Wisdom From Grandma

So, you have once again been blessed with a fruitcake for Christmas. Frankly, you’re not quite sure about the blessed part. That dense, too sweet dessert is sort of gross and you’re thinking the best thing to do with it is to drop it on your neighbor’s front porch and run. However, if you don’t feel right doing that, there is a way to make fruitcake downright yummy. The other day, my mom (who is a grandma to the best bunch of kids ever) and I were debating what to do with a downright huge fruitcake she had received. I remembered that she was planning to make Florence Pekar’s Fruitcake cookies from a 1970′s Redbook recipe my grandma had passed down to us and was saying she hadn’t gotten the dried fruit for it yet. I suggested chopping up the fruitcake and substituting it for all the dried fruit in the cookies. Um, yum!

They were delicious. And that’s when I realized that most fruitcakes are kind of icky because there’s not much dough with the fruit. I wonder how fruitcake donuts, cupcakes and pancakes taste? Anyone want to experiment and let me know? I’m really leaning toward the donuts.

In the meantime, here’s the recipe from Florence Pekar with the fruitcake alteration:

You’ll need:

1 and 3/4 cups of flour

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup softened butter

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1 large egg

1/4 cup sour milk (add a bit of lemon juice to regular milk to make sour milk.)

2 and 1/4 cups of chopped up fruitcake

Directions:

• Heat oven to 375 degrees.
• Spray your cookie sheets with non-stick spray.
• Sift your flour, baking soda and salt into a bowl.
• In a separate bowl, work the butter until it is creamy.
• Add the sugar to the butter and stir until they are blended.
• Add an egg to the mixture and stir well.
• Gradually add the flour mixture and milk to your bowl, stirring as you go.
• Stir in the fruitcake pieces.
• Drop slightly rounded teaspoonfuls of dough two inches apart on a prepared cookie sheet.
• Bake 12-15 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned. Makes 6 to 7 dozen small cookies.

Linda from Hawaii has a tip to share from her wise grandma:

My grandma enjoys doing crafts. I would spend time with her and she’d teach me how to make simple craft items. She said to me that people enjoy handmade gifts. I took her words to heart and now I like to make handmade cards and gifts to give to people.

Linda’s grandma was absolutely right. The people who love you will cherish your handmade gifts. With everyone working to trim budgets, there’s another great benefit. You can give so many more nice gifts to friends and family when you put your time and energy into a gift.

I think my grandma would approve of something a bit newfangled that I used to help me come up with project ideas for Christmas presents this year – Pinterest. I was able to hunt down and organize photos of so many awesome gift tutorials for things like holders for phones while they are charging and adorable little heart shaped hand warmers for the kids to tuck in their pockets while they are waiting for the bus. Right now, I’m drooling over an idea to recycle a Christmas sweater from the prior year into an adorable skirt. That site is just a goldmine for great ideas. You do have to get an invite or get on the site’s waiting list to join and pin things, but joining is free.

As you put together your handmade Christmas gift ideas, I’d like to encourage you to make a few extra little gifts. I’m making extra hand warmers and others in my family make scarves. If you come across someone who is in need, it is nice to be able to pass on a little holiday cheer by giving that person a little gift.

Are you making your family’s holiday gifts this year?

I received a lot of Grandma’s gadgets over the years, including a meat grinder. It looked a little scary, so I tucked it back in the corner of the pantry and pretended I didn’t have it. However, I’ve discovered that grinding your own meats and grains is a great way to get fresher, healthier and, often, cheaper food. Now, I don’t have a grain mill yet and I don’t use my scary grinder from Grandma very often. (In fact, I think I only used it the one time, when I ground up ham for deviled ham sandwiches. They were good, but it wasn’t fun to do.)

What I have been doing, though, is keeping an eye out for great sales on organic meat. Then, I pick up that bargain roast and ask the butcher to grind it up for me. Instead of getting a bunch of nasty scraps noone in their right mind would eat until they are ground up, I get pure ground beef.

I am looking for a good sale on a grain mill, but, from what I’ve been reading, the key is to get a mill with a lot of steel and very little plastic so that it lasts for centuries. (Or at least longer than a week!) From everything I’ve heard and all the reviews I’ve looked at, there is one clear winner in the grain mill department – the Country Living Grain Mill. It also is pretty pricey. The second favorite seems to be the Lehman’s Best Grain Mill, which is about half the price. I think I’ll get the Lehman’s model for my use.