Good Eats

Good evening, ya'll. Come on in where it is warm tonight for it is way to cold to sit on the porch. It wasn't too bad today but the temperature is dropping by the hour and is supposed to be in the teens this weekend. I sure hope it doesn't kill our fruit trees for we are enjoying the last of the grapefruit and oranges today. They are too big to cover up so we are just hoping for the best.

The farmers in this area are crossing their fingers with the peaches and greens they have planted. Peaches need so many hours of cold below 47 and I think they will reach those hours this weekend. Farmers in Florida may loose their strawberries and citrus but I hope not for we like to eat a lot of fruit.

During the holidays I cooked and we ate way too much and we have been cutting back on the amount we eat and I am trying to cook with less calories and have a few recipes to share with you. You know I like to use mixes and I am trying to use what staples I have without going to the grocery store. You know how it is, you go for a few items and leave with 3 bags full so I am trying to stay out of them.

The first recipe is from a rice pilaf mix and it is good. I also froze a portion and it freezes well, is inexpensive and feeds a whole bunch. Enjoy!

SOUTHWESTERN CHICKEN PILAF

1 pkg. rice pilaf mix - I used the Near East
2 cups chicken broth
1 tsp. cumin
1 can diced tomatoes
2 cups of chopped, canned chicken or 2 cups baked or rotisserie chicken
1 can whole kernel corn - drained (or the Mexican whole kernel corn)
1 cup canned black, red or pinto beans rinsed and drained
1/2 cup green onion tops

Prepare the rice pilaf mix using chicken broth instead of water and add the cumin with the spice sack following the instructions on the box.
When rice is tender add the tomatoes, chicken, corn and beans. Heat thoroughly and sprinkle with chopped onions and grated cheese if you like. If it is too dry, add a little more chicken broth. Serve with a salad and toasted tortilla chips. It freezes well and feeds a whole bunch of folks.

SPINACH PASTA WITH OVEN DRIED TOMATOES

Oven dried tomatoes: I used 1 carton from the grocery store - the little green basket
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Halve cherry or grape tomatoes and toss with olive oil, salt, pepper and dried basil to your tastes. Place on parchment lined baking sheet in one layer and bake until dried - about 25 minutes.

Pasta:
8 oz. spinach pasta - about 1/2 package. I buy mine from a Mennonite store
2 tbsp. butter
1/2 cup grated Parmesan, Romano, asiago cheese mixture (I use Kraft)
1/2 cup chicken broth

Cook pasta in salted water until tender. Drain, return to pan and add butter and cheeses. Toss gently and add broth and gently toss until cheese and butter are melted. Pour into casserole dish I served this with baked chicken but would make a great vegetarian main dish. You may need to add more broth - depends on the pasta. Some pastas soak up the broth more than others.

I hope you will try these and let me know how you like them.
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Stay in and stay warm and dry and drink some hot chocolate with me.

Nuff said,

The Georgia Peach
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A Southern Wedding

Ooh, it is cold outside so come on in the house and sit by the fire with us. A cup of hot chocolate is just what you need on a night like this. I have said it before and I'll say it again, I don't like cold weather. How cold is it? The weather person said it is colder here in South Georgia than in some places in Alaska! Friends who have just returned from upper New York said it's colder here than there! IT IS COLD and these old bones don't like it. Guess I'll just have to hibernate for the rest of the week and sit by the fire, drink hot drinks, read, knit and crochet. Don't mind a bit.

The other day I was discussing how impolite it is here in the South to brag about what you have, what you've done, how much something costs or just bragging on yourself in general. We were taught if your horn needed tooting, someone else would do it and it they didn't it wasn't worth tooting. It's a hard lesson to learn and some people just don't ever learn.

I have several friends that I tend to avoid for their conversations consist of what they bought, what they are going to buy and what they have done. These are the people whose children are perfect, their grandchildren are even more perfect and they have the perfect house, car, husband/wife and life. If you don't believe it just ask them or rather just listen for they will tell you. If you listen long enough they will then begin to tell you what is wrong with you and yours and how imperfect they are and how you can fix it.

This reminds me of a friend of my mother-in-love, Roy's mom, that had the perfect life and was always willing to check yours and help to make it perfection. It would make Roy's mom so mad when this friend would drop in, look at everything cooking on the stove or in the oven and give her opinion on what was wrong with it and how to fix it. By the time she left Mama Minta would have steam coming out of her ears. If you bought something new, she tended to always find something wrong with it or hers was better. Other than that, she was a real, sweet lady and a good friend, Bless her heart.

