For breakfast? Why, its OKRA!

Mama Glenda and Big Phil now have access to some fantastic OKRA. We have a standing order for 5 pounds any time they are coming this way. We are putting it up by blanching it for two minutes, dropping it in ice water to cool it off, then draining it well and truly.  We spread it out on a large cookie sheet, then place it in the freezer for a couple of hours or more. After it is frozen, we quickly bag it up in quart ziplock baggies, and back in the freezer they go. One large cookie sheet equals three bags, which are about a pound in each.  

The frozen okra chops up really easy for gumbo or Okra & Tomatoes, which we eat over rice.  It's a wonderful dish for the dead of winter.  With some cornbread or biscuits to kind of sop up the juices!


Our favorite way with okra is very simple.  Place a layer of okra in a pan with a top.  Add water so you've got about a quarter of an inch.  Sprinkle with  a little salt & pepper, and add a half of a jalepeno if you're into that, which we are. You need to add just a little oil or butter, say about  half  teaspoon for a large frying pan. You turn the heat on high and watch for it to boil. As soon as it boils good,  put the top on, turn the heat off and set the timer for 10 minutes. That's it, you're done. Serve immediately!  It cooks enough so that it is not crunchy, but it doesn't get slimy.  The Jalepeno kind of infuses through the okra, and oil helps keep it green and pretty. We love it this way!

Last Saturday morning I served this beside a couple of slices of NC tomatoes & a big dollop of steel-cut oats. Twas delicious!  Really, you should try it!

Fruits of the Season (with a side of Beets)

It started in early June really; we got a box of beets from Catherine Porth, thinking to make about 20 quarts of pickled beets. 

We  wound up with closer to 30, and still had enough beets to try perfecting a salad we sampled at AFWF.  It's got a little vinegar and oil, some yogurt, hazel nuts and micro greens. We've got the beet part down, but haven't yet gotten the hazelnuts candied to our satisfaction.

Then came the expedition to Callaham’s Orchard for blackberries and a few peaches. But it wasn't until around 4th of July the peaches really became plentiful in Lexington county. This year they are truly phenomenal.  We found a place out on Highway 1 near Gilbert that's been giving us great deals. We've frozen about 2 bushels at least, and lately Alice has been dehydrating them. In addition to just eatin' on them, we've made Bill Smith's Green Peach Salad, and his Peach Soup, Peach Cobbler, and a killer relish made with peaches, avocados and peppers.  

Alice and Catherine have also been picking blueberries. So far we've frozen about 4 gallons, made Blueberry Sorbet, a peach and blueberry cobbler and eaten them plain.  

One thing we hadn't really planned on was Pear Apples.  A couple of weeks ago we got almost a bushel from the tree at Mama Glenda's.  The bigger ones are the size of tennis balls, and if you let them sit for while, they are almost, but not quiet, like a Bartlett pear. They are too watery to do anything else with except eat, though we have frozen some to use later in smoothies, and maybe Sheri's Pear Soup.

Last spring I found out that Callaham's Orchard has nectarines.  As I have never, to my knowledge, eaten a SC Nectarine,  I got Suzanne to let me know when they would be coming in. Mama Glenda and Big Phil went by last Saturday: they brought down two huge boxes Andy Callaham had picked that morning. They are wonderful.  We have frozen them, made Ginger-Nectarine Preserves, Pickled Nectarines with Bourbon, and used them in along with the peaches in Green Peach Salad. And of course we’ve eaten them plain. Really, you all should go NOW and get some!

Yeah, Yeah, this post is too long I know. Sorry. I'll do better.  Next time:  Rumptopf?

A Fruity Foodie Old Friendly Fathers Day Weekend

A friend of ours from the SFA, Sheri Castle, from beautiful Carboro, NC. has just had her first cookbook published. She’s travelling around the South for 4 months promoting it, and we’ve been trying to meet up with her since April. Unfortunately when we’ve been headed to NC, she’s been elsewhere, and when she’s been in SC or Georgia, we couldn’t make it happen. About 6 weeks ago we found out that Heidi and Joe Trull of Grits and Groceries were featuring recipes from Sheri’s book for their June Dinner Club. Grits and Groceries is kind of in Belton, SC., just down the road a piece from Mom & Dads house in Williamston. Since this was Father’s Day Weekend, we called Mama Glenda and Big Phil to see if we could take them down for a celebratory meal. Now we’ve been fans of Grits & Groceries Breakfast for years, (Glenda and Phil rave about the Stuffed French Toast) but none of us had never been to Dinner Club.

