A decadent, historical fruit salad featuring my favorite fruit! This is apparently the summer of fruit salads for me, or at least the summer of fruit. It seems like most of the recipes I've made this summer have featured fruit in some way, and this one is no exception. Ambrosia might be best known to people as either the food of the Greek gods, or a fruity, creamy dessert that's a stable of Southern get togethers, but this isn't quite that. If you're familiar with what most people think of as traditional Southern ambrosia, you might be surprised at how simple and light its earlier ancestor was. Ambrosia first began popping up in American cookbooks in the late 1800's, and while its exact origin story appears to be a mystery - digging around on the internet didn't turn up any clear creation myths for this fruit salad - it's been a fairly popular treat to eat since then. I don't think it's quite as common up north - I definitely can't say I remember seeing it on any dessert tables at any functions I've ever been to - but I had a coworker who made it pretty frequently for his family! Early ambrosia was literally just fruit and sugar, nicely layered and sprinkled in sugar in a dish. More modern interpretations include marshmallows, a variety of canned fruit, cherries, nuts, and a creamy element like sour cream, yogurt, whipped cream, or even pudding! The recipe I used comes from the May 1907 issue of Cooking Club Magazine, republished on Tori's Kitchen and complete with beautiful pictures and excellent instructions on how to make your own. This admittedly would probably be something Samantha would have been snacking on more than Rebecca, but that being said, there's no reason the Rubins couldn't have treated themselves to this tasty dish on a hot summer day, especially as canned goods made products like pineapple a lot more affordable and easier to prepare for families that weren't close to a pineapple plantation. Instead of mixing everything together into a bowl, this recipe recommends making individual servings for your guests with each of the ingredients layered at the bottom. To start, you supreme three oranges and slice the pieces up into bite sized morsels before putting them on the bottom of the bowl. Supreme-ing an orange worked out to be a lot trickier than I thought it would be. To do it right, you need to skin the orange so you see mostly orange flesh poking through, and then cut into the sections so you're left with beautiful orange slices without any of the white or clear webbing on the outside of the sections. I don't know if my oranges were just uncooperative or what, but this was really tricky to get right, and I mangled quite a few of them! Fortunately, I didn't need intact slices, so chopping them up covered this up pretty well. Once you're done, you sprinkle on a little bit of sugar! Next comes a layer of coconut. The original recipe uses unsweetened dried coconut, but Tori recommends using sweetened if you're looking for a sweeter dessert rather than a dry fruit salad. I used sweetened just because that's what we had in the pantry! Next, add a layer of thinly sliced bananas. Then add some sliced pineapple! This can be fresh or canned. To make it authentic, use canned. It'll save you some time with prep work, too! And then you continue in this pattern until your bowls are full! Unfortunately, mine were tiny enough that I could really only do a layer of each before I ran out of room, and then just garnished the top with some extra orange and banana. I sprinkled this with sugar, and added more of my favorite ingredient in this dish - coconut! This gets chilled in the fridge before serving, and looks quite colorful and elegant when displayed in glass bowls. I was pretty impressed that such a simple dish could look so pretty in the right serving dish! So, there you have it: a simple but tasty fruit salad. It's interesting to snack on these tropical fruits and think that this would have been a rare treat for a middle class family back in the early 1900's. We take so much of this stuff for granted, where Rebecca or Nellie would probably have been really excited to try something that definitely wasn't grown in New York City and wouldn't have been readily available or affordable before Dole and other companies began exporting their canned pineapple. These four fruits with a little sugar would have been just as decadent and tasty as a chocolate cake or bowl of ice cream for novelty alone. For us, it's a little on the tame side, but is definitely a nice, refreshing treat to have. I'm a fan of all four fruits in it, so for me, this definitely hit the spot and had a fun assortment of flavors and textures. Plus, while this is probably a little too sugary to be considered a truly guilt free dessert, it's definitely better for you than guzzling an entire carton of home made ice cream. I've been trying to find good ways to enjoy sweet treats without devouring an entire war cake in one sitting, and this definitely scratches that itch without making you feel guilty for the rest of the day. Overall, even if this was kind of a pain in the butt to make thanks to my oranges not cooperating with being beautifully sliced open, this was a fun peek into the past I'd definitely be willing to make again. Not to turn my nose up at the more modern version, but it was fun to have a light, refreshing dessert that didn't make me feel like I needed to make up for indulging by hopping on the treadmill. Always a plus in my book! Also, coconut is just one of those foods for me. Yum!

