The Auctioneer ~

Hello all....

The summer before I was to start into high school 

(this would have been in the summer of 1953),

my daddy and mama decided we needed to buy a farm...

a farm in ARKANSAS...

my aunt and uncle had moved there, loved it and wanted all us there, too.

SAY  WHAAAAT ????

move me away from all my friends I'd grown up with...???

planned forever on going to high school with all of them !!!

This is another post at a later time....big story....
 

We found the farm and moved right after school was out.

Such a cute little town and cousins and friends came out from Texas and

spent time with us....that helped my feelings.......some.

ANYway...

the one thing that I had so much fun doing there

was going to the Sat. afternoon auction held downtown on the square.

Folks would bring in the neatest things.

olden things...

and brown eggs from their chickens...

and everything else under the sun.

The auctioneer would get to talking so fast that the way he used

to get his tongue all straightened out was to say

PINEAPPLE  PINEAPPLE  PINEAPPLE three times and never miss 

a beat.
No one wanted to stand close to him cause the spit would fly, the faster he talked...
hahhaa....actually it turned out to be a great summer.
(and we moved back home before school started)

While I've been inside the house so much while Mr. Sweet was ill,

I've done quite a lot of cooking and baking...

today, I wanted to make a 

PINEAPPLE  UPSIDE  DOWN  CAKE.
(they are one of my favorites on the planet)
*(and don't you luv the way I slide food into my post sometimes...:>)

Normally when I make this cake that my mama made in HER cast iron skillet,
I use a white or yellow cake mix.

THIS time, I used a Duncan Hines

Signature
PINEAPPLE
SUPREME....

and HOLY COW...it was so thick and yellow and luscious ..and it had a recipe on the side of the box.

Most of the time, one doesn't need a RECIPE to make this cake...

We know that you melt 3/4th stick of real butter in a cast iron skillet...
then you sprinkle a packed 1 cup of light brown sugar...
( I like to use the brown sugar sub...less calories)
and we know to place pineapple rounds over the top of that sweet brown sugar...
then we know it's just  fun and adds color and goood taste to drop a juicy, red cherry
right in the middle of all those slices of pineapple.

In this recipe on the cake mix box,
it says add 4 LARGE eggs to the mix...
1 small box of INSTANT Vanilla Pudding (I used French Vanilla, don't cha know)
(I had never used pudding in my Pineapple Upside Down cake before.
.nor that many eggs)
1 cup water..
1/2 cup oil...  
***
Bake about 50 minutes at 350 degrees.

MERCY....just the SMELL brought me to my knees..
♥

...by far, the prettiest Pineapple Upside Down cake I've ever made...
and
can you see that caramelized brown sugar, just hugging that pineapple and cherry...
Oooooo HONEY GIRL...

This photo looks like a delicious, red eyed
OWL..
:>)

 This is delicious but I believe that I still like the white cake best.....could be because that's what I grew up on.

You know old habits are hard to change.....

My Aunt Lola was such a great cook...everything she made was delicious.
She taught me a lot about cooking.
♥
( I didn't have grandmothers...died before I was born...
but I had a whole room full of the BEST aunts that I loved dearly)
♥ 
Aunt Lola had 3 small children during WW2
and times were very tough for her and the family.

Always trying to make her meals stretch as far as they would go,
she said it was very important to "scrape" the bowl or pan to get as
much as you could to go into the cake or whatever you were making....
that it just might produce another serving.

I've always remembered that...
and think of my sweet aunt as I scrape every bowl for that last bit.

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