Posted on 01/22/2006 7:04:33 AM PST by devane617
OK, so I am getting old, but still remember my favorite time of the week -- Sunday dinner at Grandma's house. In the south we call Sunday lunch, dinner. For an unknown reason, when I awoke this morning, I was thinking about all the happy times as a kid spent at Grandma's house and how much I miss those easy Sundays. On the menu would be:
Pot Roast, Fried Chicken, or Baked Ham.
Fresh veggies from the garden:
Purple hull peas, Butter beans, Sweet potato's, Yellow Squash, Creamed corn, Bread dressing, Cornbread, and Busicuts.
For dessert:
Carrot Cake, German Chocolate cake, Chocolate pie, and Lemon meringue pie.
As kids we would be sent out in the yard to play. Never thought about watching TV, or video games the entire day.
On the way home from Grandma's my Dad would stop by a small country store that had huge Ice Cream cones. I would always have Lime Sherbert.
..it's comforting to return to a slower yesteryear, when time felt like it stood still...and memories were made in a sweeter, more mellow time.
My grandmother always made our Sunday dinner (lunch) on Saturday, so we could eat immediately on return from church.
She kept the (usually) chicken & dumplings in the warming container that was recessed into our old stove.--(Grandmother lived with us)
Along with the chicken & dumplings, we had 'greens' (which I never acquired a taste for)...and always, always cornbread, and fresh vegetables from the curb market....
..and homemade pies.
My great grandmother ....after a Sunday meal...use to simply throw a white sheet over the food and let it sit until supper time :^ (Grandmother never did that!)
(Great grandmother had a small icebox for absolute refrigeration!)
And Sunday afternoon, before evening worship, many times we would crumble the leftover cold cornbread into a large glass of cold milk or buttermilk :)
It's an acquired taste :) ....and one you're more likely to find in the South, or Tennessee, where I'm from :)
I have moved from state to state a lot over the past two decades, and I often go to a new grocery store and find they don't carry these. However, you can ask the grocery store manager if he will stock these items, and he usually will. My experience is these items will fly off the grocery shelves, and the manager will thank you. You may have to provide manager with the web addresses to get it done, though.
I want to share these Southern barbequing secrets with you Alisha, believe me you won't regret it. If you can't burn a fire outside, you can bake barbequed pork ribs, or broil steaks/hamburgers in the oven.
Here is where you can order these wonderful seasonings/sauces on the net:
www.dalesseasoning.com
www.tonychachere.com
Barbequed Ribs
If you want to oven bake pork or beef ribs, parboil them first on top the stove.
Then marinate them in Dale's steak seasoning (the longer the better).
When ready to bake or grill coat them with Tony Chachere's seasoning.
Here is my homemade barbeque sauce mixture, which you brush on them several times while cooking:
Take about four tablespoons of spicy mustard and mix with a teaspoon of vinegar, two tablespoons of Dale's or Worchester Sauce, a small can of tomato sauce, a tablespoon of garlic powder, a tablespoon of onion powder, and about 1/3 cup of honey.
Depending on the oven/grill heat, you may have to wait until the ribs are close to done before adding the BBQ sauce, since honey does burn fast.
Sunday dinner was always fried chicken or roast - best meal of the week because that half stick of gum handed out by the Elders of the Church just didn't cut it. I was always starving by the time dinner was served!
The pot roast is in the crockpot. Green beans on cookin'. Potatos and carrots to come later. And apple pie after dinner. Sure smells good cooking. Dinner's at 4:00.
What Tennessean would ever have cornbread without some buttermilk for a later snack. The cornbread crumbled into the buttermilk.
Yep, both my grandmothers just left the meal on the table, and covered it with a tablecloth. Basically folks just ate all day, and any late comers had everything layed out for them.
Zak's Mom is right, bioled okra is disgusting, it MUST be fried.
Here's my fried chicken recipe:
Pour some flour into an empty bread bag.
Take a cut up chicken and shake in the bag of flour.
