chocolate sprinkles and had to use what
 I had....multicolor!

That's it for today. I have rambled enough. Hope you all had a good Halloween. Here are a few photos of our pumpkin carving adventure. They turned out pretty good.

Kristen looks like she's having fun, doesn't she?

Cameron and Halena dig out the pumpkin guts.

Eeeeeeeeeew! We saved some to plant next year.

Yes, this is me with my arm in the pumpkin.

My son and husband waited until everyone else was done.

The first four done. Left to right: Kristen's evil face, my Frankie, Hally's witch and Cameron's ghostie-ghoulie.

Chuck's really evil face.

Andy has always loved Scooby Doo.

We couldn't get them all in one photo. but this was how they looked on
 Halloween, all lined up on the fence posts, waiting for the trick-or-treaters.

Have a good day and remember....to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Mopey Monday

Today is a mopey Monday. My husband left Friday for Nevada (which is why the Friday Friends wound up on Saturday), my daughter-in-law and grandkids are all at school, and my son is at work. I should be enjoying the peace and quiet, but its just a little too quiet.

I saw this cute paper pumpkin on firstpalette.com and I liked it so much that I decided to make some with my granddaughter. We used different papers for ours and they turned out pretty cute. We used green curly ribbon to make the little vine tendrils and we're going to hang them on the front porch.

Its also the time of year for hot chocolate making! Every year I buy the stuff to make my own hot chocolate mix. Its one of our family traditions.

I don't buy fancy brands but I do like to use Nesquik for most of my chocolate mix because it has a lot more cocoa in it than the generic. I also use a lot more creamer than most people do. Here's my recipe:

Gramma G's Hot Chocolate

1 large and 1 small non-fat instant dry milk
1 really big powdered creamer
1 large Nesquik and 1 small generic chocolate milk mix
1 2lb. bag powdered sugar

Open 2 garbage bags (make sure they are NOT the odor killer kind) and put one inside the other. Dump all the ingredients into the bags and twist the top, trapping air inside. Now shake and tumble until well mixed. Trapping air inside the bag gives the mix room to move as you move the bag. When well-mixed, put into storage containers. It makes a lot...enough that I only have to make it twice every winter, and we are a family of six, plus I usually give some as gifts. Use 1/4 cup mix for a 8oz. mug of hot chocolate. Add marshmallows or whipped cream. YUM!!!

This big glass canister holds a little more than half of the mix.....

...and this largest Tupperware canister holds the rest!

So, okay, maybe today won't be so bad. I have the house to myself, I have plenty of hot chocolate, and I have my computer to communicate with all of you. Actually, it sounds pretty good, now I think of it. Think I'll go boil some water. While I wait, here's a thought for you. Living on earth is expensive, but it comes with a free trip around the sun every year! See ya later, Gramma G.