SLUSHY - not for kids

1 cup Sugar
5 cup hot water
1 (12-oz) can frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
2 cups pineapple juice
2 cups grapefruit juice
2 cups brandy
1 (3-liter) bottle of ginger ale

Stir the sugar into the hot water; mix until completely dissolved. Add the orange juice concentrate, pineapple juice, grapefruit juice, and brandy to the sugar water. Stir and mix until thoroughly blended.

Pour into a freezer safe container and freeze overnight.

To Serve: Fill a glass half full of frozen slushy mixture.  Finish filling glass with ginger ale. Stir well and serve.  Keeps for a very long time in the freezer.

Snow Ice Cream

1 (12-oz) can evaporated milk
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
pinch of salt
1 T. vanilla extract
1 gallon clean snow, approximately

In large mixing bowl, combine evaporated milk, confectioner's sugar, granulated sugar, salt, and vanilla extract; mix throughly. Add snow; mix until all is completely blended; serve immediately.
If it is too thin, add more snow. If it is too dry, add a little more milk, but be careful..... just a few drops of milk mushes it down fast!
Texture greatly suffers if you try to hold it over in the freezer, but it can be done and the kids get a big kick out of pulling 'snow' back out of the freezer once it has all melted outside.

Let your imagination go to vary the recipe. Reducing the vanilla to about 1 tsp. and adding a few squirts of chocolate syrup before stirring makes a great Chocolate Snow Ice Cream.

 Reduce the milk a little and add a thawed package (or can) of sweetened, sliced strawberries.

Replace the granulated sugar with your favorite Jello powder (orange comes out tasting like the Dreamsicle)

Don't hold back, let your imagination go. Enjoy that snow!

Chicken Salad - History

I have always loved a good Chicken Salad. By good, I mean one that is light on the dressing. I don't like a heavy dressing that covers up the flavor of all the other ingredients. The dressing should simply be there to bind all the ingredients together as one and heighten the flavors.

One day, quite awhile back, I was browsing through a cooking magazine when I came across an interesting Chicken Salad recipe. Interesting because it contained fruit. I actually had everything on the ingredient list so I whipped up a bowl. It was wonderful! My oldest daughter and I both loved it more than nearly any Chicken Salad we had ever eaten. It was definitely worth a repeat.

BUT..... before we could make it again, the recipe had disappeared. We kept hoping to find it, but as time went on, we never did. And we could not remember how we made it. But we did remember that what we liked best about it was the grapes and the light dressing.  So I decided to take the best qualities of all the Chicken Salads we had ever eaten and try to create a Chicken Salad recipe that was our ultimate favorite. So after only two tries, the Chicken Salad recipe you see posted here is my scrumptious result. It is now, my all-time favorite Chicken Salad, and my daughter loves it as well. With just a couple of crackers on the side, it is a complete meal on it's own. Made ahead, it is an excellent high protein, low fat, vitamin packed lunch in a hurry. And making it ahead gives it time for all the flavors to blend together perfectly.  I hope you enjoy it as much as we do. If you have an variations to it that you like, I would love to hear them. Either post your variations here in the comments or email them to me at: tentfire@hotmail.com

Chicken Salad

4 cups cooked chicken, chopped
1 cup sliced celery
1 cup red grapes, halved (no seeds)
2/3 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1/2 cup thick mayonnaise
1 (6-oz) carton vanilla yogurt
1 T. millk

Combine chicken, celery, grapes, walnuts, mayonnaise, yogurt, and milk. Stir well, until all is thoroughly blended. Chill before serving. Eat as a sandwich or serve on a leaf of lettuce with a side of crackers.

Special Thanks

Special THANKS goes:

•  to my mom, for all the time, energy, and great pains that she took to dig deep for old recipes and for all the numerous recipes she has passed down from her head to mine.
• to LL, ND and KB, whose excitement and encouragement gave me the push and drive I needed to stick with it as I put this cookbook together.
• to RM and PK, who never complained about the odd meals they got (such as stew for breakfast and oatmeal for dinner) while I was running through my list of recipes, preparing them all to get exact measurements (My family cooks mostly on the "eye ball measuring style). 
• to AM, for being my most honest food critic. That was very important!
• to all of my critters, who eagerly ate my mistakes without complaining.
• to LL and LC, who were so very generous with the enormous amount of time they gave me in their home, under their feet and on the Internet as I typed in my recipes to the publisher. I can't thank you guys enough! (I didn't have a working computer at that time.)
• to ALL six of my kids, for helping me compile the list of recipes for this cookbook. (LL, ND, AM, KB, RM , and PK are my children)
• to everyone else who deserves thanks but has not been mentioned.
  
   THANKS!!

Chicken 'n Butter 'n Cream

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1/8 rounded tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. paprika
3 lbs. chicken pieces, alike or assorted
1/3 cup butter
1 1/2 cup milk

Combine flour, salt, pepper and paprika. Dip chicken in water, then coat each piece well with four mixture. Place chicken in a flat baking dish. Sprinkle remaining flour mixture over moist and/or missed spots on chicken. Slice butter thinly over chicken. Gently pour milk around and over all. Bake, covered, in a pre-heated 350 degree (F) oven for about one hour. Uncover and continue baking an additional 30 minutes or until done.

How It Came About

I come from a family of many great cooks, for many generations back. Recipes have been passed down from generation to generation, embedded into the next generation's mind. Some recipes were scribbled onto scraps of paper, tucked away into little boxes for safe keeping. As my mom grew up and moved out on her own, she began calling her mom to ask how to make those familiar favorites of her childhood. Most recipes were simply verbally passed down. Some were merely a vague ingredient list scribbled down on a scrap of paper, no instructions and no concrete measurements (a handful of this, and a scoop of that).

As I grew up and moved out on my own, I began to miss the foods my mom cooked. I began repeatedly calling her and asking, "Mom, how do you make...?" And so began another generation of recipes passed down from parents' head to child's, and many boxes of recipes scribbled on scraps of paper that are now so yellowed and brittle, some are barely legible. I say parents-to-child because a few of the recipes in this book were passed down to me from my dad.

As I began to have a family of my own, I found much joy in cooking for my six children, searching for and creating recipes that pleased them. They, too, quickly developed their favorites.

As my children began growing up and moving out on their own, they, also, began to miss the foods I cooked. Soon, they began calling me and asking, "Mom,how do you make...?"  As I began to repeatedly answer, "I don't have that written down anywhere. I will just have to tell you how to make it." and began digging through boxes of old recipes I did have, recipes that are now barely readable and crumbly, I realized that generations of recipes were in great danger of being lost. Thus, this cookbook was born.

My cookbook, "Hello, Mom, How Do You Make...." has been available in book form for about five years, and will remain available to anyone that would like to purchase one. And I will now bring it to you online, a few recipes at a time. And here, I will also be including the history behind many of the recipes. I hope you get much enjoyment from many of them. Feel free to email me with any questions you might have or suggestions as to which category you would like to see a recipe posted in next. You can reach me at: tentfire@hotmail.com