Spring Flowers

You've not heard from me lately because I've been out in the yard working and having so much fun in the yard. I think I have at least one of every plant, but a gardener is always thinking about the next plant and next year and the changes we'll make. I was finally able to identify the snowball-type plant with white blooms as large as a soccer ball. It's a Chinese snowball. I bought a large 3-gallon size marked down at Lowe's and popped it out of the pot, divided it in half, repotted each half and the two will be ready to put in the ground early spring next year. I can't wait. I also bought two burgundy-leafed lorapetalum plants and did them the same way. I have plans for them. We're in a severe drought right now so I'm watering my pot plants but not the ones in the ground. We have a well but there is limitation on how long the water will last. The irises are blooming beautifully and the daylilies will be next. The roses are absolutely breathtaking this year. The clematis are blooming and budded. I could go on forever, but I'll give you a break and let you know that if you have any questions about gardening, cooking, housecleaning, just contact me and I can help. Granny

GRANNY'S SOUTHERN CORNBREAD RECIPE

The video demonstrating how to make this delicous cornbread is posted below beneath the recipe and is also available on youtube. Cornbread is a staple of any southern dinner table and I know you'll soon be making it a regular addition to your family's meals as well. Enjoy! Granny

Preheat oven to 500 degrees
Ingredients:
3 cups White Lily cornmeal mix
1 egg
1/2 cup shortening (can use bacon grease as part of measurement, if desired)
1 cup buttermilk

Spray iron frying pan with pan spray. Place small amount of bacon grease or shortening in pan. Put pan on stove eye and turn on high while mixing ingredients.(Pan should be hot, nearly to smoking, when cornbread is poured in.If it starts to smoke before batter is ready for pouring, turn stove eye off). Mix ingredients, adding extra buttermilk if necessary to make a thin batter. Pour into very hot pan (will sear and make a crisp bottom crust), place in oven. Cook 15-20 minutes till brown on top. Pour out onto cake cooling rack to keep it crisp. Place rack over a bowl or pan for air circulation till cool. Place on plate, slice into 6-8 generous portions.

Let me know how your recipe turns out and how your family likes it.

Here's the video: http://youtu.be/rR_vwbNjE24

Praline Pumpkin Cheesecake

I made this cheesecake and it's delicious beyond words.

Praline Pumpkin Cheesecake

Ingredients

Cheesecake crust:
2 cups crushed gingersnaps
4 Tbsp. melted butter

Pumpkin Cheesecake Filling Ingredients:
3 (8-oz.) pkgs. cream cheese, softened to room temp.
1 cup extra fine granulated sugar (see note below)
1/2 cup dark or light brown sugar, firmly packed
4 large eggs
1 can (15-oz.) solid pack pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling) *See Helpful Hints below
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. cloves
2 tsp. vanilla

Praline Topping
1/2 cup light or dark brown sugar, firmly packed
3/4 cup whipping cream
4 Tbsp. butter
1/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups pecans, coarsely chopped

Directions

Preheat oven to 325

1. To make cheesecake crust, crush gingersnaps in food processor to obtain 2 cups. Add melted butter and mix well. Press onto bottom of 9-inch springform pan and place in oven for 9 minutes.
2. When cool enough to handle, place pan on a layer of heavy-duty foil and wrap outside of pan with foil. Place pan in roasting pan and set aside.
3. To make pumpkin cheesecake, beat soft cream cheese and both sugars on low speed until well blended with no lumps.
4. Add one egg at a time waiting for previous added amount to be fully incorporated. Scrape bowl and beaters well in between additions.
5. Add pumpkin, spices and vanilla and mix to combine. Don't overbeat mixture. Pour into cake pan over ginger crust. Pour water into roasting pan, about an inch high and place in oven.
6. Bake until center of cake no longer trembles, about 1 hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours.
7. Pull roaster out of oven and pull out cheesecake. Allow cheesecake to cool on a rack at room temp. for 1 hour. Place in refrigerator, covered and still in pan, overnight. Remove from fridge, remove outer ring of springform pan. (Run a sharp knife around edge of ring before removing)
Leave bottom of springform pan in place.
8. Praline topping: Toast pecans for 8 minutes in 350 degree oven. In a saucepan, bring all ingredients, excluding pecans to a boil. Boil for 3 minutes ensuring that mixture will not boil over. Remove from heat and stir in pecans.
9. Allow to cool for 10 minutes and spread on surface of cake.

