So technically, it’s still Friday. At least here in the midwest. What a busy week! I don’t have Loopy pictures today, because now I’ll wait and show you when we’re all done. I will say that that set of shelves along the green wall from Wednesday’s post is full of Cherry Tree Hill and Apple Laine, and it looks beautiful! All of the bags and cases of yarn are put away …. and all of the shelves are completely full. So, we have more shelves coming on Monday. (Because we have more yarn arriving daily around here.) Things are almost feeling Loopy over there. I’m thinking about another week and we’ll have it completely Loopified. I’ll keep you posted. (You all have been so nice about wanting to see photos!) Monday, it’s back to business as usual here at The Loopy Ewe – yay!
Have you ever been completely frustrated with automated phone systems? I had to call AT&T this week. We had our phones switched over, and had to get new phone numbers. The gal taking the order assured me that the toll-free number would stay the same, as it’s a “forwarding number”. However, when I tried it out after the technician left, there was a recording that stated that number had been disconnected and giving our new (local – so not toll-free) number. All I needed to do was call someone at AT&T to tell them that the forwarding wasn’t working. I spent 45 minutes on the phone. What was I doing? Oh, entering my “account number” 9 different times, picking “the option that best describes the problem” about 15 times, finally reaching someone and then being put on hold because she was “residential” and I needed “business”. (Although I picked the “business” option several times before reaching her.) When she told me she’d have to transfer me, I said, “Don’t put me on hold! I can’t get out of that endless loop to get a real person!” She said, “I understand. I won’t.” And then proceeded to do just that and I was then disconnected and had to start all over again. (Yes, I do know about hitting “O” for Operator, or pushing the # or the * buttons. I tried it all. I guess the phone company is wise to all of those tricks.) Needless to say, I was completely frustrated with that phone company at the end of all of this. Today, I had to call back. But, this time I had a real number and got a real person who quickly solved the next phone problem that had come up, went the extra mile with her customer service, sent out an extremely helpful techinician within 2 hours, and restored my faith in the phone company. Or at least restored my faith in her part of the phone company. I really really can’t stand automated phone systems, though.
Today’s recipe is from my Grandma Bass (from Germany) and was probably my very favorite thing that she made. She used to have one ready for me every time I visited, and every time I came home for a break from college. My mom brought this one over to us this week, knowing that we needed a little extra TLC in the midst of moving-mayhem. 🙂
Grandma’s Hefekranz
5 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
3 eggs, beaten + 1 egg white
4 Tbl. shortening, melted and cooled
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 cup raisins
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbl. yeast
powdered sugar
– Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water. Add a pinch of sugar to it and let it rise for 5 minutes.
– Mix dry ingredients. Add in raisins.
– Add in yeast mixture, vanilla, 3 beaten eggs and shortening. Mix and knead well.
– Let rise until double. Punch down and let rest for 5 minutes.
– Divide into 3 equal balls. Roll out each ball into a long tube shape and braid the 3 of them together. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise until double.
– Brush top with egg white.
– Bake at 325 degrees for 40 minutes. Let cool and then sprinkle with powdered sugar.
(One time my mom made this for me for my birthday and dropped it off while it was still warm. I took the towel off the top and there were strings poked down into the top at regular intervals. I asked what the strings were for and found out that she had put birthday candles in the top and the warmth from the Hefenkranz had melted the skinny little candles into puddles and left the wicks hanging there!)
So this month’s contest is simple – what is your favorite recipe that you remember someone special making for you or for family gatherings in your childhood? (Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt, Uncle, etc.) You don’t have to share the recipe – but tell us what it was in the comments. (Of course if it’s really good, you’re always welcome to share the recipe!) I’ll use the random number generator to draw a winner from all of the comments during this next week, and the winner will receive $25 in Loopy Bucks!
Sheri foundacuteredKitchenaidcoffeemakerfortheLoopyofficebutitwas$99forpete’ssake!
Needlesstosay,Ididn’tgetit.($99,areyoukiddingme?)
One of my oldest and best friends makes an amazing apple pie. Most important ingredient is love, cuz I can tell you we all tried the same recipe, but it never came out the same. Nothing elaborate to meet the eye, but an amazing burst of flavor on the tongue and senses.
Even our Prime Minister (I live in Holland) loves this apple pie of hers and he drives his security people crazy when he makes an unplanned diversion to her room (she works at the parliament buildings) when he catches wind that she has baked again (which she does almost every week). When I organize special “to do’s” I sometimes make a special request for her pie, but it’s best when she is also present for the festivities and to share with us. To me it is a physical manifestation of love. Pure and simple!
