Fun Foods

What kinds of fun foods have you made?

Do you remember making fun foods? Did you make cookies for holidays? I accumulated a lot of cookie cutters so I could make sugar cookie dough and cut out holiday shapes for the different holidays of the year. My mother usually used a glass to cut out round sugar cookies, but I liked making different shapes. Did you make candy from scratch? My mother would make fudge and would recruit me to stir the fudge. If it wasn't stirred enough it would be grainy. She also made divinity from scratch. It took a lot of stirring and testing to make sure it was cooked to just the right stage. My mother made rhubarb pies and custard pies. When my mother baked bread, she would often fry flattened pieces of the dough. We could put honey or jam or cinnamon sugar on them, but they were good with nothing else on them. Sometimes we made popcorn in a pan with a lid. We would have to shake the pan over the burner. If we got tired and set the pan down on the burner for too long, we would have burned popcorn. My grandmother had a plum tree. She made plum-filled cookies and frequently offered them to us. One time she gave us dried corn. It was so sweet that it was almost like candy. A couple of years ago one of my daughters wanted to make chocolates. Again there was a lot of stirring to get it cooked just right. Then we added lots of different toppings. Customizing the chocolates with what we wanted was a lot of fun. I have learned to make treats with stevia or just using fruits for sweetening. I like making a type of fudge with dates, coconut oil, cocoa and shredded coconut. I learned how to make teddy bears out of bread dough. They are fun to give to someone for a special occasion or to say thank you or to welcome a new neighbor. Making a family recipe book could be a memory making project. Recording how you made fun foods can be an important part of your life story.

Recipe for Teddy Bear Bread with Photo Cutting Board
by storykeeper

What Kind of Candy Do You Remember?

Here's another question for your life story:

With kind of candy do you remember?

Growing up I remember penny candy at the small store in our town.  You could get one or two pieces of candy for a penny.  If you had a nickel, you could buy 5 to 10 pieces of candy. You could buy candy bars for 3 cents or for 5 cents. 

In the summer time to remember the pioneers, my mother would make honey candy.  We would pull and stretch the candy just like taffy.  It reminded us of how nice it was to have candy we could buy.

Trick or Treat candy at Halloween were a variety of different candies.  Today most of the candy handed out seems to be mini chocolate candy bars. 

Homemade candy was a part of getting ready for Christmas.  Standing and stirring a pan full of fudge to prevent it from turning to sugar was a lot of work, but the results were wonderful tasting.  Beating the egg whites and adding the hot syrup to make divinity was fun to do.  Testing the consistency of the syrup in a cup of water was fun and delicious too as you got to eat the tested portion.  Pouring hot syrup over peanuts to make peanut brittle was fun too.  Sometimes the candy didn't come out just right, yet we would eat it any way.  When it turned out just right, it was so good.

At a dinner with friends some started talking about the kind of candy they had when they went to the movies.  They would buy the long lasting kind of candy so it would last through most of the movie.

When my daughters came to visit this year, they brought ingredients for making good for you chocolate.  It was a lot of work melting the cocoa butter at a very low temperature.  Then we added different ingredients like nuts and fruits.  The best ones had lots of nuts and fruits in them.   

Writing down your memories of making candy or buying or receiving candy is a part of your story.  Write down the people who gave you the candy or who made the candy.  Did you have a certain kind of candy at certain times of the year?  Have your tried to make candy that is better for you or have you banned candy from your life?  Record your experience with candy and add another interesting chapter to your story.