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

Brunswick Stew

 Fall is probably one of my most favorite season.  It is is especially important to me because it brings back the memories of when my late  mother and I  made Brunswick stew together.  We would grind fresh meat.  I would shucks homegrown corn to go in it.  We would laugh and talk about her childhood memories of  her mother, father, and brothers and sisters. making Brunswick stew was one of the best time for the entire family.




Brunswick Stew

Mama's Homemade Gravy

My Mama’s Homemade Gravy This is one of the most basic gravies that pretty much  anyone can make. This is the perfect brown gravy but depending on the type of meat that you cook and the drippings from them, you can have beef or chicken-flavored gravy. Ingredients: 1/4 cup  all-purpose flour.  If you do not have any flour, then cornstarch will make a  nice substitute. 2-3 tablespoons of your meat dripping.  This  would be the residue leftover  from any meat that you cook. If there is too much grease leftover, then you can strain it. Salt and pepper  season to taste Any herbs of your choice preferably basil and oregano. They can be dried or fresh. Water or milk.  Milk makes a much creamier gravy.  Also you can use cooking wine like red or white wines.  Both add a little kick to your gravy!!!!   Directions: In a small saucepan place the meat dripping in milk or water.  Bring the mixture to a high boil.  Once it gets boiling, then lower the liquid.  While this is happening, make a paste with the flour, salt, pepper, and the herbs and any of the broths (see below) in a separate bowl.   Combine all of these ingredients and add them to your saucepan mixture. This will slow down down the boiling process so allow all of the combined ingredients to return to a high boil.  During the boiling, add the remaining ingredient of  cooking wine 1/2 cup.  Reduce to low and let simmer for 20 -30 minutes. This will be the creamiest gravy that you have ever had.  Also to keep it from clumping, lightly whisk it repeatedly.  If you want a beef or chicken flavored gravy add a can of beef or chicken broth.

The woman behind my Mama''s Recipe

Growing up in the North Georgia Mountains was a real treat for me and my brothers. We were the youngest of my parents six children and my mother raised my brothers and I as a single widowed parent. At the time of our father's death, I was 6 years old. My youngest brother was 4 and my oldest brother was 9.

 Breakfast, lunch and dinner were our most precious time for not just eating but fellowship as well. My mother and I did all the cooking, which was also our mother and daughter time together. My brothers enjoyed the benefits of tasting and eating  whatever my mother and I were preparing for each meal. Various food favorites sometimes were eaten at more than one meal. For example, biscuits would be eaten at dinnertime and the next morning as a breakfast food. Biscuits were always served with homemade jams and jellies. Also any leftover bread was usually frozen and used later in the year to make cornbread dressing with the Turkey at Thanksgiving.

Ultimately my mama's recipes provided me a sense of confidence and assurance that I could do whatever I set out to do. My mother always enjoyed having her youngest daughter in the kitchen with her since my older sisters didn't share her passion for cooking. I hope that your experience with looking through my blog causes you to reflect, reminisce and relate to enjoying and sharing timeless opportunities with those you love. 

Southern favorites

In this blog, one will be learning about how to cook southern foods. My three most favorite southern dishes to cook up anytime of the year are are fried chicken, biscuits, and apple pie. There are many delicious southern favorite cuisines out there but in my opinion, these three are the absolute best!!!

podcast

Hull's the good, the bad, and overall effects of social networking through Blogging

  After reading Hull’s article  blogging between the lines, I learned that blogging can be informative, fun, entertaining, therapeutic, and a way to advertise your business as well as making money.  Blogging is also one of the biggest and most popular forms of social networking. For many people it is a way to share hobbies, interests, and moments of their life to people they already known and total strangers.  In the article, Hull dealt with blogging mainly from the media’s perspective as in print versus the internet.  She gave the pros and cons of blogging.  She presented both sides in terms of how successful blogging for a newspaper can be as well as how damaging it can be.  The positive side of blogging can be very beneficial in terms of bringing new subscribers to a newspaper and giving voice to those that would otherwise not be heard.  However in the negative perspective, some reporters get so caught up with blogging that they fail to finish their work.  There have been instances of reporters who have used blogging for their own personal pulpits.  In turn, this type of behavior by some reporters has led to attracting the attention of negative individuals such as hate groups that might want to be heard in a national or major news publication. The final lesson learned from the article on blogging is that Hull went into details about the legalistic side of blogging. She cited several lawyers throughout her article as well as giving detailed examples of reporters who have lost their job over inappropriate blogging comments or topics. Ultimately blogging is mainly from your perspective of life and whatever you choose to talk about, if you use someone else’s wording give proper credit. Hull, D. (2006). Blogging between the lines. American Journalism Review, 28(6), 62-67.      

Preview of my next blog topic