What brought on this long train of thought was a wedding account I read in a small town newspaper recently. I don't know the families but drew several conclusions about them as I read the account. Number one - if they don't have a lot of money they owe a whole bunch now and had to mortgage the farm to pay for this wedding. Number two - they have a lot of money and want everyone to know it just in case they missed that point. Number three - it's new money and they didn't have a good, Southern mama like mine to teach them not to toot their horn so loudly and proclaim their wealth to the world.

Now I don't know what the situation is but I knew I was in for a real bragging account when it took a whole paragraph when the groom was described as handsomely attired in a classic, named designer tuxedo and the elegant boutonniere was described in detail. If the groom and groomsmen were described in such detail, I thought oh my the bride's attire will take a whole page and it almost did.

When you read such words as monogrammed, exotic flowers, towering pillows, streaming ribbons, walkways covered with white rose petals, beautiful creation by famous designer, round AND teardrop expensive crystals, cathedral length train, and ad nauseous, you know you are reading about the event of the century. It went of for about 8 columns in the newspaper and I am beginning to know these people personally. Talk about minute details it was a doozey.

Now I like weddings and I love a good and joyful wedding but do you have to tell every detail down to the wedding, the reception and all the parties before the wedding? My, my how exciting. I will have to confess I didn't read the whole thing for I became tired of the superfluous verbiage used to describe this historic event. (Aren't you amazed at my vocabulary? See, I am edjicated)

I hope my mama doesn't read this is up in heaven for she is going to lay a gigantic guilt trip on me for making fun of a wedding account. She would remind me that it is unkind and unnecessary and daddy is going to remind me that if you can't say something good, don't say anything at all. We should have never let daddy take that Dale Carnegie course for he never forgot that saying. Well, mama, I wasn't making fun of it as much as just reading with amazement that someone spent that much money on a wedding. I sure hope it lasts at least 25 years for it will take that long to pay for it or get the good out of the marriage license.

Folks, I just had to share that but I tried to leave out some of the details so the innocent won't be recognized or the guilty as the case may be. It was in a paper from far, far away in a land further away and I don't know who they are. Does that say enough to keep me from being talked about?

Well, I have rambled enough tonight but have a recipe to share with you since we are talking about a big party. I used this recipe that I "doctored" a bit for a Christmas party and thought it was pretty good.

Barbecued Cocktail Sausages

1 pkg. cocktail sausages
1 can cranberry sauce
4 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tbsp. catsup or chili sauce
3 tbsp. spicy, brown mustard
3 tbsp. lemon juice
Zest of 1 lemon
2 tbsp. smokey barbecue sauce
1 tbsp. chili powder

Heat cranberry sauce and whisk until smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients and heat stirring to combine all the flavors. Add the sausage and continue to heat until sausages swell up.
I made the sauce a day ahead kept it in the refrigerator, heated it the next day and added the sausage.

I refrigerated the leftover sauce and used it today for chicken nuggets. It is a good barbecue sauce to use on most anything. Be sure and taste it after adding all the ingredients to see if it needs more chili powder. Depends on your taste for spicy. I got lots of compliments on it and have given several the recipe so cook and enjoy it.

Ya'll come back to see me and stay warm.

Nuff said,

The Georgia Peach
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Questions You Don't Ask

Wow, it is cold as a witches you know what in a brass bra as she flies through the air on her broom. Baby, it is cold outside so come on in the house and get warm. Have a fire in the fireplace and the heat on so we are warm and toasty. We are very blessed.

You have heard me talk about Southern manners and how old fashioned I am but being raised by a good, Southern mama and watched by the "mama police" in my small, home town, I am what I am. Mama was born and raised by a good, Southern mama and grandmother and taught me well. Part of the Mama Police's duties in a small town is to watch all the children in the town and report bad manners, rude behavior or any other shady deeds to the town and then to the parents and we had a bunch. This background has made me an older, Southern mama but I try not to be a Mama Police.

We were taught some basic manners which we were supposed to follow at all times. This included respecting anyone older than we were or in a supervisory position over us. We learned to say maam and sir and the need to be kind to everyone even if you didn't like them. Mama always reminded me that honey collected more bees than vinegar so we learned how to be "honey sweet" even if we didn't like them. Mama said that to charm them was much better than making them mad and she taught me well.

