Hot Spiced Tea (Is there balm in Gilead?)

Tell me truly, I implore.  *snort* Now that I've taken two lines from Edgar A. Poe's The Raven and planted them into your minds, let me tell y'all, this is the kind of kind nepenthe that will have you quaffing more. 

Eh.  It must be the antibiotic making crazy talk, dragging lines hesitantly forward from a fragmented memory not thought of for a long while.  I really was going to start with Kathleen Battle and Jessye Norman's epic duet of the beautiful folk song "There Is a Balm in Gilead" 'cause that's what hot spiced tea reminds me of, something to make the wounded whole and heal the sinsick soul.  Not that a sinus infection qualifies as a wound or sinsick  (now there's an argument just waiting to happen concerning Original Sin and the appearance of less than perfection i.e. illnesses {don't get me started -- antibiotics, remember??}) but hot spiced tea makes the minor nastiness that it is feel all better.  Lots better.  I'm having a cup of it now and am feeling immensely better.  I might be using exclamation marks by the end of the post.

I looked and looked in the local church cookbooks for the recipe.  I broke out my favorite cookbook of all, the Mississippi Cookbook, a compilation of recipes from home economics teachers and the extension service.  You can tell it's my favorite, it's all to pieces and held together with a rubber band.

It wasn't in any of them.  I looked online and the closest I found was for Hot Russian (spiced) Tea.  But that wasn't quite it either.  I'm thinking it's one of those recipes that Mrs. Mary Sue was called for and wrote (written?) down on the back of an envelope.  I'm pretty sure that envelope is in the bottom of the **shudder** junk drawer.  Y'all have one -- don't deny it.  It's that one drawer in the house that, if not careful, will begin to expand to an entire cabinet or chest of drawers or room.  It's either there or stuck between the pages of a cookbook I don't use often that I swore to myself I'd remember.  I didn't.  I don't know where the recipe is for hot spiced tea made with the fresh fruit juices so I put one together.

The oranges tonight are tangelos.  The local

FFA fellows and gurls sell boxes of Florida

fruit for their big fundraiser.  Despite the cold

early last year and the dry weather through 

the summer, the citrus coming out of

Florida is exceptional this year!

There's a lot of fruit juices added to the recipe.  You can see where I started with three family sized teabags, scratched out four and finishing with five.  It will take a strong tea to carry the flavors.  The cloves measured out are more than a tablespoon.  They're more than two tablespoons but not quite three. 

 I love my old Peter Pan Peanut Butter jar

that has been home to cinnamon sticks

for well over 20 years.

I'll be truthful -- I didn't measure them at all.  The Fellows and I enjoy the clove flavor in this so I measured a palm-full.  A palm full... Not everybody likes cloves that much, though, so a tablespoon is a good amount to start.  Tweak it like you like. 

Those ingredients are:

Five family sized tea bags.  I like Luzianne.  Mama likes Lipton. It's a house divided.

Three cinnamon sticks

One tablespoon whole cloves

One large can pineapple juice

Three cups sugar.  This is not too much sugar -- the recipe makes almost two gallons!

Three quarts of water, boiling

Juice of six medium large lemons

Juice of 12 oranges.

Okay!  Here we go.

Fruit juices react with metal.  Use a big porcelain pot with at least an eight quart capacity.  I made this once in the stock pot.  Eewwwwwww... Not good.  That taste of metal like eating a bite of pie with a spoon out of the aluminum pie pan entirely ruined the tea. 

To the boiling water add teabags, cinnamon, and cloves.  Let steep for at least 15 minutes.

Juice oranges and lemons while waiting.

There're cakes covered up under those 

flour sack dish cloths.

The Fellows don't like pulp.  I strain it out.

Pretend you're seeing lemons instead of oranges in that last photo.  

When the dinger dings add all fruit juices and sugar to the pot of steeped tea.

I don't even have any more Kentucky eggnog 

and the photo is blurry.  I'm going to say it's

the antibiotics this time.  

I bring it back to the boil just long enough to assure the sugar is dissolved and that the whole of it is piping hot.  I also let it stay refrigerated in the pot with the spices overnight to develop flavors more, storing in jugs in the refrigerator sans spices the next day. 

Have a cup!  Join me while I cut cardboard for cakes, won't you??

