Cornbread.... it's what's for supper!

I am a Southern girl through and through.  There are a number of Southern foods that course through my veins.. turnip greens, biscuits with fresh cane syrup, peach cobbler, chicken and dumplings, butter beans,..... the list goes on and on... and you can be sure that cornbread is a big part of it.

I was not a bit fan of cornbread as a kid. Probably because we had it sooo often. It was my mother's go-to bread.  Yeast rolls were a huge treat and came at restaurants or when we had company over and had roast. Biscuits were at least once a week, but I never grew tired of them.. how can you grow tired of biscuits!

I never remember having sliced bread at the table like so many families did. Nope, mother would throw together a pone of cornbread without thinking.. it was the most natural thing for her. I can close my eyes and see her in our little kitchen mixing it all together and later flipping it in the hot cast iron skillet. Pure Magic!

I married a fella who loves cornbread... would eat it every meal I think!  But I never learned to make it, so for the first 10 years or so of our marriage he got Cornbread muffins from Jiffy Mix. He never complained, but I know he relished those meals at Mother's and in restaurants where there was real cornbread.  After 10 years of marriage and the birth of our 2nd child, I came home and our income took a dive. I started learning to cook from scratch.. the way my mother and grandmother's did.  And I fell in love with it and, I might add, took to it like a duck takes to water. I saw unabashedly that I am a good cook.  You need only look at our waistlines to know that!

One of those from scratch things I learned to make was cornbread and with it came a new found love for it. I was no longer a kid bored with it over and over. I will eat it with a regular meal, but I really love it with soups and stews.  Oh my!  Soooo good!

Last night's supper was one of those meals... I discovered a wonderful easy to make soup / stew online this year.. Hobo Stew.  I love a dish where you toss stuff in a pot, let it cook and voila! You have a yummy meal!  And, of course, there had to be cornbread. It goes perfect with this!

Decided to document the process... phone pictures not perfect. I do not have photo worthy lighting in my kitchen... but they work...

I have no recipe (true to many things I cook)... and while I have lovely vintage Pyrex bowls I use for so many things, I always.. always make cornbread in a Pyrex measuring cup. No idea why since I never measure anything when making it. I just do.  I also have plenty of whisks, spoons, spatulas etc but I always mix it with a fork... my mom mixed hers with a fork... it's a family thing.

I have made cornbread for years in a skillet, but when my husband and his sisters were going through their parents estate, they came across cast iron that had belonged to their grandmother. I ended up with a few pieces including a corn bread stick pan. I had one before but the sticks were skinny and shallow and burned easily. This one is perfect!  Just the right size. And it is now seasoned to perfection! So in the batter goes.


And 20 minutes later out it comes...













Let's flip these babies over and see how they look...

        Ready to dip into some stew!

Sweet Magnolias...

I have loved Magnolias all my life.  I am from the Magnolia State afterall!  We have a large gorgeous tree on the East side of our home outside our breakfast, kitchen and laundry room windows. I love that tree. I love watching the birds skitter about in the branches.. love the deep green of the leaves.. the red berries that show up after the creamy white blooms have played out.. the light sweet scent that lingers in late spring while the tree is in bloom... I really love seeing red birds on the branches.. that red against the green leaves! Wow!  And a few times we have had snow and red birds at the same time. Amazing!

The Magnolia is starting to bloom right now. I love to find a bloom that hasn't opened and then watch it progress day by day from a bud to a wide open flower.  Here are a few photos showing the various stages... Once again I wish I could attatch smells to this blog.. light sweet fragrance... hmmmm...

The white bloom will actually turn a golden brown color as it dies.  As strange as it may sound, those dying blooms have a beauty all their own. We don't have any of those yet.

Here is a shot of our tree.. I couldn't get it all in the frame.. it is sooo tall.... it was about half this size when we moved here 21 years ago.

One more thing I love about that tree... memories of my kids climbing in it!  Magnolias have great branches for climbing!

In like a lamb.....

March most definitely came in like a lamb here. It was one of the most beautiful days. Temps in the 60s, lots of sunshine, soft breezes.... truly lovely. I even saw my first butterfly of 2011 fluttering about the yard.

After being inside all morning, I decided to get out and grab some of this day.  Now normally that would mean something like taking a walk (I had actually done that already) or sitting in my glider to read or at one of our outside tables to eat lunch or read or work on Bible study.. I opted for none of the above. Instead, I donned some jeans and a t-shirt and added a floppy straw hat and my pink crocs .. grabbed a basket and my pink gardening gloves and set out to weed the flowerbed. (Why do we say weed when what we really are doing is de-weeding?)

I have to stop here and say that this is totally out of my nature. I have weeded many times, but I don't recall every choosing to do it!  Normally my husband will say "We need to clean up the beds today"and so I get the task of sitting on the ground and pulling up weeds.  It is not a task I normally enjoy and yet yesterday I did. I wonder what my husband has been praying for me? LOL!

I pulls weeds for about an hour. Here is one area of the bed that is now weedless (ok, mostly weedless... there seems to always be those that turn invisible while you are pulling!)

It may not be the prettiest looking flower bed just yet. We need to add some fresh straw or mulch over the now exposed soil. But earlier in the day you could see none of that brown soil due to weeds. (Should have taken a before shot!)

Here is the result of my efforts:

Not completely full, but about 3/4s.  Pretty good amount of weeds, I say!

I also played with the pups a bit. Mac is getting better at bringing his ball back to me and actually letting me have it to throw again... that is until he is tired of the game or gets distracted.  We played ball for quite a while.  It was a special day for Mac. His 2nd birthday!  He has no idea what that means, but he liked it because every so often I would tell someone "Today is Mac's birthday!" or I would just scoop  him up and say something that included the word "Birthday" and he got lots of attention and love.  So for him birthday means good stuff!

Here is the birthday boy:

And yes, his coat is a soft and silky as it looks!

I love this shot, he seems to be lost in thought. Actually my guess is he is pondering how to catch one of those pesky squirrels that taunt him so.

Miss Mia was, as usual, not interested in posing for the camera. She had bugs and such to hunt:

And finally, here is a shot of me. Oh my!

I decided that I am becoming an Old Southern Woman... hat and all! LOL! At least I am an Old Southern Woman who is choosing to find joy in this journey God has for her.

Barb

Azaleas in Bloom

Our regular Azaleas bloomed several weeks ago, but alas I was unable to get photos of them.  We have a mass of them along the East side of our house... Henry Clay variety which produce a red that is muted and more like red clay than bright red.  In the backyard, we planted some more red azaleas. These plants stay smaller, but have large blooms like regular azaleas. They bloom a few weeks later in the spring and again the fall.  Truly lovely... what Southern Girl doesn't love Azaleas... they symbolize home!