Anthrodynia

The other day as I was browsing around on FB I saw a news article on the Oregon situation and shooting.  I messed up big time and read some of the comments.

First and only rule of reading news articles…

1) NEVER EVER READ THE COMMENTS!!!!!

The pure stupidity and hatefulness will get you every time.  I know this but I let curiosity get the best of me.  I saw where one guy actually said he wished they had all been shot and killed.  Sadly this didn’t surprise me cause I’ve seen quite a few people say this.  At first I was appalled and then I just felt sorry for the guy.  What must his life be like that he has so much hate in his heart?  I mean really?  Wishing death upon them and wishing that kind of pain on those people’s family members, all because they sat in an empty building with guns or because he didn’t agree with why they did it?  They didn’t harm anyone, nor even threaten anyone, yet this guy wished death upon them?  I just can’t wrap my head around that.  I have NEVER wished death on anyone, nor will I ever.  Maybe I expect more humanity from my fellow humans?  Is it really too much to expect?  Good grief, I hope not!

kuebiko

n. a state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence, which force you to revise your image of what can happen in this world—mending the fences of your expectations, weeding out all unwelcome and invasive truths, cultivating the perennial good that’s buried under the surface, and propping yourself up like an old scarecrow, who’s bursting at the seams but powerless to do anything but stand there and watch.

Anyway, this got me to thinking about the supposed “state of the world”, all the hatred oozing out of people that we are exposed to on a daily basis and how social media tends to work as an emotional multiplier.  To be honest, it depresses the hell out of me and naturally it makes me angry and I see just how easily emotions can go viral.  This is why I personally don’t post anything religious, political or angry on my own FB.  Emotions are contagious.  I want to share laughter and fun with my friends.  I got to thinking about how the internet has been such a blessing and a curse.  Sometimes all the negativity, hate and anger is just overwhelming.  I usually take a break at this point.  I think I liked it much better when I didn’t know what everyone thought 24/7.  All of the memes, you should think this, act like this, like this candidate, hate this candidate, the keyboard courage, the shaming, the snark, the passive aggressiveness, it all just gets so mentally exhausting.  I liked it better when I had to ask people for their opinions rather than have them shoved down my throat every time I log on.

So after having been put in a bad mood by all of that nonsense it was time to go get the kids from school.  As I was leaving I stopped at the end of the driveway as is my routine, and I got the mail.  I always look forward to checking the mail just as I always get excited when I’ve ordered something and I’m anticipating it’s arrival.  I love getting magazines and Christmas cards at Christmas time.  Most days it’s junk mail or bills.  Nothing to get excited about.  This got me to thinking about back when I was a teenager and I had pen pals.  I guess that is why I still get excited about getting mail.  I remember that anticipation and excitement and who wouldn’t be happy to see colorfully decorated envelopes just for you in the mailbox.  It was fun and it made me happy.  It was all made even better if the letter also contained either pictures or friendship books.  Today with FB, email, text, etc people don’t have to sit down and write, they can just type it out.  Now they can even do it in 140 characters or less on Twitter.  It is all so impersonal.  Has convenience just about killed the art of writing?  People can’t or just won’t even take the time to write anymore.  Surely people could find the time if they just had the desire?  I mean who doesn’t like to get letters in the mail from their friends?  I know I sure would like to get some mail that isn’t junk or a bill.  After doing a cursory look on FB for the term pen pals I found this article.  It’s from last year so it’s still fairly recent but it says that having pen pals is making a comeback.  I sure hope so.  It seems I’m not the only one that wants to bring this back.  I’m all for this.  Let’s add a little sunshine to everyone’s day and start writing snail mail letters to our friends or even better, make a new friend by becoming someone’s pen pal.  For those who just don’t have the time or interest in writing, share something funny or happy online.  Let’s make laughter viral because we could all use it.

