The Crab Chronicles

Elva's Cornbread Dressing - the Best in the World

The tradition in my family has always been that on Thanksgiving morning, instead of my usual breakfast, I would eat a piece of cornbread spread with butter and crumbled up in a bowl with some warm milk. YUM.

Guess what Michael had for breakfast this morning?!

The first thing I made today was the cornbread.

It's important to make the cornbread so it can cool off before the dressing is made. Here in the south we make dressing, not "stuffing" and we put it in a pan, usually Pyrex or Corning Ware, not inside the turkey. [We don't even eat turkey at my house, we prefer pork roast.]

My mother's favorite food is her own dressing. Most people who have ever tried it understand why immediately. Nobody makes dressing better than Elva. Nobody. My friend Bronwyn said recently on Facebook that Elva's dressing was her favorite food! High compliment. She's from Louisiana and a good cook and gourmand.

This year, we let Michael do most of the work making the dressing. The whole process went a lot faster. My brother couldn't come over so it's just the three of us. We are trying to get Michael helping more in the kitchen.

The fact he has only one hand is irrelevant. He has a sharp knife he likes, and he has a method of chopping which is fast and accurate and involves no bloodletting. He breaks eggs easily. He loves to use the hand blender. He does make a big mess in the kitchen, but what man doesn't?!

The other aspect is that with his granny sitting at the table telling him what to do, he is learning valuable kitchen skills and he will eat a boatload of whatever is cooked, which is good. (He actually forgets to eat sometimes and he's skinny as a stick.)

the recipe is below - click on it to make it bigger

This year, Mom wrote down the recipe, and it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to scan it into the computer. She left out a few things. For instance, cornbread is much better if you add a big dollop of mayonnaise -- Duke's, of course. It's great to make it in a cast iron skillet, unless you're a small woman with arthritis and/or you don't have a strong person around to get the skillet in and out of the oven. [I actually wrote a blog a few years ago about how to make cornbread.]

Mom says "string" the celery. My memaw used to do that. I am a bit lazy. I use the tender inner stalks and don't fool with stringing the celery.

You don't have to dry out the bread. It's optional.

We like to take the chopped celery and onion and cook it in a small glass bowl in some chicken broth in the microwave for about 3 minutes, then macerate it with a hand blender. (Mom's teeth are bad and she can't eat anything chewy. Don't ever use the word "dentures" around her either, unless you want to get slapped.)

She didn't put precise measurements on the seasoning. We season HEAVILY. The more the merrier. Onions plus onion powder means extra onion flavor, which is always good.

We like to use Campbell's Cream of Chicken soup with herbs. Old-fashioned cream of chicken is fine too.

You mix the celery and onions into about 3-4 cups of crumbled cornbread and about 3-4 cups of bread torn into little pieces. Then you throw in your soups, melted butter, eggs, seasonings, baking powder (about a tablespoon) and chicken broth. The mixture should be pretty wet, not stiff.

A lot of times, we make 2 small pans of dressing instead of one big one, and freeze one. Then we've got dressing already made for Christmas dinner.

If I were a professional blogger I'd post a photo of the dressing but we aren't eating until tonight and it's not cooked yet.

I did take a photo of the pecan pie Michael and I made this morning. YUM.

One day in the future, when my mom is in heaven I will find this recipe, assemble the ingredients, and Michael and I will make the dressing, and think of Mom/Granny/Miss Elva, and hopefully we will smile. Hope that's a long ways away, though..

 

 

Catching Up

Oh my, so much going on in my life, but most of it is highly personal and therefore un-bloggable. Is that a word? The squiggly red line underneath it indicates no, but then there are so many new words that I had never heard of until just recently, like "selfie." I also used to think "content" [the noun form] was a fairly obscure word, but now, as a writer, "content" is the word used the most to describe what I do. Writers today don't just write, they "create content."

I have been working feverishly for a couple of weeks, helping a friend of a friend with her PhD dissertation. Tons of typing. The fingers of my right hand have actually gotten sore, and the other day I had eyestrain. I turned down the brightness of my computer screen and stopped typing for half a day to recover.

Let's see, what else is going on in my world?

It's not too hot but the humidity is horrible. It rains about every afternoon, a nice thunderstorm to cool things down from the low 90's, but then I walk outside with Lola and it feels like stepping into a shower where the water just got turned off. My hair just looks like a bunch of damp curls, like a giant mussed it all up. Good thing I am 54 now and I really don't care any more. Short hair is my friend..

My gardens have petered out. I learned, to my dismay, that eggplant is not my friend, digestively. I have a wonderful, huge eggplant that's thriving in my otherwise ruined garden. The other night I peeled one and sliced it, then made fried eggplant using Italian seasoning flavored breadcrumbs. Dipped the slices in egg, then fried them in olive oil, which is the only oil I use. Delicious. I pigged out. Regretted it the next day.