I had to work with a man in remodeling the school library where I worked several years ago and people told me how rude he was. They also told me he was arrogant and hard to work with and I was a lot intimidated until I remembered what my mama had taught me. The first time I met him I dressed as prettily as I could, walked to meet him with my hand extended to shake his with a great, big smile on my face. I told him I had heard he was a wonderful cabinet maker and how I was looking forward to letting him show me just how good he was and how I just knew he was going to do a great job for me. I flattered him, blinked my eyelashes, smiled oh so sweetly and stroked his ego until he was puffed up like a toad frog.

The outcome of pouring on all this honey was some of the best cabinet work I have ever seen in that library. He went over and beyond what he had to do and gave me his very best and we became friends through it all. Now don't you tell me that respecting someone and pouring on the honey doesn't work for I know it does. This is especially true if it is a man so try it.

Now to get back to our discussion. There were some questions we were never to ask or facts we were not to express. You did not ask a lady her age or weight and you never said the word pregnant or sex. You knew how old they were and you could see if they were overweight and sex and preganancy were private matters. You also didn't ask how much anything cost or volunteer how much anything you had cost. That was considered bad manners for it was rather obvious if you had on expensive clothing and it was not necessary to ask such a personal question. It might hurt their feelings and it would show your lack of breeding and embarass your mama and that was a huge no-no.

I worked with someone one time who would examine all that I had on, comment on whether she liked it or not, inquire where I got it and how much it cost. She would even reach out and touch the item to see what it felt like and that was invading my personal space. It would just fly all over me and I had to remember the bees and the honey before the vinegar spewed out of my mouth. It didn't take me long to realize that she had not been taught the good, Southern manners I had and all I could say was "Bless her heart." When I wouldn't tell her where I bought it or how much it cost she would just sniff loudly and walk away as if I had hurt her feelings. Finally one day I told her I had been taught that was rude and it was none of her business. That stopped those questions although I could see the battle going on in her mind after she examined me every morning.

One of the cardinal rules mama taught us was not to brag about how much anything cost. Now at our house it didn't cost a whole lot for mama made most of what we wore and she made the drapes, upholstered the furniture, painted the furniture and did anything else that needed doing. This meant we looked good but it didn't cost a whole lot. In fact, if you had any raising or breeding of any kind you just didn't brag about what you had or how much it cost. Again we were taught that was private information and was nobody's business but yours.

Where we were raised there are lots of plantation, Ante-bellum homes and people who owned huge amounts of land and some had a lot of money. Many of these families however had once been wealthy but had fallen on hard times or spent all that their daddy and granddaddys had made. This didn't stop some of them from continuing to live like they had been raised but it did mean they owed a lot of money.

I remember asking mama why some of these ladies worked and their husbands played at farming, hunted and fished and mama said somebody had to make the living and some of these men just never found a job worthy of them. It took me awhile to understand what she meant but I finally realized that the women in these families were the strong ones and the men, well you know what I think about them. Some worked at working but just never pulled it off and many of these lovely old homes were falling apart but still full of beautiful antiques and were sitting on some of the riches farming land in the world.

It was also a fact that many of these families owed the merchants in town a lot of money. After all they had to keep up the front of living the lifestyle they were accustomed to. Those days were before credit and debit cards and you just told the store owner the "Charge it" and they would write it out in a little pad and give you the receipt. At the end of the month you would get the bill for the purchases and at our house you paid it off. A clerk told mama, in confidence of course, that many of these families owed them money they would never be able to pay off. I was shocked for mama and daddy hated to owe anyone a dime.

Now don't get me wrong for not all of the old families in our town were like this for many of them worked very hard farming and being good stewards of what had been left to them. They lived just like their good Southern mamas raised them and did not brag about what they had or how much it cost.

Being Southern is more than just the location where we live and it also includes some basic manners. These manners are based on respect for yourself and for others and the need to not think you are better than someone else because of money you have. These basic rules are slowly slipping away and it makes me sad for it means our society is not as kind as it used to be and respect for others is fast disappearing.

Tomorrow I am going to write about a wedding write up in a small paper I read today and about fell off the couch laughing. It is quiet evident that these families had not been taught not to brag and brag loudly about what they had or what they owed. As mama would say, Bless their hearts, they just don't know any better but I would add maybe they just don't care.

Drop by tomorrow and I will give you lowdown on this affair.

Ya'll come back to see me and stay warm.

Nuff said,

The Georgia Peach
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