Tag Archives: Homemade

In Need Of Antidote for Too Many Christmas Cookies

After one to many Christmas cookies, a nice hearty soup was in order for we Bees. With our recent trip home, I knew just the antidote!

Chicken corn soup with rivels!

Have you ever tried chicken corn soup with rivels before? It’s absolutely wonderful!

Rivels? Scratching your head yet? No, no, these are not little bugs or anything crazy like that. Think of rivels as a homemade pasta. Little, perfect, delicious, little pasta’s.

In Central PA, typically we eat this soup towards the end of summer with freshly picked ears of corn. Oh how I just adore fresh sweet corn! We Bees were truly spoiled because my family would always kindly share the corn from their fields with us too. Sigh…

Speaking of family, I skyped with my grandparents this weekend and had to tell them what a proud little baker I was with my chicken corn soup accomplishments. I mean we are talking about homemade chicken stock folks! That’s serious stuff in my book, or maybe just serious time? Nevertheless, well worth it in the end! Anyways, it turns out my grandparents were cooking the soup the following day as well. Guess you can take the Bees out of Pennsylvania, but you’ll never take Pennsylvania out of the Bees.

Homemade Ice Cream

For some reason I do not have the clearest memories from when I was a child, however, simple things that I do remember include homemade ice cream and the summers at my grandparents when I was a kid growing up in central Pennsylvania. I remember we would make flavors like Teaberry, Vanilla, and Strawberry. We would sit out back on their patio and enjoy the warm summer evenings and eat our delicious ice cream.

I am sure some of you are asking what in the world is Teaberry? Teaberry is really one of the many staples from Pennsylvania. Teaberry is a tiny red berry (pink when it melts) that tastes like wintergreen. I am sure this is really an acquired taste but my husband and I enjoy it. Sometimes my gram even uses teaberry candies on top of her Christmas sugar cookies.

Mmmmm….Isn’t it funny how the simple little things remind you of some of the best memories in your life?

Yesterday I got to Skype with my grandparents and we talked about the ice cream machine briefly. From what I remember they have an older model that had a hand crank but also had a motor. I think I remember rock salt being needed as well?
Okay, where is all this talk of homemade ice cream and Teaberry flavor going?? Well, Larry bought me a Cuisinart ice cream, frozen yogurt, sorbet maker!! I am so excited and cannot wait to experiment with healthier, low fat, better for you flavors than what we can purchase at the stores.

We snapped a few pictures from my first try and experiment with flavors. We opted for fresh cherry frozen yogurt. The results were not too shabby but a bit overly sweet for our taste buds. Next time around I would tone down the sugar and vanilla. As we speak I am concocting some vanilla cinnamon ice cream.

Until next time!