I finally found a word for how social media tends to affect me.

anthrodynia

n. a state of exhaustion with how shitty people can be to each other, typically causing a countervailing sense of affection for things that are sincere but not judgmental, are unabashedly joyful, or just are.

 

Silly Hill

The last time I posted on here we were still living in Michigan and about to relocate back to the south.  We’ve been here for a little over a year now.  As much as I loved Michigan and love my friends there it just wasn’t home.  Now that we are back I am no longer spending months on end with cabin fever and longing for any semblance of the climate and culture that I grew up in.  There was a little bit of culture shock for me though because I’ve always lived in college towns and cities and now we’re out in the country.  So I’m adjusting to country living and slowly but surely acclimating back to the heat and humidity.  At times I miss sidewalks, neighborhood kids running in and out of the house and quick trips to the store but being able to see the Milky Way from my back patio and the scents, omg, the scents are amazing out here.  It’s all totally worth it.  For the whole month of April, the air everywhere around here is sickly sweet with the lovely smell of honeysuckle.  It’s downright heavenly.  So much life and greenery.  It’s the very essence of the south and what I missed about it while away.  It also doesn’t hurt that we’re back down here with some rather awesome BBQ.  Did I mention I’m also within a few hours driving distance of all of my childhood friends and my beloved Gulf Coast?

We did actually start our back yard hobby farm.  I’ll start by telling you about the name.  We toyed around with a few ideas but finally landed on one that just felt right and that being, Silly Hill.  We are named after the homestead/farm where my mother lived as a child.  When she and her sister and brother were young they moved from Hillsboro, Al to a house on a hill off of Old Highway 20 in Leighton, Al.  My aunt not wanting to move said “I don’t want to move up on that ole silly hill” and the name stuck.  From then on that’s what they called it.  My grandfather was a sharecropper and at various times grew corn, watermelon and cotton at the foot of the hill.  It was here where my grandfather employed the singer Percy Sledge when he was a teenager.  When we moved into our new house I noticed that it was on an ever so slight small hill, if you can even call it a hill.  There is just enough of a slope that if you were to be on roller skates or a bike you would pick up speed going down the driveway.  I am also a big fan of silliness in general so naming the farm after the original silly hill just fit.  It was perfect!  Then I designed the logo with the help from Dr. J.

Getting the farm going was a lot of hard work, sweat and toil on Dr. J’s part and a lot of learning on my part.  We ended up with 4 50×60 plots that we rotate each growing season.  Our soil was really crappy and probably had a lot to do with some of the crop failures.  I mean really crappy, as in we don’t even have any earthworms.  We used organic fertilizer to try to correct the issues but probably not nearly enough.  In one plot we grew clover for ground cover.  Another plot was dedicated to soybeans, herbs, peppers and pumpkins.  The deer took out most of the soybeans and the squash bugs completely obliterated the pumpkins.  The hot peppers did well but the bells didn’t come in at all.  Another plot was used to grow purple hull peas, green beans, okra, corn and cucumbers.  The purple hull peas and okra did great.  The squash bugs again killed off all of our cukes and the green beans and corn grew great but were too tough to eat.  We eventually put up an electric fence around all four plots to keep the deer out and that worked out well.  We also put in drip tape and had the watering system on a timer.  That worked well also.  The last plot was dedicated to fall veggies.  We planted turnip greens, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and carrots.  Out of all that we only had luck with the turnip greens.  We only ended up with a handful of carrots, one broccoli plant and the cabbage never formed a head.  This first year I didn’t expect everything to go perfect.  This was more of a let’s try it and see kind of thing.  We know more about what to expect now.  This coming spring we plan to plant a few different veggies.  I believe we’re going to try to grow some black beans this year, a different variety of green beans and since we’ve grown tomatoes in the past, we’ll grow those this year as well.

On the business side of the farm what we have accomplished is purchasing a business license and buying the tent, table and signage for selling at the farmer’s market.  Basically just gathering all the needed supplies to be able to sell our produce and products.  We’re still not quite ready to actually sell at the market yet but we have been able to sell some of our excess in other ways.  We also started a Facebook page for the farm and a store front on that page where you can order the bath products directly from the site.

