Colonial Corn Cakes

Last week for Activity Days Emma’s group talked about President George Washington.  They made “hoe cakes” to get a taste of breakfast from colonial times.  Apparently Mr. Washington’s favorite breakfast was these hoe cakes with honey and butter on them.  Emma made them for us on Saturday, and woke up early today so she would have time to help making them again. A big hit at our house, they’re sort of like corn based crepes. I’m planning to keep this recipe handy because it’s a good one for using with ingredients I have in my food storage too.

Hoe Cakes

1 Cup cornmeal

1 Cup flour

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups hot milk

4 Tbsp. honey

2 beaten eggs

Mix together the cornmeal, flour, and salt. Heat the milk until it just begins to boil (steam appears). Pour it in the dry misture. Add the honey and eggs. Stir just until the ingredients are wet. Spoon batter onto a hot, oiled griddle. Turn to brown both sides. We topped ours with butter, honey or maple syrup. So yummy!

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Mint Jelly Cookies

These are my all time favorite cookies for Christmas time. You may know them as thumb print cookies. I haven’t had the time yet to make them, and will finally be making them today. The recipe is from my great grandmother- my mother’s dad’s mother. Yum!

1/2 lb. butter

1/2 C. sugar

3 egg yolks

2 1/4 C. flour

1 drop vanilla

dash salt

Combine all ingredients except flour and mix well. Add flour and mix. Form dough into small balls and using your finger or a wooden spoon handle dipped in water make a well. Add mint green apple jelly (or any red jelly) to fill well to 3/4 full. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes. They don’t brown, but will look firm and dry when done.

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What’s for Breakfast?

A little known fact about me is that I come from a father with a strong cereal addiction gene. Cold cereal was always one of his top choices for a late night snack, and I have picked up on this habit big time! Rob teases me that I can’t go through a day without eating a bowl, and it was especially true when I was pregnant. Maybe my body is craving the calcium, because I’m not much of a milk drinker. Well, the addiction is now being past on to yet another generation. We always have at least four boxes of cereal in the pantry and eat it almost every day for breakfast.

I have a rule for picking out cereal at the store: it has to have 10 grams of sugar or less per serving. That way when the kids bring me the box of Cocoa Puffs I can say, “How much sugar is in it?” And their usual answer goes something like, “oh man, 12!” And that ends the begging. There are exceptions for cereals like Frosted Mini Wheats that also have a higher protein or fiber count.Needless to say they were very excited when the cereals came out with “75% Less Sugar” or “1/3 Less Sugar” in huge letters across the front of the box. Now cereals that were once out of reach are within the rules!

At our house we also have “breakfast dinner” which is where we eat the traditional breakfast foods like: waffles, pancakes, sausage, scrambled eggs etc. for dinner because otherwise we would miss out on these great foods. My mom was one of those wonderful moms that got up every morning and made a nice breakfast for us. Even through those early morning seminary years! I will always admire her for that, but have come to accept that in that area my children will have much different memories… “Mom, we’re out of paper bowls and milk! Now what do we eat for breakfast?”

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Our Favorite Dinner

This is one of our family’s favorite dinners. There are a few things that everyone really likes, and this is one of them. Salmon is about the only fish we eat in our house and I usually cover it with lemon salt and dill and then broil it, but in this house with no real oven, and a BBQ that was crawling with ants, this time I made it in a frying pan on the stove. Couscous is very popular around here, but seems to end up all over the house whenever we have it, so it is a bit of a luxury. The mixed vegetables are a good compromise because I can tell Hunter to pick two vegetables that he’s willing to eat, and eat all of those on his plate. Anyway, now I have something for my recipe category!

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