This makes almost two gallons of spiced tea, a perfect amount for an open house, small church function, or to store in the refrigerator until your fellows get home.  It will keep for several weeks there.  I've not ever frozen it, but I bet it'd freeze well also -- there's nothing in it to not freeze well.

Y'all don't forget to keep a hat or hood on your head;  Mama's right about body heat escaping from there.  And if the head cold or sinus infection develops, make this tea.  All that vitamin C and tea flavonoids are good for what ail you, cinnamon for aching joints and cloves are a traditional antiseptic and respiratory aid.  I promise!!!  See how much better I'm feeling?  All those exclamation marks... Hot spiced tea ROCKS!!!

GranGranny's Tomato Vegetable Soup a la Mayree

Howard and Sara Lois Mohundro, Grandaddy and Granny, lived in a little house on Parker Drive in Memphis, Tennessee the day I met them - the day after X and I married.  I'd wanted to meet them so badly, X talked of his grandparents often and fondly, and with good reason.  They were all he claimed and more.  It didn't take but a moment of Granny's scrutiny to ascertain that I was, indeed, a farm gurl from hard-working folk, just like her.  She would have loved me anyways, for X's sake, but she didn't have to;  I could work doing the things she knew (like cropping the larger leaves on the greens instead of pulling the whole plant up), scurry to bring in her myriad pot plants and dig the banana trees when the first big chill threatened, Hoover (Hoover?! it was a new term to me, meaning vacuum) the floor furnace AND light the pilot light -- all without being told.  Working and cooking went a long way in Granny's book...

Grandaddy.  Wwwwwwell (and that's the way he said it, a long 'w' and a waver in his voice)... He was something else.  Sitting on the back porch any evening when the weather allowed with them brought stories, augmented I'm sure, of souped up motors and running moonshine up and down the Tombigbee Hills of Mississippi.  I adored him.

I adored them.

This was their 60th Anniversary Celebration at

AJ's house in Olive Branch.

One evening, X and I were visiting Granny and Grandaddy in their home.  The Fellows were staying with AJ and weren't with us.  I forget the occasion to be in Memphis but we had time to sit a spell and get caught up on the latest family gossip news.  They'd been watching the television.  Loudly.  Granny was having a hard time hearing the conversation going on over the tv.  She turned, looked at Grandaddy and said "Mute it."  Grandaddy began flipping through channels carrying on his conversation.

A second time, Granny said a little louder, "Mute it, Howard."  And again, Grandaddy picks up the remote and begins flipping through the channels, continuing the dialogue of keen observations on family behavior that only he could observe in the way he did.

Granny (I still get the jiggly giggles just thinking about this!) leaned forward in her chair, flopping her paper on the corner of the table between them, and repeated "I said MUTE it, Howard!!!"

To which Grandaddy replied, "There ain't no d*mn news on SaraLois!!!"  Grandaddy said Sara Lois like S'raLois -- kind of all one word that evening.  He didn't get in a hurry about speaking any one word, much less two, but he sure spit out her name that night.

X and I fell out of our chairs from lack of oxygen, trying to hold in the laughter. 

Annnnyways.  Granny made the best vegetable soup.  I loved having soup and cornbread at her house.  She made it for Grandaddy the way he liked it, super sweet.  To say Grandaddy had a sweet tooth is like saying the Pope is Catholic, possums play dead, or the sun shines.  It's a given.  

I've scanned the recipe so you can see Granny's instructions.  You'll notice that it contains a WHOLE cup of sugar.  Surely enough, you'll see that she mentions that this is the way Grandaddy likes it.  You know it's love when enough sugar for a gallon of sweet tea goes into a pot of soup!

I put mine together a little differently because we like it meatier tasting.  I found, through the years of making this, that cooking everything with the tomatoes from the beginning resulted in a very different sort of tomato taste than adding them at the end.  It also makes a thicker broth from the beginning and  butter beans and field peas take forever to cook in it.  Maybe not forever -- but a longer time than in the thinner meat broth.

Here's what you'll need:

Cast iron soup pot.  What?  You don't have a big ol' cast iron soup pot? Mine doubles as the greens pot and the chicken and dumplings pot.  Bless your heart.  I suppose any large pot will do, it needs to hold four quarts comfortably. 

