Family recipe Monday: custards and puddings

It's about that time of year when the cool, light desserts start sounding good. Not that there's a time when they don't....but even though the weather has been on the cool side itself here lately, the days are long, and lighter fare sounds better and better. Here are some great ways to end a long day, with minimal or no oven heating.

Egg custard

4 eggs
¾ cup sugar
3 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla
Pinch salt

Lightly beat the eggs, add sugar and continue beating. Add milk and vanilla and pour into an unbaked pie shell. Sprinkle top with nutmeg and bake 25-30 minutes at 250* F.
--Vada Brooks Johnson

Jell-O, of course, defined an enormous number of recipes in the 20th century. If you're ever in the Rochester, NY, area, you can check out the Jell-O Gallery. There are a number of those recipes that are mercifully forgotten now--check out James Lileks's Gallery of Regrettable Food for some prime, hilarious examples--but this one is a keeper.

Lemon fluff

1 pkg. lemon or orange Jell-O
¾ cup hot water
1 cup sugar
¼ cup lemon juice
1 tall can of milk
Vanilla wafers for crumbs

Partly congeal Jell-O. When Jell-O is slightly jelled, whip, adding sugar and lemon juice. Whip again thoroughly. Chill milk and whip. Combine with Jell-O and mix. Line dish with crumbs. Pour in fluff, sprinkle with crumbs and set.
--Vada Brooks Johnson

Here is another recipe from the cryptic series. We'd love to provide you the directions, but this is all there is. If anyone has any insights into how this was made, please send them on. Until then, we, too, say "Nuts."

Apple pudding

1 T shortening
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour
¼ tsp soda
¼ tsp salt
1 apple, cubed
Nuts

--Vada Brooks Johnson

Frozen Angel comes from a co-worker of Vada's, who worked in Lubbock for years at the Frontier Stamp Company. This recipe is written on a Frontier Stamp balance sheet form from the office. You can see from its condition why we are working to rescue recipes.

Frozen angel dessert

1 cup graham cracker crumbs
6 T sugar
3 T melted butter
2 eggs, separated
1 can (1 1/3 cup) Eagle Brand milk
½ cup lemon juice
1 T grated lemon rind
1 can Angel Flake coconut

Combine cracker crumbs with 2 T sugar and melted butter. Press mixture on bottom and sides of lightly buttered dish. Chill. Beat egg yolks until thick and lemon-colored. Combine Eagle Brand milk. Stir in lemon rind and lemon juice until thick. Stir in 1 cup coconut. Beat egg whites until stiff and gradually add rest of sugar. Fold gently into lemon mixture. Pour in tray, sprinkle top with remaining coconut. Chill in freezer until firm (4 to 6 hours).
--Mattie Ruth

Caveat: Eagle Brand is sweetened condensed milk, NOT evaporated milk. They are not the same and are not interchangeable. Overlook this distinction at your own risk. Eagle Brand was invented by Gail Borden in the 1850s as an early way of combating food-borne diseases in pre-refrigeration days. Pre-refrigeration days were scary, especially in the warmer climates. This became a successful product as a part of military provisions in the Civil War. He is remembered, among other ways, by the state of Texas naming the county of Borden and its county seat of Gail, which is not far from Lubbock, in his honor. Texans of my grandmother's generation simply called it "Eagle Brand" in all recipes. You're just supposed to know what that means. Evaporated milk, which didn't come along until the 20th century, has 60% of its water removed, but no added sugar. The sugar in Eagle Brand is itself a preservative, which is why it was originally added.
 
Finally, here's a real classic that uses both evaporated milk AND sweetened condensed milk. That's a sure sign of a Texas recipe. NB: Fredericksburg, Texas, produces the best peaches on this or any other planet.

Fredericksburg fresh peach ice cream

5 eggs
2 ½ cups sugar
1 14-oz can Eagle Brand milk
1 13-oz can evaporated milk
1 T vanilla extract
Milk
2 cups mashed peaches

Beat the eggs until frothy. Add 2 cups of the sugar and beat well. Add the condensed milk, evaporated milk, and vanilla. Beat until well blended. Pour the mixture into a 1-gallon freezer container. Add enough milk to fill the freezer container to within 4” from the top. Freeze for about 5 minutes or until the custard is thick. Combine the peaches and the remaining ½ cup of sugar. Remove the dasher from the freezer container and add the peaches to the custard. Replace the dasher and continue freezing until firm.

We all remember cranking ice cream in the hand-turned freezer. Funny how the grownups all set a good example by volunteering to do this at the beginning and encouraging us to follow their example at the end...

Happy Monday.

Migration count

Rapid Creek, early morning

Today was day 3 of the West River Migration Count. I would like to take this opportunity to register an official protest against the hours that birds keep. 6 a.m. on a beautiful weekend morning is a bit over the top, unless you're a bird person or stumbling along in the wake of one. Next time, the birds can come to us, says I.

We birded along Canyon Lake and upstream along Rapid Creek for most of the morning, then moved up to Mary Hall Park for a few hours. Gene is compiling the statistics, as birders do, and we'll post those later. I just have a few shots of the sightings. Enjoy.

