Summer glows with fruit and vegetables! Time to get out your buckets and baskets. A good start is a visit to a local farmers' market and grocery produce bins. Many prefer to pick their own fruit and use this as a family outing. I learned an important lesson about blackberry picking and we still laugh. Red bugs are there! A friend invited me to pick muscadines some years ago and her rows were clean and easy to pick. Of course, remember the insect spray. Far better to prevent those pesky insects!
Hot afternoons just seem to call for bowls of homemade ice cream. I have vivid memories of the old wood hand-crank makers that seemed to take forever to freeze. How wonderful to own an electric one. My mother always had this for our fourth of July gatherings and it was usually plain vanilla ice cream. Thumbing through my very old metal recipe container, there was mama's recipe written on the back of an old envelope. Why did she do this you might think? Remembering the incident well, I was having lunch with my parents and Mama had the ice cream bucket in the kitchen sink, covered with towels to keep it cold. Why is it there is never a piece of paper or pencil when it's needed? She hurriedly found a pen and the envelope was available. I have shown it to our grown children and they always get a laugh from that!
In this recipe box are also recipes from her mother and other special people in my life! Collecting ideas on cooking and recipes is a way to remember those lovely people who were a big part of our lives. Will I ever cook as well as they did? Doubtful, but I have insights on cooking from the best!
A new broom sweeps clean,
but the old brush
knows the corners.
Irish Proverb
