July 25th is National ice cream Sundae Day. This is a simple sauce that works great for Sundaes!
P.S. It is also national chili dog day.
Chocolate Sauce
Chile Con Queso
Excellent with tortilla chips. Be sure to shred your own cheese, otherwise the dip may not be smooth.
Strawberry Lemonade Jam
Yakisoba Sauce
Use in place of Soy Sauce or in Yakisoba pork.
Maple Cream
Sort of like whipped honey, maple cream is a great addition to toast or crackers!
Cardamom Apple Jam
Some good apple choices are Golden delicious, a mixture of Granny Smith and Pink Lady, or a mixture of whatever you have. We used an unknown apple from a friends tree.
While this is good as a jam, it is also very good over vanilla ice cream!
Black Berry Jam
In the early summer, the kids often pick red blackberries. We enjoy them and occasionally have enough for a mixed berry jam. Oma told us the other day of a blackberry farm that had you pick berries for a very good price. We enjoyed picking around 30 pounds of blackberries and ate a pound or two also. They were very good.
Not wanting the berries to go to waste, we froze some, made fruit leather with some and Adrian made a pie. We used most of the berries for jam. It is wonderful on fresh sourdough bread! There are a lot of seeds in blackberries. If desired, strain part or all of the seeds.
This is a small batch jam recipe that uses very little sugar. For a sweeter jam, see notes.
Marinara Sauce (to Can)
This summer we wanted to make Marinara Sauce to can some garden tomatoes our neighbor, Mrs. Beer, shared with us. We knew she often cans her extra tomatoes, so we asked for her favorite recipe. She gave us this one and we adjusted it very slightly.
We usually eat a whole quart of sauce with spaghetti, but decided to can pints instead this year. Our thought was to use it for extra special grilled pizza since we often have that with company. This sauce is also extra good on homemade noodles.
Using roma tomatoes are best for a thick sauce, but we usually combine them with assorted tomatoes from the garden. We think it creates a better blend of flavors.
Enchilada Sauce
Instead of buying enchilada sauce, this is an easy recipe to make your own. Adjust the seasonings to your taste.
Thimbleberry Jam
Thimbleberries are a raspberry like berry that Dad introduced us to many years ago in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I will happily eat as many as I can find.
But, since we are rarely in the UP when they are ripe, Daddy often buys jars of jam for us to enjoy at home. We have only made jam once, but it was the best jam ever (memories make things a lot better don’t they?)
We went on vacation with my parents and they were showing us around where Daddy spent summers and fun places we used to visit when my siblings and I were younger. One day Mom and Dad took the kids up Brockway Mountain and while they were gone, Allan and I surprised my parents with fresh jam with berries we had picked.