Oh gosh, I guess I have two favorite food memories. The first one is the homemade noodles that Anna Lee made for Thanksgiving lunch. Oh MMMMM, delicious. I wish I had that recipe, but I doubt I’d ever actually have the time to make them. The second one is the homemade cinnimon rolls that we make every year for Christmas morning. Oooey and gooey and yum, too.
My Grandma Randall made the best Potatoes Au Gratin when I was a kid which we, of course, called Potatoes All Rotten. It was always the highlight of Thanksgiving to eat ourselves sick on it. When I got older I asked her what made hers better than any Au Gratin I’ve ever had… she revealed that the secret was 3 TIMES THE CHEESE the recipe called for!! A massive coronary waiting to happen I’m sure but it tasted incredible!
Hands down my mom’s fudge. I have never had better in my 51 years. Thankfully she taught me very young how to make it as she passed at the age of 41. I found the recipe in an old cookbook of hers that I still have. It’s falling apart but I keep it for the memories.
Chocolate Fudge
2 Sqaures of unsweetened chocolate
2 cups of sugar
2/3 cup milk
1/8 tsp Cream of Tartar
Bring to the soft ball stage and remove from heat. Add
2TBSP butter and let it melt without stirring then add
1 tsp vanilla
Stir till your arms fall off or the fudge loses its shine then quickly pour into a buttered dish to harden.
This recipe takes lots of practice to get right, fortunately you can always eat your mistakes! Enjoy!
Oh! For me, my grandma used to make Lefse every Christmas. I love it, and now I help to make it every year. Mmm… So good.
The list is long and varied, my grandmother was a baker and she always had something fresh when you visited. My absolute most favourite thing she made was Pulla bread (not sure if this is the right spelling). Pulla is a finnish egg bread with a touch of cardamon. If you were lucky and arrived just after the bread came out of the oven, ummmm. But if it was a couple of days later, just toast it up, maybe even yummier.
My mom made nut bread (buchty) for Christmastime. She had a big old hand grinder and she’d grind up the nuts (pecans and walnuts, I think) at the kitchen table, and her arm would hurt for a couple of days. There would be about a 1/2 inch of bread jelly-rolled around the same amount of nut stuff–mmm!
I don’t have time to read all the comments, but if you can refrain from pushing any buttons on your phone (pretend you don’t have touch tone, like my Grandma), then you’ll get a human being the fastest. It’s hard to wait, though!
With me it has to be my Grandmothers buttermilk biscuits! She always made two platters full (total about 60) every time we had a family gathering. I have tried and tried to replicate them, but never can! She even tried to teach me herself as a child, but they didn’t turn out as delicate & fluffy as hers.Then there was her tea cakes! Oh, the memories!
My grandma’s Kringla! It is a Norwegian cookie… It is a pretzel shaped cookie, that is soft and cake-like. My grandpa likes to put butter on them. I like them plain any time of day or night. I tried to make them once. It was awful. So that is why they are so precious and I love them so.
Wow, go offline for a weekend and there are 355 comments. But I will share that my country grandmother always made me chicken and dumplings when I came to see her (for my dad she made banana pudding and I didn’t turn that down, either). My city grandmother made these Swedish Christmas toasts, that were like sweet dried bread things with sugar and dried fruit I think. I wish I had that recipe.
To this day, my favorite comfort food is a dish my mom made when I was growing up. We call it “beans and bas’,” which is a corruption of “beans and pasta” as my Italian relatives would pronounce it. At some point it started off as a pasta fagioli-type dish, but by the time my mom inherited it from her mom, it had become shells and cannelini beans, tossed with garlic and olive oil and plenty of grated cheese. We’ll also add spinach or escarole for some nutritional value, and also red pepper flakes, but those are definitely *this* generation’s contribution! No matter how many time I make it, it never, never tastes as good as my mother’s … such few, simple ingredients, but Mom’s is always the most comforting!
My hungarian grandmother always made spitzbaum for us. It is a VERY buttery crust with damson plum preserves over the top and then a criss-crossed buttery lattice on top, sprinkled with powdered sugar when it was cool. As kids we always got to take the dough and make the long snakes that would make the lattice work on top. The dough was so buttery and delicious, though, not all of it made it onto the jelly roll pan.
you all are making me hungry!
now that it’s fall, my favorite is my dad’s lamb curry. he never had written recipes for anything. fortunately, i watched him make it one time and wrote everything down. i think i drove him nuts that day. i may just need to make some today.
