A New Kind of Birthday Cake!

Yesterday was my birthday, and I had such fun celebrating! Thursday, the women I serve with in the Relief Society Presidency took me to lunch and gave me the best goodies to take home with me! I wish I'd taken pictures of these beautiful women, but I forgot to take my camera. We had Mexican food, which is one of my favorites, and we talked and laughed and had such fun. I got candles and chocolate, a good book, some body spray, a heatable wrap to use when my arthritis gets bad and a Christmas cookbook! I'll be making some awesome plates of goodies to give away this holiday!

On Friday Kevin bought me a new dryer. We had ordered one and things got messed up and it wasn't coming as we expected. (Kevin was buying that one too.) I decided to go "green" and bought a used dryer which didn't cost as much and makes me feel like I'm doing one more thing to help Mother Earth out. The boys took all four of us out to the diner for hamburgers (again ... I forgot my camera!) where they made me get up and do the twist while they sang to me. (Be happy you missed that little show!)

Friday night, instead of a birthday cake Kevin made homemade funnel cakes for my birthday. I don't know how he did it, but they were fresh and warm and oh my goodness! We topped them with strawberry jam, chocolate sauce and powdered sugar. As AJ said, these were better than ones you get at the fair or Elitch's because we could make them just the way we like

And were they good???

They sure were! Getting older was never so much fun!

Another Recipe, Another Story

Tomorrow is the first day of fall and I've decided to share a summer recipe, and this one has a fun story behind it.

I like when recipes have a story to them. To me it makes them taste so much better. Your grandma made this dish every Easter, or Great Aunt Lida served that recipe every Sunday, or here's one that Uncle Greg invented one summer when he was out camping. This is a recipe you serve with fruit salad, and here's how I came to have it.

In the late 1940s my mother and her sister moved from Minneappolis, Minnesota down to Houston, Texas. They became friends with a large group of other single people in their church and had many, many adventures. When I was a girl I loved to hear all her stories. One of her friends had a close friend who was married. One night her husband took her to dinner at a well-known hotel there in Houston that was known not only for it's romantic atmosphere, but also for it's amazing menu.

That night the woman had the fruit salad with poppyseed dressing. She was so taken with the dressing she asked the waiter if she might get the recipe, which he soon brought to her. At the end of the meal when her husband was presented with the bill, an additional $100 was added to it for the recipe. They were shocked, and afterwards the woman decided that if they were going to charge her that much for the recipe she was going to get her money's worth and passed it around to all of her friends; one of which knew my mother.

I've always liked that story. That spunky woman passing around that fancy hotel's $100 recipe! And here it is for you to try. We always serve it on the side in a small gravy boat or pitcher so you may add as much or as little as you like. It's a sweet and sour type of dressing and is wonderful with a fresh fruit salad. Have fun!

Poppy Seed Dressing

1 cup sugar

1-1/2 teaspoons dry mustard

1 teaspoon salt

1-1/2 cups oil

1/2 cup vinegar

1 Tablespoon poppy seeds

Mix sugar, mustard, salt and vinegar.  Add oil gradually, but steadily. Add poppy seeds last.

Forty-three Years and Counting!

My BFF Beth had her birthday Monday. We've been friends for 43 years this month, so of course in all that time we've celebrated many birthdays together. Her birthday dinner of choice was always BBQ Beef Sandwiches and chocolate cake with peppermint frosting. I did get the recipe for the sandwiches, but never did get the peppermint frosting recipe. Beth tried to make it once when we were roommates and it turned out looking like she'd thrown up on the plate!

So every year I make these sandwiches for my family on her birthday. It's the only time all year I do make them, and I always ask why, cuz they're so stinkin' good!  It's been kind of a crazy couple of days around here so I'm making them for dinner tonight. Mmmm! I can smell the meat cooking!

I'm sharing the recipe here. The only thing I do differently these days is, after I brown the meat, I put it and the onions in my crock pot before I cover it with the sauce so it can cook all day long. The house smells amazing and it makes the meat easy to shred, which I like. I also prefer chuck roast for the way it tastes. Give it a try!

This is a picture of Beth and I the summer we were 17.

We spent a week up at Lake Tahoe before we started college.

Don't we look young???

