Charm of the Carolines

Beds Room

I remember how horrified I was to learn in the middle ages families would gather up all their farm animals and bring them into the house at night. People and animals alike would sleep in one or two rooms with straw floors and the composting of organic materials on the floor helped to heat the home.

Yuck!

I thought, "Yuck!" until last night when I found what appeared to be a coyote near my dogs who were fascinated with the creature that had wandered up to my back yard. Two co-workers have lost their dogs to coyotes this year, and I wasn't about to be the third. This coupled with the overnight low temperature predicted to be 9 degrees, I had to do something.

As much as I would like to live on a farm, after last night thank goodness I don't!

SNOW!!!!

Middle Tennessee is experiencing one of the biggest snowfalls in the past 10 years or so. Southern middle Tennessee saw the first snow with 4-6 inches accummulating, where northern middle Tennessee didn't get any snow until the afternoon, but their accummulations are expected to reach 10 inches. Ice pellets are falling right now and it's slick and dangerous.

Don't know what projects I'll tackle today, but I do know I won't be driving. Hot Chocolate and marshmallows are definitely on the agenda.

My mom called and is making snow cream.

Basic Snow Cream Recipe

1 cup milk

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

large bowl of snow (about 3 quarts)

Blend milk, sugar and vanilla. Stir in enough snow to make snow cream to an ice cream consistency.

My aunt called and she and her granddaughter are making Snow Ball Ice Cream. It's basically the same thing only sweetened condensed milk is substituted for both the cream and sugar.

5 cups snow or shaved ice

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Hoping to snap some pictures of my neighbors and their snow angels and snow men.

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Happy Birthday Oprah!

Love her or hate her, there is no denying Oprah Winfrey is one of the most influential women in the world. She also spent much of her formative years in Nashville with her father, Vernon Winfrey, still a resident of one of Nashville’s southern suburbs.

Oprah was born on January 29, 1954, in Kosciusko, Mississippi. Growing up poor in the segregated South, she was raised by various relatives, first moving to Wisconsin and then to Nashville.

Sent to live with her father as a young teen, Oprah thrived under his strict, yet loving and encouraging, supervision and made her education a priority. Winfrey became an honors student, was voted Most Popular Girl, joined her high school speech team at East Nashville High School and placed second in the nation in dramatic interpretation. She won an oratory contest, which secured her a full scholarship to Tennessee State University to study Communications.

Crowned Miss Fire Prevention and then Miss Black Tennessee at age 19, in 1972 Oprah dropped out of TSU during her sophomore year to began her career in broadcasting at Nashville's WTVF-TV.

Oprah became the youngest and the first African-American woman ever to anchor the news in Nashville. She then moved to Baltimore to co-anchor the six o'clock news until she was recruited to co-host Baltimore's WJZ-TV's local talk show, "People Are Talking." The show made her a national success and was so popular that reruns were shown at night!

In 1988, Oprah was awarded a diploma from Tennessee State University.

And the rest, as they say is history. The Oprah Winfrey show has been one of the most successful programs in television. She went on to produce and star in films, a TV drama, started a magazine, is a compassionate philanthropist, and many, many other endeavors.

                     Happy Birthday Oprah!

Valentine's Kiss

With Valentine's Day quickly approaching, I was perusing the net and magazines looking for inspiration for a project to surprise my neighbors. What would they like best? Heart shaped cookies? Cupcakes? A hand-made card?

Then I ran across these pictures.

Not exactly the Kiss I was thinking about, but I got my inspiration! Go live this day like a rock star!

Shoo-Fly Pie

Some of the most memorable recipes are not the ones that turned out beautiful and delicious, but the ones that forever go down in history as a complete disasters. For my brother Rob it was Deer Dip. For my brother Andy, it's a tie between the caramel pie that exploded and hit the ceiling or the pinto beans he failed to soak overnight. I on the other hand have so many failed kitchen disasters, I can't even begin to name them all.

One of my favorites was the attempt to make Shoo-Fly Pie. And before you go judging me, make one for yourself first. Cooking with molassas is risky at best and downright foolish on most any given day. It turns hard as a rock.

So unless you know a special secret I don't or you just like pies that taste like rock candy, I challenge you to make this pie... well.

And there are two basic types of Shoo-Fly Pie, dry-bottomed and wet-botomed. But I really don't know the difference. Mine turned out hard as a rock, dry all the way through.