When I am not creating content, I content myself with reading..

I recently finished reading the highly lauded book The Goldfinch, which won the Pulitzer for fiction not long ago. When I started reading it I just couldn't get into it. Hated the very long descriptions of everything. Hated how slow it was. Stopped reading it, in fact, and just put it on the shelf in my room. I read a couple of other books, including Flight Patterns by Karen White. Terrific book.

Eventually I ran out of reading material, and I reluctantly turned back to The Goldfinch. One of my cousins who reads a lot told me she loved it. So I finished it. Holding the darn thing was hard - it's over 700 pages and even the trade paperback version is really heavy. Too bad I hate reading on a Kindle. Anyway, I didn't like the main character and I was sort of appalled by his life, but I can't deny it's well-written. My cousin told me her book club was evenly divided between folks who loved the book and folks who hated it.

There's not much more to report, not that I can discuss publicly. I am going to take a break from blogging about my children. They are grown now and entitled to their privacy.

I saw a trailer for a new movie that looks really interesting, and it's Meg Ryan's directorial debut, Ithaca. IMDB has it listed as a 2015 release but according to this interview with Meg Ryan it got pushed back to this September. It's based on the Saroyan book The Human Comedy. Looks like a good one.

 

 

Funeral Food

The 20th anniversary of my dad's death is quickly approaching [July 11th] and reading Catherine's blog about Hash Brown Casserole got me to thinking about funerals and food and how we do things in the South.

In my experience, I've never seen a church hold a reception after a funeral. I know it's done. I've just not seen it. Every funeral I've ever attended was at a church, and afterwards those close to the family went back to the house and carried some food to share, and there was a potluck post-funeral gathering.

When you're mourning you don't feel like cooking. You want to be comforted by lovely homemade food from other people, people who genuinely care about you and who also [you hope] can cook.

On Dad's side of the family there is usually a fair amount of post-funeral drinking, too, but that was more common in the older generations. I am part of the wine and beer generation, thanks be to God.

When Dad died there was a relative who showed up who was an in-law, and none of us ever liked her. She married one of Dad's cousins. There was a good bit of consternation as to how to get away from her and get back to the house without her following anyone. She had never been to my parents' house and we didn't want her there. I know that sounds mean, but outside St. Paul's after the funeral she screamed and carried on like Dad was her dearest friend in the world and I'm quite sure she hadn't seen him in at least ten years. She grabbed me and crushed me to her bosom until I thought I was going to pass out from the fumes. I am pretty sure she had been drinking. Her makeup sure looked like she had...

Anyway, we made it back to my parents house and she didn't follow, thank goodness. My mom was under enough of a strain.

My dad was a member of Rotary, very active in the church, and had sat on boards of a number of organizations around town. So there were more than 300 people at the funeral, and at least a hundred at the house afterwards. Lots of folks to feed.

We got so many platters of food which apparently came from the grocery store deli, we could have made sandwiches for a thousand people. That's OK. We also got some fried chicken that was edible, but a lot of the food was just a mystery, or inedible, or it had been made by people who couldn't cook.

My mother had a friend who simply could.not.cook. An invitation to eat at her house was always stressful. How to say no without appearing mean? She had no taste buds and did not believe in "disguising" the taste of vegetables with seasonings. When she brought food after Dad died, my brother and I carefully and quietly marked it, put it in the fridge, and after she left we tossed it in the garbage. A lot of the food had gone home with various cousins that lived in Augusta, after the fridge and freezers were filled, but we didn't want to re-gift that horrible food to anyone. The suffering would have been compounded.

One friend brought a sandwich platter covered with edible glitter.

Weird.

One of the kindest and most thoughtful food gifts after Dad died came from a neighbor down the street we really didn't know well. She brought small loaf pans filled with wonderful homemade macaroni and cheese. We froze some and ate some. It was the perfect comfort food and I've always been grateful to her.

When my grandfather died in 1972 lots of folks brought cakes and casseroles but nobody brought any meat. My mother was horrified. Thereafter, whenever taking food to grieving people, my mom always included dishes with MEAT. Grief requires protein, is her belief. (I'm not sure what would have happened if she had ever felt called to take food to a vegetarian. Probably a baked bean dish of some sort, or macaroni and cheese...)

I have already told Mom when she dies I do not want to go through the ordeal of a formal funeral service. I will have her cremated [as she wishes] and I will invite close friends and relatives to a small memorial potluck gathering. We will tell stories about her and celebrate her life, and play music, and EAT. At some point I will put her ashes in the ocean. (Or possibly in the creek behind our house, depending on whether or not I can afford a beach trip...)

Since my mother is very fond of beef, in all forms, we will eat beef, in her honor. Possibly hamburgers on the grill, or roast beef sandwiches. In any event, our mourning will include plenty of protein.

I hope I will be able to eat. I hope someone will bring something decadently chocolate.

