I can't believe of all the things going on in the world this would be the one that spurred me to write the first blog of my life. I'm sitting here, crying, like I've lost a friend, and yet I've never met the man. Strange how someone who enters your living room through a flat screened box can settle in so comfortably. No, I didn't know him, but somehow I know I would have liked him. I certainly respected him. And when he spoke, I trusted what he said. When Heath Ledger died, I was saddened by the loss of such a young man, the loss of promise and talent not fully realized. But it was a distant feeling, compassion for a stranger and those who loved him. This feels different. Perhaps its because as a journalist we catch a glimpse of the real person, not just a character portrayed. Still, he was two dimensional in my home, but a flesh and blood man to those who knew and loved him. Part of me feels almost guilty in my grief, because my loss is nothing compared to what his family, friends and co-workers must be feeling. I will miss seeing the man on the screen, the man who informed, educated, and challenged me to think. He inspired, made me smile, and entertained. God bless you Tim, the world has lost a wonderful human being. It is Friday the 13th indeed.

Katydyd

[I]written for another blog but I just copied and pasted it here - hope you don't mind!!![/I]
Bout time for a new journal. First off, I want to apologize to every one of my friends on here that write journals. I haven't been commenting on them like I used to and for that I'm sorry. I do still read them all but I used to comment on all of them as well but haven't had the time to do that or I get sidetracked and then never get back to them.

I've been pretty busy at work lately so that has cut into my LN time. Also, had to reformat my hard drive and reload WinXP on the notebook/laptop so that affected my time on LN as well. Lastly, when reformatting the system, I lost my home software for AT&T DSL or High Speed or whatever it's called, and literally, my dog (D.Bo) ate the installation disk so I've been waiting for a replacement to arrive. I could pay to have one overnighted to me but thought free was fine so I sit and wait. That just means no surfing or LN time at home before and after work. I've been managing though!

Those who know me on LN might think I spend a lot of time here. Well, I usually get obsessed with something and then I'm hooked. Like crack (which I've never tried and would never try b/c I would get addicted!), that is what LN is like for me. Some say, I know everything LN. Haha! Well, thankfully, I have a new obsession. BTW - Mike's favorite saying is "Obsessed is what the Weak call the Dedicated. I never understood that until now!

What is this obsession, you are probably asking? Well, my new obsession is my diet and exercise. By diet, I mean the food I eat, not necessarily the "diet" I'm on. Very important difference there! Back in April - after the LN Golf tourney - I had 2 major things happen. One, I saw a picture of myself that I was not at all happy with, and Two, had my annual wellness/checkup doctor's appointment. Both made me realize that I was at my highest weight ever and I was at risk for lots of health related problems that I knew I had to get a handle on. So that week (of the dr's visit), I decided to cut calories (to 1200) and add more workout time to my schedule (an early morning workout). As simple as that for me. Once I set my mind to doing something, I work to get it done. I am not saying that the actual losing weight is simple, but my drive/desire to do something about it is what gets kick started and I continue until I get there. Since going to the gym in the evenings with Mike wasn't getting me what I needed as far as cardio goes, I started going to the gym at 4:30AM for an hour / hour & a half. It was tough at first but it's been 8 weeks now and it's now a habit for me. I even went this morning after having a few cocktails with Pope at Cool River last night. Obsession or dedication? Hmmm. LOL

Well, the reason for the update is just to let everyone know that I have not fallen off the face of the earth, that I'm still around and doing pretty good. So far, I've lost 20 lbs and spent a night last week trying on and discovering clothes that I own that I can fit into again! It's a terrific feeling! I haven't been doing many happy hours (until yesterday) as a way to stay away from temptation. I guess now I feel a little more confident that I won't slide back completely or throw out the plan with just one happy hour.

Other news, Buddy and D.Bo have been having issues again. They had a pretty major scuffle a month ago and Buddy got hurt pretty badly (torn ear) so we kept them separated for a while. After a few weeks, we tried to introduce them to each other again and another fight happened. Last night, Mike accidently let D.Bo out in the yard not knowing Buddy was out there and yes, another fight! We thought about giving D.Bo back to the rescue group but decided in the end, that we are going to work it out - mainly by keeping them apart from each other. When one is outside, the other is inside and vice versa. At least they both seem to be getting along with Jaxi alright. I can't imagine having to give D.Bo up - he's my baby! At the vet this morning, he suggested we try a dog trainer to see if she could possibly help out with our situation. We'll see how it goes.

