racheld
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Posts posted by racheld
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Teepee, it's always wonderful to see your pictures---so recognizable even without your logo---just beautiful. I'm so glad to be viewing everyone's happy New Year celebrations---this is absolutely our favourite cuisine in the whole world, and I want to taste EVERYTHING!!!
Everyone's dishes from every home are just spectacular, all laid out perfectly, like one enormous banquet that goes on and on. And I love hearing about all the gatherings with family---My Deep South roots are firmly embedded in generations of family gatherings.
And this one---what a beauty, and all that WORK!!! What a great honor to all who saw and tasted at this table:
here I pan fried it on both sides and served it in a cast iron skillet.
Inside:
I do hereby, from VERY far away, confer the G.R.I.T.S. Order of the Black Skillet upon sheetz, wielder extraordinaire of the sacred skillet. This was just spectacular.
And my Mississippi River heritage begs me ask: Could you please tell me about "steamboat," or provide a link?
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I buy packs of dried soy bean in the Asian grocery stores.
Do you realize that those very beans could have come from our farm, hundreds of miles from me, thousands of miles from you? I spent many a year surrounded by those green waving fields, watching them grow from little "turtles" breaking the earth with their tiny dicots, to deepest-green rows as far as you could see. Then the waiting, the turning to gold, the drying and the testing; the combines lumbering their ponderous dinosaur tracks across, spouting the dry and the wisps and the dust into that hot, unforgiving sky, and rattling those golden beans like pebbles into the bins.
And there you hold them in your hand, a lightly-bought, easily-found item with so many uses---you convert them to milk with the flick of a switch, and I, who have lived so closely with the seeding and the harvesting, have never once tasted the stuff. But tofu
---now THAT is a miracle. Especially with one of your heavenly sauces.OK---musings done.
Cook now.
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Did you hear a little voice from over this way, beseeching the blog-gods? It was saying, "Let it be hzrt8w!" in the same tones as standing by the Sorting Hat and whispering, "Not Slitherin; Not Slitherin."
Hooray!!!
Caro will be ELATED!! We're snowed in a bit, again, and are all stocked up with good stuff to COOK!!
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I just put my favorite tablecloth on the breakfast table---the one that has pictures of pots of violets and pansies around the rim, with the inscription, "It's Spring and time to plant the seeds."
I don't CARE what the groundhog or the Weather Service or any other authority says. I've got books from Burpee, Michigan Bulb, and Nichols Garden Nursery; I've got maps and diagrams, plans and plots, and seeds saved in little packets in the freezer.
We have three to six feet of snow piled in the backyard and I wanna park that snowblower and crank that TILLER!!!!
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Where are all our southerners?
II know there are still some Southerners participating on the boards. I'm just interested about your personal stories regarding "meat and threes" and if you called them that and when.
(By looking at the site ChefCarey linked to I learned that one the thriving centers of meat and threes is Memphis.)
Thank you!
I guess I would qualify as one.
Elite (pronounced E-Light) Cafe, Clarksdale, MS. Memories only---don't know if it's still in existence. Website of Morgan Freeman's Madidi seems to place it on about the same piece of real estate.
Heavy crockery dishes, some with the actual dividers scrolled into the plates, though no dam could hold back all that dumplin' gravy or pot likker. Slabs of pink juicy ham, two crisp chunks of fried chicken, beef and gravy, liver and onions---any and all appeared from day to day, with hearty low-cooked vegetables, as well as mac and cheese and cornbread dressing, both listed in the vegetable column (along with several kinds of jello, most involving canned peaches, marshmallows, or both).
Round Table, Columbia, MS---though that one would qualify as a meat 'n' twelve. Tables seat about ten or twelve, with plates set on the perimeter. You sit with whoever's there, catch a bowl or platter as it spins past you, help yourself, and try to find a setting-down place for it next time around, so you can pick up another dish. Super food, lovely proprietors---two ladies who own and supervise; not an immaculate curl out of place, and pristine dresses creased just SO as they sit down, take a sip of their 40-weight tea, and speak toward the kitchen: "Mighty good tea today, Margrit!"
