On a perfectly rainy Saturday afternoon, I baked my very last recipe from Magnolia Table, Vol. 1. It was a fitting recipe to end with, a rather time-consuming baked Syrian Donut that Joanna Gaines used to bake with her grandfather when she was a little girl. As with most recipes in this cookbook, she shares a little story: "My grandfather was a quiet man, and we rarely had the opportunity to really connect. He and my grandmother had nine kids and lots of grandchildren, so it was rare to spend any time alone with either of them. While we mixed the dough and shaped the donuts that day, he told me stories about his life and the history of our family that I had never heard before. It was a day I will never forget." Joanna goes on to explain that she now loves to remake this recipe on the weekends with her kids and recount the same stories she remembers from her grandfather. Recipe after recipe, generation after generation.
My most favorite foods to make and eat are the ones with great stories to go with them. And what I didn't realize when I started this little mission to cook my way through a cookbook is that for the past two years, I would write my own book of stories along the way. Stories like baking pretty little ramekins of bread pudding and delivering it to Sorbes' doorstep on the first Sunday of quarantine, a Sunday tradition that continued on for weeks after. Or making that delicious spinach and leek risotto for our Good Friday feast, sharing communion for the first time with the kids and then crushing all Easter bunny dreams for Mila. Or getting up at the crack of dawn to bake orange scones and watch the royal wedding just a week from returning home from our first trip to London. Or coming home from a late night of work to find Beau's own Magnolia Table escapade, including some curated photos of his own and a shot of tomato basil soup as soon as I walked through the door. As I thumb through this now very worn, sticky, and flour-stained cookbook, I smile so big as I remember the stories and faces that shared in the messy kitchens, taste test critiques, and butter-gruyere-sugary goodness that this cookbook has brought to our table.
Food has always had this magical power of bringing people together. I still get a feeling of warmth when I eat mom's spaghetti sauce or that chicken casserole with the ritz crackers on top. Beau and I will forever cherish those first few years of marriage when it was just us, our cat, and our first kitchen - without a dishwasher. Years of learning to perfect our very own spaghetti sauce morphed into years of learning to involve our kids in what we love about the kitchen, too. Whether it's teaching Cruz to flip his own pancakes, spending an afternoon with Mila in our aprons baking something sweet, or getting in some competitive fun with another Jorgensen Top Chef night, my hope is that these years investing in cooking and the connection that comes with sharing a meal will carry on a legacy for Cruz and Mila as they grow. And that someday, they will not only know a thing or two about creating a great dish, but they will always find a sense of home around the table.
There were so many fun things I learned from this two year process of cooking through the 150 recipes in Magnolia Table. One of my favorite parts of committing to the entire cookbook is that I tried several things I would have never otherwise attempted. I will never forget making my first hollandaise sauce, and then frantically trying to fix the hollandaise sauce when it quickly broke apart! The breakfast section of this cookbook is really the hidden treasure. Even though my original goal was to cook through this thing in a year, I love that I finished it up during quarantine. Those memories of our Sundays, with a new Magnolia recipe followed by church on the couch in our pjs were definitely some of my favorites of that season at home.
On Mother's day this year, I baked Bevie's Chocolate Roll with Homemade Hot Fudge Sauce and it was absolutely delicious. There we were, all crowded around the kitchen island eating the leftover hot fudge sauce right from the pan, talking about all the recipes we've loved, as well as the very few we haven't loved along the way. I couldn't believe all the recipes the kids could recall. This was their adventure, too. And I hope by watching their mom in the kitchen they learned that investing in something and seeing it through takes commitment, takes some failing and trying again, and leads to a lot of growth and blessing along the way. And that chocolate roll was a blessing all by itself!
As we were devouring it that night and deciding that it may in fact be our favorite recipe from the book, Beau started sharing about the hot fudge sauce his dad used to make when he was a kid, to which he called "Chockie Sauce." Apparently his dad used to make it on Sunday nights and they'd have ice cream sundaes after pizza. As he talked about his dad's sweet tooth with a twinkle in his eye, I decided right then that my next adventure would be to compile my own family recipes and stories for the Jorgensen Table Cookbook. And maybe, just maybe, crack open that Magnolia Table, Volume 2 that I've resisted opening until I finished the first one.
My Favorite Magnolia Recipes, in no particular order
1. Bevie's Chocolate Roll with Hot Fudge Sauce
2. Homemade Biscuits - with the sausage gravy
3. Broiled honey thyme peaches with ice cream and balsamic reduction
4. JoJo's Chocolate chip cookies
5. Buttermilk ranch dressing
6. Sweet pepper and pancetta frittata
7. Flatbread pizza with prosciutto and new potatoes
8. Cinnamon swirl quick bread
9. Joanna's pie crust
10. Baked egg bread pudding with spinach, boursin, and bacon
11.Mushroom, spinach and swiss cheese quiche
Honorable mentions: fresh spinach and leek risotto, green beans with red wine bernaise sauce, and the angel food cake with blueberry compote.
And lastly, a shout-out to all the recipes I've made again and again. I made every thing once, but there were several recipes that quickly became part of the rotation. These are our top make agains...