 

my great-grandmother Jennie McMillan and her family [has nothing to do with funerals but I like the photo]

Amazing Chicken Salad

My son likes cold salads. This is a very Russian thing, where cold vegetable salads are an integral part of Russian diets.

In America we are accustomed now to being able to buy fresh vegetables year round. Of course, in January they have likely been shipped from California, but they are on the shelves. Russia, despite being a vast country, has traditionally not been able to get fresh veggies so easily in winter - unless you are very wealthy and have access to pricey imports.

Now, to be fair, I last visited Russia in 2004 so maybe things have changed radically and normal folks can get fresh veggies year round. I don't know.

I do know the Russian tradition has been to can or pickle veggies in summer, to see folks through the long winters. Nothing wrong with that. Both my kids were happy to eat vegetables when I adopted them, because fresh veggies were considered a big treat. They would pick onions and tomatoes from the garden and just eat them raw, right then and there. Of course, I was delighted by that, after admonishing them to rinse the veggies off with a hose, at least.

So a few years ago my friend LeeAnn gave us some chicken salad she had made. I am not a big fan of cold salads, but Michael LOVED it. He inhaled it.I didn't even get to try a bite. I put it in the fridge, and the next time I checked it was GONE.

LeeAnn puts chopped celery, chopped pecans, and grapes, in her chicken salad, so it's fairly healthy.

Last week I went to Honeybaked Ham for my lb. of turkey I like to keep in the fridge for a snack. Great low-carb high-protein snack, smoked turkey. They had some small containers of chicken salad in the cooler, and the salad looked like it had grapes in it, which is how LeeAnn makes hers. 

I got home and looked at it and that tiny container was $8! Michael ate it all in less than 24 hours.

I decided yesterday to just find LeeAnn's recipe and make my own chicken salad, to keep in the fridge for Mike. He is never home for dinner these days, always out with friends, but he often comes in at midnight hungry. I'd rather he eat chicken salad than just a granola bar.

So I found the original email from LeeAnn where I had asked how she made her chicken salad.

"I just salt/pepper/boil boneless chicken breasts, shred in food processor, add mayo, pecan bits, a little bit of diced red onions and celery, and a pinch of pepper and salt and a bigger pinch of sugar.  At the end I add celery salt until I like the taste.Then I add the grapes last so they don't get smooshed."

I used rotisserie chicken because it's easier to pull chicken off the bone - and Lola was happy to eat the skin and gristley bits, of course. I went right by LeeAnn's instructions, but I also added some squeezes of fresh lemon juice to the chicken, and some onion powder and Lawrey's seasoned salt. I made Mom taste it. She said it was good. (I couldn't taste-test it because my stomach won't tolerate raw onion, no matter how finely chopped.) The grapes were rather large and I asked Mom if I should halve them. NO. Of course, Michael said I should have chopped the grapes. He ate a big fat sandwich when he got home, though, so it was a win-win situation for me.

I used up a good bit of mayonnaise, and Lola had a great time using her incredibly long tongue to lick the jar...

Twenty Questions with Suzy Darrah

Imagine being 6 years old and going to a birthday party where you can’t eat the cake, or the cookies. All the other kids can eat all the goodies. You can’t eat anything because you are allergic to gluten [or dairy] and you don’t want to have to go to the hospital.

Suzy Darrah, of Myrtle Beach SC, mom to two boys, ages 11 and 8, saw that happening at birthday parties not long ago, and decided to do something about it. She started a specialty bakery called Hippienut, making gluten-free and/or dairy-free or sugar-free cakes, cupcakes, muffins, etc. for children and grown folks whose restrictive diets prevent them from enjoying most baked goods.

Suzy was an experienced baker. She had started learning the business when she was a new bride years ago. “I started a baking business called Sweet & Savory and the moms were asking me to make cakes for their kids’ birthdays. Then I was making cakes for restaurants on Pawley’s Island. I was doing well and had a big customer base on Pawley’s Islands.” By that time she knew baking. “When I was pregnant the first time I had just gotten married and I was bored out of my mind and I started working at my friend’s bakery, Crady’s in Conway [now a restaurant]. My mom was a big baker, and I learned a lot at Crady’s from Barbara, my friend’s mother.”

She didn’t start off her professional career as a baker. “I was a coastal geologist. I worked on the Hunley – helped dig it out and get the bones out. I was a scientific diver for a while. I also taught scuba diving.” That life was not conducive to raising kids, however, so she turned to baking.

Before I started my usual Twenty Questions, I wanted to find out more about Suzy and her business. [Full disclosure - I know Suzy because she is the girlfriend of my cousin Michael Hasty.]

How long have you lived in Myrtle Beach? I grew up here. I lived in Marathon for a while. Had a scuba shop and taught diving here. You can’t be on a boat for a week at a time when you have two little ones. My boys are 11 and 8.

