Arlene and her family affectionately called her husband Paul’s mom by the name “Mil.” Why Mil? Because M-I-L is short for Mother-In-Law! So if you ever see one of Arlene’s recipes like “Mil’s Wilted Salad,” that means it’s from Paul’s mom!
In this sweet episode from 1996, Arlene shares some stories about Mil and then makes some of her favorite recipes. That includes peanut butter ho-ho cake, Mil’s wilted lettuce salad, pastry shells with creamed chicken, and peas with tiny onions.
This Mother’s Day, why not make a nice meal like this for your mother (or mother-in-law)!
Note: We were unable to find all the recipes from this program.
Peanut Butter Ho-Ho Cake
Classic flavors, without the trouble of rolling the cake up!
Ingredients
- 1 box chocolate cake mix (18 1/2 oz)
- 1/2 cup butter
- 5 Tbsp Crisco shortening
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup lukewarm milk
- 3 Tbsp flour
- 3/4 cup peanut butter
- 1 can chocolate icing (16 oz)
Instructions
- Prepare and bake cake mix according to directions on box, using 9 x 13-inch pan. Cool completely. Do not remove from pan.
- In a mixing bowl, cream together butter, Crisco and sugar until thoroughly blended. Add milk, flour and peanut butter. Beat with mixer until fluffy. Spread on cooled cake and chill until peanut butter mixture sets.
- Heat canned icing in microwave 30 seconds until thin. Pour over cake. Refrigerate at least one hour. Makes 15 servings. Enjoy!
MIL’s Wilted Lettuce Salad
An old-fashioned recipe for a sweet and sour salad.
Ingredients
- 1 bunch leaf lettuce, cleaned and broken into pieces
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 6 strips bacon
- 1/3 cup vinegar
- 1/3 cup sugar
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- In a large salad bowl, place lettuce and onion. Set aside in refrigerator to crisp.
- In a small skillet, cook bacon until crisp. Remove, drain and crumble. Lower heat and add vinegar. Continue to heat until boiling and add sugar. Lower heat and stir until smooth. Pour over lettuce just before serving. Salt and pepper to taste. Makes 6 servings. Enjoy!
MIL’s Chicken a la King
A deliciously creamy chicken dish, that tastes great served with toast, biscuits, or pastry shells.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 1 cup light cream (half & half)
- 2 egg yolks
- 3 cups chicken, cooked & cubed
- 1 small can mushrooms
Instructions
- In a large saucepan, melt butter. Add flour and salt and cook until thickened and lightly browned. Add chicken broth and bring to a boil, then lower heat.
- In a small bowl, combine cream and egg yolks. Add small amount of sauce to egg mixture, stirring vigorously. Return mixture to sauce, stirring vigorously to prevent cooking of egg. Add chicken, mushrooms and heat through. Serve in pastry shells, biscuits or on toast points. Makes 6 servings. Enjoy!