I tried to imagine the life they must live, just supervising all those wonderful cooks every day---I thought of them as waking to their coffee, reading the Jackson Daily Ledger in their silky robes, then dressing, stockings rolled just below their knees, and drifting downstairs to take in the delicious aromas and the serene temper of the white-draped dining rooms, ready to receive their guests with the aplomb and ease of royalty.
A sign says "Please take only one meat" but the vegetables pour out like manna from the kitchen; when the bowls get a bit low, they are replaced immediately, with the same or an equally delicious side dish. People come in, sit down, and begin from the beginning. I seem to remember going to the sideboard for your dish of pie or banana pudding.
Blue And White---Tunica, MS
This adjunct to a "filling station" has a long and illustrious history in the Delta. It has long featured wonderful food, a smalltown-cafe atmosphere, and take-no-prisoners waitresses whose approach was heralded by the crisp whisk of stiff nylon dresses, and whose training in waitress-ship must have included courses in deep-sigh, toe-tap, glass-clunkdown, brusque answers, and perfect memory of who-had-what. Usual meats---phenomenal threes. And PIE. Speak not of pie til you've had theirs.
I wonder how the B&W fares these days---Tunica has become a suburb of Memphis since the advent of all the casinos and enough blacktop to pave O'Hare. I like to imagine it's still there, still filled with families and farmers at lunchtime, all having a good hot noon dinner of ham and greens and cornbread, with a nice slice of sweet onion on a teensy plate at the side.
And in another little factory town, a seventies memory of another little caffay, part of another service station, whose proprietor served a 1.50 lunch of meat, three, dessert, and rolls you had to stand up and reach for as they floated away. Ladies usually ordered the "hafe-lunch" (owner's accent) of a small serving of meat, very slightly reduced portions of the threes, a roll, and a half-slice of pie---75 cents.
Neither factory nor cafe exist anymore, and the town is almost gone as well, melted into that good black Delta gumbo with the rain and sun.
It's amazing that I remember any of these from childhood---I do not think I ever looked at a menu until I was a teenager. My order was always the same: a hamburger, served the way everybody served it: mustard, onion, and a couple of slices of tongue-curling dill pickle. We had burgers at home, patted round and fried in a skillet, sometimes on Wonder Bread, sometimes on buns. But a burger with a grilled patty, slice of too-orange cheese laid on to droop down its corners whilst the two bun halves crisp-sizzled in the who-knows-how-old grease---now THAT was a sandwich.
And a dear friend asked me to lunch one day, down in her area---she said to allow time for the drive, and extra for lunch, of course. She also mentioned I was in for an "adventure." Had she mentioned the name of the place, I might have been mildly apprehensive, I of the backroads and thickets and acres of woods to stroll and drive, but not until we traversed several gravel roads and a quite rickety bridge and arrived at "Booger Holler" did she even hint at the nature of the "restaurant."
We walked up shiny-smooth wooden steps, into a flappy screendoor, and past little shelves with a few loaves of bread, a pint or two of mayonnaise, some big jars of fat pink smoke-sausage. She paid our four-dollar fee, we were handed a large flap-top takeout styrofoam container, and we walked down a little hallway. On the stove were four or five pots, and we were to just lift the lids and use the big spoons and ladles to help ourselves. A young man obligingly creaked open the wide oven door and dispensed biscuits or cornbread; we were made free to make a choice from the two tubs of canned K-Mart drinks embedded in the coldest icy water in history.
There were a couple of shaky picnic tables out under the shadetrees; their only accoutrements consisted of a tin can of plastic forks, one of knives, and a stack of napkins held down by a smooth rock. A jar of homemade wasptail peppersauce in a Tabasco bottle, along with matching clean, dry bottle filled with toothpicks, sat handy. We washed our hands at an outdoor faucet set over a ring of bricks, dried our hands from the spindle-roll of paper towels. We sat with the other lunchers, joined in the feasting and the conversation, and heard about hunting and crops and the newest news from the political pages. I remember that meal for its surprising simplicity, its well-prepared and rustically-served food, and the ease with which we were welcomed into that shabby little combination of store/home/restaurant. And all the men at table had removed their hats.