Mom’s almond bars! We have Dutch heratage so anything with almond was good but my mom’s almond bars were notorious. If she needed help from her next door neighbor she sould promise a pan of her bars and he would literally come running with whatever tool/help she needed. My mouth is wattering just thinking about them!
My very very favorite is my mom’s german dinner she used to make us. Homemade sauerkraut and red cabbage. I think there was some pork (surprise!) in there, but the sauerkraut and red cabbage always were my favorites. I still beg her to make it now and again.
Oh, and that recipe looks amazing! I think it’s going in the oven tonight as a treat for my girlfriend.
Great job on getting the stuff together for the new loopy room! I bet it looks amazing. I hope that from here on out things actually go smoothly and no more hijinks like what the phone company tried to pull!
Sometimes it’s the simple things that have the greatest memories. I remember my step mom’s chocolate chip cookies she would make every now and then. They were so delicious! My only problem is that I can’t replicate their taste and texture despite many tries 🙁
Ricotta cheese on toast. Mom would mix ricotta cheese with a little sugar and cinnamon , spread it thickly on bread, and place it under the broiler until “done.” Yum!
Granny’s bran muffins. When I was a kid they were one of the two things I was willing to eat. When I was at Granny’s I had them crumbled up with milk in the morning and heated with butter for lunch and dinner.
My mom got the recipe and made them at home, but they tasted completely different and I didn’t want them. I guess it had to be made with North Carolina milk, and North Carolina bran cereal.
I have no idea how to make either of these, but they ae a toss up for my favorite recipe. Both made by my Grandma Nieters who probably learned to make them from her Polish mother. Almond Creme cookies, and Potato Soup. She used to make them for my sisters and I whenever we spent the night at her house. Yum!
Are you sure $99 is too much for the perfect Loopy coffee maker? Maybe you can find another red one someplace else for a more reasonable price.
My recipe item is actually my husband’s. HIs mother always made Christmas Bread for the family, but allowed no one to see the recipe. The long story made soooo much shorter is that when she passed away suddenly right before Christmas is 1999, I found what looked to be the recipe card. She had already baked the bread for that year. I started the next November and tried to make the bread. I burned out 4 mixers trying to decode (you read that right…decode) the recipe. But, on Christmas morning, everyone had Christmas bread. My brother-in-laws and father-in-law have told me that it just wouldn’t be Christmas without Christmas Bread.
And I feel your automated phone pain. I had to lie to the gas and electric company the other day in order to get to a human being when our power kept coming on and off and the automated system told me that it had been fixed. I had to tell them that I had a gas leak in order to talk to a personand then tell the person that I had made it up!
Ooh, my favorite dessert that my grandma made was rice pudding. I can never make it like she did. It was the best!! My other Grandma used to make me sweet Tamales with raisins. I have never seen anyone make the sweet ones since. She’s gone now so i don’t get them anymore but they were good!!
My favorite (still) is raisen pie. This is a family recipe from my dad’s side of the family and I had a cousin that made me one every year for my birthday while we were teenagers. It still shows up at all the family gatherings. It is a custard-type pie that is really yummy and I know when it is made that someone is thinking of me.
my mom makes pumpkin squares in the fall around thanksgiving and Christmas. my sister loves them so much that there is a dance you’re sure to see any time she even mentions the treat!! also, this year, i’m obsessed with pumpkin fluff, which is a quick and fairly healthy treat made of three whopping ingredients (well, and a little cinnamon for spice! 😉 ). mmmmmmmm… fall!
AT&T has the WORST phone system. I thought they were a phone company they should get the phone call thing right. I don’t have home phone because I tried to ask a question about phone and DSL service and spent 30 minutes trying to get a person on the phone. I said boo to them and just used my cell phone.
My mom used to make applesauce cake for my birthday. I loved it. I remember when I was about 23 (almost 20 yrs ago)…. I had just broken up with my boyfriend. We had rented a cottage for a week, but I went alone with my dachsund. My parents showed up to take me to the theatre. She went out to the car to grab some things and came back with an applesauce cake!! It was very comforting for a solo vacation after a break-up!!! I still remember that… can’t really remember what that boyfriend looked like but I remember that cake.