 

Four cups of ham, chopped fine, if starting raw.  I kind of shredded this and doubled the amount.  It was already cooked and would fall apart in the stirring.

 

28 ounces can of tomatoes.  I like the Red Gold crushed tomatoes.  They're economically priced but don't taste like it at alllll.

 

A medium onion, diced kind of small.

 

Two small potatoes or one large one (whatever is in that pantry will work just fine).

 

One cup (or so) of  butter beans, field peas, okra, carrots, green beans, and English peas.  OR whatEVER is in your freezer or on the shelves available.  This evening I didn't have butter beans (how'd that happen?  I always have butter beans!) so I put in English peas.  

 

If you like bell pepper, by all means add it in.  I like bell pepper just fine, but not in a vegetable soup like this.  It's overpowering.  There doesn't seem a way to get a small 'taste' of bell pepper by using a small amount.  I don't use it in soups.

 

Three quarts of water.

 

Dice/shred ham. 

Yikes.  I've not even been in the Kentucky egg nog tonight

and have blurry photo!

 

Place in soup pot with water 

 and put on heat to come to a rolling boil for ten or fifteen minutes.  

 

There's no time on this step.  It should be long enough for the salt in the ham to impart to the water and make a rich ham broth.

Butter beans and peas take about the same length of time to cook so add them to the boiling ham broth.

 

If fresh carrots are being used, they'd be added now and cooked with the peas/butter beans/ham broth 'til almost tender.  There weren't any carrots in the crisper;  they were in the freezer so they'll get added later.  Semi-finely diced onion and potato are added to the soup pot.

The rolling boil is continuing in the background as soup ingredients are added.  When the potatoes are almost done add everything else but the tomatoes (and don't forget the little dab of corn that was all there was in the house).

 

 

Is it smelling incredible yet?  Why, yes.  Yes it is!  Add seasonings.  Since this is a shank ham (with precious little smokey flavor) I'm adding liquid smoke, garlic powder, and black pepper.

 I promise, I've not been into the egg nog.

I know. Fresh garlic IS better but it's cold outside, the wind is blowing, and the garlic is happy being warm under it's covering of dirt.  I wasn't going out to dig any. 

 

Granny's soup was always very sweet for Grandaddy.  Y'all ought to try it just once the way she's written it.  The tomatoes require something to knock the edge off but since this is ham, I'm going to use 1/4 cup of local honey.  Surprise ingredient!!!  

 

Now it's time to add the tomatoes, adjusting salt if necessary.

Yes.  Even though I wipe the tops and bottoms of

metal cans to open, if possible, I always open the 

bottom.  Mama's voice saying "You don't know

what ran across the top of that can" lingers...

I'll leave the lid off for the soup to simmer for another 15 or twenty minutes.  Everything is fully cooked in it now, it's just a matter of the flavors melding and the broth continuing to thicken a little bit.

Ooops.  I forgot to take a photo of the finished soup in the pot before bundling it up to carry to church tonight to share!

That's a sneak peak at the ingredients

for Mrs. Camille's Spiced Tea...

Tadadaaaaaaa... We've eaten our fill and this is what's left!  It's hearty. I made a pun!  There's almost no saturated fat in it whatsoever.  Filling.  Hot.  The light doesn't do it justice, it IS red.  Don't laugh at my bundling.  I've discovered that thread-bare cotton rugs are fabulous insulators for hot foods AND, if placed in any number of larger baking dishes, will absorb any wayward spill from the food!

There was a bowl of fried pitty-pat (small hand-formed)

biscuits made to go along with the soup.  I would've made

cornbread, too, but ran out of time!

 

Granny almost always made hers with ham.  The Fellows actually prefer it with ground beef.  All you need to do is brown the beef and pour off the excess fat to start the process.

 

Go check the pantry and freezer.  See if there's the makings for this pot of love.  Your fambly will thank you for it!

Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make Do, Do Without...

Use it up, wear it out, make do, do without.  More than a colloquialism, it's a way of life 'round here.   Resources are used uhmmmm resourcefully - never wasted.  Everything wears out.  Do without, I've done without so many things for so long I don't think I've ever done with.  Make do??  I'm the queen of make do.  I'm one Southern gurl that can make some serious do with no problem.  I don't even have to ponder it anymore.

