*i love you* Fudge

Barefoot Love!

*I Cook Barefooted!*

I'm not much of a chocolate fiend.

I wouldn't make a very convincing cookie monster. 
(Though I do like his style!)

And you pro-bab-ly won't see me high-tailin' it 
to catch up with the ice cream man on a hot day.

But wrap some homemade fudge up in a little blanket,

tie a love note to it,

and

address it to me...

and I will follow you around like a fat, sick puppy

because that is what I will be once I'm finished gorging on compliments and candy!

  

Collect.

Compose.

Seal and Deliver.

"I LOVE... 

That you can turn an off handed comment about broccoli 

into a three hour discussion about politics in organized sports."

A dear friend gave *i love you* jars as gifts to all us girls a few years ago for Christmas.

I fell in love with her idea and did the same for my Kentucky family.

After collecting mason jars of all sizes, shapes, and colors,

scouting out the best (and idiot proof) 
homemade fudge recipes I could find,

and hunkering down with pen and paper,

I continued the gift that kept on giving... 

I spread around the LOVE!

*I wonder if she knows just what she's started.*

"I LOVE...

That you get so excited about everything you do.

Nothing half ass for Scarlett."

       ~ A few of my favorites ~

S'more Fudge

 2 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup evaporated milk

1 (7 oz. jar) marshmallow creme

2 cups chocolate chips

1 tsp. vanilla

Butter a small square pan.

In a large pot, combine sugar, butter and evaporated milk.

Bring to a boil over medium heat;

stirring constantly.

Boil 5 minutes and remove from heat.

Add marshmallow creme and chocolate chips.

Blend till smooth.

Stir in vanilla.

Pour into pan and cool to room temperature. 

Score the fudge into small square pieces.

Refrigerate till firm.

Remove fudge from pan and cut rest of way through.

Refrigerate.

"A piece for You. A piece for Me."

Chocolate Mint Fudge

1 (12 oz.) pkg. semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk

6 oz. white chocolate

2 tsp. vanilla

1 Tbsp. peppermint extract

Add 1 cup milk to chocolate chips. Melt.

Add vanilla.

Pour half of the mixture into an 8x8 in. wax paper-lined pan.

Let cool for 10 minutes. 

Melt white chocolate with remaining milk.

Add peppermint and green food coloring.

(Mixture will be very thick.)

Spread on first layer.

Cool another 10 minutes.

Top with other half of chocolate mixture.

Cool.

Remove from pan, remove paper. Cut into squares.

Refrigerate.

"A piece for You. A piece for Me."

Maple Nut Fudge

1 cup maple syrup

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup cream

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup walnuts

1/2 tsp. vanilla

Boil sugar, cream, and butter until soft ball stage is reached.

Add nuts and vanilla.

Beat until ready to pour into wax paper-lined pan.

Cool.

Refrigerate.

"A piece for You. A piece for Me." 

***

You want reviews?
How 'bout,
"I Love... This!" ヅ





 How 'bout You?
Have a recipe you want to share on 
*I Cook Barefooted!*?
Show some Barefoot Love and...

Send it here:  scarlettcolleen@yahoo.com 
Want to include a photo? Fun!

What's on your table?

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.

All life is an experiment.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 *Barefoot Love* Airbrush By, Colleen 
2012

*I Cook Barefooted!* ~ Key Lime Pie

Barefoot Love!

We moved a lot when I was little.


"Our battered suitcases
were piled on the sidewalk again;
we had longer ways to go.
But no matter,
the road is life."
~ Jack Kerouac

California 
introduced us to
Giant Redwoods, the West Coast,

and Disneyland.

I was an infant;

Breast was the meal du jour!

Alaska 
introduced us to 
a very… long… car ride,

and bean sandwiches.

We were poor. 

We had love and beans.

Florida 
introduced us to
the East Coast...

 The Florida Keys ~ That's me there; the little smiling face in the two piece!

the Sun, the Sand, and the Wind in our hair...

and it began my love affair
with my Be-lov-ed

Key Lime Pie!


"Adventure is a path.
Real adventure ~ self-determined, self-motivated,
often risky...
forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world.
The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it.
Your body will collide with the earth
and you will bear witness.
In this way you will be compelled
to grapple with the limitless kindness
and bottomless cruelty of humankind...
and perhaps realize that you yourself
are capable of both.
This will change you.
Nothing will ever again 
be black-and-white."
~ Mark Jenkins

In 1972,

my mom clipped a recipe from the Tampa Times.

She selected true key limes,

as the ingredient list suggested,

on a drive down to the Florida Keys.

Key limes are yellow, when ripe,

and smaller than the limes

found in these parts.

They’re tart and bitter and delicious!

The following November

we introduced 
Our Kentucky Family 
to a

Thanksgiving mouth explosion!

