Prepare for Senior Citizens Day with tasty recipes. It arrives on August 21.
It is one of three annual special days identified on this month of August 2015’s calendar page. Air Force Day on August 1 and Coast Guard Day August 4 are the other two.
Senior Citizens Day 2015 is now a week away, which means that we still have time enough to make some good celebration plans for making it a very special stand-out day.
With Senior Citizens Day falling on a Friday this year there will be a full week ahead of its arrival during which we can plan and make happen lots of very fine and very fun seniors-themed celebrations of various kinds which can be most happily enjoyed by not just seniors but all our younger generations as well.
For starters, Kitchen Kapers thinks foods must be important parts of such a very special opportunities-filled day.
It’s good that there is still plenty of sufficient time left to plan some extra special August 21 menus to make Senior Citizens Day’s meals a very meaningful and unforgettable time for seniors and their families and friends.
A good time surely will be had by all celebrating Senior Citizens Day on Friday August 21, because seniors usually are very good at knowing how to have fun times just getting together with other seniors and younger folks as well for multi-generational good time get-together events.
How might Senior Citizens Day best be celebrated?
What kinds of foods might we want to serve at senior gatherings?
What would we most enjoy eating on Senior Citizens Day?
For those answers, once again we’re turning to our usual menu experts, who are all of our countless local recipe contributors in Apopka’s and other nearby communities’ cookbooks collections.
This week we’re turning the pages of two of our so very many favorite cookbooks, author Carole Arthurs’ “Older Americans Cookbook (Recipes from the Past to the Present)” and the “Old Timers Athletic Association’s Best Recipes” cookbook.
We’re searching both of those cookbooks for some great stand-out recipes for special occasion menu suggestions and ideas which seem to just jump off our cookbooks’ printed pages because they are just so very perfectly appropriate for celebrating this coming-up-fast Senior Citizens Day on August 21.
If seniors’ culinary tastes can be summed up and defined, that likely might be best done by the wonderful wide variety of recipes selected for inclusion in these two really neat cookbooks focused on favorite recipes of older Americans, sometimes kindly referred to as “old timers.”
If you are old enough to qualify as a bona fide senior, you should enjoy Senior Citizens Day all day long any way you like this Friday August 21, just doing what you most enjoy.
If that enjoyment happens to be cooking, maybe that very special day’s highlights for you might include trying some or all of our Apopka-area cookbooks’ recipes below, especially some of the much earlier-days’ cookbooks focusing on the look and taste of that earlier time’s cuisine.
Vintage recipes like this first recipe from fairly far back in this community’s local culinary history are every bit as great tasting as the newer recipes from today’s modern age. A taste of yesteryear’s cuisine is a nice reminder of how our daily food used to be when some of us were so much younger back in our earliest growing up eras half a century or more ago.
This week’s first recipe has been included here in Kitchen Kapers fairly frequently through the past three decades. Just still having access to an early days’ recipe from so far back in our culinary history is a rare and much appreciated culinary community treasure.
Thanks very much to all of our local “old timers” who brought so many recipes back into that much appreciated cookbook’s easy access for us.
BETTY BROOME’S
DOE’S OLD-FASHIONED
HOE CAKES
Recipe from Old Timers Athletic Association’s Best Recipes
1 cup self-rising meal
1/4 cup self-rising flour
Buttermilk (amount as needed)
Add enough buttermilk to the meal and flour to make a thin mixture and stir well. Have the frying pan hot and add enough cooking oil to prevent from sticking. Make small hoe cakes or large, but be sure you spoon the mixture into thin cakes. Fry on one side and then turn the hoecakes to brown on other side as you would a pancake. This is best eaten with butter while hot.
“True or false,” this cookbook reports, “it is said that many years ago farm workers carried cornmeal to the fields along with a hoe and drinking water. They built a fire. They added a little water to the cornmeal. The hoe was heated over the fire and a cake of the mixture was placed on the hoe to cook a hot meal. They are much better today when fried in a well-greased hot skillet or frying pan.”
CAROLE ARTHURS’
ZESTY BEAN SOUP
Recipe from
Older Americans Cookbook
1 package dried beans (15 bean variety package)
3 cups water
Salt and pepper (amounts to your taste)
Ground beef, ground sausage or Italian smoked sausage, sliced
Garlic powder and blackened seasonings (amounts to your taste)
Bay leaf
Hot sauce (optional)
1 can chicken broth
1/4 cup Picante sauce
1 large onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 can tomatoes
Soak and wash beans, then soak beans overnight. Drain. Put in large cooking pot. Add water. Bring water to a boil. Add seasonings, onion and celery. Brown the meat. Rinse off the fat. Add the meat to soup. Add chicken broth, picante sauce and tomatoes. Cover pot and simmer slowly for two to three hours.
MICROWAVE SPICED
FRUIT COMPOTE
Recipe from Old Timers Athletic Association’s Best Recipes
(Deliciously different! Serve warm or chilled!)
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup juice from fruit (or peach nectar)
3 tablespoons peach brandy
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Dash of ground cloves
1 can pineapple chunks
1 (17-ounce) canned fruit for salads, drained
2 oranges, peeled and sliced or sectioned
Dairy sour cream (optional)
In a 1-1/2 quart casserole, stir together sugar, fruit juice, brandy and seasoning. Microwave this mixture, uncovered, on High for 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 minutes or until the mixture just starts to boil.
Stir in pineapple chunks, the oranges and the fruit. Microwave uncovered, on high for three minutes more or until it is hot. Top with sour cream. Cinnamon or mint sprigs, if you wish. Recipe makes six deliciously different servings. Serve warm or chilled.
MARY RUSSELL’S CHOCOLATE FUDGE FROM A 1933 COOKBOOK
Recipe from
Older Americans Cookbook
2 cups sugar
2/3 cup milk
2 squares (two ounces) chocolate or half cup cocoa
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
Put the sugar, milk, chocolate squares or cocoa, salt and corn syrup in a sauce pan. Stir over low heat until chocolate has melted and the sugar dissolved. Increase heat, boil steadily until thermometer registers 236 to 238 degrees Fahrenheit (soft ball stage).
Stir the mixture occasionally during the boiling period to prevent burning. Remove the cooked candy from stove, drop in the butter and set aside to cool without stirring. Cool until thermometer reads 110 degrees Fahrenheit or until the pan can be held in the palm of the hand without discomfort.
Add vanilla and beat with a wooden spoon until fudge loses its gloss and becomes thick enough to hold its shape when a little is dropped from the spoon.
Turn into slightly buttered pan to make a layer 3/4 inch deep. It may be necessary to press the fudge into the corners with knuckles. When cold, cut into squares and lift from pan with a spatula.
For fruit fudge, follow recipe for chocolate fudge and stir in half a cup of coarsely chopped figs, dates, raisins or a mixture of these dried fruits into the candy just before turning it into the pan.