Helpful Hints:
1. Drain pumpkin on paper towels to remove excess moisture. (This step is very important. Spread pumpkin out on several layers of paper towels and use more paper towels spread out over to press moisture out. Will take several times to get it dry enough.
2. Just to be safe, butter the inside of the springform pan.
3. You don't have to buy extrafine sugar for this recipe. Put the granulated sugar in the food processor for a minute or so and you have extrafine sugar.

Pomegranate Jelly

I made pomegranate jelly from the fruit of our bush. The taste is excellent and such a lovely red color. It's made the usual way of any jelly. To prepare the pomegranates split open the skin of the fruit and pull the seeds out into a pan. Barely cover with water and proceed as usual.

Cleaning Tip

For dusty lampshades roll a Lint Roller over it; lifts the dust right off. Tables with a decorative cloth can be cleaned by rolling the Lint Roller over the top. Can also carefully remove the tablecloth (to keep from spreading dust) and tumble in dryer using the cold air cycle.

Another tip: If you wear decorative pins or a corsage keep a bar of soap handy and push the point of the pin into the soap several times. before pinning onto garment. Pin glides right in. I wear a live flower every Sunday to church and I use the bar of soap. (Hold onto and recycle your bars of soap when they're mostly "used up". You won't have to use a new bar)

Japanese Fruitcake

This is a cake that our mothers and grandmothers made for Christmas. The longer it sits in the fridge, wrapped airtight, the better it tastes. The cake is stacked with a plain layer and a dark layer, plain and dark. Makes a lovely presention. When wrapping something to be completely airtight use a small kitchen trash bag (make sure it's not perfumed in any way). Pull the top of bag together and suck the air out, place twist tie on. This idea works for many irregularly shaped items that plastic or foil wrap just will not do.

Japanese Fruitcake

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. soda
1 cup raisins, 1 cup chopped pecans

Mix cake in usual manner. Divide dough into TWO PORTIONS. Use one-half of batter to make layers that will be plain. Pour into two prepared cake pans. Into the other portion add 1 tsp. each of cinnamon, allspice, cloves and nutmeg. Flour raisins and pecans and add to mixture. (One Tbsp. flour mixed in a bowl with raisins and pecans keeps them from dropping to bottom of cake pan during cooking.) Pour into two prepared cake pans. Layers will be thin; don't overcook.

FILLING

3 cups sugar
1 cup milk
1 whole coconut (This recipe is from the era before frozen coconut. Then, you had to crack the coconut, peel the brown off, shred it.) Now I buy frozen coconut
3 oranges, peeled, sectioned and chopped into small pieces, with small amount of zested peel. (You'll want to purchase a kitchen gadget, Micro-Plane that's perfect for fruit zest.)
1 lemon, peeled, sectioned and chopped, with small amont finely grated peel
1/4 stick butter

Mix all and cook until it begins to thicken. You don't want it to get too thick because you want it to soak into the layers. Put filling between and on top of the four layers. If you want enough icing to put on the outside of layers, double the recipe and thicken enough to stick to outside of layers.

pomegranates

We have lots of pomegranates we're picking now off our bush. They'll start to crack, and even crack open when they're ready to pick. I've picked up about 2 1/2 gallons of pecans. We take them to a man who has a machine to crack them at 30 cents a pound. Sure beats dragging the skin off your fingers to shell them. Then I freeze them. The taste of fresh is so much better than the small bags of very expensive pecans at the grocery. Makes the cooked product so much better. Pecan pie, cakes with pecans, candy with pecans. I always make tons of goodies at Christmas, starting right after Thanksgiving and refrigerating them. I usually make a Japanese Fruitcake, an old-time cake that our mothers and grandmothers in the South made at Christmas. The longer it sits the more moist and better it is. We prepare baskets of the Christmas goodies to take to our neighbors. Christmas is a fun time with the whole family gathering in, eating, and eating again. We have a white elephant gift exchange each year that's always a lot of fun, with some begging and pleading for somebody to take the gosh-awful gift they just opened and let them get something else. I go to Home Depot or Lowe's the day after Thanksgiving and get potted poinsettias to decorate the house. They're really cheap that one day only, so I'm always there. An easy and inexpensive way to decorate. I do have a small Christmas tree and other decorations too though.

