Fried Green 'Maters & How to can them!

This one goes so far back that I can’t even tell you when it started and I’m 79. My grandma said that her grandma did it this way. That is back to the Civil War days.

You will need

Pan hot grease (I would use lard but you can use shortening)
I would use a cast iron skillet (you use whatever you have )

Green tomatoes, sliced about 3/8 in thick (they can be turning pink)
1 part whole egg, ½ part water, mixed
salt –n- pepper
½ cup Self Rising flour
1 cup corn meal mix

1) Heat grease until when you drop a bit of ‘mater in it sizzles.

2) Salt-n-pepper the ‘maters, then roll in flour. Now dip in egg wash, then into the corn meal, and into the hot grease. Fry very quick, till a golden brown.

3) Remove and place on a paper towel to blot off any grease. Then lightly salt.

Here is another goodie

Canning Green Tomatoes to Fry

1) Have jars clean with new tops

2) In a sauce pan, add water by the cup and add ½ teaspoon salt for each cup of water. Bring to a boil

3) Take green tomatoes, slice them 3/8 in thick and drop in boiling water till they start to turn grey. Remove and place in the jars.

4) Then pour full of the boiling salt water. Now seal. They will be good in the winter.

The Fruits of my Harvest, 2007

Here's some pictures of my hobby. I have put it aside this year to work on other things. Here's the harvest from 2007.

Dave's hobby raising giant pumpkins!
He is measuring it, not hugging it!
It measured to weigh 760 pounds with 6 weeks still left to grow, but we lost it due to stem rot.

Three watermelons filled the back of my pickup truck!

Watermelon that weighed 129 pounds!


The one in the front was a 640 pound squash We got 2nd place with it.
The 3rd one back was a 565 pound pumpkin. We placed 4th with it in Allardt ,Tn.

Corn Pone

Let’s make some cornbread!

Ingredients

You will need a 6”cast iron skillet
1 cup white corn meal mix
½ cup Buttermilk
1 tbsp Vegetable oil
2 heaping tbsp of Self Rising flour
¼ cup water

1) Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray your skillet with PAM.

2) Then mix white corn meal mix, vegetable oil, flour, buttermilk, and water. You may need to add a little more liquid.

3) You want it to pour out of your mixing bowl in to your skillet and level it up by shaking it.

4) Put it in your oven. I won’t say how long because each oven is different, but start checking after 20 minutes. Cook until it is good and brown. Then put a plate on top and flip it over.

Serve it with the bottom up. It looks better. It is a must to have PLENTY of butter!!!

Vegetable Soup

1 or 2 ham hocks
1 quart of tomatoes (fresh chopped)
1 cup of cooked white beans
½ cup diced celery
1 med. onion
1 ½ cups chopped cabbage
2 cups diced potatoes
3 med. carrots, diced
2 ears of corn, cut off
salt and pepper


1) Cover ham hocks with water and boil for about 1 hour.

2) Add onions, potatoes, corn, tomatoes, celery, cabbage and carrots. Cook until tender, then add cooked beans, salt, and pepper to taste.

Dave’s Mandated Side Item: “Now a pone of cornbread and a gob of real butter is a must.” So we will add a recipe for it.

Intro

Hello friends and neighbors!

Welcome to my new blog for Foods of the Southland! You'll be delighted to know that this improvement will help you all by allowing you to send the newsletter, our updates and recipes, and everything else we intend to post (even videos!) without the possibility of them deleting it as spam! You can just send them the link to this blog! After all, you know I don't cook with SPAM!

As a matter of fact, to start out this new adventure and in the next few days, I'm going to post a recipe that none of you have EVER seen before!! So stay tuned!!

The best is yet to come!!

But first -- I must introduce myself -- So I wrote a little something for all of you:

I am David (Dave) Franks, Author, Pit Master and Flunky!!!

This is my first time at bloggin’. For all of you that have been getting our newsletter, a lot of this will be sour grapes. But the new ones might get something out of it. I was born in Whitehaven, Tennessee. That is now part of Memphis. I went to Whitehaven School; the grammar and high schools were all together. My Grandmother was the first teacher hired there. My Grandfather was the first doctor there, and my great uncle was the first dentist. I started cooking (helping) when I was 4 or 5. The biggest thing that I did was bring in the wood, keep the fire going, and the stirring. We raised, canned, dried and cured a lot of meat by using sugar, salt, red pepper, black pepper and smoking. We would sit around the fire and listen to the battery radio and shell corn to take to the grist mill the next day on the back of our mule to make meal. We would take butter and eggs to the country store and they would credit us for them. Then, when we needed some things, they would debit our account.

When I was growing up, there were only three Bar-B-Q joints in the Memphis area that I can remember. The one in Memphis is where I got my eating sauce recipe from, the one down at Bullfrog Corner, Mississippi is where my basting sauce recipe came from. I learned how to Bar-B-Q at J.C. Harbin's while working for him because he was our sponsor for the Doc Hollom River race. We would swim 5 or 10 miles down the Mississippi river. As most of you know, I have a cookbook out, Foods of the Southland, with over 250 good Southern recipes.

We are putting our Lil' Red Barn Bar-B-Q sauce on the market real soon. We plan on getting into competitive Bar-B-Q’ing next year. I am building a new pair of smokers that are trailer mounted and enclosed in a Lil' Red Barn.

If anyone would like a good old southern recipe, just let me know. If I don’t have it, I can get them. Something that I forgot to mention was that I now live in Maynardville, Tennessee. Just in case someone does not know where that is, well it is about 12 miles northeast of Knoxville, TN. The University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge, and Gatlinburg are all within a stones throw of our house. Maynardville is located in Union County, and was the home of Roy Acuff, Carl Smith, and my wife, Betty, and me! Ha!

I try to do a lot of cookouts (just for fun, not for hire). And being that the gardens and a lot of fresh veggies are plentiful, let’s talk about cooking them. Let’s start with fried green matoes. (You will be getting some Hillbilly now and then). We may not talk good, but we sho’ do eat good.