Transcript
- Well, hello and welcome to our Mother’s Day program. Let me be the first to say happy mother’s day to you. If you are out there, and you have loved and nourished your children, you have sacrificed to give them things that you maybe didn’t have as a child, it’s a tribute to you today. It is a real tribute because we live in a world where grotesque things happen to children every day, and it’s people who have problems, and they’re inflicting themselves on their children, and my heart bleeds when I read those accounts in the paper, the cruel things that are done. But if you are a loving mother, if you’re a mother that wraps your arms around your children, and you tell them that you love them, you’re not afraid to say that to them, and you sacrifice to give them not everything they want, but things that they need, I want to say that I’m really proud of you, and you’re doing a great job. God’s proud of you. Do you know that God looks very special, in a very special way at mothers? My own mother is gone, she’s in heaven with the Lord. My mother-in-law also passed away just a few years ago. And Paul and I lost three parents within four years, it was a tremendous loss in our lives, particularly two mothers and my father. Today, because I honored my mother last Mother’s Day, I’m gonna honor my mother-in-law today, and her name was Dolores Williams, and she was a jolly lady, she had an infectious laugh, and when she laughed, her whole body laughed, if you know what I mean, she just got into it, and she was a real neat lady, let me show you a picture, she came to Cornerstone Television, one time to visit, we had an open house and here she is here in the red, want you to see her, she’s in the red, right here, and we affectionately called her Mil. Now you say if her name was Dolores, Arlene, why would you call her Mil? Because my brother-in-law, Paul’s sister Mary’s husband, he said, you know, mom is a name you just call your mother, you know, and I don’t wanna call her by her first name, ‘cuz that’s kind of cold, so let’s call her mother in-law, M I L, which stands for Mil, and it was an affectionate term and she loved it, she loved being called Mil, and so Charlie and I always called her Mil, and we’d sign “to Mil”, you know, of course Paul always called her mom, but the in-laws called her Mil, and she really liked that. This is another picture of her, this is one of Paul’s favorite pictures. She was just a great lady and she loved to bake. She was a good cook, a great cook, but she loved to bake. She baked every day, sticky buns, homemade buns, oh, and her pie, she made a rhubarb strawberry pie that was unbelievable, and her coconut cream and she made every kind, and it’s just like the baker whose kids say, take their sandwiches to school and say, “oh, can I have the bread that’s on your sandwich? I like that better than homemade bread.” Well, these guys, her kids, Paul, Bob, Don, Jack, and Mary, they would take the pieces of pie and eat the filling, and leave the crust, could you believe that? Because they were so used to her baking all the time, it became commonplace. But she was a lady who loved her children dearly, and I mean dearly, I just show you the little cookbook that Paul put together for his mother. Let me see, I think it says, “Mother’s Day, May the 10th, 1957”, we’re gonna tell your age here, honey, this is a cookbook he put together in school, and you can see right up here, it says, “Paul” that’s who it was from, “May the 10th, 1957”. The crew’s moaning because they weren’t even born then. And this is neat because apparently what the teacher did was, the old mimeograph machine, she just mimeographed recipes from all the parents that submitted them, and they put them up in a little book like this, and they called it a “Mother’s Day” or “Mother’s Cookbook”, and this was the one that Paul did for his mom, isn’t that neat? You have things like this, that your kids are making, put them away because the more older you get, and the more the years go by, the more precious they are to you. Well, today we’re gonna be cooking, and baking some of Mil’s very favorite recipes. These were all that I found in amongst her recipes, after she had passed away. And we’re gonna get started in just a minute, but first here’s our At Home hint for the day. Stay with us. Here’s today’s At Home Hint. To decorate a special occasion cake, spread the cake with desired frosting and let it dry, gently press a cute cookie cutter into the frosting to create an outline, fill in the shape using another color of frosting. If you have a helpful hint that you’d like to share, we want to hear from you, send your hint to At Home Hints, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. If you knew Mil, you knew that in her kitchen was always a cup with a tea bag, she loved tea. She’d have a pot of tea going, she’d have sugar, and she used canned milk in her tea. So you always had to put a little bit of canned milk in the tea, and she left the teabag in there, almost to the end of the cup because Paul’s father is English, and that’s the way the English drink, really strong tea. So we have a cup of tea going here in memory of Mil. Well, the first thing we’re gonna do, is show you one of the desserts because