We just finished a 5 day mission at our church. Hope you used the Lenten season to update and polish your spiritual life. I had one major difficulty with deciphering a strong Irish accent. I multiplied the problem one evening by leaving my hearing aids on the vanity in the bathroom! That diminished the positive results from the evening one hundred fold. I remembered them the rest of the week! May each of you have a Blessed and Happy Easter.
This week I have been pondering the changes that occur from one generation to the next. One family just returned from a Florida vacation. One son and his wife chaperoned a group of youth from their church on a five day volunteer visit to the tornado area of Henryville, Indiana. They asked for donations of food and cash to help with the expenses of the week. They were overwhelmed with the response of their families and the local area. One business donated wheelbarrows, tools, etc. for them to use while they were there working and told them to leave them for the tornado victims when they left.
My son , who was a Viet Nam veteran, joined a group of veterans who had spent a number of months together constantly during the Viet Nam War. They bonded like brothers and had discussed what it might be like to come back during peacetime and enjoy the natural beauty of the area, even if it took them 40 years to do it. We can only imagine what their life was like during the wartime. Most of them do not talk about it, but they fulfilled that far off dream these past two weeks when 6 of them planned a return trip even if it were 42 years later. Just received an email from him that he is back home. It is a third world country and quite poor. He bonded with old friends, was glad he went but does not want to go back again. An unimaginable journey. The possibility of these experiences would have been more than magic in my younger years when going to Ft. Wayne was a big deal, let alone jet travel.
It is a long way from these experiences to the kitchen to prepare my suggestions for something to challenge your taste buds. I always look for something new to do to vegetables besides cooking to crisp tender and adding butter. When preparing cabbage, the original thought is slaw. I do like cooked cabbage, but a lot of people do not. If you are one of those, here is an idea that might change your mind.
CABBAGE CASSEROLE
1 medium head of cabbage, shredded
2 cups diced ham
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
½ cup milk
½ to 1 cup buttered bread or cracker crumbs
Steam cabbage in a covered sauce pan with a small amount of water until tender crisp. Drain if necessary. Arrange ham and cabbage in alternating layers in a two quart casserole dish. Blend soup and milk and pour over cabbage mixture. Top with buttered crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. My elderly friend at the nursing home gave me a new idea from a relative of hers. The recipe was written on a piece of scrap paper and was so unusual I wanted to experiment with it before I passed it on to you. You can believe what it says but it makes a lot for one little old lady to use up.
3-2-1
1 Angel Food cake mix, one step
1 cake mix of your choice
Mix both together in a zip lock bag. Take 3 tablespoons of the
mixture. Blend with 2 tablespoons water and cook 1 minute on
high in the microwave. She said she cooks hers in a coffee cup!
This can be stored in the pantry cupboard.
I chose a butter pecan cake mix and thought it was a bit bland so I added chopped pecans. I used my Corelle Ware coffee mug. Let it cool a few minutes then remove from cup. It made a nice cone
shaped dessert. Then I covered it with whipped topping and put a strawberry on top. It was quite pretty but I wouldn’t recommend it as a good combination. Be creative with chocolate cake and maybe coconut, maraschino cherries or orange cake with mandarin oranges. The ideas are limitless. This would be a nice project to let your kids do on a rainy day. Experimenting with different containers can make it interesting.
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