And the Secret Ingredient is...

 Three recipes this weekm, because last week was busy:  Caribbean Fruit Salad, Lemon Bisque, and Hershey Bar pie.

I made Caribbean Fruit salad last week.  Fruit, walnuts, and you guessed it;  jello!  I would give it a 6/10.  I'm not a big fan of the walnut/lime jello combo, and the coconut doesn't really add much flavor, just texture.  Not an appealing texture though.  

A few days ago at rehearsal, we started throwing around the idea of a potluck.  Before you cringe, keep in mind that we've spent three hours a day for the last month together.  We wear masks and socially distance as much as possible.  A few of us are already fully vaccinated.  Everyone that prepared food wore a mask while they made the food.  Which was great for me, because I'm a "sampler."  It's hard to pass marshmallows through a mask.  I made two pies, in case one wasn't enough for nine cast members and three crew members, and because I'd never tried the lemon one before.  Actually, 12.5 people, one of our cast members is is six months pregnant.  Thanks to some clever costuming, you can't tell which one it is.  The other pie, Hershey Bar, is a family favorite.  Especially of my aunt's.  She was Lottie's first great-grandchild, and during my grandma's entire pregnancy, she told her "You're gonna have that baby on my birthday."  And she was right.  I made both at once, and didn't destroy either one.  I'm kind of proud of that.  My only disaster was the whipped cream.  Something happened with the first batch, and it separated.  I got online, but none of the solutions worked.  Instead of light, fluffy whipped cream, I made butter.  Lottie, the WWI/Great Depression/WWII era housewife would have probably found some way to use it, or save it, but I had enough left over for both pies, so I threw it out and started over.  The recipes turned out well.  One of the instructions in the lemon pie was to "whip the Jello."  I didn't know you could whip Jello.

I would give both recipes 9/10.  I even ate the leftover filling for breakfast on Saturday morning.

I used the leftover filling as a test to see if the pie was set, etc.

I forgot to get a picture before I took them to rehearsal.

Caribbean Fruit Salad

1 package lime jello

1 cup boiling water

1 cup juice from drained pineapple

2/3 cup crushed pineapple

3/4 cup sliced bananas

1/4 cup chopped nuts

1/2 cup angel flake coconut

Dissolve jello in hot water and juice.  Chill and when partially set fold in pineapple, nuts, bananas and coconut.

Hershey Bar Pie

20 large marshmallows

6 Almond Hershey Bars

1/2 cup milk

Melt together in a double boiler over hot water.  When cold fold in 1/2 cup cream whipped.  Put in graham cracker crust.  Cover top with crumbs.

Lemon Bisque

1 package lemon Jello

2 cups hot water

3/4 cup cream, whipped

Grated rind of 1 lemon

1 T. lemon juice

1/2 cup sugar

salt

1 cup rolled vanilla wafers

Dissolve Jello in hot water and cool until it starts to thicken.  Whip Jello, then cream and fold together along with other ingredients, except crumbs.  Cover bottom of 8 inch pan with part of crumbs;  pour in filling and cover with remaining crumbs.

This weather is nuts

 I picked another recipe (again) that sounded fairly simple.  It's hard to mess up cookies, even for me.  I may be taking a hiatus soon, the next few weeks are going to be really busy, with school and the play I'm in.  It also didn't take a long list of ingredients, which is good, because I haven't left the house since Saturday.  We've had about 8 inches of snow since the weekend, layered with ice and sleet.  Today was our fourth consecutive snow day.  They let us out midday on Wednesday, Monday was a holiday, and we haven't been back for a week.  We're already closed for tomorrow, and we may get two to four more inches by Thursday morning.  I've been looking in the newspaper archives for this week 100 years ago.  There's no mention of the weather.  The Simons would have been celebrating my great-grandma's 17th birthday, but not much big news from Orrville.

My kitchen.  That blinding white light isn't from the sun, it's from all the snow on the ground

 Back to the recipe.he farther I got into it, the more I realized that the cookies were basically the snowball cookies that are a staple on every Midwestern Christmas cookie tray.  Except they're peanut flavored.  I used butter instead of shortening, which may change the texture slightly, but they tasted fine.  The dough was really dry, it was hard to form them according to the recipe.  The peanuts weren't chopped small enough.  I'm not good about consistency, so I finally grabbed a 2 tablespoon coffee scoop (I don't drink coffee, so at least I got some use out of it) and used that.  The recipe says 12 minutes, but the first batch started to burn at 9 minutes.  I fully intended to ration them out in case of a power outage, but it never went out.  They turned out so well, I had to put them in the fridge because when they were on the counter, I was eating one or two every time I passed through the kitchen.

Peanut Puffs

3/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 t. salt
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 t. vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
5/4 cup salted peanuts (chopped)

Cream shortening with peanut butter and salt, add sugar and vanilla, then flour and peanuts.  Shape dough in small balls.  On ungreased pan, bake 12 minutes at 375 degrees.  Roll in powdered sugar.

Google it

 I chose another fairly simple recipe this week: Macaroni A La King.  Although as a French teacher, that physically hurts to use the phrase "La King."  I also picked something that could potentially be frozen and eaten for awhile, in case we get the three days of ice and snowstorms that are forecasted to start tonight.  I'm still eating Chocolate Dessert, too.  The weeks are about to get a little crazy, with school and rehearsal, and the construction site that is my backyard.  This recipe only involved one emergency trip to the store, because I realized I only had almond milk instead of real milk.  I have a running list of things to Google.  When did almond milk become commercially available?  I knew how to prepare the ingredients, but again, the instructions were kind of vague, and I tried to remember the order of ingredients when I made macaroni and cheese from scratch.  Weird fact about me:  I don't cry when I cut onions.  Google, why don't some people cry when they chop onions? 

The "I hope it's supposed to look like this" stages

It turned out....just okay.  I didn't drain enough water after cooking the macaroni and vegetables, and it was too runny.  Despite the fact that it's piled with bacon and cheese, I don't know if it's worth saving.  

Macaroni A La King

Cook 1 cup macaroni, 1 cup celery, 2 large onions in 1 qt. water for 10 minutes.  Leave water on that remains.  Make sauce of 4 T. butter, 4 T. Flour, 2 cups milk, salt, and pepper.  Add 1/2 cup undiluted tomato soup, 2 cups shredded cheese.  Put strips os bacon over top.  Bake 30 minutes 350 degrees.