My Grandmother made homemade bread every Saturday for her children’s families. She would hand it out after church on Sunday. ( An added incentive to be in church on Sunday!)
My grandmother lived around the corner from us. I was an only child and the only grandchild in town so I got spoiled! A couple of my favorites were classic comfort foods – chicken and dumplings and meatloaf. Unfortunately my grandmother never used exact measurements. Everything was how is “felt” or looked or tasted. Even though I often watched and helped, I still can’t duplicate her recipes. My mother made a wonderful chocolate layer cake that was frequently my birthday cake. My mother also made hundreds of intricately decorated Christmas cookies. My grandmother has been dead 20 years and my mother has Alzheimer’s. Makes me sad know that I will never enjoy their specialties again.
Pumpkin Pie and Prayer Bars that Gramma always makes with the girls.
My great-grandmother used to make this sourdough bread when I was a little kid, and the only way to eat it was toasted with real butter. I have no idea what the recipe is, and the closest thing I can find is the bread the amish make and bring to town every Saturday… which is not nearly as good as hers. One thing I regret is not finding out how to make it before she passed.
My great Aunt Marion made a cut-out Christmas cookie that had a walut and brown sugar topping. It became my favorite Christmas cook and still is today (50 years later!). My Mom and I continue to make these cookies together each year. I don’t think they have another name besides “Aunt Marion’s Cookies”. Just thinking about them makes me wonder how long until Christmas! Also, my Aunt Marion was the first person who taught me to knit.
My dad made zwetschgen knödel – Austrian plum dumplings. It was a recipe he got from his grandmother. They are so tasty, little Italian prune plums wrapped in this kind of wheaty dough covered in bread crumbs and boiled, then you cut them open and dump a bunch of sugar on them. We would have them for dinner in the late summer when the plums are in season. It was awesome, like dessert for dinner. Mmmmm now I want some.
Incidentally, my dad used to call my mom his little zwetschgenknödel when they were first dating, but she got annoyed when she found out it meant dumpling because she thought he was calling her fat. I think it’s cute!
Congratulations on getting the new loopy room up and running.
I found your red kitchen aid coffee maker on amazon for $79, so there might be hope yet.
My favorite recipe is my grandparents’ fig cookies. I have no idea what the recipe is, and I should probably get it from my grandmother. She makes the filling from fig, honey and some other stuff, and then the cookie is a very basic not sweet cookie recipe (which I don’t know either) and then the cookie is rolled out and a teaspoon of fig filling is put onto it and then we cut a circle around the fig and seal it up into a little fig dumpling. Then we have these little knives and we cut little designs into the cookie.
I think these are very traditional Sicilian fig cookies.
My mother started freezing the christmas cookies (fig cookies included) so that we wouldn’t eat them before christams came around and she had no cookies to put out for guests. It didn’t work though – my brother and I just developed a taste for frozen cookies. 🙂
Growing up I did a lot of cooking with my mom and I enjoyed it all. I have a few favorite recipes but the best is her Spinach Lasagna. That one’s special because my 11 year old loves to make it now too. I just grin while I supervise.
Every 4th of July one of my aunts makes a really nice rice krispie treat in a fun shape. It might be fairly simple, but that was always one of my favorites.
It would have to be my Grams’ “Slush Mush” – aka Tuna Casserole. With Peas and macaroni noodles…mmmm. I may just have to make some tonight. No matter how hard I try, I still can’t make it as good as she used to, but it still brings warm and fuzzies. My mom and I used to go over and visit her and she’d make it for us special, with creamed cabbage. Lovely.
My gramma makes the world’s best pot roast. She puts sliced onions under the meat so it doesn’t burn, and adds tons of veggies–potatoes, carrots, pearl onions and parsnips. Somehow it’s always perfectly cooked and just melts in your mouth, and the veggies are firm on the outside but squishy on the inside!
She stopped making it for several years though–she said she couldn’t find good enough quality meat to make it with. Then my mom took her to Whole Foods and she’s made it every time we’ve visited her since! 🙂
Congratulations on getting the Loopy Room up and running, and on the new kitty! 🙂
My mom makes cranberry sauce every Thanksgiving. She started making it when I was about 8. I rebelled back then-her’s was NOT as good as the canned kind that we got before. It wasn’t sweet enough, it was too chunky, it just was not right. Then, I grew up a bit and discovered it was really, really good!
She even sent some to my first Thanksgiving away from home. It made me happy.
