Emerald Salad Recipe

My grandma would make this salad for Thanksgiving and Christmas every year and everyone in the family loved. My mom, and aunts make it now. We all still love it. I thought, I would share the recipe.

Emerald Salad

1 c. drained, crushed pineapple
1 pt cottage cheese
1/2 c. chopped pecans or English walnuts
2 boxes of Lime jello ( 13 oz) or 1 lg. box
1 c pineapple juice, if not enough to make 1 cup add water
1/2 pt. whipped cream or 1 pkg Dream whip, whipped ( you could use cool whip)
2 cups of mini marshmallows

Mix jello using 1 cup hot water plus 2 cups cold water. Add pinapple juice and marshmallows. Chill in refrigerator. After chilled until just thick, whip slightly.

Fold in pineapple, nuts, cottage cheese, and whipped cream. Put in 13x 9 inch pan. Refrigerate till it sets up. Serve and enjoy.

Hope everyone has a safe and fun 4th of July.

My grandmother's Old time stack cake recipe

Not sure where my mamaw got the recipe from but she would make her dried apple stack cakes from it.  I remember papaw building her a drying stand outside.  He took old tin roofing, four tree posts, and make it for her.  He had two layers of the tin.  She cut up apples and placed them on the tin and he built a fire underneath the tin.  He made the stand pretty tall, well, it looked tall to me at the time.  I was probably around 10 yrs old.   I just remembered it gave the apples a different taste.  A couple of years ago, I was up at my aunts house and she had this big glass jar full of some of the apples my grandparents had dehydrated.   They probably were over 34 yrs old, she had me try one.  Yes, I was brave and tried one.   It tasted  just like it did when they first dehydrated them.  I was surprised.  They had kept them in glass jars, with clear plastic over it, then a lid.  No mold, or anything.

Mamaw would cook some of the apples down and made almost like applebutter and that is what she would use between the layers of the cake.  I tried making one, but I had to use applebutter between the cake layers of mine.

This is the one I made. Not as pretty as my mamaws was, but it turned out pretty good.  Wrap in clear plastic and let set couple of days, it tastes a lot better. 

Here is the recipe for the cake part. 

3/4 cup of shortening

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of sorghum 

1 cup of buttermilk

6 cups of flour plus extra to roll

3 eggs

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp ginger

Preheat oven to 375

Sift dry ingredients together.  Cream shortening, sugar, sorghum, eggs and milk together.  Add flour mix until stiff.  Put dough onto floured broad, small portions at a time, roll thin.  Cut out with 10inch lid or pie pan.   Bake 10 mins. or until golden tan.  Put layers together with dried apples or applebutter. 

Makes 12 layers. 

I have one of her old recipe books that she had wrote some of her reciped down in and it was little hard to read,  If you try this recipe, I hope you enjoy it. 

Our Daughter's Country Wedding

Wanted to share a few pics our oldest daughter's country wedding.   She and her husband were married August 3, 2013.  It was a small country wedding, in a small country church.  My daughter is a lot like me, she likes to keep things simple and she is pretty frugal to.   We didn't spend a whole lot and we did just about everything ourselves and the help of family and friends.

I love this pic of them.  She was really close to her great-grandparents and they both are gone, but she want to have them in her wedding.  She had a memory table set up with their picture, my stepmoms and Kurt's grandpa picture. 

I love this one with just her holding their picture. 

 I was so happy that a long time friend of mine Pastor Scott was able to perform the wedding for them.  He did an amazing ceremony.  He was my neighbor for years, we went all the way through school together, from K-12, and he has been our pastor for years.  Pastor Scott and his wife Michelle, has truly been a blessing to our family. 

Pastor Scott saying  a prayer over them for their marriage. 

Beth with her brother and sister.  Love these kids more than they will ever know. 

Beth with her matron of honor and the bridemaids.

Kurt with his best man, ring bearer and groomsmen.  They wanted camo vest. 

Beth with her Marton of Honor, bridemaids, and flower girl 

Her daddy walking her down the aisle. 

 I did her wedding cakes, I also did the food for it.  My mom and aunt helped with making some food too.   They had baked ham, chicken, rolls, green beans, corn, garlic potatoes, broccoli salad, baked macaroni and cheese, sliced tomatoes,  sweet tea, lemon aid, pop and coffee. 

The happy couple before cutting the cake. 

I almost forgot this is the boutonieres we made.   The guys loved them because the were made with shotgun shells. 

Tables set up for the reception.  We did all the flowers for the wedding to along with bridemaids flowers. 

This is how we did the center pieces, each one was done different. 

 I thought she was abeauitful bride and had a beautiful wedding.  

