Southern Duties, Love, Pride, and Magic Bags of Tricks

First, one must understand that as a Southern woman, I do dearly love to cook.  Most of us ladies here do.  We pride ourselves on our "specialties".. and take great delight in being "famous" for our particular dish.  (mine is baked beans... also known as the "Kumbaya Beans".  LOL)  I can't tell you how I make em.  My own secret recipe.  But I am quite proud of my title as the reigning "Bean Queen".  Oh, yes I am!  LOL

Anyhoodles,.. here in the South, food = love.  So as much as I dearly love my family and friends, I am constantly cooking.  Full bellies = happy folks!   This thinking is in our blood.. in our very DNA.  

Lately, however, I have taken the "slacker" way out.  Sandwiches.  Leftovers.  One pot "throw together meals".  Picking up a box of fried chicken from the Publix Deli, (which when sliced makes delicious fried chicken sandwiches).   I have been lazy as sin in the kitchen.

Last night, hubby was whinin' and complaining.  "There's no cookies!  No cake!  No goodies!"   He said it in that wounded husband voice that reads in my mind as "If my dear wife LOVED me, I'd have baked goodies to eat."  (followed by a wounded hubby face... adding to my guilt.

So this morning I started out by frying chicken... followed by corn pones, (served piping hot and with real butter).... then some yellow rice to eat with the chicken... fresh green beans from my Momma and Daddy's garden cooked with bacon (of course), fresh sliced garden tomatoes, a loaf of zucchini bread, (zucchini is also from the garden), and over 3 dozen cookies, (I used peanut butter and some cranberry granola).  Also (of course) fresh brewed sweet iced tea, (also known as 'the House Wine' here at our house).

Two downfalls to this tale.  Mr. Picky NOW reminds me that he doesn't 'like' zucchini bread.  Grrrr.  Fine.  More for me and the kids to enjoy.  Also.. got it hot in here with that oven going.  I usually hate turning my oven on with summer heat... but sometimes, 'you just gotta'.  :)  A toaster over just does not do the same job.

My kids love home cooked food.  They are forever asking me, "Mom!  Where'd you get THIS from?"  (always some ingredient I found in the back of the pantry or hiding in the freezer and just decided to do something with, or add it to something we usually eat, thus adding some interest.  They are always, without fail, completely impressed.  (which makes me amused and happy too, I admit!)  And I always reply the same answer.  "Oh, just something I had in my magic bag of tricks."   I think Robyn is convinced that such a bag actually exists, and she'd LOVE a peek inside!  LOL!!

Back to business.  ;)  The recipe to the corn pones is ridiculously simple.

  

Self-rising cornmeal, Boiling water, Oil or lard for frying.  That's it.

Nothing in this recipe is measured. Depending on the amount of cornbread you want to make, pour cornmeal in a large bowl. Pour boiling water over cornmeal and stir quickly. Batter should be very thick. Drop by rounded spoonfuls into hot cooking grease. Fry until golden brown. Turn em' and fry the other side. Drain on paper towels (I use leftover brown paper bags from the grocery store) and serve hot. Similar to Hush Puppies, only better.  Good with butter or without... trust me we will eat them happily either way.

The Zucchini Bread is 2 cups self rising flour, 1 cup sugar, a good shake of cinnamon, 2 eggs, 3/4 cup shredded unpeeled zucchini, 3 tbsp. vegetable oil (or melted butter), a half cup (or so) of pecans, and a little milk.  You want cake batter consistency.   I add the pecans last, and you don't 'have' to have them.  Its just how we like ours.  Pour it out into a greased bread pan and bake at 325F for 60 - 70 minutes til it's nice and golden.  Let it cool a bit before you attempt to turn it out onto your cooling rack.  Then just let it finish cooling there.  Yummy eaten like cake or you can put cream cheese on it if you want to.  Quite good with tea or coffee. ;)

I am almost embarrassed to explain the cookie recipe.  I started with 2 cups self rising flour, a cup of brown sugar, a good shake of cinnamon, and a big scoop of peanut butter... probably about 3/4 cup worth but to be fair I did not measure it.  I worked the peanut butter in.. and found that I had no eggs.  Terrific.  I remembered that mayonaise is nothing but eggs and oil, so I added some til it got to the right "cookie dough" consistency, (stop making faces these turned out pretty darn good), and then lastly I dumped in about 2 cups of cranberry granola.  Mixed it all up good and rolled it into balls and put on UNGREASED cookie sheets and baked at 350F til golden.  Don't ask me how long.. LOL I have no idea.  Ten minutes maybe?  I don't know I just baked til they were done. :)  Robyn was a little grossed out that I used mayo in the cookies but she sure does like them.  She said, "You can't even tell there's mayonnaise in these, Mom!" :)   See?  Old Mom always knows a trick or two. ;)

Lazy Summer Sunday, Doctor Who, and No Bake Cookies...