Shoo-Fly Pie

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, divided

3/4 cup light corn syrup

1/2 cup molasses

4 eggs

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

One 9-inch frozen ready-to-bake pie shell, thawed

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl, combine 1/4 cup flour, the corn syrup, molasses, eggs, and baking soda; mix well and pour into the pie shell.

In a small bowl, combine the remaining 1 cup flour, the butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg; stir until crumbly then sprinkle evenly over the corn syrup mixture.

Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until firm.

Serve warm, or allow to cool to room temperature before serving.

This day in history...

On this day in 1939, principal photography of "Gone With The Wind" began.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

Boiled Peanuts

Sitting by the roadside on a summer day, Chatting with my messmates, passing time away, Lying in the shadow underneath the trees, Goodness how delicious, eating goober peas! Peas! Peas! Peas! Peas! Eating goober peas! Goodness how delicious, eating goober peas!

If you ever find yourself driving through the south, I encourage you to leave the interstate (or Freeway, if you aren't from here) and drive through some of the country towns on the way to your destination. In many you'll find someone on the side of the road or in the middle of an intersection selling a small sack of boiled peanuts for $1.

I love them and buy them every time I take a trip down to the panhandle of Florida on vacation.

Boiled peanuts are a traditional snack in Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, northern Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. They are an acquired taste, but according to southerners, they are totally addictive. From May through November, all over the south, you will see roadside stands - ranging from woodsheds to shiny trailers - offering fresh boiled peanuts. Sometimes they are hard to open with your fingers, and you must resort to using your teeth, but according to most people, they are worth the trouble.

Southerners will tell you boiled peanuts should always be accompanied by a beer, sweet tea, or a soft drink. Traditionally they are eaten outside where it doesn't matter if wet shells are tossed or spit on the ground.

Boiled peanuts are green or raw nuts that are boiled in salty water for hours outdoors over a fire. The shells turn soggy, and the peanuts take on a fresh, legume flavor. A green peanut is not green in color, just freshly harvested. It takes ninety to a hundred days to grow peanuts for boiling, and they are available only during May through November throughout the southern states. One of the drawbacks of boiled peanuts is that they have a very short shelf life unless refrigerated or frozen. If you leave them out on the kitchen counter for 3 to 4 days, they become slimy and smelly!

No one knows just why southerners started boiling peanuts or who was the first to boil them. However, it is believed that boiled peanuts have been a southern institution since at least the Civil War (1861-1865), when Union General William T. Sherman (1820-1891) led his troops on their march through Georgia. As a result of General Sherman's campaign in Georgia, the Confederacy was split in two and deprived of much needed supplies.

Contemporary writings are full of complaints of lack of bread and meat. The great concern of the Confederate government was to feed the army. When troops of the Confederacy were without food, peanuts were an important nutritional source. Since cooking facilities were scarce, soldiers roasted the peanuts over campfires or boiled them. It seems to be lost in history as to who came up with the idea of adding salt to the peanuts when boiling them. What they were doing by boiling in salt, is an ancient preservation technique. It was discovered that these boiled peanuts would keep and not spoil in their kits for up to seven day. The salt works as a preservative, and the boiling kills impurities and bacteria. This produced a high protein ration that could be carried by the soldier. As salt was also scarce during the Civil War, history doesn't tell us how the confederate soldiers had enough salt to use, unless salt meat, a large part of the army ration, was used somehow.

Confederate soldiers also adopted peanuts as a cheap coffee substitute along with parched rye, wheat, corn, sweet potatoes, chestnuts, chicory, and cotton seed . Some history books note that Confederate soldiers from Georgia were known as "goober grabbers."

Boiled Peanuts

Makes 5 pounds

Ingredients:

5 pounds peanuts, still in shell

1 cup salt

Water to cover

Directions

Wash the peanuts and place them in a pot. Add salt and water.

Bring the water to a boil.

Let the water boil for 3 hours.

Taste the peanuts, if they are not salty enough for your taste add more salt. If you would like the peanuts to be softer, return the water to boil and cook until they reach the consistency you desire.

I like mine to look and taste like Chickpeas.

Sweet little town of Nolensville

My friend Laine and I spent the day Saturday in Nolensville, TN, located around the county lines of Davidson, Williamson and Rutherford. What a sweet little town this is!

We started out at the Nolensville Feed Mill, which was a delight! The blueberry cheddar they offer is a delicious combination of sweet and salty that I've never experienced before and I highly recommend it. The owner's name is Darin and he started the Amish Country Market a year ago, December 2009 to be exact.

