A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Glenna's Hoppin' John (for non-black-eyed pea lovers)

Happy Almost New Year!  Legend has it that eating black-eyed peas (or Cow Peas to be a stickler for exactness) on New Year's Day will bring good luck and fortune in the new year. We can all use a little of that, right?

This recipe is for my version of Hoppin' John, the southern classic of black-eyed peas, bacon or sausage or ham hock, and rice.  The problem is I'm all about eating up the luck but not as hip on black-eyed peas so I cheat and basically make another southern staple: red beans and rice, but add a can of (cooked) black-eyed peas. They actually add an earthy, delicious undertone to the red beans and rice without overpowering it for those of us who aren't big black-eyed pea fans. 

Slow Cooker/Crockpot Pinto "Brown" Beans & Cornbread Muffins

One of my favorite meals from childhood was "Brown" beans and cornbread.  Funny, I never realized until I started blogging how we never called beans by their real names but by colors: Brown beans = Pintos, White beans = navy, Black beans = Cuban.  Still a favorite meal, I like them just as well meatless as with ham or sausage added and my favorite way to cook them is in the crockpot.  Interestingly, I did a small experiment a few years ago and found that, in the crockpot, soaking the beans overnight doesn't make more than a 15-30 minute cooking time difference.  So I don't bother anymore.  I work nights so usually when I make them, I come in from work in the morning, throw them together in the slow cooker (takes about 5 minutes!) and wake up to the lovely smell of beans and cumin.  Tasty, not to mention so very good for me!

Butter & Honey Angel Biscuits

 

  When I was first married and still trapped in the idea of being "the perfect wife", not that I was ever perfect, just that I tried to be what I thought  would make Gene think I was the perfect wife... boy, was there ever a more loaded psychological statement than that one?  Yes, I know.  I'm still not perfect but I do, at least, realize with 23 years hindsight that Gene loved me for who I was, and am, not because of some baggage in my head.  Anyway, back then one of my goals was to make a gorgeous, perfect, from-scratch meal every single night including homemade bread. I did it most nights but it required hours of planning in advance and a couple of hours in the kitchen every day.  And that was just for dinner!

 While I loved, and still love, to cook real life came crashing in and I soon realized that even though real food, from-scratch cooking, is always the ideal, to accomplish that even for a majority of time requires a few kitchen hacks.  Back then I had two for bread:  the bread machine and the angel biscuit. 

The beauty of angel biscuits is that you can make a huge batch and just pull off what you need for dinner, roll them out, let them rise for 20 minutes to come to room temp and bake them off.  Using both the leavening action of traditional bread: yeast, and that of the biscuit:  baking powder, plus baking soda and buttermilk. 

Baking soda is activated by acid which is why most biscuit recipes call for buttermilk.  A kitchen hack I learned in my Mom's kitchen is to use "sour milk" when buttermilk isn't available.  You simple add 1 Tbsp of vinegar or lemon juice to each cup of regular or what my Nannie (Grandma) would have called "sweet milk". You simply mix the two together and let stand for a couple of minutes until it thickens and curdles:  buttermilk!

The one real drawback to angel biscuits that we didn't know about 23 years ago is shortening.  My Mom was a cake decorator, back in the dinosaur days of no other option but Crisco and powdered sugar frostings, so we had huge, multiple cans of shortening at our house.  I have a confession.  Even though I know shortening is a heart attack waiting to happen, we all know the evils of trans-fat, I think I actually drooled on myself a little in the theater when we went to see The Help and Minnie fried that lovely chicken in that big cast iron skillet full of Crisco.  Yes, ignorance was indeed bliss. I miss that shortening fried chicken!

But I wasn't willing to completely write off the angel biscuits.  You can make traditional biscuits with butter instead of shortening, they're just a little more finicky, a little more crumbly if you're trying to knead and roll them out by hand.  But with angel biscuits I don't have any problems at all.  I cut the butter in by hand (and use half the amount of it than called for in most biscuit recipes) and then put the dough together in the mixer, using a two bowl method, wet and dry, and it comes together quickly and beautifully. The texture that bakes out is tender, with a crumb exactly midway between a biscuit and a dinner roll.  Perfect for any meal but very convenient for work night dinners.  (Great with sausage gravy for breakfast too!)

