I don't think I have ever spoken about my connection with the local MOPS group. I was introduced to MOPS last summer, after just moving to Savannah. I was lonely and tired and spent every single day entertaining my 2 year-old, who was my best friend. I was also constantly second-guessing myself as a Mom, not really having any mom friends to compare with. We desperately needed something. One day at the local park a mother approached me and asked if I had ever heard of MOPS and I had not. MOPS means Mothers of Preschoolers, but it is an organization for all Moms of infants through Kindergartners. I was nervous and worried at first about going to meetings, but then I realized that I was sitting in a room FULL of women who were nothing like me and yet going through exactly the same thing. We had fun; we made crafts; we listened to speakers about different issues; and we made a ton of friends. I could talk about all of the facets of motherhood and realize that no one had it all figured out. We all just needed each other to be better mothers. It was an amazing discovery.
For any of you moms out there that could use this type of support (or just want to hang out with people that get it), please please please find your local MOPS group. You can find more information about MOPS, but going to MOPS.com and you can find a local group by clicking here. If you're in the Wilmington Island or Tybee Island area, you can visit our local MOPS website here.
Yeah, so excuse me if this becomes a one-stop shop for my recipes and projects that I want to accomplish, but I must continue to re-post things that amaze and wow me. Such as these Blueberry Yogurt Multigrain Pancakes bySmitten Kitchen. (Click on the link to be taken to the Smitten Kitchen blog, and while you're there look around and/or subscribe to their amazingness.)
I had a little crisis on Father’s Day, and unlike the week that proceeded it, it did not relate to a feverish toddler who landed himself in our bed (and proceeded to be well enough at 5 a.m. to stand up and announce the different parts of our face as he poked them “NO” “EYEAR” “AYE” “MOUF”), the gutting of our (single) bathroom so that plumbers could access a wayward pipe in the building or the thin film of dirt left on every surface of every room when they were done working. No, by Father’s Day, most of those things had thankfully righted themselves, leaving only crises of less grave proportions: the blueberry pancakes I’d always known and loved no longer worked for me.
I mean, they work, in terms of technically executing what they’re supposed to. They’re a bit runnier than I remembered, thus making it difficult to flip and bake them through cleanly, but they’re hardly worth complaining over, or so felt the Dad of Honor who found them–as he is contractually obligated to–delicious. We ate our pancakes, showered him with gifts and set off for the playground. But I couldn’t stop thinking about them; they didn’t sit right and I realized that it had less to do with the recipe and more to do with … me. I’ve changed.
Suddenly, using all white flour in a breakfast baked good felt a little funny. I’m not saying I’ve sworn it off — heavens, no! — but once you figure out ways to tuck more grains into baked goods without compromising their flavor, it’s hard not to do so regularly. And buttermilk, lordy, I love buttermilk. But I don’t always have it around and yet I always have yogurt around. And doesn’t yogurt somehow seem more fitting for breakfast? New decade, new pancake, I concluded. I would embrace change!
And so on Monday, long after the last blueberry pancake had been inhaled (I told you we liked them), I got back to work and these, these are my jam, um, I mean, the kind of blueberry pancakes I’m more enthusiastic about these days. Two grain flours a big helping of plain yogurt and absolutely no compromise on flavor, texture or deliciousness, especially when draped with maple syrup. Loads of it. What? I never said I ate pancakes like a grown-up, did I?
Blueberry Yogurt Multigrain Pancakes Makes 12 to 14 4-inch pancakes
2 large eggs
1 cup plain, full-fat yogurt
2 to 4 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons butter, plus extra for buttering skillet
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (62 grams) whole wheat flour
1/2 cup (68 grams) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (32 grams) barley or rye flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 cup blueberries, rinsed and dried
Melt half of butter. Remove from heat and stir in second tablespoon of butter until melted. This keeps your butter from being too hot when you next want to add it to the wet ingredients.
Whisk egg and yogurt together in the bottom of a medium/large bowl. If you’re using a thin yogurt, no need to add any milk. If you’re using regular yogurt, stir in 2 tablespoons milk. If you’re using a thick/strained or Greek-style yogurt, add 3 to 4 tablespoons milk. Whisk in melted butter, zest and vanilla extract. In a separate, small bowl, combine flours, sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir dry ingredients into wet only until dry ingredients are moistened. A few remaining lumps is fine.