So there you go---never ask a Southerner unless you REALLY want to know.
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Unless the patron is J.Lo. I think a "I'm so sorry, but we can't do anything further" is all that is required from the restaurant.
But J Lo dyed her OWN coat after the spaghetti-sauce mishap, remember?
rachel, who watches too many dancing movies
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The best sniglet of all time is "disconfect."
It's a magical power possessed only by Mothers--the ability to pick up a child's dropped sweet and blow the germs off.
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Hopefully, by the time I get up tonight, or the very latest, off work in the morning, we can get a glimpse of some serious porn
We want porn, we want porn
This is Caroled's Mama speaking, and what have you got that CHILD up to? For sooth and for shame.
She's sleeping now, to go out to work tonight in this SNOW---about a foot all over the yard and driveway---just got it "blown" and hope no more fills the gaps. I've already READ and seen---she'll be pea-green I saw it first, and most pleased when she wakes to this glorious little "week-night" dinner.
We both love your wanderings, and all the lovely things you find.
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Hot cider, beet pickles and a lavender nosegay on an icy afternoon stroll with a friend, with a good homey roast chicken dinner to come---find anything better to add and I'd like to hear it.
Lovely to have you back---blogging and Dinner and everywhere.
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Too much cake is never, ever a problem in my book.
CAKE
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Well, you DO beat all.
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Ah, Kim---always good to hear from you, dear. I'm glad you found it enjoyable.
Hope you've been well.
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Somehow, I'm thinking that even if I did spectacular home-grown, home-put-up pickles, he'd be sitting, silently waiting at the table for the Vlasics...
Of course. Homemade vs. home-stocked. We grow accustomed, and therein lies our favorite. My own Dad was a Man of the Fifties, as well, in most instances, but his adventuresome spirit and willingness to try almost anything acquitted him well in our household---I'd branch out into whatever recipe seemed interesting, and he usually always liked it.
Mother was a meat and potatoes, peas and cornbread, spaghetti sometimes (made in a black skillet---and I remember it fondly) girl, but she was a fantastic dessert cook. She accumulated recipes by the ton, clipped from Farm Journal and Southern Living and McCall's or heard under the hairdryer and scribbled into her little book, then honed them to perfection. When we helped Daddy move after he sold our family home, I went straight to the kitchen and upended two drawers into boxes, sealing them tight and sending them straight out to "our" truck. The recipe drawer and her drawerful of crisply-ironed aprons, most embroidered or smocked or rickracked by her own hands.
Mother was also a pickle-maker extraordinaire, with enough shelves of the briny green things to stock the ark. I remember only one "bought" pickle in my Mother's kitchen: something called "candied dills," long quarter-cut spears in a knockout-sweet syrup with a few mustard seeds. I had one friend who made sure she asked if we had any, every time she visited. I'd fork her one out of the jar; she'd take it dripping between her fingers and hold it high, slurping the syrup from the end like a kid biting the bottom out of an ice cream cone. And that bit of cucumber probably contained more sugar than the drugstore double-dip.
It's just all in what you're used to.
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Just a quick "bump" of this old thread---mouth-wateringly homey and evocative in all ways of Grandma's kitchen.
I just hope the creamed corn is not from a can.
And those little ranks of tiny white bowls, with their scoop of banana pudding, the blackberry cobbler, the congealed desserts and the five-cup, the slumpy slices of cake and pie just barely fitting into the dish--too much for choosing.
Someday when the savory stuff is not calling so deliciously, I intend to make all my selections from the dessert shelf.
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On the day of the super bowl I made empanada dough.. Using Leaf Lard.. I used miss Rachel D's empanada maker.. The fried up so pretty and the dough was just awesome.
I also used Frank Stitt's pickled shrimp recipe.. 5 pound of shrimp with olive oil, lemon juice, fennel seeds, star anise, hot dried peppers, celery seeds and bay leaves..