Thanksgiving Sides: Ozarks-style Slow Cooker Dressing/Stuffing

 

One of my favorite Thanksgiving tricks is to throw the dressing/stuffing into the crockpot.  It saves room in the stove, you can fix it and not worry about it, and it cooks up deliciously. Is it "dressing" or is it "stuffing" at your house?  I live in and was raised in southwest Missouri and while we use both terms, my family tends to stick with the southern version:  "dressing" while most of the rest of the country, it's my understanding, usually calls it "stuffing." Either way, it's yummy carb-licious.

Speaking of delicious, my favorite dressing has a couple of extras: chopped sweet apples and Missouri black walnuts in a southern cornbread base. English walnuts are a great option too but black walnuts are native to our American Midwest and more than 65% of those are grown in Missouri, with the largest black walnut processor, Hammons Nut, residing in Stockton, Missouri, just a rock skip from Springfield, Black walnuts are a treat we've grown up having plenty of and loving.  For the uninitiated, like the differnece between cream cheese and goat cheese, black walnuts have all the creaminess of an English walnut but with a little more zip.  One of my dearest memories of my mother was how she would hand-shell bushels of black walnuts through the fall that we kids had scavenged from the woods around our house, and then use them in Christmas cookies and candies.  As a child I took it for granted, as an adult I admire her tenacity.  Hand-shelling nuts is not the most fun job in the world but we loved the final result, for sure!

 
Mrs. Cubbison's Stuffing mix is spiced in a way that goes particularly well with the apple/black walnut combination, I've found. It's slightly sweet and very savory which highlights both the sweetness and savoriness of the fruit and nuts, which seems to me to be the quintessential tastes of fall.

Mrs. Cubbison's, a true American success story, was started by Mrs. Cubbison in 1890's as a bread bakery, then moved to crackers, and eventually to stuffing (dressing).

For tons of Thanksgiving recipes, decorating ideas, and table setting ideas, please go to www.thanksgivingtips.com for photos, recipes, and videos.

 Mrs Cubbison's:  Facebook Page

 

Ozarks Regional Cooking: Mashed Potato Rolls from Homegrown in the Ozarks cookbook

Homegrown in the Ozarks:  Mountain Meals and Memories, 2007, by Rolland Love and Mary-Lane Kamberg  (Click for link to Amazon listing)

Looking for a fast, easy dinner bread recipe yesterday to go with our beans, I grabbed this newly purchased cookbook and gave the Mashed Potato Rolls a whirl.  I'll definitely be adding these to my repertoire.  They went together quickly, for bread, were a fast rise, and because of the high potato and fat ratio, had a solid dense crumb, almost similar to a corn muffin.  In fact, I crumbled half a roll up into my beans and felt almost like I'd made cornbread.

The cookbook itself is a soft back treasure for those of us who grew up in these "mountains", filled with uncomplicated (my hand is heavier when it comes to spices)  recipes from my youth that I haven't thought about much since my youth, to be honest.  There are old-fashioned favorites (not always my personal favorites but I remember these being around when I was a kid) like gooseberry pie, persimmon bread, cornbread, catfish, bass, venison, rabbit, and even squirrel. Along with the "wilder" stuff, there are also great recipes for pork chops with mustard sauce, several breads and cornbreads, many vegetable dishes that showcase the fields and woods of this area, and desserts of all kinds, including a black walnut pie.

Reading a lot of the recipes reminds me so much of being a kid growing up in small rural town where we  often scavenged the woods around us for trashbags or pillow cases full of black walnuts, persimmons, morel mushrooms, gooseberries, etc. for Mom, who repaid us by working up our treasures into delicious eats.  The one thing I miss the most are persimmons, a wild version much smaller and sweeter than the $3/each persimmons I occasionally see at the grocery.  I ate buckets full of those as a kid and then whatever was leftover got made into bread.

Back to the bread recipe...