Last summer I took the Alabama Cottage Food Law course and was certified to be able to bake and sell baked goods and jams.  I also went to Auburn for a two day course in Acidified Foods Manufacturing and was FDA certified.  That means that I can legally produce acidified foods such as pickles, bbq sauces, salsas and the like as long as they are produced in a health department inspected facility.  There is a lot of paperwork involved in doing that so that little side project has been put on the back burner.  However, I did start making home made baked donuts to sell.  The pumpkin spice donuts are amazing if I say so myself.  Here is a picture of our chocolate glazed chocolate donuts.

I also started making my own bath products.  I make seasonally scented salt hand scrubs, bath salts and hand lotions.  I decided to start with just four or five scents per season so as not to get too overwhelmed with products.  I’ve actually sold a decent amount of them.  I am ocd with scented stuff like bath products, candles and the such.  I figured it made more sense for me to make my own.  I love the hand lotion.  It’s not like most lotions that are heavy and greasy feeling.  This stuff is light and dries really well while leaving your skin scented and soft.

This winter there isn’t much going on at the farm.  We have about 600 onions planted and we are currently researching fruit trees and raspberries.  We plan to only buy a few to start with, just enough to feed ourselves.  We go through a lot of apples in this family so we’ll definitely be buying a few apple trees.  I’ll update more as I can.  If you want to see more photos, etc then go check us out on Facebook and give us a like to stay updated on the farm.  We are here —> Silly Hill Farm 

 

 

 

 

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes….

Anyone that knows me knows that I am a total autumnophile. I absolutely adore everything about fall: the clothes, the food, the scents, the sights, the activities. I love every aspect of the aesthetics of fall and I love how cozy the home becomes this time of year. Like I said, I love it.

“Delicious autumn! My very soul
is wedded to it,
and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns.”
-George Eliot

I just so happen to share this love of fall with my brother and my father. I have been after both of them to come up here to Michigan to experience a proper autumn for the last 3 years. The reason I’ve had ants in my pants to get them up here is because I knew we’d only be here for a few years. As it turns out, this is our last year here. So it’s my family’s last chance. Well, this year I get my wish. My immediate family is flying up this coming weekend: Mama, Papa, Pooh Bear and Big Bro D. I’m so excited for them to witness the three things that I feel make autumn in Michigan so wonderful:

Sugar Maples

Honeycrisp Apples

Cider Mills

So while they are here I plan to take them to my favorite apple cider mill, Uncle John’s. We don’t have these down south. Not in abundance like they do here. They also don’t have Honeycrisp apples in abundance down south the way we do here.  These three things will be what I miss most about Michigan once we move, other than my friends of course.

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted and for that I apologize. These last 7 months have been pretty busy. During this time Dr. J landed a job back home in Bama. So maybe I should start calling him Professor J now, heh. Here, enjoy this Michigan native singing Sweet Home Alabama.

We’ll be leaving the frozen north come Christmas. While I’m glad I won’t have to shovel snow anymore or worry about frostbite during those crazy winter vortexes, I fear I have acclimated to the cooler temps. The heat may take some getting used to. I’m moving back home so I’ll just have to acclimate, no biggie.

Anyway, we’re in the process of buying a nice place on 9 acres out in the county. What are y’all going to do with all of that land you may be wondering? Well, I have always been pretty mercurial in what I wanted to do or be when I grow up. After years of trying to figure it out and countless changes of my major in college, I finally came to the conclusion that maybe I should do the one thing that I never lost interest in and that happens to be growing and preserving food. I’ve been an avid fan of agritainment places for years. While I don’t know if we will ever get into the business of agritourism we do plan to run a small scale hobby farm or market garden in our yard and do a bit of homesteading. I’m really excited about this endeavor. This is all going to be new to me so keep an eye out for future posts on my adventures of going from a stay at home mom city girl to a small town country farm girl. This should be fun.

