I'm a Southern cook. I'm not the cook my Mama is, or that Nanny or Grandmama were, but I can, like Mama, breeze into the kitchen with no idea what's for supper, peer into the freezer or pantry, and whip up fried ham, butterbeans and/or peas, biscuits, and grits in about a half-hour total. Ditto other menus. I don't do it as often as I should - there are, after all, advantages to living in a developed area, including good take-out Chinese and plenteous restaurants - but I can do it when I need to. And the biscuits? - I have come to depend upon Mary B's or Marshall's frozen biscuits. (Mine are only about 65% likely to bake up fluffy; theirs have a better track record)
Like Nanny, I mess with recipes. This sometimes turns out good, like when I took the recipe for Russian Tea Mix, added some pumpkin pie spice and black pepper, and made it a spicy Southern Russian Chai Mix, and sometimes it turns out badly, like the time I added Cajun Seasoning to a meatloaf recipe that already had sausage in it, resulting in the consumption of gallons of sweet tea to cool the fire. (Our guests said, "It's good - - really. We like spicy food." Then they moved away.)
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In the above paragraph, I am not certain if I shoulda said, "...turns out good...turns out bad..." or "...turns out well...turns out poorly...", so I split the difference. I guess I mess with grammar, too}
Since I have packed up my cookbooks into storage, I have become adept at finding recipes online. My favorite source in
Recipezaar, though there are many others.
Southern Living is another old favorite.
Southern Plate is a recipe-driven blog I am just beginning to explore. Christy is a Southern cook shore 'nuff. I cook some of her recipes already, because they are already part of my upbringing. Her how-to-make real Banana Pudding is a must for anyone who thinks banana pudding comes in a box. It's made the way Mama does, except we make ours in a long Pyrex casserole, and top it with meringue. I want to try her Mama's Chocolate Cobbler. I've made the Shoney's look-alike strawberry pie. And that's just what I see from my first viewing.
Do you have a favorite recipe website?