Sheri’s book is all about using the South’s wonderful fresh produce. It’s arranged by crops, which is really pretty cool. So that got me thinking about farmers markets and such, which led my brain to Callaham’s Orchard, owned by some wonderful folks I went to high school with a hundred years ago.

As it turns out their Blackberry U-pick operation was in full swing. So Saturday morning we all went picking! The berries were absolutely gorgeous, and almost, but not quiet, at peak. In about 2 hours of not hard work, 5 of us picked 11 gallons of berries! We froze 3 gallons whole, kept one to eat on, and juiced the rest. We wound up with over 3 gallons!

You’re probably thinking I’m going to make wine with the juice. Well, I’m not. All that juice is reserved for Breakfast Smoothies in the dead of winter. (Although I will admit to using a small amount of whole berries for rumtopf.) I can’t say that juicing all those berries was a lot of fun, but it sure beat picking and canning couple of hundreds quarts of James Island tomatoes in a tiny un-air-conditioned kitchen on Folly Beach, which is what we used to get into this time of year! Big Phil wound up looking like he had the measles.

The event at Grits and Groceries was wonderful, ‘ceptin’ for a little bit of rain, which really wasn’t that bad, especially since Mama Glenda quickly grabbed the last available table inside! And Lo, there right inside the door was Bobby and Suzanne Callaham! So it was so good to see old friends, especially with such fantastic food all around. Bacon Wrapped Pork Loin with Fig Sauce, Squash Casserole with Swiss Cheese, Black-eyed Pea Salsa, and Peach Upside Down Cake were just some of the deliciousness they set forth for us to enjoy. Heidi and Joe did an impressive job with Sheri’s recipes. We came back with her book and have already started using it!

We’ll definitely be back to G & G for a Dinner Club, although it’ll have to be a while. Heidi and Joe have the good sense not to do outdoor events in July and August!

Painting and Eating at the Beach

I'm going to backtrack to May a bit here.Three weeks ago we had a dozen teenagers down at Surfside to paint our house. I'm talking about 19-year old kids.  We first approached them about doing this while they were on Spring Break, so we'd been thinking about this for a while. We've been feeding most of these chaps for years, and pretty much knew what they'd like. We developed a menu based on what we had in the freezers and pantry,  and what (we thought) would be pretty easy to fix, yet not be fast-food, or what they'd been eating at the college cafeterias.  Alice had all the recipes laid out and shopping lists made.  The kids took most of the meats down with them on Wednesday afternoon, but Alice still had to go shopping almost every day, especially for fruits, vegetables, juices and milk. I was supervising the painting, and didn't really get to see much of the cooking. That's pretty much all that Alice did every day: Go to Piggly Wiggly, the Seafood Market, and Walmart, and then come back and cook!

Top Sirloin Rare Roast

Athena Cantalope

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Smithfield City Ham

Apple Cranberry Casserole

Herb Roasted Turkey Breast

Marinated Carrot Salad

Roasted Green Beans

Spinach Salad

Oranges

Apples

Grapes

Bananas

Frogmore Stew

Roasted Greek Potatoes

Steak Tacos w/ Marinated Cilantro Slaw

Whole Grain Pancakes

Benton’s Bacon

Country Sausage

Scrambled Eggs

Stone Ground Grits

Buttermilk Biscuits

Country Ham

Cheddar & Scallion Biscuits.

Bratwurst & Semmel Rolls

Brioche Rolls

Butter Beans

Lasagna

Roasted Pork Loin & Brown Rice

French Toast

Home Made Cheese Bread

Lemon Bars

Home Made Ice Cream

They also consumed uncountable gallons of OJ, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, Pineapple Juice, Milk, Café Du Monde Coffee,  V-8 Fusion, Turkish Coffee, and Fru-fru Drink!  They used 8 ladders, 30 Gallons of paint, 20+ paint brushes and rollers, 3 bottles of SPF 50 Sunscreen! There were no injuries, no sunburns, and the house looks great!