Cast Iron Cookware and Cornbread

I think there is a rule somewhere that you can’t be a proper southerner without owning some cast iron cookware, preferably hand me down cast iron. I have two pieces of my grandmother’s cast iron and let me tell you, for any southerner that likes to cook, these are treasured items, just like our inherited china. I was fortunate enough to end up with both of my grandmother’s china, which also just so happened to be the same pattern. You don’t have to have cast iron that was passed down to you. You can buy it new, already seasoned from Lodge. I would season it a few times before use anyways, just to prevent sticking.

There are a few reasons to cook with cast iron.

1. Cast iron cookware is inexpensive, it lasts a lifetime and tends to be more “green” than cookware with chemical coatings like Teflon.
2. It is a very versatile cookware. You can use it in the oven, on the stove top, on a grill, over a fire and you can serve the food right out of it. It’s also versatile in regards to what you can cook or bake in it.
3. Well seasoned cast iron provides a non-stick surface. However, you have to maintain this by seasoning it often. I will show you in a minute what a well seasoned skillet looks like and tell you the process.
4. It’s also healthy for you. Using cast iron cookware tends to release trace amounts of iron into the food. This is actually beneficial as it helps prevent anemia. People with Hemochromatosis shouldn’t use cast iron though, as they tend to have too much iron in their blood. From what I understand though, this condition is fairly rare.
5. Using cookware that has been passed down to from previous generations, for me anyways, makes me feel more connected to my roots.

How to season cast iron.

• Set your oven to 350-400.
• Coat your cast iron in a thin layer of some form of oil. Lard, canola, bacon drippings or any other form of cooking oil. Use a paper towel and coat the inside of the skillet, the sides and the handle. The only part I don’t coat is the bottom of the pan.
• Place a cookie sheet on the bottom rack. Put your skillet on the rack above the cookie sheet with the bottom facing up so that the oil won’t pool and leave it in the oven for at least an hour.
• Let the skillet cool in the oven.
• Take paper towels and wipe out the excess oil while leaving a sheen.

This is what it should look like.

So yeah, it’s really that simple. Oil it up and put it in the oven for an hour. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. You will want to do this pretty often though just to maintain the non stick surface.

Now, how to clean the cast iron cookware.

There are a few rules to learn when it comes to cleaning.

1. This is the first and foremost rule. Never, ever, ever, ever, and I mean EVAH leave water standing in your cast iron or just let it air dry when it’s wet. It will rust. Trust me, you don’t want that. It won’t be the end of the world if you do but it will be close. Just kidding, it is a right pain in the neck to have to get the rust off and go through seasoning it all over again.
2. You also don’t want to scrub or scour your cast iron. If you do, all of the effort you spent seasoning the cast iron will be for naught. The only time you want to scour cast iron is when you are trying to get rust off of it.
3. Also, don’t ever put cast iron in a dishwasher.
4. What you do want to do is wipe it down with the soft side of a sponge or with a dish towel and hot water. You can use mild soap but it’s better to not use soap at all. If you need to soak your cast iron because of caked on food you can but as soon as you get it cleaned up dry it immediately. If you fried food in your cast iron, once you get rid of the excess grease then you can just wipe it down/dry with paper towels.

Here is a picture of one of the skillets that I inherited from my grandmother. Now, as you can see, that skillet has been seasoned many, many times.

Here is my collection of cast iron cookware.

And…here is THE BEST thing to cook in cast iron.

Cornbread Recipe

This is the recipe that I used in the pictures above. It’s actually Dr.J’s recipe. I love it because my cornbread comes out fluffy and moist every time.