What inspired Hippienut? My son had friends who couldn’t eat gluten or dairy and they never had fun snacks. I started fooling around with recipes trying to come up with fun and healthy snacks. I was playing around with recipes for a year and a half. They had a holiday market at The Market Common in November and I was told by a representative that “We need someone like you because you’re all organic, and can do gluten free and dairy free..” I was already really busy and didn’t think I could do it but I didn’t want to lose my spot to another vendor so I said OK.

When did you start the company? Last November 2015. Michael came up with my logo and labels, and he’s great at it. [You can see more of his great design work over at Inkhaus]

We’re still working on the Hippienut website.

Where did you get the name? Michael came up with the name and logo. It was a nickname for a kid we went to high school with. We went to Myrtle Beach high school together, although Michael was a year ahead of me.

How are you selling your products right now?

It’s only been since November we’ve been selling. People are putting in orders on Facebook and emailing me orders. I have weekly orders that go to the Boone Hall Farms market in Mt. Pleasant.

What’s your favorite recipe and why?

There are so many naturally sweet things you can add to make things good. My blueberry oat muffins are very popular and very moist.. I soak my oats in orange juice.

What makes your products different from other gluten-free products? With all my recipes, I like to keep things as natural as possible as far as what goes in – everything in its natural state. All of my ingredients are as natural and unrefined as we can be.

You make gluten-free [or dairy-free] special occasion cakes too?

I do a lot of character cakes, wedding cakes. I’ve done a lot of dairy-free stuff too.

I make my own flour mix. The best one you can buy commercially is Bob’s Red Mill. The flours, a lot of them are just too starchy, and I come up with different combinations.

Twenty Questions

What is your full name?

Suzanne Gail Darrah. That’s my maiden name

Where would you live, if you could live anywhere in the world?

I would probably live on the south end part of the creek in Murrell’s Inlet. I love a creek. I can see the ocean and I can smell the pluff mud.

What is your favorite movie and why?

I’m old school and my favorite movie would be The Private Eyes with Don Knotts and Tim Conway.

What was your least-favorite subject in school when you were a kid?

It was probably English. I love to read. I didn’t like grammar, though, diagramming sentences.

What was your nickname when you were a kid?

Sunshine. Actually people still call me Sunshine.

Do you believe in God?

Actually I don’t believe in God but I don’t talk about it because it makes other people uncomfortable.

What sound or noise do you love?

I love the sound of bubbles underwater. I love to sit underwater and hear the sound of water moving.

If you could do anything other than what you do, as a profession, what would it be?

I would work on a research ship somewhere and be doing scientific diving – what I used to do. It’s just impossible to do that and be a single mom.

If heaven exists, what do you think it is like?

I think there’s energy but I don’t know what it is.

Do you have siblings?

I have two older brothers, one is 8 years older and one is 6 years older. One is a detective and one sells cars.

What is your favorite memory of childhood [something specific]?

I love dinner time. We’d talk about our day. My mom was a stay at home mom and every night we had dinner together. My oldest brother was the funny guy. Every single night one of my brothers would spit milk through his nose, from laughing.

If you had to choose between one week traveling around the USA by car, or one week traveling around Europe on a train, which would you choose and why?

I would probably do the USA by car first. That’s what I want to do the most, only because I love our country and its beauty, and there are so many place I haven’t seen. I love a road trip, not being on a schedule.

What or who inspires you?

That’s a changer for me it’s changed over the years. My kids inspire me every day. I’m a mom and I’m biased but my kids are just amazing. They are smart and kind and hilarious. I love being around them.

Which holiday do you prefer, Christmas or July 4th?

I like Christmas. Everybody’s home and we make stuff and I bake whole lot. I like the feel of Christmas.

What project or idea are you most passionate about, right now? Right now I’m focused on getting the snacks into the backpack buddy program. The Backpack Buddy program is great – stores donate food. There are snacks for kids who may not have food, like on the weekends and school holidays when they can’t get the free school lunches. They get stuff like Doritos and fruit rollups in the backpacks. My goal is to get Hippienut into those backpacks. The kids love them, so far. I want things to taste better to children so they want to eat them. I have another little project I want to do eventually - make cakes for kids in Ronald McDonald houses. You know they can’t have certain foods.

Do you know how to cook? Yes! I know how to bake better than regular cooking. I have to have a recipe for regular [non-baked foods].

What is your favorite thing to cook/eat?

I love to go to a southern cooking buffets and eat things like fried chicken..

If you could go on vacation anywhere in the world, for 2-4 weeks, all expenses paid, where would you go and why?

I would probably go to Micronesia, Pulau, work my way around those islands – see the underwater stuff.

Who do you love the most in the world?

My children. That’s an easy one. My kids are fun. I enjoy hanging out with them!

What question has nobody ever asked you, but you wanted to answer? May I mop your floors and fold your laundry for you today? [that's a question we'd ALL like to hear!]