Und weiter gehts in der wunderländigen Weihnachtsbäckerei :o) Heute mit Schwarz-Weiß-Gebäck mit einer Spur Espresso. Das Rezept stammt von Steph.... weiterlesen

The best way to relax and cool down after a long day outdoors! Okay, this recipe might be cheating a little bit. I mean, it's really simple, is it really worth a whole blog post? My answer is yes, because I love Arnold Palmers. Is there anything more refreshing than something that's a little sweet, a little caffeinated, and a little tart? No. No, there isn't. Besides that, they do have some interesting trivia behind them, and they're very iconically 1960's. After a long day working on improving her community park or her own garden, Melody could kick back and enjoy this mocktail with her friends and family. Maybe she even would have made it herself! The Arnold Palmer is a little different from the Shirley Temple or Roy Rogers because rather than being a drink named after a celebrity just to profit off their fame, this is a mocktail that was actually created by Mr. Palmer himself. For those who didn't have a grandfather with a huge enthusiasm for professional golf after working as a caddy at the New Haven Country Club in his youth, Arnold Palmer was the first golf superstar, emerging in the 1950's just as the sport started entering American homes through the magical little box known as the television. Palmer was considered especially unique and important in the sport's history because he came from humble origins, and himself was a plain spoken, average guy, making other average Americans realize they too could participate in what was - up to that point - considered a sport only the wealthy could really enjoy. When asking my grandfather about it, he explained that before Palmer, professional golfers were looked down on by the upper class and seen as sleazy individuals. When they'd show up for tournaments, they'd often have to use the kitchen quarters instead of staying at the club! My grandfather explained that Palmer also had an awkward swing, and tended to have come from behind victories, trailing during the first holes only to have a "Palmer Charge" and snatch the title away almost last minute, making for an exciting round of golf to watch. Fans loved him because he interacted with them, giving golf balls to kids in the audience, and for his charity work. In the 1960's, Palmer was a household name, and along with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Palmer helped popularize golf around the world. His career spanned six decades, and he won an impressive 62 PGA titles. At some point in the 1960's, Palmer was at a golf course in Palm Springs, California and ordered an unique drink to go with his lunch: three parts unsweetened ice tea to one part lemonade. Palmer then overheard a fellow diner ask the waiter "I'll have that Arnold Palmer drink, too." And so the classic mocktail was born. Once the drink caught on, Arnold Palmer would order it by asking for a "Mr. Palmer." At the country club in his home town, Arnold Palmers would be served to him or his wife before they even put in their orders. While out grocery shopping, Jess and I discovered the man himself even appears on Arizona Iced Tea's ice tea and lemonade combinations, no doubt to appeal to his fans and reference the original drink. For such a simple concoction, it's surprisingly easy to wreck an Arnold Palmer. To make an Arnold Palmer the way he himself preferred it, you need to make a drink with three parts ice tea and one part lemonade. If you do equal parts tea and lemonade, it's technically a Half & Half, not a true Arnold Palmer. Sweetened ice tea makes the drink too sweet, which I admittedly didn't mind so much as a kiddo but now find kind of gross as an adult. Funny how taste buds change, isn't it? Arnold Palmers tend to be things I order at restaurants vs. something I make in my own home, but after whipping some up, I think I might need to make this a regular thing, especially in summer time. It's been brutally hot these last few weeks, making it hard to ever want to be outside even for a little bit, and coming back inside after snapping these pictures to sip on my drink was insanely refreshing. It's been nice to have them to come home to after work, too! I hope you enjoyed this look back at one of my favorite summer drinks. How have you been beating the heat this summer? We could use all the suggestions you've got!