For Senior Citizens Day on Friday August 21, Kitchen Kapers once again is turning to some of our frequently opened and so very helpful Apopka community cookbooks for a few good recipes.
This week, the first cookbooks on this desk to come quickly to hand are the Old Timers Athletic Association’s Best Recipes and Carole Arthur’s Older Americans Cookbook, with plenty more in easy reach for the next issue.
Just for a different-from-usual sweet start this time, we’re tossing out a couple of dessert delights at the top of this menu, and then following up with the healthful veggies and other nutrition-rich essential real-food recipes.
“Let them eat cake,” a famous person from history said long ago and that still works. Promise of a piece of cake or a couple of cookies for dessert as reward has long succeeded well in getting sufficient amounts of spinach and carrots and avocados off plates and into growing children’s mouths and stomachs.
“Nana’s Raisin Cookie” should be a fairly efficient real good start for` making a sometimes seemingly impossible little miracle happen. Promised reward of a small piece of peanut butter fudge might quickly move mountains of toys needing to be picked up from the floor.
Enjoy all of the recipes collected here from as many of Apopka’s community cookbooks as can be included here this week, and check back here in the future for more good veggies recipes and another cookies promise, to facilitate that carrot, peas, broccoli, spinach and Brussel sprouts vanishing faster from the youngest diners’ plates.
Enjoy all your neighbors’ and friends’ recipes’ and thank any of the local recipes contributors to Kitchen Kapers, whose names you see below and might know.
NANA’S RAISIN COOKIE
Recipe from Carole Arthurs’
Older Americans Cookbook
1 cup raisins
2 cups flour
1-1/4 cups sugar
4-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
6 tablespoons shortening (three oleo and three Crisco)
Cover the raisins with hot water and leave standing overnight. Drain off liquid and save. Mix all the above ingredients with liquid from the raisins. (If you need more liquid, you can put in a little milk.) Shape cookie dough and bake the cookies on greased cookie sheets at 375 degrees until light brown, about 20 minutes. Recipe makes two dozen cookies.
TERRI ROSE’S VANILLA CAKE
Recipe from Old Timers Athletic Association’s Best Recipes
1 cup margarine
2 cups sugar
6 eggs
4 cups crushed vanilla wafers
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
3-1/2 ounces of coconut
1 cup nuts, chopped
Cream together the margarine and sugar. Add together the beaten eggs and wafers. Add milk, vanilla, coconut and nuts. Mix and pour into greased tube or Bundt pan. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour.
RUTH BOLHUIS’S
PEANUT BUTTER FUDGE
Recipe from
Older Americans Cookbook
3 tablespoons margarine
2 cups sugar
1 cup evaporated milk
1-1/3 cups peanut butter (creamy or crunchy)
1 cup miniature marshmallows
1 teaspoon vanilla
In electric fry pan, combine margarine, sugar and milk. Cook at 280 degrees for five minutes. Turn off heat. Add peanut butter, marshmallows and vanilla. Stir until blended. Pour in square buttered 9-by12-inch pan. Cool and cut.
JUDY CALDWELL’S
SPINACH SUPREME
Recipe from Old Timers Athletic Association’s Best Recipes
1 can spinach or one package frozen spinach
1 (8-ounce) sour cream
1/2 envelope onion soup mix
Bread crumbs and grated cheese, amounts as needed
Mix the half-envelope onion soup mix with the sour cream, then, in casserole dish, mix that mixture with the spinach. Top with mixture which is half bread crumbs and half grated cheese. Heat in oven at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.
SUE MADDEW’S
SWEET POTATO DISH
Recipe from
Older Americans Cookbook
Six sweet potatoes
1/4 cup mixture of brown and white sugar
1/4 cup crushed pineapple
1 tablespoon butter
Chopped pecans
Slice sweet potatoes and place in casserole, layered, putting mixed sugar on top of sweet potatoes, then put in the crushed pineapple and butter. Sprinkle top with pecans and bake for one hour at 325 degrees.
JOAN WILSON’S
COOKING CONTEST’S PRIZE
WINNING FRESH VEGETABLE PIE
Recipe from
Older Americans Cookbook
2 cups sliced onion
1 medium eggplant, peeled and sliced
2 or 3 sliced tomatoes
2 cups fresh, torn spinach
Saute the onions in two tablespoons olive oil, then put into a round 11- or 12-inch pie pan. Layer the eggplant, tomatoes and spinach and sprinkle each layer with lemon pepper, garlic powder and dry Italian seasoning.
Repeat the layers. Drizzle about two tablespoons olive oil on top of the vegetables and then cover with a top crust for which directions follow.
Crust:
2 cups flour (or 1-3/4 cups flour and 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese)
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup Crisco
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 tablespoon white vinegar
3 tablespoons dry Italian seasoning
Mix the dry ingredients, cut in butter and Crisco. Beat egg and vinegar together. Add to dry mixture. Add Italian seasoning. Roll out dough and cover vegetables. Pierce top crust twice with fork. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. Recipe serves 8-10.
DIANE BROWN’S
VEGGIE CASSEROLE
Recipe from Old Timers Athletic Association’s Best Recipes
2 cans Veg-All
1 can water chestnuts
1 jalapeno Cheez Whiz
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup onion
Ritz crackers, crumbled for top
Drain vegetables and water chestnuts. Melt cheese. Mix all together and cover with cracker crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.
EVELYN M. ARMSTRONG’S
LIBBY’S FAMOUS PUMPKIN PIE
Recipe from Old Timers Athletic Association’s Best Recipes
4 eggs, beaten
1 (29-ounce) can Libby’s pumpkin
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves
2 (12 ounce) cans undiluted Carnation milk
2 (9 inch) unbaked pie crusts
Combine filling ingredients in order given here. Pour in pie crusts. Bake in preheated oven at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for additional 40-50 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Cool and serve with whipped cream. Recipe makes two nine-inch pies.