Preheat your oven to 200°F and have a baking sheet ready (to keep pancakes warm). Heat your skillet or saute pan to medium. If you’ve got a cast-iron skillet, this is my favorite for pancakes. Melt a pat of butter in the bottom and ladle a scant 1/4 cup (about 3 tablespoons) batter at a time, leaving at space between each pancake. Press a few berries into the top of each pancake. The batter is on the thick side, so you will want to use your spoon or spatula to gently nudge it flat, or you may find that pressing down on the berries does enough to spread the batter. When the pancakes are dry around the edges and you can see bubbles forming on the top, about 3 to 4 minutes, flip them and cook for another 3 minutes, until golden underneath. (If you listen closely, after a minute you’ll hear you blueberries pop and sizzle deliciously against the pan.) If pancakes begin cooking too quickly, lower the heat. Transfer pancakes to warm oven as they are done cooking, where you can leave them there until you’re ready to serve them.
Serve in a big stack, with fixings of your choice. Do not anticipate leftovers.
While at the MOPs Convention, I took a Hot Topics course in Food Family Style by Leigh Vickery. She has a new blog that I began following as well and this most recent post was so charming and sweet. Plus if I don't make every one of those recipes soon, I might die of my cravings. Stop by her blog at One Big Happy Table.
Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock. Photo by Christopher Hirscheimer.
I knew him first by his fried chicken, which was enough for me to know Scott Peacock had to be a good man.
What I didn’t know for some time was where he learned to make this fried chicken, the one that begins with two brine and buttermilk soaks and ends in a skillet of hot lard, butter and bits of country ham. At his former Decatur, Ga., restaurant, Watershed, this glorious chicken left me with no doubt God is a chef, and He is definitely from the South. Praise the Lard.
Like so many of us, Peacock developed his gift of Southern cooking by following someone around the kitchen. His muse was the extraordinary Edna Lewis.
Miss Lewis, as he called her until the day she died, was the granddaughter of freed slaves. She was born in 1916 in Freetown, Va., escaping the Depression and her dead-end world when she was 15 to try and find work in New York City. She was fired from
her first job – ironing – in three hours.
But somehow she survived, cooking for her friends for fun while trying to make a living as a seamstress and window dresser.
It didn’t take long for the Big Apple to realize that the roast chicken and caramel cake Miss Lewis made was something they had been missing their whole lives. In 1948, antique dealer John Nicholson announced to Miss Lewis that he was opening a restaurant, and she would be his partner.
Café Nicholson was an instant success, drawing New Yorkers and Southern transplants such as Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner and Truman Capote to its tables night after night. There was no menu; Miss Lewis wowed them with what her hands knew by heart – classic Southern cooking.
As the years passed and Miss Lewis moved on from the café, her fame spread back home. It was on one of these trips back to the South to cook for others that she met Peacock, who begged her to let him help make some pies for an Atlanta food event.
And so their friendship began.
Peacock is a white man from Alabama. Miss Lewis was a black woman from Virginia. But their relationship was not one you could pull from the pages of “The Help,” Kathryn Stockett’s fascinating look into mid—1960s Mississippi and the layers of racism that wasted the lives of many good people, both black and white.
Peacock and Miss Lewis were simply friends, drawn together through a common passion for cooking. She taught him that creativity often meant stripping away the excess in cooking, allowing the strong flavors of the South to stand on their own. The two of them joined to write the beautiful book, “The Gift of Southern Cooking,” a volume every Southern cook would do well to own.
Eventually, the two became family to each other, with Miss Lewis helping Peacock figure out who he was as a person through some tough times. And in the end, it was Peacock who took Miss Lewis in and cared for her from 1999 until she passed away in 2006.
Somehow, over talks about shrimp and grits, turtle soup and bourbon-pecan pie, two people discovered that the only skin worth talking about was the one on the chicken in the cast-iron skillet.
If you can find 20 minutes, I think you’ll enjoy “Fried Chicken and Sweet Potato Pie,” a short documentary about Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock. After the video, I’ve included their famous recipe, “Southern Pan-Fried Chicken,” as well as a few more favorites perfect for supper before opening night of “The Help.” The runaway best-seller hits the big screens today.
Southern Pan-Fried Chicken
One 3-pound chicken, cut into 8 pieces, brined* for 8 to 12 hours
1 quart buttermilk
1 pound lard
l stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup country-ham pieces, or 1 thick slice country ham cut into 1/2 inch strips
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
To prepare the chicken for frying: Drain the brined chicken and rinse out the bowl it was brined in. Return the chicken to the bowl, and pour the buttermilk over. Cover and refrigerate for 8 to 12 hours. Drain the chicken on a wire rack, discarding the
buttermilk.
Meanwhile, prepare the fat for frying by putting the lard, butter, and country ham into a heavy skillet or frying pan. Cook over low heat for 30 to 45 minutes, skimming as needed, until the butter ceases to throw off foam and the country ham is
browned. Use a slotted spoon to remove the ham carefully from the fat. (The ham pieces can be saved and used to make Smoked Pork Stock) Just before frying, increase the temperature to medium-high and heat the fat to 335°F (170°C).