What a lazy Sunday. 
No, we didn't attend mass. Not feeling that well, and neither is hubby.  Nothing that will kill us, and obviously not affecting our appetites, haha, but annoying just the same.  And on a day that's so hot they announced heat warnings, the best thing we can do is stay in and stay cool and not aggravate our individual issues.

Anyhoodle.

So my eldest is sharing with me about the convention in "The Swamp" in January.  For a change it's not all anime stuff.  This con has (in my oh so humble opinion), two major selling points.  Doctor Who, and Firefly.  Pity David Tennant won't be there, but sometimes a gal must suffer through. (sigh)

Admission is free... my favorite price.  So that's another good selling point.  I have already pre-registered our family, plus an extra for my daughter's boyfriend.  

I see also in the Swamp is the Medieval Faire... which is in late January and early February.  They always have a low cost day for homeschool families, so we'll go that day of course.   I know all this is a half a year away, but I'm a plannin' kind of gal. ;)

So it's June now and summer has officially started here in Florida.  It's hot as Hades and I pride myself on avoiding the heat and sun as much as possible.  Mornings and evenings are fine... but the middle of the day you can forget it. LOL

Peering out my window sipping the house wine, (since I am a Southern gal you KNOW that actually means sweet iced tea, and I like mine with lime please), fan blowing, A.C. running, and thinking of watching a little tv with my hubby.  I am seriously in a Doctor Who mood.

Because my Momma taught me to share, I will share with y'all this recipe that I got out of the sweet Potato Queen Big Ass Cookbook and Financial Planner.  I fixed these cookies today... they did set hard enough you could gently pick them up... but we still put them in the freezer.  You can't even eat but maybe one or two of these at a time they are so rich.  I call them "NO Bake Cookies" because I can't in good conscience call them their "real" name in front of my girls!   If you've never tried these, you should.  They're absolutely divine!  They're the best summer dessert, simply because they are (a) chocolate, and (b) you don't even have to turn on the oven.  Click on the picture to make it bigger. ;)  

Enjoy!!

Sacrebleu!

My family is Southern with a twinge of Yankee influence.  I am proudly a second generation Florida Native, and my mothers family is all "Georgia Crackers".  I guess that makes me a "Florida Cracker".  LOL  My hubby is a Native too, and so, like most dyed-in-the-wool Southerners, we eat "down home cookin'".  The Yankee influence would be from my father, who was from up North, and as a young man in the military was stationed here... where he met mom.  My joke is that Daddy is a born Yankee.. but he got here as fast as he could.  :)   Daddy did bring with him, his taste for Pennsylvania Dutch food.. and he has passed some of those Yankee tastebuds on to my sisters and I.  Now we are passing them on to our kids... as evidenced by the block of frozen scrapple in my freezer.  

Bearing this in mind, it came as rather a surprise to me when my youngest child Robyn became interested in all things French.  I have no clue where this came from.  The child reads a great deal, and more likely than not she read about France, and became enamored from there, chattering to me about the glories of Paris any time she could.  


The movie Ratatouille came out.   


She has been a "foodie" since she could talk, and has told me since she was three years old that she wanted to be a chef.  So this movie comes out, and she watches it.  Religiously.  She begs me to watch.  I refuse, as the mere thought of a rat... even a cartoon one... cooking in the kitchen causes the bile to rise in my throat.  My dear husband who is often the "fun" parent bought the movie, and after months of nagging, I finally caved and watched it, simply to get her off my back.  Hmm.  Not as bad as I though.  Quite cute, actually.  Though I am still grossed out by the thought of a rat in the kitchen.  

I love Meryl Streep, and I love Julia Child.  Hence, when the movie Julie & Julia came out, I was hot to go see it.   Ever wanting to please us, hubby bought the movie.  I've watched it not less than seven times.  Maybe more.  I bought the book, and even bought Julia's, My Life In France.   Of course I already had Mastering the Art of French Cooking (volume 1), as well as "Baking With Julia".  But, I think a good many of us who enjoy cooking probably have those books.. along with The Joy of Cooking... which, I may add, was my very first cookbook.  I got it when I was 19, newly married, and no idea how to cook.   I read 'The Joy of Cooking' like a paper back novel, following it blow by blow as I slowly learned how to prepare a meal that didn't make you want to regurgitate.   I digress.  

So, here I am, dusting off my old Julia Child cookbooks.  Vowing I would actually crack them open.  Nope.  I didn't.  "Who needs all that butter?"  I'd ask myself.   EVOO (extra virgin olive oil for you non-foodies) is better.  Isn't it?  I didn't open the cookbooks.  There they sat.  Like the good china that doesn't get used.