she loved desserts, she loved good food, particularly, but she had all kinds of varieties of desserts. And this one is called “Peanut Butter Hoho Cake”. And what we’ve done is just take a simple box cake, your favorite chocolate cake, bake in a 13 by nine pan. Someone wanted to know what this design was on top. This is a special design you get when you put a piece of foil over this, when the cake is too hot, and what it does is sticks to it, when you take it off, some of the top of the cake comes off, no special design, it’s just what happens. It happens, right? Okay, that’s not gonna matter because we’re gonna put a topping on that. And what we have here is a half a cup of butter, and we’re gonna add some Crisco to that. This would be five level tablespoons of Crisco, five level tablespoons. This looks like it might be only three. I think we’re supposed to have five. Okay, maybe Sandy, could you get me some more Crisco please? And I’ll go ahead and start to add some of the other things together. This is a cup of sugar. Just walk in, that’s all right. Thank you. I think it’s in the fridge. We just need a couple more because you know, if you don’t have the right amounts, then it’s not gonna be the right consistency. And just gonna add a couple of tablespoons. There we go, thank you my dear. Okay, we’re not gonna measure real carefully since, but that looks like about a table spoon, ‘cuz this will, there we go. All right. Now we’re gonna go cream this together. Okay? And this is gonna be spread on the top of our cake. Now remember this is called a “Peanut Butter Hoho Cake”. Cream it together just like this. The cake has to be completely cool, you cannot have a warm cake and do this, it will not work. You have the butter at the room temperature. Add the sugar to it. Now we’re gonna add, we’re gonna add some lukewarm milk. All right. Put that in there. And some flour. That’s a half a cup of milk, and this is three tablespoons of flour, and also peanut butter. This is three fourth cup of creamy peanut butter. We’re just gonna add all this in there together, just like that. And we need to blend this until it’s, hey, like this mixer, this one, I mean, it’s got speeds on it like you wouldn’t believe, anyway, we’re gonna totally turn up the power, and make this whip until it’s fluffy. Smells great. Smell that peanut butter, mm mm. My mother-in-law loved to have her family there. She was a great lady in that family was everything to her. When her children were grown, she would wait for them to come home, they’d gone, we were all married, and we had our own lives. She’d always say to you, “well, you gonna drop by? I’ll make some sticky buns”. Or I’ll make this, or I’ll make that, or “come on, let’s put the kettle on and have a cup of tea.” And she had an ability to make you feel very welcome, no matter when you went to her home, which is very nice, ‘cuz that’s, as kids, that’s the way you wanna feel, that you’re welcome when you go back home, and she had a very wonderful way of doing that. Okay, now we’re gonna take this, I probably will let this get a little bit more fluffier, but for time’s sake, I think you have the idea. We’re just gonna put this on top of the cake. See that’s why I said it didn’t matter if that was on the top or not, but it just doesn’t look real nice, and somebody wanted to know if it was a map of Italy or something, maybe it was Africa. I said, “no, it’s not, just a booboo on a cake”, but we’re covering it up with the peanut butter layer. Just like that. Now this is gonna go in the refrigerator because this has to what they call, set up a little bit. That means it has to get just a little bit dried or a little bit hard crust to it because then we put the chocolate layer on top of it. All right, this is enough for a 13 by nine. Just like that. Boy, when you go to meals, you know, she’d say sometimes Paul and I would stop at the bakery, ‘cuz we would just surprise her when we’d go, and she would look at us and oh, she’s glad to see us, and then she looked to see what was in our hands, like did we bring something? And we usually would, and she’d be so excited about that. Remember, we’re gonna chill this now, this goes in the refrigerator, I would say for were probably about an hour, maybe a little bit less than that, and then we’re gonna put a topping on it, we’ll show you that later. But anyway, she would look to see what we were brought her because she enjoyed her goodies, she really did. Next thing, which was a tradition always, was she would make chicken ala king for my brother-in-law, Don, because his birthday was on Christmas Eve. And for the first, probably 10 years of our married life, Paul and mine, every Christmas Eve, you went to their home because this was a tradition, and she always made chicken ala king, or cream chicken in patty shells. Now the way she, this is a recipe that I found of hers. You take a stick of butter and you melt it in a sauce pan, or this is in a dutch oven, and we’re gonna add, I think it’s a half a cup of flour, and you want to cook this until you make something that the French call is a Roux, R O U X, and that is simply a thickening agent, and you’ll see that the flour absorbs the butter, and it’s getting thicker and thicker, in fact, you