Just remembered one more thing! I won my first ebay auction ever on Wed - I'm so excited! I ended up bidding on another item as well and won that one later in the day!

So that's the update Nation. Hope everyone is doing well!!

PGM35

And speaking of frying, where would we be without the most basic kitchen essential, the cast iron skillet. It’s the most versatile of cooking implements and has been prized for hundreds of years by settlers, Native Americans and cooks all over the South.
This particular one has been in my family for well over 120 years. It was a wedding gift to my great-grandmother in 1888 and was given to me as a wedding gift by a great-aunt in 1989. I use it almost daily and without a doubt is my most prized possession.
It has been wielded by the sure hands of many of my forebears to delicious effect.
And it is treated with the reverence of a delicate piece of china. Woe be to anyone that uses soap on my well seasoned skillet! Oh, a gift or purchase of a new skillet is a good thing to be sure, but the inheritance of a well loved and well used cast iron skillet is to receiving the blessing of all the cooks that have used it before. It carries a magic all of its own. For there is literally nothing that cannot be cooked in a crusty bottomed, well seasoned cast iron skillet.

Our early ancestors valued them as well. The Indians traded for them, the early settlers and farmers used them to cook up the bounty of their land and when that bounty was scarce, when flour and lard were the only things left in the pantry, then the skillet was still the basis of a dinner of biscuits cooked in it. And they were good!

But the best thing a cast iron skillet is good for is to fry something. We’re fried everything we could get our hands out. Lard was a staple just like flour and sugar and it was used prodigiously. The early African slaves brought with them the propensity for frying in oil. But even before that, the early explorers and settlers could season a rather bland meal by frying it in pig or bear grease.. Our heritage of fried foods was forged in the backwoods and in the slave kitchens and it has endured to this day. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at how Colonel Harlan Sanders and his chain of fried chicken restaurants have circled the globe. Fried chicken is now not only enjoyed in the South, but has even reached places like Tokyo thanks to KFC.

But even before frying became the most popular form of cooking both our meat and vegetables, the Native Americans were smoking meat and teaching the settlers how to do it themselves. As early as the 18th century, “receipts” for barbeque included smoking a pig over a slow, smoky fire and basting it with a combination of wine, lemon juice and spices. Tomatoes were a very late arrival on the BBQ scene. Different styles of BBQ have developed over time and as I mentioned earlier can cause a deep rift as to sauces and even the type of meat that is smoked. Depending on the area of the South depends on whether you use a dry rub or a wet marinade, whether you use vinegar or mustard based sauce and even in some areas whether you use pork or beef. But predominantly in the South and particularly in the Carolinas, BBQ is pork! And today it’s not BBQ, if it’s not served with coleslaw and sweet tea. And a BBQ is also not a BBQ if it is not eaten in great quantities with lots of friends and family in attendance.




This brings me to the point, that as Southerners we believe that our food brings us together, whether in happy times or as comfort to the ailing and the recently bereaved. No sooner has word gotten out of a loved ones arrival at the pearly gates than the casserole brigade begins arriving. When my grandmother passed, we had barely gotten back in the house from the hospital when the doorbell rang. In fact, my mother had put her purse down and walked into the bathroom and was yelling at us from there to answer the door. On the porch was an old friend with a rice casserole ready to offer the much needed comfort of Southern sympathy in the form of food. But here’s a secret: this friend was the wife of my grandmother’s doctor, so she had gotten word sooner than most, as she had an inside connection. Still whether it’s within the hour or over the course of several days, the steady parade of visitors bringing their best foods in their best dishes is the balm to the soul of a family in grief.


While my own parents have been gone for many years and I truly do miss them, I have still not forgiven them (we do have long memories in the South) for depriving me, my siblings and family of the kindly bounty of caring friends and neighbors by opting not to have a funeral or visitation. We missed out on the stuffed eggs, pound cakes, potato salad and the many variations of the Campbell’s soup casseroles that arrive to sustain us through the arduous process of saying goodbye to our loved ones.
And honestly nothing brings out the best in Southern cooks than tragedy, sickness, death and new babies.