Another trip to the hospital

I think we are keeping the hospital in business.  Hannah had worked this morning till 11 am  and she came back home.  I had been up about all night with my knee hurting from the fall I took last week, trying to get our little cousin out of the barn when Hannah's market steer got loose.  I had broke down and took a muscle relaxer to see if it would easy the pain some, so I could get a little sleep.   After she got back from working, I laid back down and fell a sleep, next thing I know she is coming though the house crying and all upset, I think Cowboy( her barrel horse) just broke my nose, she said.  I got up, half a sleep, and went to her, blood pouring from her nose, she is crying and shaking.   I had to call my aunt and uncle to take us to the ER.

We get to the ER, sign in and they take her right back. They did a CT Scan and sure enough, her nose was broke in two places.  Luckily she has no facial fractures but she is in pain and having trouble breathing though her nose.  I am sure she will have plenty of bruising.   They gave her some pain meds, and she will need to see an ENT doctor, to set her nose.

I think, it happened so fast, she really don't know what happen.  But she was putting on the breast collar and she clipping it underneath and we figured when she bend down to clip the straps, he must have kicked at a fly or something and got her in the nose.   If he would have kicked her from behind it probably would have been a lot worse.  She a pretty tough cowgirl.   This is the second time she has been kicked in the face by a horse.  First time, she was around 2yrs old and baby horse(a small pony) kicked her, slight facture to the jawbone, four stitches to outside of her mouth and over 25 stitches on the inside of her mouth.

One thing living on farm and being around large animals, you have a chance of getting hurt.  You never know what one might do.    Cowboy is about 16 hands high, probably around 1200 or more lbs, and gentle as they come, but flies bothers him and kicks them.   Big ole horseflies  hurt when they bite.

A simpler life

One of the things we are working on is getting back to a simpler life.   We are always looking for ways to make life on the farm, simpler and easier to do.   Farm work gets harder on us as we get older, but it is hard to just give up something you were raised up doing, hard to get it out of your blood.  We enjoy living on a farm, it is hard work a times,  but I couldn't imagine doing anything else with my life.  My husband does work a full-time job and he does work out-of-town alot.  When he is out-of-town working, leaves all the work up to the kids and me to do.

I look forward to the time when he is retired and we can enjoy the farm more.  I would love for us to go back, to like things were when we was growing up.  Wish our kids could experience it.   I remember going to bed at night in the summer time, windows opened up, front door open with the just screen door. You could feel the nice cool air coming in and hear the frogs, and owls at night.  So peaceful and relaxing.   Just sitting on the front porch during a rain, and listening to it the hit the tin roof.  We still get to enjoy that.  Sitting on porch in the swing watching the rain.  I miss the days my mamaw would spend all day baking pies, and the smell of them baking.  She made the best pies.  She always told me to learn to make pies, cause one day I would marry a man who loves pies.  She was right, I did marry a man who loves pies, but he also loves cakes and cobblers too.   I did learn to make pies, not as good as hers, but my hubby like them.

I hope I can share with you all our journey to living a more simpler farm life.   I'm new to blogging, and I'm still trying to figure it all out.   I would love to share recipes, canning, baking, sewing, farm work and animals and how we do these things with you all.

Black raspberry dumplins for dinner.

  My uncle brought me up some nice zuchinni from his garden today, and I thought fried zucchini would be good for dinner, then I remember about the big bowl full  of black raspberries in the frig that our daughter had picked a couple of days ago.  Then I thought, raspberry dumplins, fried zucchini, fried taters, cucumber and onions would make a really good dinner.    When I make dumplins, I always make the fluffy kind, that is what our family likes the best. 

I start my raspberries in a pot cover with water.  Usually about half way up.  I add a cup of sugar.   Sorry I didn't measure anything. I have made dumplins like this for a long time and I can pretty well guess everything.  Then I bring them to a boil and let them cook down, then I add my dough for the dumplins.   I use self-rising flour, egg, couple tbsp of sugar, and milk.  Mix well and then drop in the  pot  by the spoonful.   Cover and don't remove the lid at all, until you time is up.  I turn down the heat and cook for 14 mins.   My grandmother always said the secret to fluffy dumplins is to not remove you lid while they are cooking even if stuff is boiling out from the lid.   She said if you take the lid off before you time is up, you will have blue dumplins.  Why she called them that I have no clue, but your dumplins will be tough.   So I have always done what she said to do.   She sure made a lot of dumplins in her time. 

Here they are done.  I had just removed them from the stove. 

Frying up some tators, with onions.   I add salt, pepper and some Mrs. Dash seasoning all to taste.  

Fried tators and onions done. 

I sliced up some zucchini, coated in oil with a little milk, then rolled in cornmeal,( I like a course ground meal, taste so much better) and  fried them up in my electric skillet.   

Fried zucchini. 

Cucumbers and onions.  When to the garden today and 

 was able to find some nice cucumbers.  Decide to cut them up and added onions, vinegar, salt and pepper.  Added a little water and sugar.  Love to eat them this way. 

 Yum, dinner.