Lois Jones
Lois Washington Jones pours her heart into her work when she is baking cakes and cooking, and it’s a good time for her to meditate.
Out of necessity she started making cakes about five years ago, but has always done so for family and friends, and began with sheet cakes around 1996.
She is a licensed cosmetologist, but said she feels the Lord gave her this. She likes making cakes, especially fondant 3-D cakes.
Fondant is her favorite to work with “because you can be much more creative with it.” She taught herself to use it, and posts pictures of her cakes on Facebook. She recently talked with author Bud Gardner of Houston, who approached her about writing poetry to go on some of her cakes.
As a result of having so many eggs yolks left over from her cake making, she began making homemade pasta. She says they’re are also handy for making homemade ice cream, which her family enjoys.
Originally from Chicago, she married 37 years ago and has lived south of Vardaman since then. Her husband said she could cook breakfast (her favorite meal) and spaghetti when they married.
Her family likes soul food, especially dressing in which she always uses Old Plantation sausage seasoning, and her husband and son “bring in the wild game.”
She has become very health conscious and feels people should take their health in their own hands. She favors lemons because of their medicinal properties, and recently started looking into wild edibles like dockweed, lambsquarter, pigweed and plantain weed.
She enjoys gardening and is trying sheet mulch and hay bale gardening. The bales are higher than normal raised beds, and for them she uses blood or bone meal or chicken fertilizer, alternating every other day for five days, saturating with water every day, and in 12-14 days it is ready for planting.
For the sheet, she puts down a layer of cardboard, manure, green grass clippings with hay on top. She grows strawberries, tomatoes, cantaloupes, bell pepper, zucchini, watermelon, string beans, garlic and chives.
She loves pressure canning–even chicken and deer meat, so with that and vegetables, she has whole meals ready. She also likes to can vegetable and 15-bean soup, and chili.
Lois likes a variety of foods including stir fry and sauteed things, smoked potatoes, roasted cauliflower, and her family likes candied sweet potatoes.
Both grandmothers and her mother were heavy influences on her cooking, and for the First Sunday celebration at church, she and her mother like to make sweet potato pie, hummingbird cake using carrot cake, and a coconut cake her family has made “for as long as she can remember.”
Jones Studio 276 Slaw
(My favorite slaw recipe is my own recipe:)
1/2 head of either red or regular cabbage finely shredded
3 medium Granny Smith apples, cored and shredded, tossed in lemon juice or citric acid to prevent browning.
16 oz. bag of chopped walnuts
12 oz. medium shredded carrots
20 oz. can of crushed pineapple drained
12 oz. white raisins
Splash of organic apple cider vinegar
Mix well, refrigerate and serve topped with your favorite slaw dressing.
Jones Studio 276 Easy Homemade Pasta
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp. olive oil
Pinch of salt
1-2 Tbsp. of water
15 egg yolks
Use dough hook or pasta machine mix to form dough ball. Roll out thin and either cut for ravioli or fettucini to use in your favorite recipes. Freezes well!
Vanilla Custard Sauce
(A very quick and simple recipe; can modify flavors!)
6 egg yolks
1-1/2 cups (360 ml) Half and Half
1/4 cup (30 g) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (100 g) sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. butter
Place all ingredients into Vitamix container in the order listed and secure lid Select Hot Soup Program or blend on High for 5 minutes (non-presets Vitamix models). Switch machine to Start and allow machine to complete the programmed cycle.
