Oh, My Have We Been Dancing!

Yellowrock Country Girl – Photo by Michael Craft

After an extended break from blogging due to work and internet issues I am finally back ! 

We had a great turnout for our 2nd raid at the Wrangler Country Squares on Friday the 13th of April with the Dixie Squares of Daytona Beach coming out to steal our banner, so I was busy making sure they had a banner to take back with them! I want to send out extra special thanks to Mary Ann Kuchar  of the Dixie Squares who took some of our extra bandanas and made us three extra embroidered banners for the Wrangler Country Squares. 

Rod and I have been enjoying all the square dancing over the last few months and our club the Wrangler Country Squares has grown to 17 members! We missed dancing at the Pioneer Art Settlement on Friday April 28th as the Pioneer Art Settlement had their annual Spring Frolic with all the old-time music and antique car show , contra dancers all in attendance. 

Sunday afternoon April 30th, Rod & I attended the outdoor picnic for  the area square dancers at Reed Canal Park in Port Orange hosted by Dixie Squares and Granada Squares. After lots of hotdogs and hamburgers we danced outside to the talents of John Swindle. We had a callers square going for the new dancers to earn their “purple hearts” dancing with the callers. The dancers got to dance  with the likes of Rod Barngrover  , John Saunders and John Barrett . Thanks to the Dixie Squares for inviting Rod and I to the picnic. 

Rod & I went on up to the Flagler Waves square dance club up in Flagler Beach with the Deland Honeybees who were raiding to get their banner back. It was a pleasure to dance with RJ Hogan again, as the last time Rod and I danced to  him was at the Bass Capitol Squares in Georgetown back in 1995! Wow, how time flies! 

Rod & I also attended the annual  Spring-Time  dance on April 21st  at the Brendon Squares with Rod  getting the opportunity to call with the fantastic and talented callers;  Don Whitaker, Whit Brown, Scotty Sharrer. We had a great time with 6+ squares dancing thru the night. 

A special thanks to the volunteers that helped make a successful demo dance for the 8 to 13-year-old children at the Metro  Church on Tuesday , May 1st  for Julia and Tim Parker.  The children had a great time with the help from Tim and Julia Parker, Dick Nordine, Norma and Wayne Newton  and Alice and Michael Craft . The children learned some of the basics for square dancing and also some line dancing. 

Tuesday , May 1st continued to busy with the Wrangler Country Squares having their first Square Dance Raid to the Granada Squares of Ormond Beach to get our banner back!  Thanks to Bob H , Herman  , Loren & Iva , John,  Sue , Jerry, Lill, Joyce and Norma.  We had a great time  with the Granada Squares being great hosts and lots of food to nosh on and some great dancing with John Saunders and Dick Nordine. The Dixie Squares said they would be back soon to the Wrangler Country Squares to get our banner back and John has requested bean soup ,potato soup or clam chowder when he comes out .

Thursday night,May 3rd  we had a raid to the Dixie Squares of Daytona Beach with the Casselberry Hoedowners raiding to get their banner back. Thanks to the dancers that came up from Casselberry and Orlando to make for a successful raid; Dick Nordine was already there since he was cuing rounds ,Tim and Julia Parker who chaperoned Wayne and Norma Newton and Grant and June,   our closer dancers from Daytona, Ormond Beach and Deland  Jerry , Norma, Gene , Marty, Rod and I from the woods of Pierson .

Our dance last night at the Wrangler Country Squares was a success with 27 dancers.  I enjoyed Peggy’s cinnamon coffee cake and all the extra goodies everyone brought to go with the chicken noodle soup , fruit and cheese plates. I am changing the menu up a bit next week in honor of Mothers Day with pulled pork being on the menu. With the warm weather we are letting all our dancers and visitors know that it is casual wear  for the dances until the fall when it cools back down.

 Rod and I are heading down to Plant City of Saturday May 5th for the Paul Place Memorial Dance  where Rod will get to call with the talented callers down in south Florida.

Until I see you in a square , line or round sending you all a big “yellowrock”

Happy Valentines Day – Sweets for the Sweet

 Chocolate and strawberries just go with Valentines Day. I make the very popular chocolate cake balls  ( cake pops without the stick) for some of our square dances and I always get requests for how they are made. They even have books in the cake decorating section at Walmart for decorating into all kinds of cute characters and turning them into cake pops. These are so popular all over the internet and are great make ahead treats and you can’t beat the ease of chocolate dipped strawberries for Valentines Day.