Dixie Cup Days

I was thinking the other day, I wish I had a Dixie cup. I had not thought of such a cup in years. I was snacking on almonds and I thought one of those little waxy cups would be the perfect holder for my healthy almonds. Instead I grabbed a paper napkin.

When I was a kid, my mother bought a plastic tube like object that held Dixie cups – small waxy cups that popped out of the dispenser one at a time. So if I wanted a drink of water or a little bit of juice but not a full glass, I grabbed a Dixie cup. That way, Mom didn’t have to wash 8,000 glasses or cups at the end of the day.

Memaw's solution to this was -- in her estimation -- far better. Each one of her grandchildren had their designated plastic Tupperware cup with their names on it in permanent ink. Lord help you if Memaw caught you drinking out of a real glass. You would find yourself on dishwashing duty and there was no dishwasher. Everything was washed by hand.

Dixie cups were always great for snacking. They held cookies, chips, peanuts, marshmallows, etc. When I had finished with them, I could mash down part of the rim and make a mod chair for Barbie. She had an entire Dixie cup dining room set.

I went on YouTube to see if I could find perhaps an old commercial for Dixie cups and found… a hip hop song called Dixie Cup. I didn’t want to play it because I assume it has something dirty in it. No thanks. I would rather listen to the old girl group called The Dixie Cups, if I’m going to go the cup music route. They had a big hit many years ago with “Iko Iko” which -- oh crap now I realize even that old song has rather disturbing lyrics for that day and time, talking about killing and setting things on fire.. [but the song has a good beat and you can dance to it]

 

 

 

After a minute I realized that in the YouTube search box I needed to use the words "commercial" and "vintage" to illustrate what I mean by convenience:

 

Watch the commercial above. This line made me chuckle: "Since we got Dixie dispensers, there's a lot less trouble around here." Yeah, Mom can happily watch her soap operas while the kids get their own cups and drink up all the sugary stuff in the house, without Mom knowing! Win win situation.

My mother was, for the 1960's, kind of a health fanatic, at least compared to some of the other moms. We sat down to a hot meal together every night, and my brother and I had to eat at least one serving of vegetables and an entire glass of milk. Mom lectured on The Four Food Groups so often I knew that one by heart. I also heard "Keep your elbows OFF the table!" [Dad's favorite admonition] and "Don't say you don't like something you've never tried. Take one bite." [Mom's most often-used phrase]

Now, a lot of veggies were canned but unlike now, finding veggies in the grocery store out of season was not always possible.

Mom also had to deal with me, the Picky Eater. I refused to eat entire categories of vegetables. When I was 17 and spent a week with my aunt and uncle on my own, Mom called my aunt Myrtle and said "Dee only eats lettuce and green beans but I want her to have a vegetable every night." I figured that out about the 4th night, because in addition to whatever she cooked, Myrt faithfully put a LARGE bowl of either lettuce or green beans next to my plate, and I had to eat it. Every night. For a week.

After that, I expanded my repertoire to include cucumbers [peeled, of course] and the occasional raw green pepper or celery stalk. I much preferred cheeseburgers or fried chicken to any vegetable, however.

There were other rules I had for eating: my food couldn't touch, I ate all of one thing at a time, and there better not be any weird looking specks in the food [such as pepper! ACK!].

I know I sound like a spoiled brat, right?!?

OTOH, I helped Mom a lot. I was learning to cook by the age of about 4, and by 5 I could make tuna salad or jello salad. I asked for an Easy Bake Oven around that time and Mom thought that was a waste of money, so she began a program called Teach Dee to Cook! I did eventually get a knockoff toy, sort of the Walmart version of Easy Bake Oven, but it made tiny weird little hamburgers cooked over a light bulb.

We went through a succession of Horrible Babysitters [another entire blog could be written about that] when I was under age 8 and we still lived in Augusta. We had a regular babysitter, Mrs. Lord, who we loved and she made us obey, BUT she wasn't always available and Mom and Dad went out a lot. One babysitter, who I think was a teenager from the neighborhood, completely ignored us, so Bruce and I got in the kitchen and cooked up treats in Dixie cups -- I think we used some chocolate chips and marshmallows and Lord knows what else. When Mom got home and saw the mess in the kitchen she was NOT amused and that teenager never came back.

By the time I was ten I could make a cake mix cake, which was dangerous. One time when I was about twelve or fourteen I spent the afternoon with my friend Joanne, and her mom had put a cake mix in the pantry. We got it out and made ourselves a cake and ate about 90% of it. I remember the stomach ache like it was yesterday. Joanne, an only child, was always good, until she got around me. I was a Bad Influence.

Bruce learned to cook about the same time. Mom was reminiscing about that the other day. He would watch her cook a lot of times when he was a teenager, munching on bread because he was always hungry, and so he learned how to season foods particularly well.