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup of All Purpose flour
• 1 cup of yellow cornmeal
• 1 1/2 TBSP sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 4 TBSP mayonnaise

Directions

1. Set the oven to 400.
2. Grease the inside of cast iron skillet with oil. If you want it to have a southern flare then use bacon drippings as your oil. We put that stuff in just about everything!
3. Put your skillet in the oven while you prepare the cornbread mixture. Let the oil get really hot.
4. Whip together the eggs, milk and mayo.
5. In a separate bowl add all of the dry ingredients together.
6. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix well making sure to break up any clumps.
7. Take your skillet out of the oven and pour the mixture into it. It should sizzle some around the edges. Place the skillet back into the oven.
8. Bake at 400 for 30 minutes until the edges start to pull away.
9. Reduce the heat to 350 and bake for another 10 minutes.
10. Take the skillet out of the oven, do the toothpick test.
11. If the toothpick comes out clean then let the cornbread cool in the skillet for a little bit. It should slide right out of the skillet once cooled.
12. Slice it up and slap some butter on that bad boy, it’s ready to eat.

I know it may sound kind of weird to use mayo in the recipe but don’t omit it. The mayo is what makes it moist. You can also make jalapeño cornbread using this recipe. Just dice up a half a cup of onion and about 2 jalapeños, sauté them in butter, and then add them to the mix before you put the mix into the skillet. There you go, it’s sooo good. If any of you try either version of this recipe let me know how it turns out for ya.

Southern Fried Potatoes

This week has been all about comfort food for me. I’ve been really homesick as I usually am this time of year so I’ve been fixing a lot of comfort food. Comfort food for me is the food my mama cooked, the southern staples, the food that was set on our dinner table on any given night. This week I have cooked tuna patties, my Aunt Martha’s shoepeg corn casserole, southern fried potatoes and banana pudding done Mom’s way. Mom was my paternal grandmother. I’m going to try to squeeze in a batch of chicken and dumplings too. Anyway, the other night I decided to have southern fried potatoes. I grew up eating this and it is the epitome of southern comfort food to me. It’s a real treat. Pook gets all excited when she finds out that we’re having them with dinner. Heck, I get all excited about having them with dinner, still. Even Dr. J loves them too. Buddy? He only eats certain things and potatoes in any form are not on that list. Yet. I’m determined.

I’ve seen various recipes for southern fried potatoes that call for extra ingredients added to them such as paprika, diced bell peppers and sautéed onions. That’s all fine and dandy but that’s not how my mama made them. When you start adding other ingredients it goes from being fried potatoes to some sort of potato hash or something. I like to keep things simple when I can. Sometimes, depending on the food, simple is better. It may just be my personal taste but I find when you start trying to get creative and start adding in a bunch of stuff then the food just gets too busy or it just masks the flavor. It’s like adding steak sauce to a nice thick juicy medium rare steak. However, if you do want to make it with the extra ingredients I would suggest cubing the potatoes instead of cutting them in to french fry shapes. So I figured I would share with y’all how my mama used to make this dish and how I make it now.

I’ll take you step by step through the process. All you need are three ingredients. Potatoes, oil and salt. First off though, you need a big cast iron skillet.

Rule #1: Everything is better cooked in cast iron.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs. of potatoes (any potato is fine, we prefer Yukon Golds)
• Cooking oil (we use Canola)
• Salt

Directions

1. First you want to wash and peel your potatoes
   
2. Next you’ll want to cut them into fries
   
3. Take 1/4 cup or 4 TBS of oil and poor it into the pan
   
4. Heat the oil on medium. Now, here is the golden rule for frying anything. Get the oil hot hot hot. You want the oil to be at least 350. It helps if you have a thermometer that you can use.
   
5. Put in the potatoes and stir them around to coat them with the oil.
   
6. To get the potatoes done just right you have to cover them with a lid. This is the secret trick. The heat from the oil crisps the part of the potatoes touching the pan and the lid keeps the other side soft. Once you have the lid on you’ll want to stir every few minutes and re-cover. This helps break some of the potatoes down plus it gives you a good mix of crispy and soft potatoes. Dr. J likes them mostly crispy but I prefer the mix.
   
