Frugal Foodies Will Favor This Frosty Cake

This weekend I had a chance to try out a cake I’d wanted to try for a long time. A Frosty Snowberry Cake, from a 1950s-era Pillsbury Bake-Off book. The “snowberries” are actually cubes of jellied cranberry sauce that are folded into the batter. The ingredients were the most basic of staples: flour, sugar, egg whites, shortening, and baking powder. By a happy coincidence, I even had the ingredients that I don’t have every day: light corn syrup and cream of tartar for the boiled frosting.  Vintage kitchen implements that have gone unused in the time we’ve been here were finally pressed into service. A glass double boiler. Cake pans with metal slider releases.

Cakes seemed healthier in the 1950s than they are today. No pudding in the mix. No preservatives to give the cake the longevity of Twinkies. My son Wyatt said the cake was “chewy.” I think he meant “bready.” The cake didn’t quite look like the picture shown here, as cakes that come out of our $99 oven tend to look like the Metrodome after it collapsed. However, it scored major points for satisfaction. The cranberry sauce gave the cake the taste and texture of a jelly roll. I didn’t have food coloring to tint the frosting pink, so I added a pinch of raspberry Jell-O instead. It did the job just fine.

Here’s the recipe for Frosty Snow-berry Cake, which was the Senior Winner in the 1953 Pillsbury Bake-Off.  Mrs. Marguerite Marks of Camden, New Jersey did herself proud!

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Only in the Country Can This Happen

You run out of cooking fuel while you're baking muffins.

The solution: Put half-baked muffins in the microwave, five at a time, for two minutes on high. If you don't have a microwave muffin pan -- and who among us does -- a regular plate will do. Then let cool for 10 minutes. The muffin bottoms came out hard like a pie crust, so the resulting blueberry-raspberry muffins taste like blueberry-raspberry Pop-Tarts. Good, but not aligned with the common muffin experience.

Or better yet, go buy a muffin at the coffee shop. And enjoy the weekend!

Edited because spell check doesn't know you mean "country" when you write "county."

Turn Bargain Berries into Drinkable Berries

Nancy at Rivertree kitchen not only creates great recipes,
she does great photography.

The local supermarket (local meaning 25 miles away) has every berry imaginable on sale this week: six containers for $10. (All were pints except for the raspberries, which came in 8-ounce packages.) I loaded up on strawberries yesterday, and came back for raspberries today, thinking I would freeze them, then realizing I'd never get around to it.

This strawberry sorbet recipe by Nancy at Rivertree kitchen gave me the solution, not to mention a mouth-watering heading. My blender has been going nonstop, and the freezer is filled with homemade strawberry and raspberry frozen juice bars for the steamy weekend. Plus, there were plenty of berries to bring to the local food shelf.

Got bargain berries? Give Rivertree kitchen a whirl.

You Can't Beat Fresh Eggs

How confused the hens must be of late, with one day's temperature being in the fifties and the next day's temp in the teens. But if the hens' egg production is any indication, spring is here to stay.

Dare I say it? The long winter of snow, slush, and store-bought eggs is coming to an end.

Check out this photo by blogger/musician/biologist Deborah Sewell. "I can almost see the Omega 3's," she writes.

Read Deb's  Sand Creek Almanac  post,  "Egg Comparison."

Photo copyright Deborah Sewell

Ice Station Zucchini

I have ice dams of frozen vegetables that need to be dislodged from my deep freeze.

Last summer I froze green beans instead of canning them, and bagged shredded zucchini in one-gallon freezer bags instead of in cup-size snack bags. I would deplete my stash by one, two, sometimes three snack bags a day by tossing shreds into a cup of soup, a dish of pasta, or to turn a scrambled egg into a Denny's-size omelet.

Because it's impossible to defrost a one-gallon bag of zucchini without creating a soupy mess, in the freezer they've stayed.

But with the prices of store-bought produce inching up, it's time to dismantle Ice Station Zucchini.