Chocolate Cake Balls and Dipped Strawberries-yrcg

Chocolate Cake Balls

Prepare a Chocolate Devils Food Cake per the box instructions for a 9 X 13 pan. Once the cake is baked and completely cooled. Dump the cake into a large bowl. Crumble the cake with  clean hands until it resembles coarse crumbs. Dump 1 full canister of cream cheese frosting into the cake and then mix the frosting and cake until completely combined. It will be messy at first but does finally come together into a dough like mixture. Using a  small spoon scoop out small portions of the cake mixture and roll into balls about 1-inch in size. Place on a large tray as you roll the cake balls. Once the tray is full, cover well with plastic and place in the freezer for at least 2 hours or until ready to use. I had mine in the freezer for 3 days and they were perfect for dipping.

I used Wilsons Dark Cocoa Chocolate Melts, they also have white chocolate, light cocoa and usually during various holidays even colored chocolate melts  that you find in the cake decorating department of Walmart or the hobby stores. You could also use chocolate chips or temper your own chocolate for dipping. I already had the chocolate melts in the pantry so that is what I used. I have found that if you only melt about a 1/3 of the bag at a time you can drop the frozen cake balls into the melted chocolate, roll and then remove with a spoon and drop into a small paper liner and they will finish setting up in the paper liner. Once the cake balls are all dipped arrange onto your serving trays, cover with plastic wrap and keep in the refrigerator until you are ready to serve or take to the party.

Warning: These go real fast, once folks realize they are cake balls.

Yield: 1 cake box makes about 50 cakes balls.

 Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

Get an extra bag of those chocolate melts and some nice fresh strawberries and indulge in these lovely treats.

Wash the strawberries. You can keep the leaves on or remove them. I left them on for color and something to hold onto while I dipped the berries. Dry the strawberries really well on some paper towels. You don’t want any water to get into your melted chocolate. Once the berries are dried. Dip the berries, roll to coat and let any excess chocolate drain back into the bowl. Place the berries onto a sheet of waxed paper to finish setting up. Once set, place berries into individual paper liners.

Tip: If you don’t have wax paper by the rolls and your family eats lots of cold cereals. Save those empty cereal bags for some real good heavy-duty wax paper for FREE! That’s what I do and just store them in a drawer until you need some wax paper.

 

Canning Orange Juice

We just had a freeze here in Central Florida a couple of nights ago, so many of us were picking all the fruit from our trees.  Our trees are still young at 3 years old, but we were   able to fill a large cooler and a 5 gallon bucket full of pineapple orange juice oranges and the baby navel orange tree had about 1/2 of a 5 gallon bucket along with two bushels of dark red grapefruits from the grapefruit tree.

We had a great year for such young trees and many of our neighbors have said the their trees had heavy crops this year as well.  We will be eating the grapefruits with our breakfast, but I wanted to get the juice oranges canned up to enjoy over the next few months. I know lots of folks freeze their orange juice, but I save that premium space for meat.

Pineapple Oranges from our tree-yrcg

I got this canning recipe from the Ball Blue Book for canning juice last year from my parent’s fruit trees, so I know it works perfectly. I followed the same directions as for grapefruit juice.  

First thing, you have to juice the oranges with a juice reamer, either the old fashion hand reamer or you can get the newer electric ones, but you can’t use the juicing machines that make juice from the peels and all,  the pith from the oranges and peels will make for a bitter juice.

My old fashion glass juice reamer - yrcg

I burned up my electric reamer just as I started juicing these oranges so I pulled out the trusty old fashion glass juicer that works with good old hand power! So here goes;

Canned Orange Juice  – from the Ball Blue Book

Wash the oranges; drain. Extract and strain the juice. I strained twice with a basic strainer  so I got all the seeds and the excess pulp removed from the juice. Pour strained juice into a large stock pot, add sugar to taste if desired, my oranges were pretty sweet so I only added 1/2 cup sugar to a full gallon of juice.  Heat juice to 190 degrees farenheit and then maintain temperature for 5 full minutes at the 190 degrees farenheit. DO NOT BOIL.  Ladle hot juice into prepared hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles with a spoon. Cap with two-piece canning lids. Process 1/2 pints (good for single servings) pints and quarts for 15 minutes in a boiling-water canner.

 

Fresh canned orange juice, looks like sunshine -yrcg

 

Yield: Varies with type and size of oranges. I got 8 pints  of juice out of a 5 gallon bucket of oranges. You can also can your grapefruit juice the same way.

Verdict: So far I have juiced and canned 8 pints and 15 – 1/2 pint jars from just over two gallons of juice and still have another 5 gallon bucket full of fresh oranges to go before I will be done with my juice oranges, so I should be ready to do some arm wrestling once I get done!    This home canned homegrown orange juice is out of this world and I know exactly what is in it. The pulp will settle to the  bottom of the jar, just like the juices in the grocery store, that is why they say shake well before serving!  To serve; chill juice, shake well, open and enjoy home grown sunshine.