Cedar waxwing, posing nicely for bleary-eyed photographer

Cedar waxwing

Great blue heron avidly fishing at the fish hatchery ponds. I think this is cheating.

Wood ducks at the fish hatchery

Common mergansers on Canyon Lake

Canada geese

Osprey coming in

Osprey circling

Osprey circling

Turkey vultures rising

Catbird. These were making nests all around the tiny creek in Mary Hall Park.

Black-headed grosbeak being splendid in the sun.

Sign not normally seen within most city limits...but this is Rapid City.

Black Hills sights

I have finally found my neighborhood...

I love telling out-of-state friends that I'm driving to Deadwood for the day. It makes them think that I really am living in Wild West Dakota Territory, with pistols and Bowie knives in hand, or in teeth, every time I leave the house. The truth is more prosaic: Deadwood is one of the state's most important historic preservation centers, and the annual Deadwood Historic Preservation Symposium yesteday and today focused on the effect of natural disasters on the Black Hills region's history. Since I have been somberly remembering the Lubbock tornado of 40 years ago this past week, attending this symposium seemed (and was) particularly timely.

The Black Hills themselves apparently act as a bad weather magnet, focusing blizzards and rains on the area. I particularly liked the rather terse quote one speaker cited from a newspaper editor describing the latest disaster: "Anything can happen here; this is the Black Hills."

All that happened today, though, was a terrific symposium on disasters and local history--I am no more living on a creek up here than I am moving to a houseboat in the North Atlantic, I can tell you that--and a great excuse for a meandering drive back, camera at hand.

Elementary school and cannon, two things not normally found in such close proximity.

Sign, Center City

Church building, Center City

Honest Abe as a road sign

Motorcycle in tree. No, I have no idea why, or how. Or why.

Roadside car

I have also found Shirley's neighborhood.

Water wheel, Nemo Road

Giant chair art, Nemo Road

Barn, Nemo Road

Doty Center volunteer fire department building

Here's hoping everyone is having an equally splendid weekend. Stay out of creeks, off high ridges, and away from the windward slopes. And watch out for the livestock....

Spring snow?!

Barn, Rapid City

Well, it's back. It seems that snow and winter can't resist a few too many unwanted curtain calls as we head toward--ahem--summer. It started as a cold rain and moved into a heavy wet snowfall all morning, then back into rain this afternoon. And possibly more tonight, unless it doesn't decide to heed the forecasts. After which, the weather will be near-ideal for the next ten days or so. Unless it isn't.

But it was a lovely morning with a diffuse grey light. Here's what it looked like up here:

Crabapple blossoms in snow

More crabapple blossoms in snow

Distant hillside in blowing snow

Main campus

You'll remember these characters. Here they are in rapidly melting snow.

Maybe spring is in their step after all.

Dinosaur Hill as clouds finally break up.

Migration

Avocets in flight over Seavey Lake

Thursday night was full of wind and a weird almost-snow. Sometime between the end of Thursday night and the start of Friday night, the winds stopped and the flocks of migratory birds poured into the area. Saturday morning, birds were suddenly everywhere--in town as well as on the prairies. There were perfect clouds of tiny sparrows, feeding and resting, in the yard and on the roadsides. Every bit of standing water was full of waterfowl, shorebirds and other avifauna. There's no going back now--spring is officially here.

The shorebirds have flown tremendous distances to breed; the Wilson's phalaropes winter in South America, in the Andes, and will breed on the prairies from here north to Canada before returning to the Andes at the end of summer. The eared grebes winter in southern California and Mexico, on the Gulf of California. Upland sandpipers spend up to eight months of the year in the pampas of South America. Their arrival is an astonishing feat, accomplished with no fanfare every year. Their migrations are tightly timed to the change of seasons in the north, when food is once again available here. For them, it is an endless summer, achieved at the expense of mind-boggling hard work.

Early early EARLY on Sunday morning, we saw one of our colleagues off for two weeks of paleontology field work, and then, instead of going back to sleep like normal people, headed out to a particularly species-rich prairie pond to catch the show. Here are a few shots of the results.

Blue-winged teal stretching its blue wings

Eared grebe

Wilson's phalarope (left) and eared grebe

Duck landing in a mixed group, with willets on the grass

Sharp-tailed grouse, lone male displaying for lone female (hidden) too close to the road

Sharp-tailed grouse figuring out that the road is too close

Upland sandpiper about to fly....

...and displaying on a fencepost after it lands....

...then joining the object of its attentions back on the ground. Ah, spring.

Wilson's phalarope. These birds swim in fast, spinning circles, constantly feeding. It was a long flight in to South Dakota.

Wilson's phalaropes

Wilson's phalaropes. There were over 300 of these on the lake on Saturday morning, about half that this morning. This is a very brief stopover point for many of these species.

Wilson's phalarope. This is the female, who is more brightly colored than the male, in a reversal of the usual pattern.

Wilson's phalarope

The West River Migration Count starts here this weekend; I wonder if anything will top Sunday morning's show. Happy Tuesday.