1. Gaines Family Chili
2. Sheet Pan Nachos
3. Guacamole
4. BLTs with Easy Herbed Mayo
5. After School Banana Bread
We've made it to summer and had a great first "official" week of more time at home but less time doing school! We transitioned with a lazier schedule, checked a few things off our summer bucket list, and enjoyed some time with both Grandma and Papa Curt while Beau enjoyed a few days fishing at the Boundary Waters with some work friends. For the most part, we feel we have re-entered "normal" again. We're seeing friends, forgetting to wash our hands, eating at restaurants, and spending a whole lot of time outside. June started with a heat wave and with no pools to visit, we've found reprieve at the beach, on the trampoline with sprinklers, or running through our irrigation system. ;) We set up an obstacle course one day and it was the highlight of the afternoon!
Good Things of June, so far...
906. I took the kids out to George Wyth Beach last week and we were the only ones there for the first hour of our morning! The water was the perfect temperature, there was far less goose poop than I remember, and the kids jumped right in in a matter of no time. We liked it so much that we invited their cousins to join us a few days later and were there for almost four hours. We packed a picnic, brought out all the floaties, and got a lot of sun. After many months apart, the cousin clan picked up right where they left off.
I love this series of pictures of Cruz and Mila from their first swim of summer 2020...
907. This crew of hard-working Amish guys literally built this entire house in four days. They were pounding nails at 7 am most mornings and we took our breakfasts to the deck to watch them. It will be nice to have the north side of our property filled in, but I will be sad to lose my field, aka, weed disposal area. What do people do with yard waste and rotten garden tomatoes?
908. I have been pounding out all the Magnolia recipes lately, trying to finish up the cookbook because I won't allow myself to open the new one until I finish the first one! The strategy is working, but also leading to a lot of sweets consumed lately! I made Jo Jo's cinnamon swirl bread a morning last week and it may be on the top 5 list. I'm not usually a big bread person, but this one was incredible. Especially paired with some homemade strawberry jam.
909. A new crew of girls are old enough to run more free in the cul de sac this summer and the sweetness is on overload. Summer humidity curls, swimsuits and barefeet, dolls and Calico Critters strewn all over the yards, and munchkin voices galore! Since neighbors were the first people we started sharing life with post-Coronavirus hysteria, it sort of feels like we're one big communal family lately. And I couldn't love it more.
910. Mom came to spend the night with us last week while Beau was away and we all loved having her here. We cooked yummy spring pasta and shared dinner at the table, watched Little Women and ate popcorn after the kids went to bed, read books and ate macarons, and our favorite - learned to sew little sock monsters together. Mom made a bunch of these funny little creatures for one of Charly's birthday parties years ago, and Cruz has recently developed a newfound affection for the one he brought home that day. He sleeps with it every night, calls it his "heirloom" and one night asked if maybe Grandma would help him make one for Mila since she wasn't born when he got his. So Mom dug into the storage room and found her old box of supplies and hauled them to Cedar Falls. She taught the kids (and me!) to sew and we gave life to Brainy and Lola, the two newest members of Cruz and Mila's stuffy collection.
911. After a fun sleepover with Grandma, we couldn't short Papa! Mom had to work at the library the following morning, so we went to Allison to fish at Wilder Park. It was a beautiful morning, the fish were biting like crazy, and Dad did a great job staying patient while untangling fishing lines, baiting hooks, re-baiting hooks, and taking fish off the hooks. It's a busy job fishing with kids! Afterwards, we rode our bikes up to the library, one of Cruz and Mila's favorite places to visit. Mom made us a picnic lunch, the kids checked out forty books, and enjoyed getting to spend the afternoon in a library all to themselves.
Since the library is closed to the public, Mila discovered that the American Girl doll, Kit, has been stuck in her box for months. Mila took a liking to her and Grandma obviously let her check her out and take her home. Now Mila is counting her money and wishing for one of her own.
912. We officially became country club members this summer, something I never thought I'd say! Beau and I are not golfers by any means, but started to think that a place with a private pool, poolside restaurant, and beautiful golf course might be a nice escape in an otherwise strange summer.
913. Lots of porch reading so far this summer. Mila's moved onto chapter books, and Cruz and I are almost finished with the fourth Harry Potter. And this week, we started our summer book passports, another fun alternative to the summer reading program we usually look forward to at our public library. Every week, we'll read a couple books from somewhere in our world. The kids will learn about what makes that place unique or special, and the voices and stories of the beautiful people who represent them. Looking forward to lots of travels this summer, most of them from our favorite front porch.
914. This week, Iowa was "hit" with our second tropical storm in history, which resulted in heavy rains that fell pretty much all day. It was a nice reprieve from the heat we had been experiencing and I loved that the kids requested to be on our back deck through most of it. We ate lunch out there, read our books out there, and played a game of chess out there. Three inches later, we sort of felt like Noah on the big ark. A summer rainy day is good for the soul - now if only the movie theaters could open back up!
915. I finally got around to wrapping Beau's gifts, which meant we were finally ready to celebrate him! The kids constructed a sign all on their own and I made an incredible lemon angel food cake with blueberry compote, another top five from Magnolia. Later, we celebrated our new 39 year old with some pretty great gifts - a bluetooth speaker for his bike or kayak, a t-shirt subscription, and...a Chewbacca mask.