7. Once it starts looking like this then you’re good to go. You can keep cooking it a little longer if you want more of the brown crispy potatoes. I always just eyeball it.
   
8. Once they are done place them on a plate lined with paper towels to soak up the extra oil. Salt immediately while the potatoes are still hot so that the salt sticks
9. Southern fried potatoes
   

Now, I’m curious to know. What is a dish that you consider comfort food and why?

Pantry Surprise

Wednesday nights in our house have become “Pantry Surprise” night. The point of pantry surprise is to clear out all of the old stuff that gathers in the back of the pantry. Props to Dr. J for this nifty idea cause lord knows our pantry needs clearing out. Since I know exactly where everything is in our pantry I have Dr. J do the honors of closing his eyes, reaching in and pulling out something. Whatever he pulls out I have to make dinner with the following Wednesday. This past week, I kid you not, it was a bag of cinnamon spice quick bread mix that was from 2001 with a best used by date of 2004. I honestly didn’t realize we had anything that old in our pantry. I was scared. Really scared. I decided to make the bread as part of a breakfast dinner consisting of eggs (with Louisiana hot sauce of course), country ham, fruit and the bread. The bread actually turned out pretty good. It was crumbly but other than that, still totally edible and that in itself is kinda frightening too.

The bologna moon

Sometimes playing with your food is acceptable, if it’s art. Or if you are about to encounter aliens. Or in Pook’s case, if you make a bologna moon.

Fighting The Winter Blues

Y’all bear with me, this is my first blog post. It’s the middle of February. I’m in Michigan, which means there is at least 2 feet of snow on the ground and I have nothing better to do. We have 4-6 more inches of the white stuff coming this evening and I’m totally filled with dread. I’m southern so this time of year is hard for me.  I am just sick to death of the snow; of being cold, of changing shoes every time I leave the house, this cabin fever, and sick to death of not seeing my beloved blue skies and green grass.  I am soo ready for some color. The sad part is that I know I still have another 2 months of this to go. I have to get my sunshine in pill form, no joke. Don’t laugh but I’ve actually considered buying a light therapy lamp. Evidently our area comes in at #55 for the cloudiest city in America.

So naturally, this is the time of year that I get homesick for the south the most. Having grown up where the summers are long and having traded them in for long winters, well, it’s kind of jarring.  I start daydreaming of all the sights, smells and sounds of the south and I miss them so much.  I inevitably daydream of the beach too and by beach I don’t mean the Lake Michigan beaches with their biting flies. I mean the soft white sands and warm blue waters of the Gulf Coast where I grew up or the low country beaches on the east coast.  So how do I cope?  What gets me through these last few months of cold weather?  Here is my list.

• Tropical and/or citrus fruit.
• Seafood (I crave fresh seafood. However, what I can get in the store has to suffice.)
• Cajun food.
• Comfort food i.e. good ole southern cooking e.g. chicken and dumplings, fried okra, chicken stew, cornbread, banana pudding, shrimp and grits, etc.
• Celebrating Mardi Gras with a store bought King Cake, beads and Zydeco music.
• Spring and summer scented candles e.g. honeysuckle, magnolia, any beach or tropical fruit scent, rain, grass, citrus, etc.
• Retail therapy (shopping for spring and summer clothing for the kids).
• Planning this year’s garden.
• Looking at photos from previous trips to the south or the beach.
• My “Musing Tropicana” playlist (a playlist of summery songs).

The best one of all…Pook comes up to me out of the blue just now and asked me if we can have a beach party. She told me we could fill the bathtub with water and blue food color, put in toy sea animals, make lemonade and wear our swimsuits while sitting on beach towels in the bathroom. Sounds like a plan to me, I’m game. I know our plans for tomorrow now. This one, my Pookalicious, she loves the beach probably as much as I do. Almost.