Minutes after Hurricane Charley had left us in ruins in SW Florida, I was in the kitchen whipping up food for those friends who suddenly had views of the big dipper from their living room sofas. And never underestimate what a Southern cook can whip up from a can of Vienna sausages, soda crackers and a can of cream of mushroom soup. We are nothing if not adaptable and creative. We’ve had to be. We’ve had close to 300 years of hardship, bad crops, wars, pestilence and famine. We’ve had to “make do” for a long time and we’re good at.

In conclusion, while Southern food has sustained us in good and bad times, while it has forged a heritage unlike any other region of the country, it is still looked down on by many that just don’t understand it or us. But we don’t care, because we know that there is NOTHING else like the foods we grew up on, that our mother’s and grandmothers and ancestors cooked and handed down over the generations along with the wonderful stories that go along with them. It ties us to our roots and helps us fondly remember those that have gone on before us. And we are working on trying to educate the rest of the world about our food traditions. We have successfully exported many of them, like BBQ, Coca-Cola and Krispy Kreme donuts. But sadly, grits have not taken on like that triumvirate. I’ve had Coca-cola at the foot of the great pyramid in Egypt and in front of the Taj Mahal, but you cannot get grits in either of those places. So while we have sent Coca-cola, fried chicken and BBQ around the world, let’s hope that our heritage and proclivity for grits and sweet tea will not be far behind in the near future.

myrosiedog

Tomatoes have been another staple of the Southern diet and fried green tomatoes have become almost as much of an institution as grits have.

However, I hate to burst ya’ll’s bubbles, but fried green tomatoes are NOT a Southern dish. The very first recipes that appeared in print for fried green tomatoes appeared in Northern and Midwestern newspapers around 1900. These recipes were attributed to Jewish immigrants and to the Pennsylvania Dutch. The first recipes for fried green tomatoes that appeared in Southern Newspapers didn’t appear until around 1920. Now I know many of you are saying, but we grew up eating these. I did too, but my grandmother was from Midwestern stock and was of Pennsylvania Dutch descent so that might explain why my family ate them so often. Too be sure that book and movie by Fannie Flagg in the 90’s broadened the popularity of those wonderfully tangy, green, battered slices and nowadays you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a restaurant, humble or upscale that doesn’t serve some form of them, but they are not an original Southern dish. Now that’s not to say that we didn’t enjoy them, because obviously we have adopted them as our own, but until the Great depression, fried green tomatoes were not as commonly known here as they were elsewhere. Tomatoes in their ripe form have graced the Southern table from way back, but were often just served sliced or stewed and with the rise of sliced bread, as a wonderful taste of summer in a tomato sandwich (made with Duke’s mayonnaise or course). The green tomato, though, has certainly received its share of fame and I like nothing better than a good fried green tomato (and who can resist anything battered and fried in bacon grease particularly if you were born south of the Mason Dixon line). But its humble beginnings were formed outside the South and like many foods we eat today were imported and again we claimed them as our own after a while.
But rest assured we can take credit for such Southern delicacies as fried macaroni and cheese, fried Twinkies and snickers bars and the more recent and strangely intriguing fried Coca-Cola.

myrosiedog

Turner Catledge wrote in 1982 that

“grits is the first truly American food. On a day in 1607 when sea-weary members of the London Company came ashore at Jamestown, Va., they were greeted by a band of friendly Indians offering bowls of a steaming hot substance consisting of softened maize seasoned with salt and some kind of animal fat.
The welcomers called it ‘rockahiminie”. The settlers liked it so much they adopted it as part of their own diet. They anglicized the name to hominy and set about devising a milling process by which the large corn grains could be ground into smaller particles without losing any nutrients”.

So for over 400 years, grits have been the essential Southern symbol of our culture, customs and humor. They are an institution in the South which we tried hard to export in 1976 when Jimmy Carter became president, but unfortunately, they were only a passing fad in other parts of the country until Italian polenta came along. Polenta has become a favorite in Restaurants here and up north, but don’t go asking for grits up there, because they will be quick to tell you they don’t serve ‘em.

myrosiedog