BBQ Beef Sandwiches

4-5 pound pot, chuck or rump roast

3 medium onions, sliced

French rolls (sliced sandwich size)

For sauce:

1/4 cup water

8 oz tomato sauce

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 Tablespoon chili powder

1/4 cup white vinegar

1/4 cup ketchup

2 pressed garlic cloves

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons brown sugar

Brown meat (seasoned well) in heavy kettle. Drain off fat when done. Top with onion slices.

Combine sauce ingredients and whisk until smooth. Pour over beef and onions.

Simmer covered for approximately 2 hours for sliceable meat, 3+ hours for very tender. If it dries out add water.

Serve on heated and buttered rolls.

Oh ... YEAH!

Another Goodbye

One of the hard things as your family grows up is that those who have gone before us start to leave us. My husband and I are now in our fifties, which means our parents, aunts and uncles are all in their seventies, eighties and nineties.

In the past two years my family has lost my great aunt Charlotte, my mother's brother Bud (Rollin) and my dad lost his brother Ira last summer.  Sweet, loving and fun-loving people who will be missed.

My dad's oldest brother died this week. Neal Jacobsen Hillyard Jr. was such a sweet man. He lost his wife Nona years ago, and I know he's missed her every day. Knowing they are reunited again is the only bright spot in knowing he's gone. That and the knowledge that he's out of pain now, after having battled pancreatic cancer for the past couple of years.

My sister and her husband are driving my parents to Salt Lake for the funeral, for which I am grateful. I'm sad I won't be able to be there in person, but my heart is full of memories and I will be thinking about my family, all of them, as they say goodbye.

I'm so grateful for the knowledge that this is only a temporary separation and that we will all be reunited once again.

Neal Jacobsen Hillyard Jr.

August 17, 1920 - September 14, 2011



Cockeyed Cake

I have been very open about my chocolate addiction. I think it started while in the womb since my mother is a known chocolaholic. Often when planning things for my family I see when and where I can fit chocolate into our plans. Labor Day is this Monday, and it seemed like the perfect time to add some of my favorite concoction to the menu: homemade fried chicken, potato salad, corn-on-the-cob, watermellon and ... TA DA! ... chocolate cake!

Since the last few times I've made cupcakes and pie and cake about half of it gets thrown out, I thought about making a smaller amount. That was when I remembered this old recipe my mother got back in the 1970s from her sister. No bowls needed, just the pan you fix it in! Easy peasy! And it's a smaller, one layer cake that you can jazz up a bit. I just make a powdered sugar, cocoa and milk frosting for it. But for extra fun, when you take it out of the oven, cover the top with mini-marshmallows and let them melt a bit on the hot cake. Make the frosting a bit thinner and pour or drizzle over the marshmallows. Gooey, decadent and oh so yummy!

COCKEYED CAKE

1-1/2 cups flour

3 Tablespoons cocoa

1 tsp soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

5 Tablespoons vegetable oil

1 Tablespoon inegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup cold water

Sift dry ingredients together into a greased 9" x 9" pan.  Make three holes in the dry mixture.  Into one pour the oil, another the vinegar and into the third the vanilla.  Pour cold water over all.

Beat with a spoon until nearly smooth.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Coarse but moist! Good!

The Adventures of Captain Cool

Every year when we go on vacation I look for some fun t-shirts for Stan and the boys. Superheroes, cartoon characters, whatever. This year I found a couple of tie-dyed shirts for AJ and Stan, and a particularly "groovy" one for Stan that has a peace sign on the front.

When we were at Elitch's I saw several kids walking around wearing a cape that was tie-dyed with a peace sign on it. I thought it would be perfect for Stan. When I pointed the capes out to him, he found out that they could be won at the game where you test your strength. Later when we reconnected with the boys, he took AJ over and asked him to win the cape for him. He was successful! And ... Captain Cool was born.

Captain Cool showed up at various points on our vacation and we took pictures of him. He's a pretty groovy guy. We got some interesting looks and comments, and Kevin tended to leave the area when Captain Cool showed up, but we had a lot of fun.

 Captain Cool at Wall Drug in South Dakota.

He spreads peace and "cool" wherever he goes!

 Captain Cool pays homage to Superman.

This is the phone booth at Wall Drug.

 Captain Cool at Mt. Rushmore.

Captain Cool is nothing if not patriotic!

Captain Cool at Devil's Tower in Wyoming.

He's a bit of a devil himself!