Saturday I also made the pimento cheese from Stitt.. This was cheddar mixed with homemade mayo and roasted red peppers.. I served this surrounded by Saltine Crackers.
I also made a mac and cheese with double smoked bacon.. The cheddar I used was an extra sharp aged white.. Good stuff..
Fried pork skin, fahgedaboutit..
I made deviled eggs.. With cayenne,white peps, apple cider vinegar, little mayo.. Topped with paprika..
I've been just reading and reading, wishing I'd been there to help---I'm a good hand in the kitchen.
All the food sounded scrumptious, but these just brought back Football Sundays Down South---all the above spread out on the table for munching all during the game. I seemed to be the only girl in the neighborhood growing up, and our house was the gathering place for all the games, with a nice tableful of goodies---even then, I wasn't a sports person, and would disappear with a book til the plates needed re-filling. A coupla these afternoon gatherings, and every Good Ole Boy in town was at my beck and call, for carburetor fixings, for tire-changings, for dog-washing if I'd asked.
We DID watch the last 12 minutes or so, after we got home from the movie.
Daniel YOU DID GOOOOODDDD!!!
And sweet sleep and recovery to your ladies.
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This site---all of it, every page, every dish---always makes me feel like I've walked through the Dorothy-door into a beautiful realm of colors and flavors I'm just learning about.
Caro will make us mapo tofu tonight, after she awakes. She worked last night, is off for two days now, and it's snowing fast and furious. I'm glad she's home for more reasons than one, and this will be the perfect night for all the hot/sweet flavors. Just the scents as she cooks are wonderful.
Looking forward to more of your beautiful dishes (and to tonight's dinner, thanks to you!).
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It' snowing like a HOOHAH here, and RB&R sounds like just what we need on this collllld night---10 degrees right now, and that's sort of a heat wave.
It's late in the day, but pressure cooker it is. Leftover grill-smoked ham, all the hockish parts all crusty and brown and smoky---yum already.
Thanks, all, and thanks, Brooks for the Pressure Cooker reminder.
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What she said.
Only I don't have any pork belly hanging out in the freezer or anywhere else. I never heard of it except on the stock market---they were right on there with the soybean futures---til you did that porkarama last year.
I would like to see it, though. Just watching y'all's energy perks me up.
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I was always tempted to put the silent "p" into receipts---it was in recipes, after all, and should have been sounded out in receipts, as well, I thought. I'm going to go in search of the recipe box today---a good day to stay in and do some cozy little home things.
I know the lime pickles by heart (no actual citrus involved, though I have lifelong LONGED to try one of Amy March's beloved pickled limes). And the dills, and the okra/eggplant/green tomato, which are all the same operation. I just walked by the pickle shelves and swirled a tiny squat Mason of the green grape tomatoes---their firm, close packing has given way to a little shrinkage, and they rolled around the edges of the jar like a snowglobe, making my tongue tingle for a taste. I know what I'm having with my toasted hoop-cheese sandwich for lunch.
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And Lovie, I SO want to be there to drive you to the market (or just go for you whilst you stay warm and get well), and to make soup for you and Quinn.
Please take care of you both, and get your rest.
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It is still unbelievably cold, so I am now wearing long underwear, a t-shirt, turtleneck, a heavy sweatshirt and a sweatshirt. It's hard to believe that it will ever get warm, and that in just a few (long) months, things will green up and grow!
I am trying to envision you, moving around your kitchen like a little kid in a pink snowsuit zipped up to her eyebrows, trying vainly to reach down and get just one handful of snow.
This is just the nicest thing to wake up to---things going on in the even-colder part of the country than mine (and we were -16 last night, I think; it's -3 now). Of course, a lot of that -27 Windchill may have come from all that breeze of the yelling done all over town by happy Colts fans.
Sweet smells of simmery soup and baking bread, and the enticing scent of the starters and yeasts and barms and doughs, resting warm and growing.
We never called it "leftover soup"---it was always "fridgerator soup," and started with a quart or two of home-canned tomatoes. A little sizzled onion and bell pepper, in with the red sloosh of the tomato jars, a can of Pride of Illinois corn, straight from the can, and an uncovering and choosing from any and everything in the fridge.
