It’s a hundred degrees here in north Georgia and too hot to do much of anything except remember summers in my Granny’s kitchen. Usually, she had a pressure cooker going full steam, putting up vegetables from the garden. I’m sweating in my house and I have air conditioning and steam-in-a-bag veggies from Publix.

For some reason, that makes me want to get out my cookbook. It’s a binder full of recipes she put together over the years and slid into plastic sleeves so I’d be able to feed my husband and children right one day when she wasn’t around to tell me how to do it anymore. Every time I pull out these recipes, I think of her. And today, she’s telling me I need to quit worrying about the – forgive me, Lord – bikini I’ll be squeezing into in a few weeks when I travel to Europe, and sustain my soul with a lemon pound cake.

So, here you go. I’ve copied the recipe as she wrote it, word for word. If you don’t understand, shoot me a comment. It’ll heat up your house like a sweat lodge and rid you of all impurities.

Old Fashioned Pound Cake

2 cups plain flour

1 cup Crisco

2 cups sugar

5 tbsp Sweet Milk

5 eggs

2 tbsp Lemon Flavoring

Cream sugar and Crisco. Beat one egg at a time into mixture, alternately adding bits of flour and tbsps of milk. (Add part flour, mix, add 2 tbsp milk, mix. Add rest of flour, mix. Then add rest of milk and flavoring.)

Grease bunt pan and pour in batter. Bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour, or until brown on top.

You might want to put a cookie sheet on the lower rack in the oven to catch anything that drips out.

Serve with vanilla ice cream.