I have several favorite polish recipes prepared by my mother-in-law. Poppyseed Kuchen (sp?) is one of them. Unfortunately my mother-in-law, and her mother before her, don’t believe in sharing recipes and we’ll probably never get those that aren’t written down. Actually, one time when we were at her home for a family gathering, my husband “stole” her buttermilk biscuit recipe, went into the bathroom to write it down, and put it back in her recipe box.
My grandmother was a master at making cakes with liquor in them. My most favorite was her rum cake, which is now traditionally my birthday cake because I loved them so much. She used to make them and ship them to me wherever I lived, and when she couldn’t make them anymore she had a friend (one who started a cake business) make one for me using her recipe.
I started eating this as a little kid, when she’d go lightly on the rum, which mostly baked off anyway. Funny thing is, I don’t actually care too much for rum. I just love this cake, though.
My grandmother also had ab excellent Chocolate Creme de Menthe cake recipe, as well as a biting Kalua cake whose taste was a bit more “acquired.”
When I was attending elementary school I visited my grandma every monday during lunchbreak. I don’t know her secret and I will never learn it as she’s suffering from dementia now (she’s 94), but she made me the most delicious mini pancakes. THey were so good that I refused to eat pancakes anywhere else, I was so spoiled by my grandma’s gift to make them that I couldn’t appreciate the taste of normal pancakes anymore. I would put loads of sugar on them and make a huge mess with it in the living room while watching taped episodes of “Hunter”, I think my grandma had a thing for him and that’s why we always watched him.
I’m so glad to have these old memories to turn to now that she’s in a state where she hardly recognizes me anymore.
So hard to pick just one! So I’ll say my grandmother’s goulash. It’s not traditional and probably not very Hungarian, but we all love it.
That’s easy! Nobody makes apple pie like my grandmother on my mother’s side. She used to make one for me everytime I would go visit because she knew I loved them so much.
I think of her every time I have a piece of apple pie and wonder what was in it that made it so darn good. Must have been the love.
Funny the memories this is bringing out. I only scanned the first 50 responses, but there are some similar thoughts there. When we were kids, we were poor, I’m told (I certainly don’t remember that!). So we had some things like casseroles that my mother hates (and others in the family also), but were inexpensive to feed a family of 10, and also some soups (that again, some in the family hate). My favorite casserole is hamburger/corn/noodle, very simple, egg noodles, a pound of ground beef browned up, a can of creamed corn and a can of condensed tomato soup. My favorite soup is corn chowder with knockwurst. Second is split pea soup.
My grandmother made the best fried chicken. Likely drowned in fat (unlike my mother’s), but, oh, it tasted awfully good.
My favorite items from my grandmother were, cabbage rolls, cottage cheese pie, and sugar kuchen. She always had cookies in the freezer and several pies to choose from and always a package of caramel and poppyseed rolls and anyother food she thought we might need for our trip home.
My mom always makes the family pineapple upsidedown cake for special days, and monkey bread when i’m coming to visit. Of course, i called it “Monkey Brains” for years, thinking that was the real name. Little dough balls rolled in cinnamon and stuck together look like brains, at least, right?
My mom would make my sister and me a special treat from the left over pie crust pieces…she would put the bits and pieces on a baking sheet, sprinkle them with sugar and cinamon and bake until the crust was golden brown….simply the best to come home from school and be greated with warm sugary treats….
My grandma used to make snickerdoodles every time the family gathered at her house. She had six kids and two lived in town, one an hour away and two about five hours away, so needless to say it took only the flimsiest of excuses to get the huge clan together. She’d bake snickerdoodles and there would be a fight when they finally cooled down just enough to be eaten in their cinnamon-sugary goodness. It’s still my favorite cookie in the world, though she hasn’t made them in years and everyone moved away.
My favorite childhood baked good comes from my dads side of the family, and it is a very aquired taste. It is Greman Springerlies. My grandma taught her daughter (my aunt) who taught my mother. I now live 15 hours from my mom, and she makes me a tin of these for Christmas and ships them. I love the strong anise seed flavor dunked in my hot chocolate. Christmas isnt Christmas with out them.
My 92 year-old Grandma (also German) makes the best homemade noodles on the planet. There is some chicken in the noodles, but the noodles are what it’s all about. She mostly makes them for holiday meals, so we don’t get to have them very often. Everything my Grandma cooks is wonderful, but anyone in my family will tell you that her noodles are the best.