Southern Women-Cooking

This post could actually be an entire book. In the South, we LOOOOVE food. Good food too! Not that fat free, no gluten, vegan crap. I mean real food. Cooked with bacon grease, fried or smothered. To be quite honest I haven't cooked bacon with anything that didn't turn out spectacular. It really should be its on food group. I digress....you see, food here is a reason to get together. We use it to celebrate life, death, holidays and football. You will not find a better spread of food than at an SEC tailgate on the quad at Alabama. We know how to eat!


Oh, and if there is a birth or death in a family, well, here comes the food. New moms in Alabama probably don't have to cook for the first 3 months of their child's life! Same goes for funerals. Many times you will here at church or some other social gathering..."Did you hear that Sara's grandmother passed away....I need to get a casserole to them." There is something comforting in not only being the recipient of the casserole, but also the one who prepared it. A lot of times, you don't know what to say when someone has a death. However, being able to walk in with a piping hot meal normally says all you need to. It says that you love them, and that if they need anything to call.

This year for the first time, I prepared Thanksgiving....ALL OF IT! I had Buzzy and Theresa over for a Thanksgiving meal and we had it all...from Turkey through pecan pie, I crafted it myself. Now, this was the first time that I had ever made a turkey and wasn't real sure how to do it. So, I called in reinforcements...John and Melinda. They gave me an awesome recipe and off we went. It took me, David, a flashlight and a "which end is the butt and which end is the head" discussion to get it finished, but finished it was, and it was beautiful if I do say so myself.

If you are interested in Southern Recipes, I highly recommend two cookbooks. Cotton Country Cooking, which was put together by the Junior League here in Morgan County, and White Trash Cooking. Yes, I am serious...White Trash Cooking is amazing. I will say though, you may have a hard time up north or wherever you are grabbing an opossum, or shooting a squirrel off your porch. I guess you could just use chicken... :)