A Battle of Wits

The squirrels and I are having a battle of wits. I have a pecan tree in the yard with lots of pecans each year, but it's amazing how many the squirrels can carry off. So I've wrapped the base of the trunk with aluminum flashing hoping their little claws can't hold on to climb the tree. Several fence posts are near the overhang of the tree so I nailed pie tins (upside down) to each post so they couldn't climb and jump into the tree from the posts. I then sprayed silicone spray on the flashing and pans to make it slick. If a squirrel gets up that tree I want to watch him to see how he does it. It's really aggravating to see the fruit and nuts carted off by various animals around here.

Granny's Made-From-Scratch Biscuits

Greetings from Laid Back Farm Today I'm posting a video of the "how to" of Granny's (that would be me) Made-From-Scratch Biscuits. See the youtube link at the bottom of this post. This is the same biscuit recipe I've been making for my own family for nearly 54 years. So many are intimidated by the prospect of making biscuits but it really is easy, as you will see in the video, and only takes about 20 minutes from start to finish. I hope you'll find the video helpful and please message me back and let me know how your own biscuits turned out. I'll also be glad to answer any additional questions you may have about the recipe. In this tough economy, you'll find homemade biscuits to be a delicious addition to your meals but also a very economical way to feed your family. I look forward to hearing from you. ENJOY!!

Granny's Homemade Biscuits The first thing in any cooking is to wash your hands thoroughly. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. The oven must be preheated for the biscuits to bake correctly. (I don't measure anything, but I did measure this so you'd have directions and measurements) Place 2 1/2 cups flour in a medium bowl - White Lily flour (no other brand except White Lily). Measure one cup Crisco and add to flour already in bowl. Pour 1 1/2 - 2 cups buttermilk in bowl. (Add more or less buttermilk until consistency is right). Mix the dough well with hands until it can be poured out on floured pastry sheet. Sprinkle flour over mound of biscuit dough. Flour hands and knead dough from bottom and up over till it will spread out and flatten with hands. (Doesn't take a lot of kneading). Use a biscuit cutter dipped in flour before each use. Place biscuits in pan. I have a very old pan with a wonderful sheen on it that doesn't have to be greased because it's seasoned well. You may want to grease the pan you use. You'll have several pieces of dough left over from cutting. Either roll together and cut more biscuits or pick up pieces and form into a biscuit and put onto pan. I usually have two larger-sized biscuits from this. Grandaddy likes to get these larger biscuits. Your biscuits are ready to go in the pre-heated 500 degree oven and back for 12-15 minutes. Don't overbake. While the biscuits are cooking I cut up pieces of cheese to put in the biscuits immediately when they come from the oven. I butter some biscuits to eat with honey that comes from a neighbor's hives. We had bees for several years but the mite that has taken out many hives in Georgia got in ours and they were gone. I also have fig preserves and muscadine jelly, blueberry jam. When the biscuits are removed from the pan I simply wipe down the pan with a wet dishrag and it's ready to go again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhGvQV8GxM