Let me tell you,

The dryer died one evening a couple of months ago.  Smelling hot cotton fibers and heating elements, it was snatched out from the wall and unplugged.  At 25 years old, I'd gotten my money's worth for it.  I'm holding out for the washing machine to completely go out, too, so both can be replaced by an over/under washer/dryer.  The freezer can occupy the space left by the dryer and the much needed second refrigerator can go where the freezer is.  I know.  Too many words to explain that sometimes the clothesline isn't available because of rain.  I make do with an indoor drying solution.

Yep.  That's the extendable handle from the dust mop propped on an 18 inch dowel rod laid across the towel pegs on the right (that was accidentally cropped in editing {such as it is}) stretching across the bath tub to the soap bucket, turned upside down.

Add a fan to hasten the drying and voila!

 I make do just fine without a dryer.

Sometimes I have more jars of canned vegetables than the big canner will hold.  Patience applying only to children in the household, the smaller canner is often used so there's no waiting around for a watched pot to boil.  There's no rack for it.  I'm not dissuaded in the least.  There are always old stretched clean socks waiting to be used as rags.

Cut in half, they slip quite nicely over the bottoms of the filled jars, keeping them off the bottom of the canner and from bumping each other.

Tadadaaaaaaa, rack problem solved.

The other day I was all distracted with Thanksgiving and spending it with Fambly at John's and Brenda's house (bittersweet).  Dark chocolate ganache had been made using twice the cream called for.  Yikes.  Soupy ganache.  Not good. 

I made do, breaking out the whisk and bowl for the stand mixer, Providentially  already in the fridge,

and whipping in butter.

It was one of the better make-do ideas in the kitchen.

Even Youngest Fellow knows how to make do with what's available, fixing the power supply cord so the lap top can work again!

This morning I wanted to replicate the Browning Buckmark logo for Chelsea's groom's cake.  The photo Mary Sue had shown me had the logo in fondant.  Welllll, y'all know my aversion to fondant.   An earlier cake with the Buckmark cut out of fondant was not that easy to do, the curves of the horns and fine inner workings of the doe's ears causing major consternation. I could get it on the top tier in icing.  NNNnno.  Nope.  Nuh-unh.  That'd be a nightmare of scratch and do over.  I free-hand the designs on the cakes when the design is easy.  Getting the proportions right for the Browning would take serious time.  Did I mention a lack of patience when it comes to anything other than children??

The solution, then, was to enlarge the logo pulled from the internet.  Ohh, I know - there are programs out there to do it and given fifteen more minutes I could've probably found an online coloring book with the logo in it but have I mentioned the patience thing yet??

There are those wonderful overhead-projector-in-reverse machines that take a design and shine it down on the top of the cake.  I don't have one of those.  It's time to make do again, using the grid system to enlarge an image.

Here's what I did!  I found the graph paper left over from The Fellows high school days, then found an image.

If I had a wireless printer, I could've printed it off, but there again, I made do, placing a piece of graph paper right on the screen and lightly tracing over it.

Using a ratio of two blocks for every one in the traced image, I outlined squares and transferred each curve, point by point, through the squares, enlarging the image!  Tadadaaaaa!  We learned how to do this in the third grade.  Youngest Fellow didn't have a CLUE!

"Well that's just excellent, Mayree.  I'm real excited for you,"  I hear you think.  How does that transfer to chocolate on a groom's cake?

Using the point of a mechanical pencil (no lead), I traced the Buckmark logo onto wax paper;  several of them in fact, some in reverse.

See?

Melting semi-sweet chocolate with paraffin, chocolate Browning Buckmark logos were made on the wax paper.

I've just 'glued' them together with chocolate butter cream to make a dimensional logo to stand upright on the cake tomorrow, with help of carefully placed and concealed bamboo skewers.

Now that's how to make do with what you've got.   

Woooot!  November is almost over!  I love life, but this is one of those years that I'll be glad to see the backside of in a little over a month.  My favorite time of year is here -- when home-made gifts rule hearth and home.  It is good to see Christmas come...