Prepare the dredge by blending together the flour, cornstarch, salt and pepper in a shallow bowl or on wax paper. Dredge the drained chicken pieces thoroughly in the flour mixture, then pat well to remove all excess flour.
Slip some of the chicken pieces, skin side down, into the heated fat. (Do not overcrowd the pan, and fry in batches if necessary.) Cook for 8 to 10 minutes on each side, until the chicken is golden brown and cooked through. Drain thoroughly on a wire rack or
on crumpled paper towels, and serve.
Fried chicken is delicious eaten hot, warm, at room temperature, or cold. *Brining, that is, soaking it in a saltwater solution before cooking, serves a twofold purpose: it helps the flesh retain moisture and seasons it all the way through. To make the
brine, stir kosher salt into cold water until dissolved, in the proportion of 1/4 cup salt to 1 quart of water. (Don’t use table salt in this formula, by the way; it will be too salty). Mix enough brine to cover the poultry or meat completely in a (non-reactive) bowl or pot. Store refrigerated 8 to 12 hours for poultry.
Scott Peacock’s Buttermilk Biscuits
5 cups sifted unbleached all-purpose flour (measured after sifting)
1 tablespoon plus 1 ½ teaspoons homemade baking powder or purchased baking powder
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed lard or butter, chilled
2 cups chilled buttermilk
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
Heat oven to 500°F. In a large bowl whisk together flour, homemade baking powder, and kosher salt. Add lard, coating in flour. Working quickly, rub lard between fingertips until roughly half the lard is coarsely blended and half remains in large pieces, about ¾ inch.
Make a well in center of flour mixture. Add buttermilk all at once. With a large spoon stir mixture quickly, just until it is blende and begins to mass and form a sticky dough. (If dough appears dry, add 1 to 2 tablespoons additional buttermilk.)
Immediately turn dough onto generously floured surface. Using floured hands, knead briskly 8 to 10 times until cohesive ball of dough forms. Gently flatten dough with hands to even thickness. Using floured rolling pin, lightly roll dough to ¾-inch thickness.
Using a dinner fork dipped in flour, pierce dough completely through at ½-inch intervals. Flour a 2 ½- or 3-inch biscuit cutter. Stamp out rounds and arrange on heavy parchment-lined baking sheet. Add dough pieces, as-is, to baking sheet.
Place on rack in upper third of oven. Bake 8 to 12 minutes until crusty and golden brown. Remove. Brush with melted butter. Serve hot.
Makes 12 to 16 biscuits.
Demetrie’s Chocolate Pie
Courtesy:
Kathryn Stockett, author of “The Help”
1-2/3 cups water
5 tablespoons sweetened cocoa powder, such as Ghirardelli
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
3 egg yolks, beaten
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 9-inch pie shell, prebaked plain or graham cracker
Whipped cream (or if it’s not too humid, you can top with meringue)
Shaved chocolate to sprinkle on top, for looks
In a medium sized, cool saucepan, mix water, cocoa, and cornstarch with a whisk until all the lumps are gone, making a paste. Stir in condensed milk and egg yolks. Heat to just under a boil and stir until it’s thick. Reduce heat to low and stir in butter. Add in your good vanilla, and keep stirring well. Turn off the heat and let it cool some. Pour into a prebaked pie shell, store-bought if that’s how you do things.
Let the pie set-up in a cool spot, like a plug-in refrigerator, covering with wax paper so you don’t get a skin.
Dollop cream on top or top with meringue. Yield: 1 9 inch pie, 6-8 servings
I feel led to really let it known how much I absolutely love and adore my husband. No, its not our anniversary. No, he really hasn't done anything special. No, I am not trying to score a new diamond. (although I would not shun an iPad...) I have just been given a huge gift by some people very close to me. The gift of being able to see him. He is so good. There is no malcontent or wrongness in him whatsoever. He is just so blessedly good. It has been bringing tears to my eyes for days when I think on him. Pure goodness. This song is for you, love.
(Note: You'll have to pause the playlist to the right before you can play the video. Otherwise, mind scramble.)
As many of you know, Marc and I are (it seems) always going to be renters. The one thing we have always wanted is a garden. When we close our eyes and visit our happy place, it generally includes a garden with fresh vegetables, fruit, and herbs that we can sweat in and feed our family. That and traveling around Austria. It's becoming alarmingly clear that neither of these dreams will happen any time soon. Therefore, we have taken matters into our own teeny apartment hands and created our own container garden. Most neighbors look at our patio as a cluttered dump because of the debris caused by large tomato plants and teeny tiny patio. No matter, we will continue this small slice of bliss until we are able to live inside our dream. (Which looks oddly similar to your house, Bill and Michelle!)
If any of you are like us, this post by Green Your Decor will definitely help stir some ideas in your brain on how to accomplish it easily and without much money.
