I was not sure that the day would ever come but the tomatoes are finally ripening and I am finding myself with an overwhelming amount of tomatoes! Not a bad problem at all to have just an overwhelming problem! I have given many away but I am still finding myself with so many tomatoes. I have been gathering information and trying to decide the best method to put away some tomatoes for the winter months and I think that I am going to go with freezing for now. I definitely want to can next year but it just felt like to much to run out and buy all the things that I would need to plunge into that so I settled on freezing for now. I spent a small part of nap time preparing the tomatoes and if all goes as planned we can have some tasty casseroles and soups with fresh tomatoes in the dead middle of winter. That is pretty exciting to me! I followed these directions and it was really pretty easy. A little messy but easy all the same! Give it a try and we can enjoy soup together this winter!

Oh yes, I also want to try to make some of these although by the looks of them they would not be around as long as the frozen tomatoes. Tasty!

A lot of heart…

And a little dessert!

Strawberry Pie Recipe
Glaze:
1/4 cup corn starch
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup sugar
1 pinch salt
1 strawberry Jello package (small)

Heat in sauce pan until clear.

1 baked pie shell
1 quart strawberries washed and sliced

Place berries in in pie shell pour cooled glaze over berries. Refrigerate until congealed and serve with cool whip!

*This recipe works great with any kind of fruit just match your Jello to your fruit choice!*

Bitsey is quite famous at our house! We have never had the wonderful privilege of meeting her but she has a mighty fine cake recipe! Bitsey is a friend of Brad’s grandmother and shared her cake recipe one day years ago never knowing that it would be passed through generations, passed to friends and even posted on the web now! The taste is incredible yet simple it just takes you back to being a kid and simpler times! This cake is wonderful with a glass of milk and incredible with a bit of ice cream on top! It is perfect for sharing with your valentine!

Bitsey’s Chocolate Cake

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter
4 tablespoons Cocoa
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup water
2 eggs
1/2 cup of buttermilk OR 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Melt butter and bring to a boil adding cocoa, oil and water. Boil till mixed and remove from stove top. Add chocolate mixture to flour, sugar, eggs, buttermilk, baking soda, cinnamon and vanilla mixing well. Pour into a greased 9×13 pan baking at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

Bitsey’s Icing

1/2 cup butter
4 tablespoons cocoa
6 tablespoons milk
3 3/4 cups powder sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt butter and bring to a boil adding the cocoa and milk stir till mixed and remove from the stove top. Add chocolate to powdered sugar and vanilla mixing well. Pour onto a cooled cake. Enjoy!
*The icing is really the best part of this recipe!*

Sometimes it feels as though I am always the last one to get into the holidays, by the time the holiday comes and goes I am just about ready to celebrate! Someday I will get the swing of things…maybe! At any rate I made some Pumpkin bread this week and I must admit that it was quite tasty so I wanted to share the recipe with you. I also need to confess that by the time I finally finished making the bread (it took awhile because in the middle of making it I realized that I had no flour, dinner needed to be finished and the kiddos were getting restless) I was having a sinking spell and felt like I needed something more along the lines of chocolate rather than pumpkin bread. Alas, the Pumpkin Bread was ready for the oven so I did what any other non rational person would do and I just threw in some chocolate chips. Brad looked at me as though I was off my rocker asking if the recipe called for that. I assured him that it did not call for chocolate chips but I needed their to be chocolate chips in the bread. It actually turned out quite well if I do say so myself (a few other have said so as well, you don’t have to take my need for chocolate as thinking it taste good). Enjoy!!!

Pumpkin Bread (with optional chocolate chips thrown in for sinking spells)

2 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cups shortening
4 eggs
1lb. can of pumpkin
2/3 cup water or milk
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cloves
1tsp. cinnamon
3 1/3 cups flour

Cream sugar and shortening. Add eggs, pumpkin and water. Sift dry ingredients (of course I did not sift…another confession) and add to the pumpkin mixture. Pour into two 2 quart greased loaf pans.
Bake 1 hour at 350 degrees.