My daughters birthdays are four days apart.  (No, we didn't plan this. LOL)  So since they're older now, we offered to take them out for a nice diner for their birthday.  I ask my eldest where she wants to go.  "I don't care."  Fine.  I ask my nearly 11 year old foodie where.  She lights up, and declares she would like to dine at the French Bistro in St Augustine, and she wanted escargot.  

Are you kidding me?

I google it, and I read the reviews, and evidently it's supposed to be "like stepping into Paris", and that the food was truly, truly French.  Wow.  Okay.  Umm.. sure.  I noticed that escargot is only served at dinner and not lunch, so I made reservations for the Saturday evening before their birthdays.  I have my mind up I am NOT eating a snail.  Forget it.  It ain't happenin'.

My Stars.  Such a lovely little bistro.  Fresh, crusty baguettes and "fancy" French cheeses, a lovely soup that was compliments of the Chef, and.. the much anticipated escargot.

The smell was intoxicating.  Buttery, garlicy, Heaven.  My vow to never try them was gone, and I ate two of the divine morsels.  There is nothing more delicate and delicious to be found.  My Stars and Garters, pick me up off the floor!!  Lamb and Ratatouille followed.  Every bite had us wanting to roll into the floor.   Our taste buds had died and went to Heaven.  We devoured every bite.  Dessert was fresh berry tarts for myself, hubby, and eldest, while my pint sized foodie went for the fresh-from-the-oven chocolate lava cake.  

When the meal was over, I looked at hubby.  "My Lord. NOW I know why the French all smoke.  After a meal like that, ya need a cigarette!"  Mark cracked up and agreed.   We waddled home, bellies full of fine French food.

The following day, as we mothers all have to do, was to prepare our meals.  
Nothing.. I mean NOTHING appealed to me.  How the Sam Hill do you eat something that blows your taste buds away, and then go back to eating the same boring stuff?   I cut a piece of yellow American cheese, and bit into it.  Ugh.  It tasted almost oily.  How had I always eaten it before?  I told my hubby, "It's NOT delicious."  It wasn't.  And it's not.   I felt spoiled and dissatisfied, which made me feel guilty.  I reminded myself that I was very blessed, and people were starving all over the world, and I should be ashamed of myself.   

The next day I took out hamburger from the freezer.  I got out 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking', and thumbed through, wondering to myself if Julia Child ever made anything with hamburger.  Much to my surprise, she did!  Who knew there were French hamburgers?  Hot dang!  So, I followed the recipe, and made her steamed buttered rice too.  Result?  Oh. My.  What a heavenly hamburger!  Now THAT was delicious!  Hubby carried his plate that I made him to eat at work, and later, when he got home, asked me just how I'd made it.  He loved it!  


"You know," he says, "you ought to do what Julie (Powell) did.  Go through the book in a year."  He grinned.  Oh Lord, the man is serious.  I considered it.  I sat down after dinner and looked through the cookbook.  I mean REALLY looked.  Oh dear God.. she cooked and ate BRAINS.  I am NOT eating brains.  You can forget it.  I may be a "hick", but brains and tongues and kidneys are not touching these lips.  So I told him I'd cook some of it, but some of it would not be made.  Too bad.  LOL   He counters with, "That's what you said about the snails."   


Dang it.

I am not going to do what Julie Powell did.. cooking her way through an entire, thick-butt cook book in a year, and then blogging about it. As I told my eldest today, NOBODY needs that much butter!  She laughed, and said, "Sure we do!"   Well guess what?  I will make Julia's recipes, and we'll enjoy them.  But not every day.  Lord no.  We are still eating "Southern home cookin' with our bit of Yankee influence."  :)   But after making Julia's Ground Beef with Onions & Herbs (p. 301) and steamed buttered rice (p. 530) yesterday, followed by to-days dinner, Chicken Breasts Saute'ed in Butter (p. 270) today, I have to say I have already learned a better way... more delicious way to cook.  Julia Child knew what GOOD was!  Yes, I will cook her recipes.  Not all of them.  And not in a year.  But I am happy to learn a new and better way to make things.  And incorporate what we're already doing, ever in our quest to eat better and healthier.   Butter is better than that fakey gross margarine anyway. :)  I am convinced that some of those margarines are part plastic anyway.  (gags)

Tomorrow I'm going to make tabbouleh.. we've not eaten that in a while.  I'm not aware if Julia ever made it.. it's definitely NOT French, and vegan to boot. :)   In my attempts for my family to eat healthier, and buying the organic stuff and shopping a little here and there at the hippie store..  well, I feel that Julia's recipes are NOT, in fact, the opposite of that.  Julia believed in using fresh ingredients.  Non processed.  She liked "real" food.  She didn't like the silly food fads.  I have thusly dubbed my "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" as "The Butter Bible".  LOL  I can pick and choose.  We all can. :)