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!!