Tropicalsenior

Spam here costs about $12. That comes pretty darn close.

I can get dried cherries here if I want to take out a loan on my car. They also had fresh cherries a while back. For about 4 oz they were $14. My only other option is maraschino cherries and I can't quite see that.

Well, I made the chocolate cherry snack cake. Since cherries are almost non-existent here I had to make a few modifications. They only cherries that I had were some cans of cherry pie filling which I drained and rinsed. I baked the cherries in the cake and used the sauce to brush over the top after it was baked. As I expected, the cherries sank to the bottom and didn't add much flavor to the cake. It is still a delicious moist chocolate cake. Maybe next time I will add some mandarin orange chunks. I won't be cutting into it until tonight, however, I did have a little extra cake batter and made a small cake for cook's treat. It was delicious. I'll be making it again, with or without fruit.

It made me think of a very early thread that I read the other day about redneck party food. They had a recipe for Twinkie tiramisu. It sounded rather ghastly but reading the thread in its entirety made me realize just how much redneck food I like.

When my girls were little, I used to make Black Forest Chocolate Cake, German chocolate cake and the Ghirardelli chocolate cake from the package all the time. They are all almost impossible to size down for just two people. Nowadays a small 8x8 is just perfect. That's why I like the snacking cake recipes.

That sounded so good I went looking for a recipe and found this one for Chocolate Cherry Snack Cake. It also reminded me of an aunt of mine that wasn't a terribly good Baker and she only had one good cake recipe. Her idea of changing it up was to put pieces of her favorite candies in it. The one she made with chocolate covered cherries was delicious. She slipped up badly one Christmas when she chunked in whole, hard Christmas candies. Broke my grandmother's false teeth right in half. After that we approached her cakes with much trepidation.

@ElsieD your cakes always look so down home delicious. I haven't tried this one but you have turned me on to some really good recipes. Thank you. I have three little bananas that I didn't want to throw out. They look terrible but these little bananas that they called dados are best when they are almost black. They are still firm and as sweet as honey. I made 12 Mini muffins. I love these silicone molds. They are just the right size for a couple bites.

Exactly. I don't use mine for bacon because I like my bacon curly and with some fat and flavor still in it. For sandwiches, I prefer a panini grill which incidentally is great for cooking bacon.

I have this one that I've had for about 15 years. It was a present from a dear friend. I used it the other day for the first time in about 14 years. It worked great to hold something together until the glue dried. Too bad we're not closer or I would send it to you.

Always!

Ham salad is what my mama and your mama made. Deviled ham comes in a can.

I like to add just a tiny bit of wasabi. Not too much or it can really get devilish.

That's my impression of this fruit. It's very popular here in Costa Rica and they sell them on the roadside all the time. The bright hot pink color really catches your eye and you just have to try one. Usually one is enough. Here they are called zapote, which is interesting because that is also the name of a the buzzard.

I'm with you all the way. Better to have too much than too little. However, it makes a difference in whether this is a before dinner grazing or if it is part of the meal with bread and salads. As I remember, we recommended four people to a pound as part of a meal and six people as a tray for snacks.

When I worked in a deli and made lots of cheese and cold cuts trays, we used to recommend a quarter of a pound (cheese and cold cuts combined) per person. I remember one time a woman came in and bought 8 oz of meat and 8 oz of cheese for a party of 12. When we told her how much we recommended she got very indignant and said that people were not going to pig out at her party. After she left we said it was too bad we didn't have the phone number of her guest list so that we could call them up and tell them to eat before they went.

I made some Katherine Hepburn Brownies this morning. I should never make these. They are addicting and may not even last the day.

Slice it, fry it until it is quite crispy, chop it up and add it to scrambled eggs. No need to Salt the eggs because spam has plenty of salt. Unfortunately, you are trying it 20 years too late. It was never all that great but at least it was a lot better then. When I was a kid, a fried spam sandwich was quite a treat for someone who had never eaten anything but plain old boring real meat.

For most normal people that would be a good compromise but Frozen concentrates here are just not available. The closest thing to it is the powdered package thing. These are available in about 34 different fruit combinations. Years ago I developed a cake and a quick bread recipe that used powdered Tang as the flavoring agent. They were both delicious but then Tang altered their formula and started using artificial sweetener instead of sugar and it threw my proportions completely off. In order to get the flavor concentration that I needed, even though I cut back on the sugar, they were so sweet that they almost took the enamel off your teeth. If you live in a foreign country you have to live by my motto. If you can't make it, fake it. If you can't fake it, f*** it.

I suppose for several reasons. First, I've been looking for a good orange cake for a long time. Second, because Mandarin season is almost over here and they're getting a little spongy and third, because I can get a lot more zest out of the orange then I can a Mandarin and that seems to be a big part of the strong flavor. It only took 1 Mandarin for the juice but I had to use 4 mandarins to get enough zest. I think you would get good results with any Citrus flavor in this cake and I'm even thinking of trying passion fruit.

My first thought was The Scream by Munch.

We need more emojis. We just haven't got anything adequate to answer this.

Whenever I learn new words I tried to imagine using them in conversations. I draw a complete blank on these.

I almost forgot. I did pitch in some candied citrus rind.

I cut into it last night and it's perhaps not as moist as I would like but the flavor is delicious. I would recommend this recipe to anyone. When I made it I cut the recipe in half and baked it in a glass pan for 40 minutes. The only change that I made was to add a teaspoon of orange extract. The next time that I make it I'm going to make it with orange juice instead of Mandarin. I will probably try baking it at 325° instead of 350°.

Uh-huh, my late husband was as deaf as a post until I tried opening something like this or a potato chip bag late at night.