Darin's priorities are to phovide nutritious, tasty amish food at the mill and to create an enviroment where people have a great time. The Mill is a fun place for people of all ages. They have a great produce market that starts up in late spring, and live entertainment,too. In the meantime, the coffee bar is open in the back and if you ask politely, Darin will pick up his guitar and entertain you with a song or two.

And don't forget the sweet little antiques store next door.

Shop Girl was next on our excursion. And this is where I found a great selection of gift items for friends and family, not to mention the most adorable, collapsable travel hair brush for myself!

Donna Land recently opened the Reaching Out Thrift Store in downtown Nolensville. Donna, a nurse at Vanderbilt Hospital, witnessed first-hand the desperate choices some of her patients were having to make between food or medication, especially the elderly. In an effort to raise more money to help out these individuals than she could provide with her own contributions, Donna established the Reach Outing Thrift Store. Accepting donations of any clothing, household, or sporting goods items, Donna sells these donations at bargain prices so your donations or purchases go to a worthy need in our community. Donna will even make arrangements to pick up your donations if you can't make a trip to her shop. I hosted a neighborhood yard sale in late summer and what a relief to have Donna and her fiance simply pack up the leftovers and whisk them away. It was so easy, I plan to forgo the yard sale this year and just take the items directly to the Thrift store.

The next shop we visited while strolling downtown was Three French Hens. Owners Amy Mills and Stacey Harris Fish have combined an antique shop with gifts, decorating items and vintage clothing.

At the end of the downtown district was The Roost, another quaint and charming antiques/gift shop. Laine and I found lots of treasures in Nolensville.

Then time to eat lunch. Uncle Buds restaurant recently opened and we both enjoyed a meal of catfish, white beans, slaw, fries and hushpuppies. It was a major departure from my low-carb selections, but still delicious.

So pull out your calendar and plan your trip.

Sock-it-to-Me Cake

I have a birthday coming up just around the corner.I need to post a picture of the birthday cake my sister-in-law made for me a few years ago. It's a special cake that takes two days to prepare, but looks like a basket of straawberries when you are finished and tastes scruptious. When that day comes when I post that picture, there'll be no recipe or explanation. I simply don't even know where to begin. Beth will have to start her own blog, I guess! My favorite cake when I was a little girl was Sock-it-to-me cake. Is that a southern thing or can you get this cake elsewhere? I love this cake for two reasons. First, I love cinnamon. Second, I love sweet-tart combinations. This cake offers a generous helping of both! SOCK-IT-TO-ME CAKE 1 pkg. butter cake mix 1/2 cup chopped pecans 1/2 cup sugar 2 tablespoons brown sugar, or more 3/4 cup vegetable oil 2 tsp. cinnamon, or more 4 eggs 8 oz. sour cream 3 tablespoons orange juice or lemon juice 1 cup confectioners sugar Combine cake mix, sugar and oil. Mix in eggs. Add sour cream and mix well. Stir in pecans. Pour half of the batter into greased tube pan. Sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon over batter. Add remaining batter. Bake at 350 degrees for an hour until cake is done. Cool and glaze with mixture of confectioners sugar and orange juice or lemon juice.

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Charm of the Carolines is participating in a little linky love today. Join the fun!

Tempt my Tummy

Fried Chitlins

Not every grocery carries chitlins or chitterlings or hog maw. Depending on where you live and shop, you may have to special order this cut of meat. Or if you are a novice, you may want to forgo cooking your own and simply visit a soul food restaurant. We have many great restaurants in middle Tennessee.

After cleaning the chitterlings of the fat you will only end up with about half as much volume.

INGREDIENTS:

2 pounds chitterlings

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 tablespoon water

fine cracker crumbs

1-2 onions

2-3 Bay Leaves

Salt, Pepper, Garlic

oil for deep frying

PREPARATION:

Clean and Prepare chitterlings. Wash chitterlings 3 or 4 times. (

Place in a large kettle with 4 or 5 cups of water with 1 or 2 chopped onions, 2 bay leaves, 2 teaspoons salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, 2 cloves minced garlic, and other seasonings as desired.

Simmer for 2 hours or until chitterlings are tender.

Beat egg with 1 tablespoon water.

Cut boiled chitterlings into pieces about the size of oysters.

Dip each piece into egg mixture then roll in crumbs.

Fry in oil at about 370° F until golden brown.