We've been hooked since!

There are few culinary pleasures that actually

tug on my heartstrings.

I do love me a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut!

And, I am a sucker for a bowl of warm pasta and bread.

But it is that last Thursday in November,

every year since I was four,

that my mouth, literally, becomes a pie hole.

 “Really, it’s green?”

Yes, it is my friends!

Yes, it is.

☮

Key Lime Pie

For Pie:

1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk

4 Egg yolks (Save the whites for Meringue!)

¼ cup Lime juice,
(Key limes preferably, but bottled lime juice will suffice!)

3 to 4 drops of Green food coloring
*Presentation folks. It's all in the presentation.*

1 Graham cracker crust

For Meringue:

4 Egg whites

1 tsp. Cream of tartar

3 Tbsp. Sugar

Beat egg yolks until light yellow.

Add sweetened condensed milk and lime juice.

Mix in drops of green, and Voila!

Pour into graham crust.

Beat all ingredients for the meringue in mixer

until stiff and peaks form.

~If you’re looking to combine dessert with your workout:

Whisk in a glass bowl and count after me…

One, Two, Ten-thousand! ~

Pile immediately on top of pie in pretty dips and waves.

Bake at 350 degrees until tips of meringue are lightly browned.

You want reviews?

    How 'bout, 

"Green is my new favorite color!"  ヅ

     

How 'bout You?
Have a recipe you want to share on 
*I Cook Barefooted!*?
Show some Barefoot Love and...
Send it here:  scarlettcolleen@yahoo.com 
Want to include a photo? Fun!

What's on your table?


 

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.

All life is an experiment.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 *Barefoot Love*Airbrush By, Colleen 
2012

The Soap Jar

My grandmother was an artist. I don’t know that I understood this fully, until I recalled an encounter with the soap jar. We think we know a person, a loved one passed on, through the words they’ve spoken or the love they’ve shared. But what of the Life only they’ve experienced, as the unique individuals that they were?  There’s more to me, I can tell you, than that mass of dirty laundry staring at me from across the hall, which unfortunately I am in charge of, and that I will no doubt leave behind without a second glance when my time here has expired. A Life is truly in the details. It is in the malleable mosaic of living, and in the very existence of Self. We are complex creatures, difficult to figure out really.  However, when we are still, when we are quiet, the minutia of Self are revealed – in a word, a smile, or even in an old jar sitting beneath a window’s ledge, smelling of an Irish Spring and soap.      

Though certainly skilled in her more mundane, household duties – my grandmother could snap a bean and hang a bed sheet out to dry with style and speed – it is a treat for those of us who love her, each and every time, we happen across those memories we know to be, authentically Helen. In a sagging cardboard box overflowing with well-used sewing patterns smelling of old newsprint and attic, or occasionally in the impossibly small-and-perfect embroidery she once created, or even in an old pencil sketch of song birds perched atop a “Good Evening”, our family still marvels at her brilliance and her flair for thoughtful ingenuity in the simplest of things.

My grandmother’s most impressive talents, however, lay hidden in her knack for collecting and repurposing just about anything. Snug drawers, littered shelves, and nooks-and-crannies neatly housed rusty old nails pulled from splintered old barn wood, bits of fabric (so meager in size, that Hunca Munca herself would turn up her nose), stamps and greeting cards and pressed paper napkins – pencil stubs, colored glass and all things pink-and-pretty. In each of these things, these “…wagon wheel, Roy Rogers, garagesale…” things, we are given a glimpse into this simply-complex mosaic that was her Life.

~

So, who saves nasty old soap in a jar, I asked myself years ago, wavering then between my good sense and snobbery.  I stepped into her kitchen to ask her the same, where she stood rifling through a drawer in the sideboard. 

“Scarlett, bring those young eyes of yours over here and see if you can’t find a rubber band in that drawer.”  She straightened no more than three square cards with matching envelopes, which she held in her hand. “I want you to put these in your suitcase and take them home to Missouri when you leave.”

I closed my mouth, and quickly handed her a large silver paper clip resting on top of a pile of pens, some sort of glue or grease in a crimped tube, and a small flashlight.

She resumed her search, “Let’s find a rubber band to put around them, so they stay nice.”

Her eyes looked at me then, to the jar I still held in my hand, and then back to the task ahead of her. “Go get a small paper bag off the back porch, behind the tool box, and we’ll scrape some of that soap into it for your family.” 

‘Seriously,’ I laughed inside – so hard, it was difficult to keep my nostrils from flaring and tears escaping.  I could just see the look on my husband’s face as I handed him a clean towel, and the jar, before his morning shower.

“For what purpose,” I muttered under my breath, disbelieving. It became blaringly obvious; there was only one thing to do. Put it back where you found it, Scarlett, and nobody gets hurt.   