Grandmama's Pumpkin Fat Cake aka Pumpkin Chess Pie Cake aka Paula Deen's Pumpkin Gooey Cake

Grandmama calls it Chess Pie Cake.  Paula Deen calls it Gooey Cake.  The Fellows call it Fat Cake 'cause once you've started eating it you can't stop until it's all gone;  then you feel all fat.  I've grown partial to calling it Fat Cake.

It looks unassuming, crumbly, dense, perhaps even ordinary.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  It's rich - oh so rich - with a buttery crusty layer and a sweetened cream cheese filling with a hint of vanilla that will send blood sugar levels sky rocketing.  It's Biblically good.

For Thanksgiving, Grandmama often adds pumpkin to the filling for a holiday flair.  I called her last week to get the recipe.  We talked for a solid two hours, catching up on fambly news on either side.  We're careful not to pry where prying would be rudely invasive:  she's my son's other grandmother:  X's mom.  She's one massive blessing in my life, past and present, and I'm glad we remain friends.  She's the one that made the first Fat Cake I'd ever had the privilege of overindulging on.  It's at her house The Fellows started calling it Fat Cake.  The name and calories stuck.

I've been baking for other folks the last two weeks, continuing right through Friday evening with a groom's cake to be assembled this weekend.  One extended fambly member had ordered two cakes and something else -- whatever I wanted to bake.  I wanted Pumpkin Fat Cake.

I had baked this fambly member the best looking cream cheese pound cake ever.  It was cooling in the dining room on the table set up for cakes.

You know how I blame stuff on the dog sometimes? I caught him in the act of indulging his sweet tooth on a good chunk of that beautiful pound cake.  I seldom holler at him but I was so mad I fairly screamed at him.   He was still moping when I started assembling Fat Cake.

Annnnyways.  Fat Cake.  Pumpkin Fat Cake.

For the crust you'll need:
one box butter cake mix
one egg
one stick margarine butter

Y'all know I'm going to do this the easy way.  Break out the Cuisinart and put the crust ingredients in, pulsing until everything is mixed.  Somehow, all the butter was taken out of the refrigerator and had come to room temperature.  Actually, I know the somehow, distraction from all the do-overs this weekend (don't get me started on the chocolate sponge cake).  It's a small matter to be dealt with:  the crust mixture is sticky and gloopy.  IF you can remember to not take it out and the butter is cold, the mixture will be nice and crumbly and it can be pressed into the 9 x 13 pan very easily.

As it is, the mixture is gloopy (for lack of a better adjective)

and requires a bit of skill and finesse to spread non-stick cooking spray

generously applied to the hands

to press the gloopy crust mix evenly and into the corners of the pan.  I've pan-coated my pans but non-stick cooking spray, alone, will work fine for this recipe.

Tadadaaaaaaaa!  They multiplied!!!!

I don't clean the Cuisinart bowl.  It's not necessary.  Any small amount of the crust won't harm or alter the cream cheese filling flavor.  I'm all about saving the universe from entropy, being careful to conserve energy on every level -- even down to not expending energy on cleaning the Cuisinart when not needed!

I put all the filling ingredients in it at once.  Yep.  All of them:
three eggs
eight ounces cream cheese
16 ounces (one box) confectioners' sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
nutmeg or any other pie spices desired, to taste
one can of pumpkin

Process until well blended and smooth.  It's a bowlful of filling so you'll want to be quick about getting it poured on top of the prepared crust.

Bake at 350 degrees an hour.  Or so.  Until set. My oven is slow so it takes almost two hours to bake until the filling is set.  Let cool, cut into squares, large or small, and enjoy!

Youngest Fellow describes them as pumpkin pie fat cake.  I suppose that'll work too!

The basic recipe and instructions for Grandmama's (plain) Fat Cake are:
1 box butter cake mix                                         8 oz. cream cheese
1 egg                                                                        16 oz. confectioner's sugar
1 stick butter                                                         1/2 teaspoon vanilla

3 eggs

Preheat oven to 350.  Mix and press in bottom of 9 x 13 pan the butter cake mix, one egg, and butter.  Set aside.  Mix 3 eggs, cream cheese, sugar and vanilla.  Pour over cake mixture in pan.  Bake 50 minutes to 1 hour until top layer is set.

Thank you, Ann McCoy, for the conversation and recipe.  Love you BIG!!!