I decided half way through the day today that I was going to choose a recipe from the little box of recipe cards that I found in my grandma's kitchen after she passed away, and I was going to make one of her dishes! So, I picked one at random and ended up with rhubarb pie dessert. Awesome. It is probably one of the least healthy recipes in the bunch, but that's okay!
I was out this afternoon and early evening, and then on my way home decided to pick up the ingredients at a store that was on my way home. They didn't have any rhubarb, which is exactly when it dawned on me that it isn't quite rhubarb season, and come to think of it, I don't think I have ever actually noticed rhubarb being sold in the grocery store, so I needed a plan b. I thought of the second most likely fruit that grandma would have cooked with, and picked up some strawberries.
I got home with my ingredients and got to work. Might I say here that I don't think I have ever actually bought a container of cool whip before in my life, and I was too afraid to actually look on the list of ingredients, so I decided to remain ignorant instead.
With "undeclared" playing beside me, I cut up the strawberries and put them in a sauce pan with a little sugar (I used a bit less than grandma had written down...) some water and some corn starch, and started it cooking. Beautiful.
After the strawberries were cooking for a little while, I looked at the recipe card again, and realized that I had only put in 3 tsp of corn starch instead of table spoons. I thought the best way to remedy this would be to put some more in after. I gently poured in some corn starch, as all of the sudden I heard a fire alarm go off outside, and jerked my hand so that probably about half a cup of corn starch landed in the pot. Okay, don't panic.
I grabbed the pot and took it to the sink, where I scooped out almost all of the extra cornstarch. There were a few little clots of it left in the pot, but with stirring most of them came out. So here is a piece of advice: don't add corn starch in anything after the fact. Yikes.
Moving on, I waited for the strawberries to cool. I got bored, so I decided to give myself a green clay facial.
I poured the cooled strawberries into the graham cracker crust, and then put the mini marshmallows on top.
Next I mixed up the vanilla pudding mix (Ya, I told you how unhealthy this was!) Now, this is where I made another little teensy mistake... I decided that it would make more sense to mix the cool whip in with the pudding instead of making a separate layer first (because it was just way too hard to spread over the marshmallows.) So I mixed them in and added the milk. I poured the mix over the rest of the pie a little too energetically...
I cleaned up the mess and poured a little more carefully, and then left the pie to cool and the pudding to set. I watched some more "undeclared" and then came back to find that the pudding did not set... fully. Another word of advice: Don't mix cool whip in with a vanilla pudding mix, they don't work too well together. I think the major lesson I am getting out of today is that I REALLY can't take short cuts in this recipe, even thought I seem to really want to.
Well, so what if dessert is a little liquidy. I put another layer of cool whip on top and left it in the fridge for another hour, just to see if it helped.
It didn't really help. Whatever, it still tasted good. What would Grandma have done? She would have adapted, probably served it as ice cream topping or something. So, I served it anyway, and I called it: a Strawberry parfait.
Love and kindness all.
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