A little bowl of pale tan field peas, with the little bits of bacon that made them so delicious; a Tupperware of two-days-ago spaghetti and meatballs, with the meat cut into spoon-bite bits; some home-canned snap beans still holding on to their gentle vinegar tang; a Saran-wrapped block of homemade macaroni and cheese (made mostly with Ronco spaghetti at our house, thick and slabby with all the grated hoop cheese), cut into small bits and added last, to melt and swirl into the mixture, making it rich and homey.
We had soups and stews and gumbos (one of which I hope to find the recipe for; it was from a dear neighbor who was raised on Avery Island, home of Tabasco sauce, and who taught me the makings of court boullion---soon coo-beyon' with the uplifted "n" came as easily from my lips as from hers).
Her gumbo was made from the wild mallards brought home by every man and boy, and a couple of daughters who grew up in kneeboots, striding those fields toward the water, lying on frozen ground for hours awaiting those overflying shadows. Mrs. J. made the court boullion from several ducks, simmered into softly-falling dark richness. She boned them, and added the meat back to the big pot, seasoned it right at the end with file' powder, and ladled it over big scoops of long-grain rice lying warm in the wide soupbowls.
Nothing in those bowls but rice, the clear brownish broth with tiny golden flecks of duckfat afloat, and maybe a wisp of softly-cooked onion here and there. That was all---duck, onion, salt, file' powder, water. I think. We gathered at each others' houses for potfuls of the stuff. My Dad would make the big cooker full and invite the six of them. She would oblige by cooking up a batch, and having the four of us over.
One evening we arrived to find her blushing a bit, and wanting to explain things, in case we thought her strange for putting roadkill in her pot---a neighbor had brought her a guinea hen from his farm way out in the country. The flock of them had scattered around his truck, and he accidentally ran over one, so she was his first thought---that Cajun woman with all her strange herbs and ingredients. She welcomed it gladly, and I don't think we could tell one tender chunk from another in the bowls.
Gosh, I've had too much coffee!!! Anyway, stay warm and think:
TOMATOES
TOMATOES TOMATOES -
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There's more than CORN in Indiana---29-17!!!
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1)Pickeled Shrimp
4)Deviled Eggs 5)Pimento Cheese
4)Mac and CHeese w/bacon
5)Chili with nachos and sides
Sandwiches will be:
1)Pork Belly 3)NO BBQ Shrimp Sandwiches
. .I have 12 pounds of pork belly which is going to be enough meat for the 12 guests showing up..
Dessert
1)Brownies
2)Sweet potato pie
3)Big ol messy chocolate cake
Woo, Daniel! You could be throwing this party anywhere South of the M/D!!
Devilled eggs, Paminna Cheese and Sweet Tater Pie!!! I just cannot tell you.
I hope y'all have a wonderful time tomorrow---we went on a service call to Chicago one day this week, first time I'd ever seen that humongous Sears Tower. In daytime, you could see a BIG cloud of steam coming up below one of the big white antennas. When we returned after dark, one side of the tall poles had a white light on it, and the other one was illuminated in a BRIGHT Colts blue.
All the way across the city, the ONLY Bears thing we saw besides about three crawl-boards, was a little sign on a piece of construction paper on a cubicle, topped by a little mylar football balloon.
THEN, coming home and getting back into town, almost EVERY building we passed on I-465 was lit up by BLUE spotlights, making the walls glow blue all the way up. There's a frenzy going on, with parties and signs and BIG gatherings, lots of blue-painted faces and flags on vehicles---I've never SEEN such a furor.
And---OT---each time I see your handwriting, I'm tempted to get out something written by my Dad and show you---it's uncannily alike. And nice to see.
We aren't sports fans, so tomorrow, we're gonna go out somewhere---there won't be any crowds.
Dinner! 2007
in Cooking
Posted
VERRRRY nice debut, logicalmind! Welcome.
Toast points
I've been out of the loop for a bit, but have caught up on all the beautiful pictures and descriptions---terrific work, ALL!