Strawberry Delight

Thanks to Ozark Gardens here at home, I have enjoyed eating strawberries from my six ever-bearing plants. (Don't snicker please. With my weird summer schedule I wasn't sure I could keep them alive, but I did, so now I see a strawberry patch of my own for spring/summer 2021). Right now it is a consumption competition between me and the turtles...I am guessing and hoping it's the turtle I see now and then elsewhere in the yard. There are hazy recollections swirling in my gray matter of sultry strawberry-picking outings on trips to the country as a kid. I loved the strawberry shortcake that was at the end of the chore, so it seemed the thing to do to help pick the tasty bounty and sport red fingertips for a while. Back then the turtles were a REAL problem for this city child. They were more prevalent in the wild blackberry patches I tiptoed through 'helping' with that chore, again because blackberry cobbler would be in my immediate future.

Perhaps because strawberries are on my mind, when I looked through the tattered pages of my mother's Better Homes and Garden Cook Book - you know, the one with the red and white checkered tablecloth pattern on the cover - my eyes and fingers seemed to find several recipes using this seasonal fruit. These recipes are not the ones printed on the book's pages, but ones handwritten by Mom, my paternal grandmother, my sister and me on all sorts of now aged and food-stained sheets. A few are on the backs of First National Bank deposit slips where Mom (Evelyn Pearson) worked for years as a teller. Several looked as though I typed them with my portable Smith & Corona typewriter in the blue case, received as an eighth grade graduation gift. High school and college papers were typed - last minute of course - on that prized possession. I have never met a challenge since quite like typing a research paper (footnotes and all) on one of those. The behinder I was the more often I had to re-type a page because I misjudged the space needed for that page's footnotes, a topic that deserves its own column space someday.

In honor of this scrumptious seasonal fruit, and to celebrate finding within minutes both halves of the recipe on yellowed sheets in different sections of the cookbook, I am sharing one we prepared often at home for family, church fellowships and for club meetings. Had I needed to and with a bit of time, I probably could have remembered the entire recipe.

STRAWBERRY SODA CAKE

1 pkg yellow cake mix. Bake according to directions. 2 pkgs of strawberry jello mixed with 1 cup boiling water and 1 cup strawberry soda. As soon as cake is done, punch cake (all over) with a fork from top to bottom. Immediately pour all the jello mixutre over cake.

TOPPING

Mix 1 pkg of instant French vanilla pudding and 1 1/2 cups cold milk. Fold in 1 small carton of Cool Whip. Spread over cake and refigerate before serving.

Where are the strawberries, you ask? Just in the addition of the strawberry soda. With some freshly picked strawberries available, I would slice some up to place over the topping. Perfect summertime dessert to slide into the dog days of summer right around the corner.