Sugarplums date back centuries, first noted in Delights for Ladies, a cookbook published in 1609. Made of dried fruit, toasted nuts, and crunchy sugar, it's no wonder they've been a holiday tradition ever since, referenced each year in The Nutcracker and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Roses' famous sweet potato balls fresh out the oven with their marshmallow center warm and gooey and the cornflake crust, sweet and crunchy. Absolute perfection.

Late that afternoon, when there was enough sunlight to hold an hour’s play, we lined up tin cans on the porch and saw who could spit their seeds the farthest. If you hit a can, you were a champion; if your seed made it into the can, well, you were a legend. All the pain of the wasp stings was lost for a moment in fun and games, and the watermelon was sweet down to its last slice...

Snickerdoodles became a tradition at the farm and a favorite among my cousins and me. These weren’t your traditional snickerdoodles either. Picture this: a marshmallow dipped in warm butter, rolled in cinnamon sugar, then wrapped in a crescent roll and baked. We ate handfuls of these as kids, ran around all night with full stomachs, and never once regretted a single bite...

Sundays at the farm were all about fighting a sea of bodies to the bathroom, followed by farmhouse OJ, Rose’s famous breakfast, and a hearty debate over which church we would all attend that morning. Mater Dolorosa or St. Patrick’s? It would boil down to which church had the shorter service and, of course, the better donut shop nearby...

When summer was drawing to a close and the cranberries were ripe on the vines, we knew my gram, Rose, was about to make her famous cran cobbler. She’d toss out an order to fetch some pans from the hidden pantry in her bedroom, and like Pavlov’s dogs, our mouths would water as we foraged through the pantry for the largest cranberry-picking pans we could find...

The lollipop is said to have been created by George Smith of New Haven, CT in 1908. He owned a small candy store called The Bradley Smith Company and named his treats after his favorite racehorse, Lolly Pop. Getting a patent was difficult, however, as the term first appeared in The English Dictionary in the early 1800s as “a hard sweetmeat sometimes on a stick”. Sure sounds like a lollipop to me!

Rose met me and Penny at the car with a glass in each hand. I’ll tell you, lemonade had never tasted so good. But that was Rose; she always found a way to turn lemons into lemonade...

It’s the simple things in life that bring us the most joy—like roasting marshmallows around a fire with our grandkids, a warm cran cobbler fresh from the oven, the smell of wildflowers after a rain, and the refreshing taste of an ice cold cocktail on a sweltering summer day...