Hearts at Home Third Thursday Thoughts: Why I’m Thankful For Cool Whip

Today I’m delighted to once again be participating in the Hearts at Home blog hop.  “Hearts at Home seeks to encourage, equip, and educate every mom in every season of motherhood using Christian values to strengthen families.” If you’re in search of a few new recipes, be sure to visit some of the other blogging mamas who are dishing on favorite foods and check out all the helpful resources on the Hearts at Home website. 

Believe it or not, this month’s topic left me stumped. I realize that the invitation to “share your favorite homemade dish,” doesn’t sound extraordinarily complicated. But my favorite dish to eat and my favorite dish to prepare are two entirely different things. My taste buds appreciate a steamy plate of home made pasta with real butter and cream sauce, lemon-drizzled asparagus and bread carefully kneaded by hand, while my daily reality lends itself to boxed noodles, sauce in a jar, and bread from the freezer case of my local grocery store. In this current  season of motherhood, my favorite dishes to prepare are those that don’t tie me to the kitchen for long.

Nothing highlights my lack of culinary creativity quite like a potluck.  Practicality suggests that this mama’s contribution to the endless food spread should be a basic kid dish to ensure that my five children will put something besides just potato chips on their plates. But that small voice of domestic insecurity dares me to prove I can rival Martha Stewart if I simply put my mind to it.

My lapse from reality usually comes when I’m tossing together my old-potluck-stand-by, Snicker salad (What’s not to love about a dish that clumps chocolate in with the fruit food group?) As I chop the Granny Smiths, I begin to imagine all the cute little Pampered Chef recipes that will be brought by make-it-from-scratch women and plopped right next to my glorified pudding. Then for one crazy instant, I wonder if I, too, shouldn’t take a little extra time to whip up an impressive homemade dish that would not only taste divine, but also look gorgeous in the potluck line.

Thankfully, before I can say “Martha Stewart,” a child spills on the carpet, streaks naked through the kitchen or demands assistance in the bathroom. Later, if I mention my competitive potluck edge to my husband, he will most likely take the opportunity to remind me of the notable day that I swore I would never make anything from scratch again…

It all began with those cute little road side stands perched along the lakeside roads in Michigan, and my husband’s endearing inability to drive by the tantalizing lure of beautiful produce. In my man’s defense, Michigan farmers’ markets boast a rainbow-like beauty with which our Iowa sweetcorn stands can’t compete. So, as we wrapped up our week-long family vacation at the Great Lake, we loaded up on farm fresh-souvenirs with visions of freezing the summer sweet fruit and enjoying a taste of Michigan all winter long.

In theory, it was a great idea. But when a family of seven is piled into a minivan that seats only seven, and that family has just hauled half of their house to another state for a week long vacation, there is little room for unplanned cargo. And even if a family of seven does find places to stow extra cargo in their overstocked mini van, the fruit has to survive an excruciating fourteen hours home in order to be gently placed in the waiting refrigerator.

Needless to say, by the time I unloaded the bag of fruit that had been wedged between my feet and the dashboard, the luscious handpicked peaches were rather squashed and bruised. Being Dutch (translation- frugal), I couldn’t bear to throw the ripe jewels away, so I scoured my cookbooks in search of an idea for using delicious but squashed peaches. I found a homemade peach dessert marked with this notation from the author, “This recipe is PERFECT for end of the summer Michigan peaces”  Inarguably, I’d just stumbled on the recipe for me; never mind that I didn’t own any of the ingredients necessary for making the acclaimed dessert.

I went to the store with five children in tow, bought all of the required ingredients and came home eager to impress my family with a rare and glorious Martha Stewart moment. However, when I got home, I was shocked to discover that most of the peaches I had planned on using were gone. Seems the kids had a snack when I wasn’t looking and weren’t a bit bothered by the bruised condition of our Michigan fruit.

Hindsight suggests that at that point in time, I would have been wise to surrender my visions of kitchen stardom and simply whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies instead. But a woman seeking her own glory rarely sees clearly! All I could see was a grocery sack full of ingredients that begged to be used and an imagined crown of praise that would be presented to this supermom when she presented her family with the fresh peach dessert PERFECT for end of the summer Michigan peaches. Determined to complete my mission, I decided I could slice the peaches small and thin and merely stretch the fruit in a sparse layer across the 9×13 pan. Once I’d done so, I was shocked at just how little fruit three skinned peaches produces.

For one weak moment, I was tempted to open a generic can of peaches from the pantry to fill in the gaps, but the note in the recipe’s margin cried out against such heresy with the bold warning: THIS DESSERT IS NOT THE SAME WITH CANNED PEACHES. So in the end, I took what remained of my fresh Michigan peaches (very little besides the seed) and squeezed out all the drops of juice I could muster in an attempt to make the dessert “taste peachy”. I ended up rearranging my skinny layer of peaches over and over until I was convinced that each bite would have one token peach. Then I convinced myself that the homemade whipped cream would cover my measly fruit filling and compensate for any lack.

To be honest, I’m a Cool Whip gal. I can’t remember a time prior to my Michigan peach moment that I’d ever made real whipped cream. In fact, I didn’t realize one could do so. That being said, I wasn’t quite sure how to do it. Thankfully, a quick look in the index of my cook book directed me to a special feature addressing the fine mechanics of producing perfect whipped cream complete with fluffy peaks and airy texture.  Expectantly, I turned on the mixer and waited for my bowl of whipping cream to transform into mountains of creamy paradise. However, after much whipping and mixing, I realized that the whipping cream wasn’t looking like the photo in my recipe book– no -peaks of cream rising out of my mixing bowl- just a flat white substance that resembled a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Certain that time was the magic ingredient, I left the mixer running and went to the other room to change baby Maggie’s diaper. When I returned to the kitchen, I found two-year-old Joshua squatted on the counter, carefully dropping chocolate chips one by one into the bowl of not-so-whipped cream. I guess the clever kid thought we were making cookies- since that’s the only reason his mom ever enlists the mixer.

After picking the chocolate chips one by one out of the cream, all the “fluff” that had been gained was gone and the majority of the cream had been licked off of my fingers or stuck to the chocolate. In the end, I spread a THIN layer of white stuff over the already sparse layer of peaches and stuffed the ugly looking MADE FROM SCRATCH DESSERT into the refrigerator. I then promptly convinced myself to feel sorry for Martha Stewart because she has most likely never had the privilege of cooking with toddlers, changing poopy diapers and answering at least one-hundred questions from a cumulative of five precious children all while whipping up a dinner dessert from scratch. When I was finished cleaning up the dishes from the two hour baking endeavor, I called my dear husband and assured him that if he ever got the craving for a fresh peach dessert, I’d gladly drive to our local nursery and buy him a homemade peach pie!

So that’s why, as we head into summer potluck season, I’ll stick with Snickers salad and a bag of potato chips.  And when I plop my five-minute wonder right next to the fanciest dessert at the table, I’ll breathe a prayer of thanks for Cool Whip and for a God who loves Marys just as much as He loves Marthas!