Aunt Karla,
I was looking through the recipe book and couldn't find this one listed. There was a few fruit punch recipes listed, but they really didn't sound right. Grandma made this punch at just about every Christmas party I can remember. It was a red fruit punch (and it tasted like tropical punch or something) that she would freeze ahead of time and then mash up with either 7-up or Sprite in her big punch bowl.
Any ideas what might have happened to the recipe?
Thanks,
Toby
Hi Toby ~
Mom made all kinds of red punch. It just depended on what she had in her kitchen at the time. It wasn't usually a set recipe. I do know that she always used koolaid and 7-up/Sprite. Then whatever else she decided, sometimes she added lemonade and/or pineapple juice. The last few years I had made the punch for Christmas Eve. This is what I did.
1 package of Cherry Koolaid (any red one but I usually use Cherry), 1 package of Tropical Punch Koolaid, 1 package of Orange Koolaid, 2 to 2 1/2 c. sugar and enough water to make 1 gallon. Freeze til slushy. I made it Christmas Eve morning and put in the freezer. Add the 7-up at serving time. I know this isn't much of a recipe but it is good. I started making this back when my kids where in grade school for their class parties (only without the pop added). I had several Mom's call for the recipe because their kids loved it. I still make it often and I every time I make it for a group I get compliments on it. It's kinda funny/embarrassing when someone wants the recipe and you tell them it's just koolaid. It is the combination of the 3 flavors that makes it so good. If I want to make it extra special I add the 7-up. I made 4 gallon of this for Steve's work Christmas Party this year and added 2 2liter bottles of 7-up filling my 5 gallon bucket nicely. One of the guys told me it was the best punch he had ever drank and he must have drank 10 glasses of it. Another good thing about it is it's cheap and fast and you can make 1 gallon or 5 in the same amount of time.
In the cookbook I would say refer to the 10 Gallon/1 Gallon Punch recipe - the first recipe in the book on page 1. Then you can expand to your tastes.
Growing up we always had punch for Sunday dinner, my job was almost always to make the punch. Mom would tell me what to put in. The most common recipe was: 1 can of frozen lemonade and 2 packages of koolaid with 1 1/2 c. sugar with enough water to make 1 gallon. Any flavor of koolaid was good in this, but my favorite was lime. Anyway, give it a try and let me know what you come up with or what you like best.
Good luck ~ Love ~ Aunt Karla
A couple more punch/pop memories:
Of course we often had Mom's Famous Grape Juice, 2 qts of her home canned grape juice, a cup of sugar, a bottle of 7-up (it was a 1 qt. glass bottle then) and lots of ice to make one gallon.
When we were growing up about the only time you got to have 7-up was when you were sick or when we had grape juice. It was quite a treat if there was left over 7-up after making grape juice. Since I usually made the punch I learned to always make sure there wasn't enough room in the container for the whole bottle of 7-up then I would get to drink the last few swallows of it.
Pop was never a common household item and definitely not something you drank everyday. Growing up you only bought pop if it was on sale and the only kinds of pop I ever remember Mom buying were Root Beer, Orange, Quench and of course 7-up (back then Coke might have been about the only other variety available, and Mom never bought that). The Root Beer and Orange was used to make ice cream floats. Root Beer floats were probably our most common Family Home Evening Treat. I think that was Dad's favorite!! I think Mom bought Quench just because she liked it. Us kids didn't really care for it, but through the years we grew to like it because she would share it with us and make us feel special drinking it with her.
And this leads to a couple more memories:
Back then when you bought pop it came in pint or quart glass jars. If you washed the jars and returned them to the grocery story (usually Shamrock Market) they would give you a penny for the pints and a nickel for the quarts. If us kids boxed them up and got them ready and took them into the store Mom would let us keep the money. If I needed to earn money selling pop bottles was always what I did first. Then I would clean out and organize Mom's drawers and she would pay me for doing that ( I think I got a quarter per drawer). Sometimes when she was gone to meetings in the evenings I would clean out the bathroom drawers for a surprise for her. She always made a big deal out of my doing that for her. I learned that Dad would sometimes pay better than Mom. If I polished Dad's shoes he would give me fifty cents!! Depending on how much money I needed to earn, sometimes I would even polish his work boots. I loved to polish Dad's shoes and it soon became my job to polish his shoes for him every Saturday and he didn't even have to pay me for it but he often did anyway.
Enough of memory lane for today!!!
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