Pomegranate Jelly

I made pomegranate jelly from the fruit of our bush. The taste is excellent and such a lovely red color. It's made the usual way of any jelly. To prepare the pomegranates split open the skin of the fruit and pull the seeds out into a pan. Barely cover with water and proceed as usual.

Cleaning Tip

For dusty lampshades roll a Lint Roller over it; lifts the dust right off. Tables with a decorative cloth can be cleaned by rolling the Lint Roller over the top. Can also carefully remove the tablecloth (to keep from spreading dust) and tumble in dryer using the cold air cycle.

Another tip: If you wear decorative pins or a corsage keep a bar of soap handy and push the point of the pin into the soap several times. before pinning onto garment. Pin glides right in. I wear a live flower every Sunday to church and I use the bar of soap. (Hold onto and recycle your bars of soap when they're mostly "used up". You won't have to use a new bar)

Japanese Fruitcake

This is a cake that our mothers and grandmothers made for Christmas. The longer it sits in the fridge, wrapped airtight, the better it tastes. The cake is stacked with a plain layer and a dark layer, plain and dark. Makes a lovely presention. When wrapping something to be completely airtight use a small kitchen trash bag (make sure it's not perfumed in any way). Pull the top of bag together and suck the air out, place twist tie on. This idea works for many irregularly shaped items that plastic or foil wrap just will not do.

Japanese Fruitcake

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. soda
1 cup raisins, 1 cup chopped pecans

Mix cake in usual manner. Divide dough into TWO PORTIONS. Use one-half of batter to make layers that will be plain. Pour into two prepared cake pans. Into the other portion add 1 tsp. each of cinnamon, allspice, cloves and nutmeg. Flour raisins and pecans and add to mixture. (One Tbsp. flour mixed in a bowl with raisins and pecans keeps them from dropping to bottom of cake pan during cooking.) Pour into two prepared cake pans. Layers will be thin; don't overcook.

FILLING

3 cups sugar
1 cup milk
1 whole coconut (This recipe is from the era before frozen coconut. Then, you had to crack the coconut, peel the brown off, shred it.) Now I buy frozen coconut
3 oranges, peeled, sectioned and chopped into small pieces, with small amount of zested peel. (You'll want to purchase a kitchen gadget, Micro-Plane that's perfect for fruit zest.)
1 lemon, peeled, sectioned and chopped, with small amont finely grated peel
1/4 stick butter

Mix all and cook until it begins to thicken. You don't want it to get too thick because you want it to soak into the layers. Put filling between and on top of the four layers. If you want enough icing to put on the outside of layers, double the recipe and thicken enough to stick to outside of layers.