can see in the bottom of the pan, hardly any liquid left and you stir this because you want the flour to cook because what it’s doing is cooking some flavor, if you went on with the recipe now, it would taste very floury or pasty, but as you’re cooking it, and you’re letting that cook together, the butter flavor overwhelms the flour, and then as you’re cooking it, the taste is just wonderful because it makes a very buttery flavor in whatever you’re making. This is the foundation or the basis, for the cream that goes with the chicken. As you can see, it’s cooking pretty well there. Now what we’re gonna do, we’re going to add a couple of cups, of chicken broth. Now, if you want to make your own chicken broth, you can boil some chicken, that’s fine. Actually we need about two cups. That’s what we’re doing. Also, you wanna have your chicken cooked. It’s really important to stir this, to get the lumps out because you can see that it’s going to, if you don’t stir it, the lumps will be in the bottom, and you don’t want that to happen. Now that’s about 10 and a half ounces so, we’re gonna add about another half of a can. All right. And I know this isn’t real good to do, but we’re just gonna, there we go. And you’re gonna see that this is gonna come very velvety, and this has to come to a boil, and then we’re gonna lower the heat, once that comes up to a boil we’ll lower the heat. And I’m gonna add a little bit of salt here, not too much, just a little bit. What we have here, get rid of that, is three cups of cooked chicken, and we cubed it, this is boneless, skinless, chicken breast, and I’ll tell you one of the quickest ways to cook this, instead of cooking it in a pot and seasoning, unless you want to have the broth to make a soup, or to use in this, we cook this in the microwave, clean it really well, take all the fat off it, put it into a low, flat dish, like a pie plate, and put single layer, cover it with the plastic wrap, and you put it in there and cook it until it’s done, and what it looks like, it’s shrink wrapped, ‘cuz it keeps drawing down on it, and it holds the heat in and that stuff will cook that fast. That’s one of the things that we found that we really, I mean, it really makes it easy to do. All right now, so now we’re gonna lower the heat, turn that down because it’s gotten very thick, you can see it’s thickening up, see here. Now we’re gonna combine some egg yolks. We have two egg yolks here, and we’re going to give it a creamy taste by adding a cup of cream, this is half and half. All right, just like that. Now the key here is, that we’re going to add a little bit of the mixture that we have in our pan. If I put that in there, you’d have strings of eggs in that, you don’t want that because that would cook the eggs. So I’m gonna take just a little bit of this, to cook this first. You just do it like that because that will warm up the cold milk, add just a little bit more, and then you can put it in there, and then the eggs will not be cooked, you can see that there’s no egg strings of white eggs in there, and that’s important to do that, if you dump that in there, the eggs would cook, and you’d have look like scrambled eggs in your chicken ala king and it wouldn’t taste good. Now we’re gonna put it all in here. Oh, and it’s so creamy and smooth, looks just wonderful. And then we’re going to take our whisk, this is a fun part here, look how creamy and smooth that is, that’s just beautiful. That’s what you’re looking for, that’s the basis of your chicken ala king. Now we’re gonna add our three cups of chicken. Make sure they’re cubed because all you have to do now, really is to make sure that this is completely heated through. And we’re also gonna add a small jar, I’m only gonna use about half of these mushrooms, small jar of mushrooms, if you like more, you can add more, but really all this is gonna do, is cook through, warm up, and you’re ready with your chicken ala king. And we’ll be right back to show you patty shells to serve this in, in just a minute. Stay with us now. Well, we have our chicken ala king or cream chicken, going very well there on the stove. Here’s a variety of containers, edible containers, that we can serve the chicken ala king in, now Mil always did patty shells, and this was her pie crust that she would cut circles out of, and I’m gonna show you how to do that. Here’s a pie crust, all you do is lay a container, about just a little bit smaller than, oh, say a saucer or just this size is perfect. And then what she would do is take that, and this is those large muffin cups, this is one of those, you can put it over glass custard cups, anything, a cup, anything, but she would take it like this, and then just shape it down, push it all around, and that’s bake it in the oven at a high, like 425, 450 degrees, five to eight minutes. Just keep watching them because they’ll get browned, and they’re very hot when they come out, so don’t be handling them with your fingers, ‘cuz you’ll get burnt. These are also they’ll little patty shells that you can buy in the frozen foods and they work fine. Both works very beautifully. Now one of the salads that she used to always make for us was called “Wilted Lettuce”, and all you do is brown some bacon like I have