I have been baking a lot (call it longing for cooler weather) lately from one of my favorite cookbooks More From Magnolia: Recipes from the World Famous Bakery and Allysa Torey’s Home Kitchen. These little delectable treats are called Chocolate Fudge Brownies With Butterscotch Chips and Pecans. They really do live up to their big name and are just as tasty as they suggest! Now I am not a big butterscotch fan but it really is not overwhelming at all and it adds to the flavor. Usually I think that butterscotch is way to strong but it is just perfect in this recipe! This is a great little cookbook and I am slowly working my way through it but already highly recommend it if not for the Chocolate Fudge Brownies With Butterscotch Chips and Pecans alone!!!

I had the opportunity to make two of my favorite desserts last week with Brad’s extended family in town and I thought that I might share the recipes with you so that they can become your favorites as well! Enjoy!!!

Banana Pudding

3-4 Bananas
1 Box of Vanilla Wafers
1 Can of Sweet and Condensed Milk
1 Large Box of Vanilla Pudding (plus milk called for on the back of the package)
1 Large Container of Cool Whip

Make pudding according to directions adding in the Sweet and Condensed Milk as well as half the Cool Whip. Stir until mixed. You will layer the ingredients starting with the Wafers, then the Sliced Bananas and ending with the Pudding mixture. Layer approximately 3 times and top with the rest of the Cool Whip. This is much better made the day before serving.

Death by Chocolate

1 Package of Brownie Mix
3 Boxes of Chocolate Mousse (plus milk called for on the back of the package)-If you cannot find the Chocolate Mouse you can substitute Chocolate Pudding
1 Large Container of Cool Whip
1 Package of Heath Topping

Cook Brownies according to package directions and allow to cool also prepare your Chocolate Mousse according to package directions and allow to chill. Crumble brownies and begin layering with the brownies first, follow with Mousse, Cool Whip and Heath Topping. Layer approximately three times. This is better prepared the day before.

This is quite the yummy salsa! It shows up at many of our Sunday School gatherings sometimes twice as the actual Parker Family will bring it and then as the recipe is getting passed around others will show up with it as well! Quite humorous! I thought that I would pass it along, as it is so super duper salsa yummy!

Parker Family Salsa

1 can 20-ounce tomatoes
1 green jalapeno (leave out the seeds trust me on this one)
¼ bunch or more cilantro
1-2 cloves of garlic
½ of a lime (juice only)
¼ teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon salt
1 onion yellow or green (optional)

You can mix all of this together in a food processor or for those of you with not so much counter space you can get the same results from a blender. Enjoy!

This is a great recipe idea for something that can be dressy for a dinner party or just fun for the kids. There is definitely an art to it and it takes a little time but they are actually a lot of fun to make! I ended up using a skewer stick to stick the marshmallow on and then dipped it in the chocolate. To release the marshmallow without knocking it over and making a mess I just used a fork. I ran the skewer through the fork tines and pulled the stick out and then used the skewer again to push the dipped marshmallow off of the fork. It sounds complicated but I promise that it isn’t. My clever brain wheel was turning this morning and I came up with the idea of sprinkling crushed graham crackers on top as well for the smores taste. Clever, I know! Unfortunately I did not have any graham crackers so I cannot report on the taste of that but I can report that the taste of the Marshmallow Truffles is a quite tasty one. I hope that everyone enjoys these!

Marshmallow Truffles

Mmmmm Good! I have started giving Charis cheesy toast in the last few days and she is in love with it! It is a very complicated recipe of sprinkling cheese on bread and then placing it in the oven on broil. Complicated I know! She eats all of it minus the crust of course! I have never been a big crust fan so I decide that she is not either. I know I know that is where all the good stuff is but blah! It is so much fun to see what she likes and does not like. She is definitely her own little person, therefore, when she is older if she wants to eat the crust of the bread she is allowed to. I will just make sure that she knows how gross it is first.

I cannot get away from the free Kraft magazine that I spoke of earlier in the blog. I tried the Chocolate-Candy Cane Cake earlier this week and it was quite tasty. Peppermint is usually not my favorite but I thought that it just looked too pretty to pass up. If you can get your cake to look like the picture you are incredible though! Since the “frosting” is Cool Whip it is hard to get it to stay in place as it gets a little gloopy. Also word to the wise…wait till the last minute to put on the crushed candy cane; the red will bleed into the Cool Whip. I also had to store the cake in the fridge while serving it since it would get so puddley. It was still a huge hit though at Bible Study as good chunk of the cake was gone. It was such a big hit that I do recommend the cake just mind the puddles.