I know it's not politically correct, or environmentally correct, but I miss the convenience of the Dixie Cup. I also miss ice cream floats, fizzy tablets you dropped in water and then drank, Hawaiian punch, Bosco, Tang, and pretty much all foods made my Memaw and Papaw...

It's pleasant to look back, though.

photos of the "new house" in Knoxville, a few months after we moved. I was 8 years old.

The Always Popular Tex Mex Dip

Many years ago, my mother found a recipe for Tex Mex Dip. She started serving it at parties. People would make fools of themselves eating this dip. I've never seen anything like it. About a year ago, we made it and watched Michael eat it like crazy -- which is a very good thing because it's got guacamole and chopped tomatoes and olives and beans. It's fairly healthy.

Michael invited his friend Eric over to Granny's little birthday celebration last night. We like Eric a lot. Nice boy, very polite. He brought Mother some roses. I sent Michael to the store for last-minute supplies while I made the birthday (rum) cake. He asked about making the Tex Mex dip. I told him all the ingredients and I said IF you buy the ingredients, you and Eric can make it, with supervision from Granny of course.

Much to my surprise, the boys got all the ingredients. It only took 3 phonecalls from Kroger. LOL

I asked Mother to walk out to the kitchen and supervise because I'm not as good at making it as she is. I let the boys do it all except I chopped the tomatoes. (Chopping is a laborious process for Michael although he can do it just fine.)

Anyway, the photos below tell the story, and I've included the recipe -- which is in a cookbook Mom and I wrote years ago.. If you ever have a party, make the dip. Buy Tostitos or Fritos scoops, because you want a big chip to hold the dip. Mother advises folks to dig straight down, through all the layers. Michael usually just spoons a bit bunch of dip onto a plate and sits there and dips off the plate.

We also made Mom's famous shrimp spread [fresh shrimp, cream cheese, mayo, herbs] and Alton Brown's Onion Dip. Our friend Bronwyn came over and had a good visit, too; I just didn't get a photo. So it was a fun evening.

I hope 2016 is a terrific year. Lord knows 2015 was difficult..

 

Rainy Day Chili

When I was a little girl, on rainy days, we used to repeat "Rain rain go away / come again another day!" I always repeated the second sentence with vehemence.

Rainy days meant being cooped up in the house. It wasn't always boring. Sometimes my brother and I would play "fort" - meaning we would get out the old scratchy wool Army blankets and/or old blankies from toddlerhood and drape them across the furniture to make our fortresses. Then we would make up games to play, like a route across the room that didn't involve touching the carpeted floor.

Do kids still make "forts"? I suspect not.

My mother was a firm believer in turning off the TV and saying GO PLAY! She only tolerated a certain amount of TV watching before she fussed, primarily at me. My brother was never a big TV watcher. Today, he doesn't watch TV at all.

I've been anxiously watching the weather situation the last few days, but here it's been mostly just rain and a lot of weather like England - mist so heavy you can feel it when you walk outside but no big drops, except during the occasional showers.

Of course, taking Lola out in this poses challenges the minute we come back in. She is so low to the ground that her belly and chest get sopping wet if she walks in grass, so I have to rub her down with an old towel. She tolerates it but doesn't help by rolling over..

I am thankful it's not cold enough to snow..

When I was growing up, Mom always made chili on cold, rainy days. Bruce and I used to say on the bus ride home, "looks like we'll be having chili for dinner..."

Rainy and cold all day yesterday. Of course I made a big pot of chili for the crockpot and it turned out well.

I wish I could say the same for my teams. Georgia lost to Alabama, 38 - 10. Then Tennessee lost to Arkansas, 24 - 20. That's maybe worse because it was so close. Next weekend, Georgia plays Tennessee. I will have to root for Georgia because it's the family school - me, my parents, many of my aunts and uncles and cousins - we are all Dawgs. Normally I root for Tennessee, but not when they play the Dawgs..

Michael came home from work around 6, having eaten a huge hamburger after his shift. He was mad about the football game, about Georgia getting beat. He has a friend who attends Alabama. Working at a sports bar lets him see how passionate people are about their football games. He said it was dead until about 3 and then a flood of folks got there and his job [host] then got complicated.

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I have a lot of family members and friends in the Carolinas, so the news of flooding there scares me. A friend on Facebook posted video of his son swimming in the back yard. They don't have a pool. My concern would be snakes..

This is funny... yet not.

Michael spent the evening with friends but I left the crockpot on warm, because he's usually hungry when he comes in late at night. He likes chili.

Lola woke me up at 5:30, whining to go out of my room. That's not typical. I threw on some shoes and went downstairs to let her out to tinkle, and as I went down I could smell chili, which scared me. After she went out and came back in, I looked in the kitchen, and there was no chili in the crockpot bowl. Huh?!? There was enough in there for 2 more meals! I stared at the crockpot while Lola whined. I finally thought to look in the fridge. Michael had carefully ladled out the chili into a plastic bowl, covered it with foil, and put it in the fridge, just as I would have done. 

