Jubilee On Ice & A Dessert

I am probably a little biased but for me there is nothing quite as special as a country Christmas and I know for certain there are three other bloggers who feel the same way. Today the four of us country girls are sharing the heart of our Country Christmas with you.Carole from Garden Up Green organized this memorable event.You will find all of the links at the end of this post where other Country stories are being shared by some lovely ladies.
I am not just a little bit country, I am all the way country in my heart and when you see this photo you will see why it is true.

Mom, Dad, Sandra and I lived on this slice of heaven in the farm country of Idaho.It was a gentle life founded on the principles of love Jesus, honor your Mom and Dad, work hard, play hard and be thankful. Very simple and yet it worked beautifully and resulted in not wanting much and being grateful for most everything.
Sundays were for Church, followed by a country-style dinner and a very special dessert.I always looked forward to Sunday for all sorts of reason, but one was my parents always took Sunday off and that meant special things might just happen.

Even in the Winter farmers work, they have shops where they work on all of their farm equipment to get it ready for the next season. So that meant that Dad would still work, and Mom being the capable woman she was would often times help him- but not ever on Sunday.
Winters in Idaho were fabulous for a kid, there was sledding to be done, snowmen that just had to be made and of course ice-skating on all of the sloughs that snaked through the countryside.
I remember the year I received those magical skates.They were white and I had just finished reading Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates and imagined myself skating from the beginning of those icy waterways to the very end. I just knew an adventure was in the making, I was sort of a female Tom Sawyer.

On that white winter Sunday morning us girls had gone to Church while Dad stayed behind. Dad wasn't much for going to Church-he figured that since he kept a can of Copenhagen chew in his back pocket and had an Olympia beer now and again he wasn't getting in to heaven anyway.So he kept an eye on the Sunday roast while we were away.
Mom had made an extra special dessert on this Sunday and she named it Cherries Jubilee. I know now that it wasn't really Cherries Jubilee but it sure was a jubilee to sample it.

We finished our meal and I was itching the entire time to get those skates on and get to business skating up the frozen waterways.
If you have never skated on "real ice," it's a different bird, its rough and often times the snow has to be swept off by hand with a broom before you can even begin to think of skating on it.

Once the dishes were done one of the most glorious surprises of my childhood Country Christmas was about to occur.
My Mom and Dad slipped on ice-skates that I had never seen before, to this day I do not know where they got them from or where they went after wards.Even more of a mystery to me at the time was that they both knew how to ice-skate!Dad's were old, brown and tattered and Mom's were not any better.

The three of us skated until our ankles hurt so terribly we could not skate one more inch.My Dad was a pretty serious fellow, but on that sunshine infused, magical country Christmas sort of day he laughed more than I had ever seen him laugh before.The three of us had a jubilee on ice and we looked as though we had stepped straight out of Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates and all of my Christmas wishes really had came true.

Sharing my Mom's Cherry Jubilee recipe, its super sweet and rich, but it sure is pretty!

 

Cherries Jubilee                                                                     Ingredients:1 Can cherry pie filling                                                                                1 8 oz container cool-whip thawed                                                                                                           1 8 oz. package of cream cheese softened  1/2 cup granulated sugar    1 graham cracker crust      Directions:  Combine softened cream cheese and cool whip with an electric mixer. Add sugar and mix until well Incorporated.  Scoop into prepared graham cracker pie crust.Top with cherry pie filling and chill for several hours.                                          

 Carole from Garden Up Green| Jane from Grit Antiques

                           Judith from Botanic Bleu| Jemma from At Home with Jemma