It was too late for that. She had heard my protestations. “You have the energy and the know-how – why don’t you take it home for me and see what pretty little soaps you can make out of it, and give them as gifts this Christmas.”

“Thanks, Grandma,” I answered over my shoulder, “but I don’t think we need any more soap right now.” I quickly replaced the quart canning jar beneath the windowsill and turned to see her grinning at me from the door. (She was much faster than she looked.)

“Now, that’s perfectly good soap,” she assured me, deftly stretching the thin, elastic band she’d found in another drawer, over a sleeping fawn painted in sepia tones. “That’s the trouble with this world today. People just toss things out when there’s plenty of good use to be had in them.”

We stood there a moment or two, before she gave in, gazing at the soap jar beneath the window.  I suppose, if I had looked closely enough then, I might have noticed how daylight played on the splashy hues of pink pastels, and variegated greens, and how the warm Kentucky sun danced along the creamy slivers of white behind the glass. Had I given it time to see it as anything other than used up bits, perhaps in the perfumed scent of a rose or the clean scent of a manly Irish Spring, I might have seen the beauty in such a thing, possibly even shared her vision – if I were quiet enough, still enough.   

I know now, the eagerness and the love behind the grin; that we all might see the wonder and the beauty and the artistry she left behind, in a perfectly good mosaic. 

 

You're Not From Around Here, Are You?

I am often asked, “You’re not from around here, are you?” inviting conversation every time I open my mouth to speak. It is with pride that I strut my southern roots, calling attention to my place of origin with drawn out syllables served up with a side of hospitality. This unmistakable calling card, established early in my childhood, afforded me a place from which to stand on my own two feet. It gave me a name of my own and a home in my heart, no matter where the wind blew me.

To this question, my answer is always the same, “Kentucky is my home, born and raised.” It’s here my mid-western friends politely remind me that my identity crisis is showing. Despite their friendly teasing, they step to the side making room for the soap box I carry in my back pocket on the enthusiastic, if not enlightening, subject of my southern upbringing.

Home was my beginning. Here I seek constancy in times of confusion, significance in times of isolation. It is familiar ground beneath my feet, and it is the steady, insistent heartbeat of family. A willful spirit stumbled out of me in this place, brilliantly ordinary. It was here that I discovered me and yet, it is the one place I know better than I know myself.

Kentucky is my home. Home where the grass is so green it’s blue and the scrappy little redbuds shoot up like weeds. It is where I first learned to whistle, carry a tune, and tie my shoes. It was the land my ancestors left Ireland and England for; to raise their families on rich soil, worship in their faith, and to play their old-timey music every spare moment between.

This is where I heard as a child, stumbling into the kitchen on the slam of the screen door, that I was a “sight for sore eyes.” Here “everything’s fine and the goose is hangin‘ high”, if you ask Grandma. It’s where I developed a taste for the sugary tartness of handpicked gooseberries made into a pie, and to fancy southern sweet tea in a tall glass. This place is Home. It’s fried chicken in the skillet and fresh sliced tomatoes from the garden, green beans cooked down with bacon, mashed potatoes with lots of cream and butter, and jam cake with caramel icing sitting on the sideboard.

This small slice of the world is where a wave and a nod are the customary thing to do when you pass your neighbor, his tractor, or his dog on the road. It’s where the old folks miss the old ways and the young ones fight for change, and both still sit down together to supper. This place I call Home is “the dearest land outside of heaven to me,” though I have lived more than six hundred miles west of it for most of my thirty-nine years.

I am often reminded that, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” It just “happened” to drag me kicking and screaming all the way to Missouri, where unexpectedly, the gateway to the west opened a window to my heart. It is here I met and married the love of my life, and where we’ve chosen to raise our three gloriously rowdy children. In this place where blue skies blanket a sea of wheat and corn, and the serpentine banks of the Missouri River twist an weave through lush countryside, I put down roots; even as I dreamt of returning home. Here we are building new memories with every fence post set, every friendship fostered and with every waning season renewed by the next. It is here we live and laugh and cry and dream.

My native tongue is as much a part of me today as those misty blue hills mirrored in the color of my eyes. I don’t catch the moonrise above the treetops over those Kentucky hills as often as I’d like, and I’m much too late to listen for Grandpa’s “Faded Love” on the fiddle, though I can still hear the bounce of his bow on the strings. And yet, there is no distance so great between me and Home that I would fear the emptiness of a star-filled sky.

Here in this place out west, far from my beginnings, I have made a home; and yet, when I am asked the inevitable, “You’re not from around here, are you?”, as the sound of my southern roots give me away, a rise of excitement and belonging fills me up, ’cause I’m a homegrown Kentucky girl at heart and I always will be.