Got a zippy zucchini recipe that goes beyond bread? Share it here. In the meantime, try these Zucchini Cupcakes from A Taste of Home. Spicy and caramel frosted, they should be called "I Can't Believe They're Zucchini Cupcakes!"

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How Do You Catch and Cook a Turkey?

Every November the Askov American asks area kindergarten teachers to pose the above question to their classes. Reading the answers aloud on the day before Thanksgiving has become a tradition in our family. As a Thanksgiving greeting I wanted to share some with you. The students are from Finlayson, Willow River, and East Central Elementary Schools.

Wyatt: I would catch it with a turkey catcher. Then I would take the hair off and put it in a pan and cook it for 5 min.

Kaleb: I would jump off a tree and catch him with a net and then he trips and says “hey don’t do that.” And then I’ll roast him in the oven. Then he’ll get all burnt up and hot and his fur would come off. And then you take him out and he is all roasted and then you eat him up.

David: I would be in a deer stand in a tree and then set a trap with worms. And then he would go in to eat the worms and the string would shut the door and he would be stuck inside. I would get out of the deer stand and grab the turkey and take it home and eat it.

Ethan: I would catch him with a playing net by catching him when I saw him. I would cook it up. And then make turkey soup. Then turn it into a transformer because I want it to be a robot that is like Optimus prime that turns into a semi-truck.

Seth: I will catch a turkey with a horse. I will grab onto him. Cook him in the stove – give him a shot – for 10 hours. Eat him with my friend, all of it. I will have potatoes, green beans, corn and chicken.

Marisol: Catch it in your hand and cook it in the urn.

Johnathin: My dad shoots them sometimes. I would put it in the stove. Then we take it out. We wait until people come that we know and we eat it.

Lyndee: Quick run and catch it with my big net and then catch another one. First cut it up and put it in a pan. Put it on a stove and flip it in the air. Put it on a plate until it gets warmer. Then sit at the table and bring all the food to eat because we are hungry!

Erik: I would set my dog out to go hunt for the turkey. He catches it. I will cut off the head and put it in the oven. Very hot oven for 2,100 minutes. When it’s done I will take it out. I will say Mom, do you want that turkey to eat?

Regardless of how you catch and cook your turkey, enjoy!



To subscribe to the weekly Askov American, call 320-838-3151 or e-mail askovamerican@scicable.com. The annual subscription rate is $28 in Pine County or $34 outside of Pine County.

Beans, beans, the tyrannical fruit

When the green beans on the vine are in danger of getting too tough and the temperature threatens to dip below freezing, you don't merely jump. You ask how high.

Beans, beans, the tyrannical fruit,

They force me to pick before I compute.

When the vines are bare, how good I'll feel,

With beans in the freezer for many a meal.

Beaning and blogging

Summertime Sundays have become my favorite mornings for preparing garden vegetables. On Sunday mornings Mike is hosting his country gospel music program on WKLK-AM. Wyatt usually sleeps late. That leaves me alone in the kitchen, free to play whatever music I wish without eye rolling from others. And my music of choice is usually The Deep End with Nick Michaels. It's a syndicated program of deep-cut classic rock, the B- and C- and D-sides, with a sprinkling of classics you never tire of. Only 41 affiliates nationwide carry The Deep End. Duluth is the only Minnesota affiliate and only one of 16 nationwide to air the extended four-hour program.

That means a busy morning. I tend to work in time to music. In Minneapolis I discovered Ice-T provided a good backdrop for punching yeast dough. Last year I rhythmically shredded zucchini with a thrift-store kitchen contraption that resembled a countertop wood chipper. This year it's beans, green and dragon tongue: trimming them, blanching them, freezing them. Today, I was chopping beans to ZZ Top's La Grange. I stopped before the Ahow-how-how-how led to ow-ow-ow. 

And during this dance of chopping, blanching, and freezing, that's when the blogging ideas flow. During the summer harvest, ideas often must wait their turn. Ripened beans on the vine are harsh taskmasters.

That's why it feels good to have several blog posts in the can, as good as it feels to have fresh vegetables in the freezer. Both are stores against less plentiful and productive days.