Canned Snow Cones

Lemon Lime and Berry Blue snow cone syrup

Alright, not exactly. Just read.

My family has had quite a bit of healing since our move to our new home. The change has been therapeutic for everyone. The boys have been able to attend a traditional-looking school and progress by leaps and bounds. Kevin commutes much further to work but is now an early bird and seems more relaxed during his time at home. And I, well, I'm beginning to do things I have not enjoyed for a very long time.

One of those things is preparing food for my family. Sure, my family ate before. I did not starve them but I had not prepared meals for them in the way I used to - with love, thoughtfulness, and just a bit of passion.

What I want to share here is what makes me excited and lights up my eyes a little - creating. I'm an artist at heart and I must create. I see just about everything I love as art. Creating good food is something in which I can increase my skills, display and give others to enjoy, and I can feel proud of my accomplishments in food creation.

As a regular part of this blog, I'd like to share food - making, baking, cooking, growing, preserving, raising, etc. So, here goes...

I have a weakness for Slurpees from 7-eleven and Slushees from Foster's Freeze. It's a 20 minute drive to town and I've made excuses many a time to go into town on an "errand" just so I can buy these sweet, fruity, frozen treats. However, ultimately, I'm cheap. If I can make it, and make it better, I want to so, I did. Here is a super easy recipe for perfectly thick snow cone (or slushee) syrup that you can have on hand for making these yummy treats on a whim.

Snow Cone Syrup

2 cups granulated sugar

1 cup water

1 packet unsweetened Kool-aid

Combine sugar and water in a saucepan over medium high heat. Stir to dissolve and bring syrup to a boil. Boil one minute then remove from heat. Add unsweetened Kool-aid and stir until completely dissolved. Cool completely and serve over shaved ice for snow cones or mix syrup and ice in blender for slushees.

Now, I like cooking and such but I LOVE efficiency because it means less work. So...I decided to triple this recipe and can it so we can have it year round. I did this 3x with our three favorite Kool-aid flavors. All I did was, instead of cooling the syrup after dissolving the Kool-aid flavoring, I pored the hot syrup into hot 1/2 pint canning jars, afixed the warm lids and bands properly and set them in a water bath canner for 10 minutes.

Ha! Canned Snow cones. I know, not really but, at least we have the fixings for them year round. I do keep a bag of ice in the deep freeze for such purposes.