If you see Captain Cool out and about, feel free to flash him the peace sign.  He could show up in your neighborhood, or ... well who knows where he'll turn up next!

Cabela's!

One of the highlights of our vacation, well ... for Stan and the boys, was a trip to Cabela's in Rapid City. It's a big, outdoorsmen type store, selling hunting, fishing, mountain climbing, etc. type of stuff.

One of the things that really tickled the three of them was a man who greeted them at the entrance whose job it was to disarm them before entering the store. Since they don't tend to walk around packing, they thought it was fun. When I heard this it disturbed me. Really? Are there that many people who go there to shop carrying weapons that they need someone at the door?? Scary.

Anyway, they took pictures. They don't have any of them in the store, but you can see where Cabela's interest lies.

Devil's Tower, Wyoming

How many of us remember 1977's iconic Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Remember the scene of Richard Dreyfuss building the mountain out of mashed potatoes? We can all hum the classic notes that summon the Mother Ship, can't we?

It's one of our family's favorite movies, and since we were up in that neck of the woods on vacaation we took a side trip over to Wyoming to visit Devil's Tower were the climax of the movie takes place. There were no signs of Steven Spielberg or his cast of Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, but we had a ton of fun checking out this classic piece of rock.

Devil's Tower is a National Monument, if you can believe that. Part of our National Park Service, Devil's Tower was once thought to be an extinct volcano, but they now know it's what's referred to as an igneous intrusion. I think that's scientific talk for tall rock!

 The old American Indian legend is that a group of children were playing (seven sisters and their brother) when the boy suddenly turned into a bear and began to chase his sisters. The girls ran to the stump of a great tree which bade them to get onto it. As they did it began to rise into the air. The bear came to kill them, and as the stump rose up the bear clawed it, scoring it all around as it rose up. The seven sisters were borne into the sky, and became the stars of the Big Dipper.

When you look at Devil's Tower, you can see how this story came to be. We saw mountain climbers making their way up, they have Junior Ranger programs that hike around the base, and many trails to enjoy the area. And, if you are looking for signs of those aliens, just down the mountain are several places where you can find all kinds of fun items to satisfy that itch as well.

Here are some photos of our visit!

 Even from the highway at a distance, it's impressive.

 There are so many exciting and beautiful things to see in our country.

Glad we came here!

 Kevin and AJ with Devil's Tower behind them.

It was a hot day too!

 Stan and I enjoyed the chance to bring our family here.

A final look at Devil's Tower before we take off.

Mt. Rushmore National Memorial

We spent some time in South Dakota for our family vacation this year. What a beautiful state. I kept saying that if not for the harsh winters there I would love to live there. Maybe a summer home?

We visited Wall Drug Store which is an adventure in itself, and also Mt. Rushmore National Memorial. What an inspiring site. Here are some of the photos we got while we were there!

A Summer Rerun

The movie The Help opened this week. It is based on a book that I just loved. Little nervous about seeing the movie, but others have told me that it doesn't disappoint. In honor of the movie coming out, I thought I would repost my review of the book, first posted in April 2010. It's a summer rerun!

The Help, Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel, is one of those books where the characters stay with you long after you put the book down. The story of three ordinary, yet amazing women, in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, The Help bring to light the life of two black women working as maids at the dawn of the civil rights movement.

Aibileen and Minny have stories to tell of what life is like for them, and Skeeter, one of the privileged young white women of the time who is trying to listen to those stories and write them down into a book all the while having her eyes opened to the cost of the life she has known. Taking on this project, this book that describes what life is like for a black maid in the Deep South, the chances they take and the consequences of it, you see how much was sacrificed to move us forward.

As these three women come together an incredible story comes out; a timeless story that transcends race, age and time…that we are all the same. We are all women with a heart, a mind, dreams, fears and joys.

Their stories are scattered among the chapters, each written in their own voice. Stockett’s ability to do that is so good, you feel as if the book truly were written by three different women.

While the book is sad at times, there is a triumphant feel to it. These women show a courage and a tenacity that is inspiring. In some ways it was reminiscent of A Thousand Splendid Suns by revealing how little really is different between us as women.

A favorite line from the book sums it up best: Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.

Pick this book up. You won’t regret it.

Note: Here is a link to film critic Roger Ebert's review of the film: http://t.co/6DXdEwK