here, and you make it very crisp, just like this, very crisp bacon. And I’m gonna go ahead and put my bacon into the bowl because it’s crisp and it’s ready to go. Now normally I would have this done ahead of time, and then you’d put it back in just to warm it up before it was time to serve it. But today because we’re trying to cover so much for you, I’ve left it in here just to keep it good and hot. Now what I’m gonna add to this. This is like a sweet and sour, it’s a hot bacon dressing, and I’m going to add some, a few onions, they don’t have to cook a whole long time, just enough in there to let them brown just little bit, ‘cuz that brings out the flavor of the onion. And also I would let these cook a good while. There we go. And I would add some vinegar. Now it depends on the way you like sweet and you like sour. If you like it more sour, add more vinegar. If you like it more sweet, add more sugar. But I would let these cook a while. Then I would add my vinegar to make it sour. And then I would add my sugar to make it sweet, and just let it cook. But don’t let it cook for a long time because the vinegar will evaporate. You will not have that strong taste of vinegar, and I’m gonna put my pepper in here. Okay. And Mil would do this and she would make this, and I can remember going in different times, we’d go for dinner and you could smell, as soon as you hit the door, you’d smell that vinegar cooking, I’d say, “she’s making that wilted lettuce.” She taught me how to do this because she knew this was one of the things that Paul liked, and she wanted me to be able to make it for him because he enjoyed it. Her cinnamon buns, oh, sticky buns, she could make them boy, she knew how to do it. All you would do then is take your leaf lettuce, put it in a bowl, put your bacon on top, and you serve this just before, you put that on the salad, just before you’re ready to eat, you don’t let it set because this has to be hot. You have to stand back because the vinegar takes your breath sometime too. Okay, this is done. What I wanna show you now is what to do with the cake. I know we have just a minute here, but the cake has been chilling, and we’ve taken one jar of prepared chocolate icing, and we put it into the microwave. Now you have to make sure you don’t do the one with the metal can, has to be the one in the plastic container, just like this one. And we’re going to stir it, to make sure it’s liquid the whole way down. Just put this in there about 30 seconds, don’t put it too long, and we’re gonna pour this over. That’s your hoho cake. The crew right now, I can tell Lauren in the control room, is probably ooohing and awwing, and maybe a few others up there. Then I would put this back in the refrigerator to firm up and that’s the peanut butter hoho cake. And this tribute today to my mother-in-law Mil, she’s a great cook, more than that, she loved God in an unusual way, she had a personal relationship with him that was wonderful. We’ll be right back to present the whole meal as a tribute to mother-in-law in just a moment. Stay with us.
- [Announcer] To receive the recipes presented on today’s program, plus many more great recipe ideas, send your best donation in a stamped, self-addressed business size envelope to, At Home, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. You’ll receive Arlene’s heartwarming newsletter, “Enjoy”, featuring an entire month of At Home recipes, including today’s mouthwatering dishes. Be sure to include the Enjoy issue number with your request.
- Well we’re honoring mother-in-law today, but honey, it’s your mom, and she was a great lady and we miss her a lot, don’t we?
- Yes, we do.
- Well, but these were her favorites, some of her favorite foods, you can see there’s the peanut butter hoho cake in the front. Oh, she would’ve loved that. And this is her wilted lettuce salad, right here. And you can see on our plates, I’ve already dished them out. Here are the patty shells, with the cream chicken, bits of mushroom, and we always would enjoy, particularly Paul’s dad, always enjoy these peas with a little tiny baby onions in them, it’s a nice accompaniment to this meal. And there would always be a pot of tea on the table. There would always be bread and butter and of course, you always had to have canned milk with the tea. She had a profound effect on a lot of lives, and she’s sadly missed by a lot of people, a lot of friends, but most of all, by us and your siblings and spouses, we missed her because she loved God, that’s the greatest tribute you can pay to your family, is to love God first and then love your family. So we say happy Mother’s Day to everyone out there, who’s doing what God’s called you to do, loving your children. Be sure to join us the next time, because it just wouldn’t be the same without you, see you then.
- [Announcer] Fresh produce provided by “Jordan Banana”, Wholesalers of fresh fruit and vegetables, in Dravosburg, Pennsylvania. Appliance’s provided by “Dacor distinctive appliances”, a reflection of your good taste. Groceries provided by “Foodland”, where the answer is always yes. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers, whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.
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