He never helps me around the kitchen without my asking. Never.

Either he's maturing, or he really liked the chili and wanted to keep it for other meals. I figured it would be OK on warm all night but I could have been mistaken. He didn't want to take a chance on it burning, clearly. (I am sort of famous for burning food, because I get distracted by wanting to write something and leaving stuff on the stove...)

I told him the other day, "For the rest of your life, after I'm dead, the smell of burned food (particularly onions) will make you think of me and you will get sad, because of the memories..."

He just grinned.

Rules for Eating Out

I watch and enjoy Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern but at some point in the program I will have to turn the channel.

I am not a vegetarian or vegan, but every show seems to have a scene designed to make my vegetarian or vegan friends scream and run out of the room, or faint. I don't want to be too graphic, but let me just say, Andrew Zimmern was likely a butcher in another life, and leave it at that.

I like to eat meat I buy in a store that looks nothing whatsoever like the animal. Don't judge. My mother likes to eat meat every day, so becoming a vegetarian would be difficult for me right now. Maybe one day.

I will never go to a restaurant with Andrew Zimmern. I'd love to meet him, but not in a restaurant. He would likely choose the weirdest thing on the menu.

Restaurants are fascinating places.

Over my lifetime, I have learned some lessons in them.

When I was the kid I was such a picky eater, every time the family went to a restaurant it was an ordeal. My food couldn't touch. It couldn't have onions in it. I avoided ketchup and mustard like they were radioactive. My parents were pretty strict about most things but they indulged me a bit when it came to being a picky eater. I learned young that in restaurants I usually enjoyed a plain cheeseburger, french fries, and a coke. That became my standard order, everywhere, for years. Then my standard order became fried chicken. One day my father let me try fried flounder at a seafood place. I loved it. That became my standard seafood order.

After I grew up, my tastes expanded a great deal. I lived on my own. I traveled. I experienced other cultures. I got less picky, fast.

Skip ahead to Kazakhstan, 2007. I was eating alone in a restaurant and I ordered chicken soup, which I thought was a pretty safe order, having been raised on Campbell's soups. WRONG. I was served a bowl containing what looked like a small chicken carcass that had been hacked to death. Lots of bones, gristle, and unidentifiable objects. [Andrew Zimmern probably would've just said "oooh, CRUNCHY intestines, yummy!"] I just shrugged and picked out what seemed edible.

I realize I have probably blogged about this before, but in the spirit of helping my readers avoid upset stomachs, I am going to talk again about some basic rules for eating out. I've learned these rules the hard way, people. 

Michael has friends who are now off in college, experiencing life on their own, and they should probably read this. [Parents, please forward a link.]

DEE"S RESTAURANT RULES

Health department ratings matter. If your favorite place to eat scores less than 90%, leave, unless you enjoy spending the night in the bathroom. I recently learned a Steak & Shake not far from my house scored a 59. Needless to say, I will not be eating there anytime soon. Restaurants are required to post their ratings where customers can easily see them, so look for them.

TV's or no TV's. If you are eating in a place where there are lots of TVs, the food will likely not be too pricey. It may or may not be good. Probably won't get sushi there. Don't go to such a place on a 3rd date if you want to actually talk to your date. Yeah, BTDT.

Never order gravy. I don't care where you are or what you want to eat. Gravy can contain all sorts of chemicals and/or gruesome stuff like LARD [a/k/a pig fat]. Just avoid the gravy, or stop at CVS on the way home and buy some Pepcid. Your choice.

Don't order fried chicken in a restaurant that doesn't specialize in it. Nine times out of ten you will get tough and/or greasy fried chicken.

If the menu is written in cursive and looks like a wedding invitation, make sure you have plenty of money. It won't be cheap. It might even be in a foreign language. Unless you are fluent in that language, ask for a translation if there isn't one. TRUE STORY: I studied French for two years in high school. Many years later, I am in France, thinking I can order from the menu very competently. I ordered. The waitress repeated my order. I smiled. The waitress - who appeared to struggle with English at first - looked annoyed and finally said quite plainly, "You REALLY want to eat a cow's stomach?" The look of horror on my face caused my brother and his wife to die laughing. I ordered something else, needless to say...

In a seafood restaurant, shrimp are often served with the tail still on. Then you have to pull off the tail, especially if the shrimp are fried. I actually told a waiter once if he'd take the dadgum tails off my shrimp I'd tip him better. He did and I tipped him more generously than usual. If you come to my house to eat shrimp, you won't see tails on the shrimp.

If you go to a place that sells lobster, expect a bib. I was about 10 when I ate my first lobster in a restaurant and I was horrified by the bib the waiter brought. "I'M NOT A BABY I DON'T NEED A BIB!" I said forcefully. Now I would not care. In fact, if I could ever afford to order lobster in a restaurant I'd be tickled. I wouldn't care if the bib was made from a trash bag...