Food Prices Increase

It doesn't take an economist to tell you that food prices are rising, with the highest jump in 36 years. And the droughts, floods and other calamities will cause the prices to rise even more. You can save tons of money in the grocery store by being a careful shopper. What caused me to sit down here just now was on my last trip to the grocery. In the produce section there were packages of sliced squash at twice the price of the fresh squash on another part of the counter. Come on! How long does it take to zip a knife through squash to slice it? Seconds, that's how long. Any time you pay somebody to do something you can do yourself, it will cost you. You can buy small (less than 1 lb.) bags of sliced apples for $2.50. You can buy
2 1/2-3 lbs. of fresh apples for the same price. /Another idea: Wal-Mart equals other stores' ads, even the Buy One Get One Free ads. And when you have maufacturer's coupons from the Sunday paper for these specials they often end up nearly paying you to take it. You don't have to use gas and travel all over just to get a store's specials. The ad must state a price (often BOGOs don't) and it must be the same exact item. Store brands are also equalled and there's real savings there. And you do know you shouldn't buy dishwashing detergent and cleaners at the grocery; get those at the Dollar stores. Much cheaper. And speaking of the Dollar stores they have a large selection of greeting cards at a fraction of the cost of a Hallmark or other card. I send lots of cards and this is an important way to save. I consider myself an expert at saving money. These are just a few of my ideas. More later.

happenings in Between

The name of our community is Between. We're halfway between Stone Mountain and Athens (Georgia Bulldogs, you know), but we're also halfway between Loganville and Monroe. I said all that to say this -- ta da! we have a traffic light in Between now. Highway 78 has striped crosswalks at the light. Everything the big city has, we have. Also, since Between doesn't have a post office, our address is Monroe. And Monroe just happens to have the oldest person in the WORLD living here. She was 115 last Friday. And feeling well, too. There are only a very few people who've lived in three centuries. That's just so amazing.

Fig Preserves Cake

Be sure to use homemade fig preserves. Finely chop figs.

For the cake:
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups canola oil
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup sour cream
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/4 cups fig preserves
1 cup pecan pieces, toasted

For the frosting:
8 oz. cream cheese
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 lb. confectioner's sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

To make the layers: Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour three 8-in. pans. In medium bowl beat eggs till light in color. Add sugar and oil and continue to beat to make a smooth batter.

In a bowl combine flour with cinnamon and salt and stir. Add half the flour mixture to batter and STIR to blend. Add buttermilk and sour cream and mix well. Add preserves and nuts and stir into batter. Divide batter equally among 3 prepared pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Loosen layers by gently running knife around edge and turning out onto wire rack to continue cooling while making frosting.

To make the frosting: In a medium bowl combine cream cheese and butter and beat with mixer till smooth. Add sugar and vanilla and beat at high speed till fluffy. Spread frosting between layers and over assembled cake.

Pickin' blueberries

We've been so busy for the last 6 weeks picking blueberries on our farm. We picked about 70 gallons. (Now think about the size of a blueberry. It takes 1 1/2 hours to pick a gallon.) We sold most of them, made blueberry cobblers, and eat them fresh. They're so sweet this year, perhaps because of the 90-plus degree heat every day. But we're relieved they're gone for this year. Tiring and hot work. We prefer buyers pick their own, but not many are willing to put forth the effort anymore. It's easier for them to pay somebody to do the work. Figs are starting to ripen and looks like tons on the tree, if the birds will allow. I'd like to make several jars of fig preserves to have for my Fig Preserve Cake that's so good. I don't have any now because we got zero figs last year due to hornets taking up residence in the fig bush. And hornets are not like other bees; they'll fight you if you try to go along about your business. They refuse to be ignored. In September we'll have muscadines (a southern grape) and they too make absolutely delicious jelly. William has been sharing okra with us and nothing beats a fresh pan of fried okra. It's not summer without fried okra. And of course the obligatory fresh sliced tomatoes. We've picked tons off 4 - you read it right, 4 - plants. One day we got 2 5-gal. buckets full. I froze and canned them for later soup, chili, etc. use. Again, all the difference in the world in store-bought ("vine ripened" HA!) tomatoes and picked ripe off the plant at home. We have the Parks Whopper variety that I grow from seed, starting February 14 in the basement on a hot box. A viable seed given heat and moisture has no choice but to sprout and grow. I did grow some late Better Boy variety because I found the seed in the basement. Just now starting to bloom. We'll see if this was a good idea. But I'm always trying new things, wondering what to do next.