Then take the chicken pieces and roll them in a mixture of eggs/buttermilk (mostly eggs to keep mixture thick).
Then place the ckicken pieces back into the flour bag (makes the chicken crispier).
After all the chicken is floured a second time, the buttermilk/egg mixture is thick, so I pour it into the bread bag with the chicken and flour.
At this point your cooking oil should be really hot. Place chicken in the oil, sprinkle with Tony Chachere's Seasoning Mix, and brown on all sides. Then turn the stove on a really low simmer and cover the chicken and cook the inside. Sometimes I brown it again on higher heat before taking out of the pan.
I cook all my fried chicken in my grandmother's big iron skillet, and make my cornbread and bisquits in her iron skillets of various sizes I inherited from her.
I'm getting hungry.
Those cast iron skillets are a treasure. I had one years ago that I used only to fry potatoes in and it was seasoned to perfection.
My daughter came to live for a while and when she left so did my skillet. She of course admits taking it and says she ain't giving it back.
When I was young, she raised chickens in the back yard (and this was not out in the country). I vividly remember seeing her and my aunt chasing down chickens, wringing their necks, plucking them, and singeing the remaining feathers off with a match. I never watched the rest of the procedure until the best chicken and dumplins you ever ate were on the table. [I know she used a pressure cooker because once the lid blew and my mother talked to her dying day of all the fun helping Grandma clean the mess off the applicances, the floor, the walls, the ceiling ... every exposed surface in the kitchen!]. Or scrumptious fried chicken with delicious milk gravy served with either rice or mashed potatoes.
She also cooked something she called creamed corn ... I've never been able to duplicate it or found anything even close to the wonder of that dish. She took 'mature' white corn, barely skimmed the tips off the kernels, then scraped all the creamy stuff off the cobs. Simmered slowly in an iron frying pan with bacon grease, this made a dish certainly fit for royalty. She also cooked delicious collards and made the best banana pudding ever.
I wish I could even begin to match her culinary skills ... not fancy but ohhhhhh so good!
My mother seasoned two skillets for me about a year ago. They are my pride and joy in my kitchen. Fried eggs with lots of pepper, sausage (hot of course), biscuits, and coffee.
My great grandmother always always did the sheet over the Sunday dinner thing....
..and then we ate the leftovers before evening church.
Surprisingly, no one seemed to come down with food poisoning :)
If the cooks in your family are like mine, they cook stuff very well done! Not much room for anything bad to grow.
Don't blame her. When my Granny was sent home from the hospital to die, I went by to see her and return a cast iron dutch oven and bread skillet I'd borrowed from her.
She smiled and said, "No, you keep them."
And she taught me how you NEVER use dishwashing soap on an iron skillet. My various sized iron bread skillets are wiped clean with a paper towel, and my dutch ovens and other iron castware is cleaned with hot water only.
Every now and then, I take the dutch ovens and pots and cover them with lard (or cooking oil) and salt, and bake them for several hours, that's how I season them.
My Granny's extended family has enjoyed several decades of meals cooked in her cast iron cookware, and when I can no longer use them, they will be passed on to my sister's daughters (Granny's great grandkids, one of whom is named for Granny).
My husband is from Oklahoma and likes his cornbread in sweet milk.
An eye roast, with gravy made from the drippings.
Mashed potatoes, Stewed tomatoes
Corn-on-the-cob with melted butter.
Green beans with bacon
Homemade biscuits that melted in your mouth.
Cherry Pie.
Baked chicken (basted with butter and spices)
Cornmeal souffle (a/k/a "spoonbread")
Three bean salad
Green jello with pears in it
Baked custard for dessert.
Mighty good!
Oh, if I could only get a real beef brisket (not corned beef) here, I'd cook a brisket like my dear (now deceased) Texas adopted grandmother did (She was my sister in law's mother).
And the sauce!!!!!!
This lady wrote a great cookbook, and I have her recipe, just can't get the real brisket here in Tennessee.
And NOTHING beats real Texas barbeque.
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