After faith in God, solid moral training and encouraging a love for reading, I don’t think there is anything more important to teach kids than to enjoy doing useful things with their hands, including cooking and gardening.
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-JT
1 quart of heavy cream
1 pint of regular milk (maybe, if it's around)
8 egg yolks
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla (extract if need be, or use 1 vanilla bean, parted out)
Heat cream and milk (if using milk) until at boiling. Be careful, or it will boil over and burn.
Mix egg yolks with sugar using a whisk. It will be thick.
SLOWLY mix in small amounts of hot cream/milk to egg/sugar mixture. If you don't do this very slowly, and carefully, you will wind up with scrambled eggs.
When cream is fully incorporated, return to heat and keep stirring with whisk. The point is to make a fairly thick custard (it will coat the back of a spoon easily).
When that is done, take off the heat, strain and cool.
Make ice cream as directed by your machine (I use a machine... it's easier).
This is the most difficult recipe I make, because it's very easy to scramble the egg yolks instead of make a custard.
/johnny
We had two boys that used to watch me cook but had no interest in actually “cooking”. UNTIL they both got married and then they’d call me and ask for my meatloaf recipe or how I made mashed potatoes or how to make potato pancakes or how I made the sausage stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey or....you get the idea!
Made me feel good that they “remembered” way back to their childhoods and wanted to prepare the same meals with their own kids. Even now they do a lot of the cooking because they want the meals to taste like they “used to”!! I find it interesting because their wives are excellent cooks.
One of the only things I do remember them helping with was making a Waldorf Salad. A few times it didn’t seem like there were enough apples in the salad. Hmmmm, I wonder why? LOL!
Oh, and they both have gardens.
My kids love lemon curd. They practically cheer whenever they see a bag lemons in the fridge. I love having them help make it as it can be time consuming. One gets to zest every single lemon, squeeze out the juice and another can stand at the stove and stir constantly so we don’t end up with chunks of egg yolk in the curd.
They learn to cook and I can accomplish other things while over seeing the process.
I have to post an addendum to this week’s thread, because I discovered something.
Husband and I were watching Youtube today, and we discovered the Crazy Russian Hacker:
https://www.youtube.com/user/CrazyRussianHacker
He had an idea about chopping onions: chew gum while you chop, and your eyes won’t water.
A few days ago, I chopped an onion and my eyes really stung and watered; and I remembered that when I saw his video.
It works! Tonight when I chopped an onion, I chewed a piece of gum. I could feel the inside of my nose and mouth burning slightly, but my eyes didn’t burn or tear.
How the heck does this work? I wish I’d discovered it years ago.
(He also has a ‘how to peel an egg’ video, which I haven’t tried yet...)
-JT
What a weekend! The weather here felt as though we were in upstate NY. Snow, ice, freezing temps. Schools closed, traffic stopped. ISP-not providing. Monday doesn’t seem half bad. We became hibernating bears. Weather such as this makes me long for my GM biscuits and gravy. She’d make biscuits every morning and as a child, we were given special biscuits and gravy. Of course, gravy then was what we call cream gravy or home style gravy. Just recently found on some blog that they, too, loved biscuits and gravy. The only difference- they were REALLY special as they were eating biscuits and CHOCOLATE gravy. Never having heard of chocolate gravy, made note and placed in the to-try file. Just cream gravy with cocoa powder added along with a sweetener. One day when feeling really decadent.....
Odor tips ...just in case. Dog meets skunk. Bathe dog with tomato juice. When this occurred, it was tried. Passing grade was given. Though it is a messy proposition (large dog), much better than the skunk-smell of a close & loving friend/dog. Even at the risk of forgoing that bloody Mary. They are worth every drop.
Question? Do any here remember their elders speak of scraping the egg shells? On yet another blog, somewhere, it was read that they remember talk of taking a spoon to scrape the egg white off the egg shell so as not to lose any. Never heard that before. How much would cling to the shell in a lifetime of broken eggs? And leading to another question.....what do you do with your egg shells? Coffee, fertilizer, compost, mosaic art, elec. garbage disposal, or just toss?
This brings to mind the rubber bands saved, folded scraps of tin foil/aluminum foil - habits of some elders learned during the Depression. Any others known out there? There might be a time in the future when the ideas once forgotten should again be learned. Share, please? TIA
REMEMBERING JELLO
http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2010/12/13/birth-of-a-mormon-tradition-jello/
Remember tomato aspic. Tomato juice mixed with gelatin? Could never acquire a taste for that although it was tried.
There was a dark cherry Jello. A salad/dessert mold made with the dark cherry Jello, Coke Cola, dark cherries, and pecans IIRC. Mother was a member of the Home Ec group in Duncanville. They would meet every month and each would bring a dish for the table. There were both types of molds..the dark cherry disappearing first. The Lemon Chiffon Pies will always be remembered with great fondness. With the raw egg scare, few even remember how to make these any longer. One company had a Lemon Chiffon Pie mix in a box (Betty Crocker?) but even those are no longer found. Nothing on a hot summer day like a big piece of Lemon Chiffon Pie... or Lime Chiffon. Both were delicious.