First Lady of Southern Cuisine

I would like to shout out an honor to Paula Deen.

First Lady of Southern Cuisine

Kraft Recipes

 I do not know about anybody else but with all the blogs talking about food, it has made me hungry for Thanksgiving.    If you need easy to fix meals and do not have a lot of time to cook, then definitely check out the Kraft recipes  website:   Thanksgiving Turkey

The Wonderful Life of a Blogger

I learned that blogging can be therapeutic and it brought back fun memories of my mother and I cooking together. Doing blogging has reminded me of dishes that I thought I’d forgotten how to cook.  Once I started writing about my favorite dishes, the details of how to prepare them started coming back. These were the shared memories of mother and daughter that I will always treasure even more now that I know longer have my mother alive to talk about them with.  Blogging can be time consuming, exhausting but really fun to do.  I want to someday use this blog as a way to create a new enterprise for myself.  Getting a chance to see how this medium allows you to meet so many different people, has given me a new way of thinking and a chance to creatively and successfully challenge myself to try something new and enjoyable.

Easy Southern Fried Chicken

My Mama’s easy Fried Chicken Recipe

Here is a simple fried chicken recipe that I grew up on

Ingredients

1 whole chicken (fryer).  My mother preferred small fryers.  Also, you can have the market butcher cut up the pieces or buy it already cut up.  I just prefer to do it myself.      

Crisco Shortening or Lard

Salt and Pepper to season

Plain all-purpose flour

Directions

Wash and cut up chicken.  A whole chicken should come to nine individual pieces

Salt and pepper all the pieces.  Refrigerate for 1 hour.  You can do longer if you like.

I like to make an herb mixture of flour, basil, oregano, paprika, garlic salt, and season-all or season-salt.

Get a brown paper bag and pour mixture in.

Start placing pieces in the bag and  shake the bag lightly so the mixture coats each piece.

Heat shortening in a cast iron skillet.

However when you hear the oil sizzling, then it is ready.

Fry chicken for 10 to 12 minutes on each side making sure it’s golden brown. Darker pieces need to cook longer than white pieces.

Drain chicken on paper towel on a flat metal pan.

Allow chicken to cool for several minutes before eating

Apple Pie Part II

  To see the  the finish product, please refer to the following YouTube video: Apple Pie Part II

Apple Pie

Hello and thank you in advance for visiting my blog. Here is a step by step introduction of how to make my Mama's Apple pie. This is one of my favorite desserts that we did together.  As the saying goes, apple pie is as American as it gets!!!!

 For a full demonstration and to see the complete pie, please refer to the following YouTube video: My Mama's Apple Pie

Ingredients for the pie filling:

6-8 apples - preferably  Granny Smith
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 and ½ tbsp. of vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ cup all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar

Directions:

Wash, peel, cork the apples, and then slice.  Depending on the density of the pie, your slices can be thick and thin.  Pour two tablespoons of lemon juice on the apple slices. This keeps the apples from turning while peeling the rest. Mix all the other ingredients together.  Set aside and proceed to work on making the crust.

Ingredients for the pie crust:

2 cups all-purpose plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
¾ stick unsalted butter or Crisco all vegetable shortening.  Both make one of the flakiest crusts that you ever want to eat.
4 to 8 tablespoons of ice water.  To make the water really cold, I put crushed ice in the water and let the water sit in the freezer for a few seconds

Directions:

Blend flour and salt together, then cut up into cubes the butter.  Using a pastry blender, start  mixing all the ingredients together  The combination of the flour, salt and butter should resemble a coarse mixture making it crumb like.  The more you combine the ingredients repeatedly the flakier the crust.   If you do not have a pastry blender , then two  butter knives will work.  You will work the two knives the same way as the pastry blender.  Once this is completed, take the cold water and start adding it in one tablespoon at a time.  Usually 3 tablespoons will get the mixture to form,  an additional 1 to 4  tablespoons of water will get the dough to fully form. You will want to form the dough into a round ball.  Once it forms, then you want to divide the dough making a top and bottom crust.  The smaller divide will be the top crust and the bigger divide will be the bottom crust.   Wrap the crusts in plastic wrap and sit in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. The coldness will make the crust easier to roll out and form.

Recipe for Biscuits

This is simple recipe for baking biscuits. Also this can be used for making dumplings which is a wonderful and hearty dish for chicken and dumplings. Also this can be used for any leftover turkey from the holidays.


 

 this is taken from Alton Brown, of the Food Network channel


http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/alton-brown/southern-biscuits-recipe/index.html