Cooking with Sam: Try out these favorite recipes

We are on to New Year’s, and what do we eat on New Year’s Day? Peas, greens and hog jowl with cornbread and sweet tea. How Southern – but we are in the South.

Greens are the color of money, and peas represents how many dollars you will have. If that was really the case, I would be rich. I love peas, in any form, and of course turnip greens. Yankees say do not eat “the tops,” the turnip greens. They just eat the turnips. To me they are both good.

I hope everyone has a great year and is thankful for all you have to eat.

I sure do like to cook and eat all I can every day. I am overweight, but it has cost me a lot of money to look this way. I am healthy, though, and I guess that is all we have; if we have our health, we are rich.

Here are a few recipes that I enjoy cooking.

Sam’s Coconut Sheet Cake

1 cup of coconut

1 box of yellow cake mix

1 can of Eagle brand milk

1 large Cool Whip

1 can of mandarin oranges

1 can crushed pineapple

1 jar of cherries

Bake cake following directions on box.

Punch holes in cake while hot and pour Eagle brand on top.

Mix together Cool Whip and coconut. Cut oranges into small pieces and place on top. Spread on top of cake. Sprinkle coconut on top, about 1/3 of a cup, and place cherries all over, about every two inches to be sure each piece has a cherry.

This will last about five days in the fridge. It is quick and easy.

Sour Cream Pound Cake

This cake will last in the fridge for a while and will freeze great. Sometimes I will cook one, cut it into slices and freeze for a snack. I like to put fresh berries and whipped cream on top.

½ tsp. lemon peel in batter

1 cup soft butter

2 cups sugar

6 eggs

3 cups sifted flour

½ tsp. salt

¼ tsp. soda

1 cup sour cream

1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream butter and sugar until light. Add eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each.

Sift dry ingredients three times and add alternately with sour cream to first mixture, beating until smooth. Add flavoring.

Pour into a 9-inch tube pan that has been greased well. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour and 20 minutes. Let stand in pan on rack about five minutes.