Tag Archive | traditional

Potatoes Au Gratin

Aug30

Vickie’s Potatoes Au Gratin

Vickie’s Potatoes Au Gratin
A simple way to spruce up your dinner table for the holidays. This is an easy recipe to make, though it does take some time to bake. It’s well worth it.

I found this recipe in a box at my Grandmother’s house. It was a clipping from the local paper, with hand written notes next to some of the ingredients and directions. I’m pretty sure those notes were made by my Maw. In our family, we called her Maw Stoots.  I’ve made my own little tweaks to the recipe to fit my families tastes. I hope you like it.

Preparation Time: 25 Minutes
Bake time: 1 to 1.5 hours
Serves: 6  Continue reading →

Southern Fried Okra

Aug30

Southern Fried Okra

Vickie’s Southern Fried Okra
One of Gary’s favorite southern foods is fried okra. He says it’s like eating popcorn and you just can’t get enough of it.

I make it for him about three or four times a year. For his birthday, our anniversary and on holidays.

Preparation time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Ingredients:

  • 1 to 2 cups of fresh or frozen okra (thawed)
  • ½ cup Flour
  • ½ cup Corn Meal
  • 1 tspn salt
  • 1 tspn pepper
  • ½ stick of butter or margarine

Continue reading →

Green Bean Casserole

Aug30

Sandy’s Green Bean Casserole

GrandMa Sandy’s Green Bean Casserole
A perfect way to spice up your veggies.  For Gary’s family, holidays often included this bean casserole that makes every celebration a little extra special.

It’s simple to make and is often found on southern tables for fall and winter dinners, or spring and summer picnics. It’s become a family favorite for the Hollands.

Preparation time: 50 minutes
Ingredients:

  • 2 med size cans of cut green beans
  •     (or 1 lbs frozen cut green beans)
  • 1 can Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup
  • 1/2 can of milk
    (use the mushroom can to measure)
  • 1 tsp of black pepper (or to taste)
  • 1lg. container of French’s French Fried Onion Rings

Continue reading →

Green Beans and Potatoes

May13

Vickie’s Green Beans and Potatoes

Beans and Potatoes

A classic way to spruce up your vegetables. Beef stew is a popular favorite in my family. But sometimes stew isn’t really what you want.

One very cold winter day, we just wanted to warm up the house. Too snowy to take to the country roads. It was time to open the freezer and the cabinets to find something good for dinner.

Cleaning out the pantry, we found a sack of potatoes and some green beans in the freezer. And a dinner side dish, became dinner.

Preparation Time: 10 minutes, 3 hours to cook.  Continue reading →

Country Green Beans

May13

Vickie’s Country Green Beans

Country Green Beans

A spin on our Southern Green Beans.
There are several southern cooking restaurants around the country. One of our favorites is Cracker Barrel. And the boys love their green beans.

One weekend we slow cooked a roast with potatoes and green beans. The beans in particular garnered rave reviews and my son mentioned he liked these beans better than the southern green beans. So I devised a way to get the flavor of a slow cooked stew, without the 2 day cooking.  They go great with a chicken or beef dinner.

People ask, what’s the difference between country green beans and green beans? The answer is cook time. Today a lot of people barely cook green beans, making them crunchy and hard. That might be great for the vitamins, but it’s not the way our country ancestors cooked beans. My grand mothers cooked the way their grand parents cooked and so on. They cooked the hell out of their veggies.

Preparation Time: 6 to 12 hours
Serves: A large family Continue reading →

Southern Green Beans

May13

Southern Green Beans

Vickie’s Southern Green Beans

When I was young, we would trek down to Tennessee to visit the relatives. My Dad’s Mom loved to cook. Of course she kept cooking even when everyone had sat down to dinner or supper. My Dad was always telling her to sit down and eat. Within 5 minutes she’d jump back up and run to tend something else in the kitchen.

I loved the smell of her house. It always had such a warm and welcoming scent. Primarily because she was always cooking something. She had her own large vegetable garden and was always canning and cooking for the freezer. It’s always the simple recipes you don’t write down and become lost to the shadows of the past. I’ve never been able to recreate her version, but I stumbled on a version that my family loves. They go great with a ham or chicken dinner.

People ask, what’s the difference between country green beans and green beans? The answer is cook time. Today a lot of people barely cook green beans, making them crunchy and hard. That might be great for the vitamins, but it’s not the way our country ancestors cooked beans. My grand mothers cooked the way their grand parents cooked and so on. They cooked the hell out of their veggies.

Preparation Time: 4 to 8 hours
Serves: A large family Continue reading →

Southern Greens – Turnip, Collard and Mustard Greens

May8

Southern Greens – Turnip, Collard and Mustard Greens

Collard Greens

Turnip greens are popular in the South and probably the most common greens you’ll find on a Southern Dinner Table. But mustard and collard greens are also popular favorites.

Turnip greens are distinctive, but mild tasting. Mustard greens tend to have a strong and somewhat tangy pronounced flavor. While Collard greens hold the mildest taste and pick up the flavor of the ingredients you add to them.

None of these are my thing, but I’ve had to learn to cook them for Gary. All of them are really simple to cook. Just don’t ask me to try them.

Preparation Time: 2 – 2.5 hours
Serves: 4 to 5 Continue reading →

NC BBQ Cole Slaw

May8

Granddaddy Holland’s NC BBQ Cole Slaw

BBQ Coleslaw

I’ve heard many stories about Gary’s side of the family going to Love Valley in North Carolina to visit their grand parents. One of the stories I often hear about are the bbq dinners with Granddaddy’s special Cole Slaw. It became a family tradition and even a family secret.

Sadly, Granddaddy Holland passed away before passing on his secret recipe that everyone loved so much. But cousin Kevin has been working on that recipe for a number of years and everyone has told me he has recreated it quite well.

Like a lot of North Carolina bbq, this slaw has a vinegar base.

Preparation time: 10 minutes or 2 days.
This is best when made 2 days ahead of meal time, so flavors have time to blend.  Continue reading →

Country Baked Beans

May8

Papaw’s Country Baked Beans

Country BBQ Beans

We’re from Tennessee where barbeque is summer time mainstay. Whither it’s a bbq rub or sauce, there’s nothing like smoking a side of meat on the grill for an outdoors weekend bit of fun. But my Dad’s bbq beans were also a side dish during the winter too. I don’t remember a single Thanksgiving dinner where a bowl of bbq beans next to the Turkey wasn’t part of our table.

One cold and rainy fall day, my dad decided we were having a warm roast for dinner. And that meant making bbq beans. I don’t remember how I got involved in fixing the meal, but this is how he taught me to make a country version of baked beans.

Preparation Time: 1 hour
Serves 6 to 8 Continue reading →

Garrett’s Tea Scones

Apr30

Garrett’s English Tea Scones

Garrett’s English Tea Scones

Anne, Duchess of Bedford, was one of Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting in the late 1830’s and early 1840’s. It’s Anne who is credited for “inventing” Afternoon Tea.

It was during these early days of Queen Victoria’s reign, that the time between lunch and dinner was widening. Anne began asking for tea and small cakes to be brought to her private quarters in mid-afternoon to stave off her hunger between meals.

It wasn’t long before she began inviting other ladies to her private tea in the hopes of learning the latest gossip, which of course she would share with the Queen. And the afternoon Tea with treats became a mainstay of English society.

The baker in our house is Garrett, who has a talent for breads. And his tea scones are no exception. They’re great with dinner, especially on the side of a bowl of Vickie’s Beast Stew.

Preparation Time: 30 min
Makes approx 16 scones  Continue reading →