If your server has dirty hands or poor hygiene, tell the manager. When I was a kid, we were in a restaurant somewhere while traveling, likely a Howard Johnson's -- in the days before fast food places were common -- and the waitress had bad BO. It was a hot day. The smell was terrible. I think Mom and Dad debated about whether or not to tell the manager. The waitress looked rough, like she had a bad hangover and would attack us in the parking lot. Don't remember the outcome of that, but people who serve food need to not stink.

It's not so bad now, but there was a period of time when servers [who used to be called waiters or waitresses] would tell you their life story. "Hi, my name is Chad and I'll be your server!" The last time I had to listen to someone like that I just smiled back and said "My name is Dee and I'll be your customer!" The look of confusion on the guy's face was priceless. I was tempted to point to the empty chair beside me and say ["This is my imaginary friend Mr. Winkles and he's hungry!" Didn't want to get hauled off to a rubber room, though...]

If you take photos of your food and post same on Facebook, be prepared for me to give you a hard time. I am not into "food porn." I hate that term. Unless you are a professional food stylist, there's a 99% chance the artful mound of precious local ingredients that cost you $29.95 will be the subject of my mocking derision because it will look ridiculous. It's what I call "foo foo" food.

 

I guess I've gotten old and cranky. About 75% of the time when I go to a restaurant, the food I get is not as good as I could make it at home. So I don't eat out a lot. I tend to just order something exotic and interesting, like fried pickles or spinach salad with gorgonzola crumbles.

[Just FYI, I never thought I'd like gorgonzola because the word sounds like a skin disease, but I do, actually...]

 

I've never worked in a restaurant, but I told Michael after he got his new job the other day, it's great experience to work in a restaurant. You can ALWAYS find a job. Learn as much as you can. Work hard. If you go off to college for your final 2 years, you can find a job in Athens, or wherever. It's a portable skill. Restaurants are everywhere.

[He has already learned a valuable life lesson. They asked him today to write the specials on the chalkboard and he misspelled "tilapia." Spelling matters, Dude...]

Bon Appetit!

below, at a restaurant a few years ago with Alesia's then-boyfriend

The Last Tomato

Most of my ancestors were farmers - the ones who didn't own real estate offices or general stores, that is. Heck, most people in the South in the 19th century were farmers, so my family was pretty typical.

my great grandfather W.D. Hasty [a farmer] and his family, about 1910

When I bought my house in 2005 I developed an interest in gardening.

When you live in an apartment or a condo you typically don't get too excited about gardening. In those places "gardening" is planting something in a pot and sticking it on the balcony. When I think back to all the apartments I lived in from 1982-2005, I don't think I spent 15 minutes on any balcony or patio at any place I lived. What was the view? More apartments, or the parking lot. No lush pastoral scenes anywhere. I didn't care.

Now I have a nice backyard. True, the weeds outnumber the actual blades of grass 100:1 but so be it. I can't pay a service to come in and make it look like the Augusta National and even if I won the lottery I don't think that's where I'd spend my money. [Sorry Dad]

my back patio and some of my gardening efforts

No, my yard will never grace the pages of Better Homes and Gardens or Southern Living magazine or even Garden and Gun. I love gardening, though, and seeing things I've grown on my plate thrills me no end.

My forebears gardened for food, or to make a living. I garden for fun.

[Incidentally, Garden and Gun features a story about how to fix tomatoes called Any Way You Slice It which you might find interesting. I'm sure people who live in gated communities would appreciate something like Heirloom Tomato Salad with Grilled Peaches, Pickled Charred Shallots, and Burrata with Sorghum Vinaigrette. I think it's a wee bit pretentious..]

As for us normal folks in the South, we prefer the classics.

Pictured above is the very last homegrown tomato I was able to produce in my garden this summer. [And my pathetic attempt to root rosemary in a decorative egg cup, not me trying to grow a Christmas tree for Barbie...]

It's been a tough summer for my gardens. First I didn't feel much like gardening after my surgery. Then it was wicked hot. Lately we've had days and days of rain. Too much rain. My front yard is covered in mushrooms.

Last night I showed Michael the lovely tomato pictured above and I said:

"You know what this is?"

"A tomato." [He's so smart, that boy!]

"Not just any tomato, son. It's the LAST tomato we're going to get out of our gardens this year. THE LAST ONE."

He just looked at me like, OK, so what?

"Tomorrow, I am going to slice this beautiful tomato and make you a sandwich. Two pieces of white bread, Duke's mayonnaise, sliced tomato, salt and pepper."

He went back to looking at his phone. Typical teenager.

Oh well. I will make Mother the same kind of sandwich, and she will appreciate it.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: only age really gives one an appreciation of simple but beautiful things in life. I now pay attention to a beautiful piece of fruit, the birds in my backyard, the way Lola's ears are so velvety...

I finally understand quite clearly what is really important in life...