Ann's Hot Buttered Rum

Guess who's favorite flavor of Lifesaver is buttered rum?  I'll give you three guesses;  first two don't count.  Me?  Did you guess me?  You're RIGHT!  Needless to say, it was a pleasant surprise, becoming an adult (or at least grown) and discovering there really is such a thing as buttered rum.  X's mother made it.  I drank it, discovering pleasurable aspects to being an adult not afforded the child eating Lifesavers of the same flavor.

It's the middle of winter with the Deep South's coldest weather on its way.  I'm not sure when, only that the end of January and February are cold.  You wouldn't know it from all the shorts and yard work in evidence today.  Beaudeux and I had the house wide open while we worked outside and drank sweet tea on the porch. 

Beau doesn't actually like or drink tea.  He'd much rather

have a dark beer on a hot day but it's a dry county and we've not been

in touch with our helicopter pilot to arrange for his beer drop yet.

Labradoodles are notorious sots.

I've been trying to get the buttered rum mix made since before Christmas.  I had everything the week before and a couple of Extra Fellows with Youngest Fellow came in needing bananas foster at midnight.  It took me a while to remember more ice cream at the Pig.  I remembered  last week and, with the surge of false wellness that accompanies a shot of glucocorticosteroid,  accomplished lots of yard work, lots of inside work, managed to make hot buttered rum, and even remembered to take pictures.  

You'll need:

One pound of butter

One pound of light brown sugar 

One pound of confectioner's sugar

Two teaspoons cinnamon

Two teaspoons nutmeg

One quart vanilla ice cream, softened.

Look at the pretty OLD jars I've been riding around all week.

I <3 these!  They're the ones rescued from the old barn

the almost-kinsman had.

Those are Knox, Crown, French's mustard, Kerr, and Atlas

jars.  The Knox, Crown, and mustard jar will not be canned in.

There were seven dozen quart jars and two dozen pint jars.

I'm proud to have them.  Jars are costly!

Combine butter, sugars, and spices until creamy.

Go ahead.  Taste it.  I did.  And I'm not sorry.

Stir in softened ice cream.

If you don't feel like waiting around for the ice cream to soften up,

by all means, cut it out.  Patience is a virtue wasted on  

buttered rum.  Be careful with the knife.  

Use three tablespoons of mix with jigger of rum and boiling water to fill cup.

That's a three pound storage container full.  Is it enough for a winter?

I dunno...  Certainly enough to share (but you've got to bring your own rum).

Time to sit down and figure out what's wrong with the computer while running 

a second quality control on the buttered rum recipe.  The first QC test ran cold...

This is good without the rum, too!  It's good with scotch, kahlua, frangelica, bourbon, but not gin (trust me).  Be mindful imbibers;  this will sneak up on you quickly.  It is good for what ails ya' but too much of it will BE what ails ya...

Y'all enjoy!

Mama's Few More Pennies: Havard Lane Totes

She doesn't realize I know the reason for her pressing need for money.  Mama started the end of October with "I've got to make a few more pennies somehow.  I was going to sell buck eye trees at Two Rivers Festival but I guess I won't since the dry weather killed the tree."  I learned long and protracted sentences from Mama and Faulkner.

Dry weather kills everything, according to Mama, when there's been little rain for long spells.  Never mind the buck eye tree was over fifty years old.   They're short lived trees, like dogwoods and sassafrasses.  Mama said dry weather got those too.  And my yew tree.

Mama needs a few more pennies, a half-million of them, $5,000.00, to pay for her own funeral.  She thought she had snuck into town, as quick as the doctor released her to drive again.  She's fairly certain I don't know she went to the funeral home to check on her burial policy.  I might not have know but she was spotted by Florist Friend, who's shop is across the road from Freeman's (Funeral Home, dignified, quality and personal service).

He and his mother, the ordered formal designer behind most of the silk arrangements, keep weather eyes trained across the road.  It's the absolute truth:  funerals are big business in the floral industry.

Annnnyways, Florist Friend promptly called, "Is MawMaw Perlena planning on popping off soon??  She's across the road..."

I knew it!  Well.  I knew something.  She had been depressed since the colon resection to remove a spot of cancer.  The diagnosis of colon cancer had come in late August, hardly two months after the death of her oldest child.  She had been down, feeling worthless, with little energy or drive and now she wanted to make a few more pennies?

 She doesn't have to.  She wants to.

The verbal onslought for the ability and resources to make a few more pennies started as quickly as she could drive the three miles to her Pine Level home, pick up the phone, and call me.

11 Havard Lane

She's a classic octogenarian Southern lady, her adeptness at passive-aggressive behavior honed to unrecognizable by those dolts that don't know her most of the fambly.  A therapist friend told me that Mama's generation of youngsters weren't allowed to voice their thoughts.  They couldn't express want, desire, or any negative emotion.  Instead they learned passive-aggressive behavior and have carried it into old age.

Mama calls me and says "I need to make a few more pennies.  The buckeye tree is gone.  I can't hold out to make more than a batch of jelly in a day.  The hens aren't laying.  No one will drive out here for a yard sale.  I could piece and put in a quilt but couldn't get out of it what it's worth.  I don't know how to do it, but I just need to make a few more pennies."

This is passive-aggressive for what Mama really wants to say to me:  I should harvest the half-dozen buck eyes off my tree and plant them for her;  I should purchase another fifty pound bag of sugar and two dozen boxes of SureJel pectin, lids and bands and make up her five gallons of juice into jelly;  I should not use her eggs even though Perlena's Peculiar Hennie's eggs have superior leavening power and no other will do;  if I were a good child I'd have her yard sale in town for her;  AND I should help her put in the quilt that I know is already pieced together.

I've as much chutzpah as Mama, a positive aspect of mDNA.  I didn't do any of those things.  I pulled a classic tactic in dealing with children called "distract and redirect."  It works wonders, keeping youngsters and octogenarians alike from becoming so engrossed in a behavior that they become aberrant.  I found her a project to redirect her attention to and it's worked wonders, serving the purpose also of putting a few more pennies in her pocket.

I talked/coaxed/directed her how to make a tote bag.  Not any tote bag but one from recycled materials:  her chicken and dog feed sacks.

Remember, Mama doesn't throw any good thing away when it may have one or more uses in it.  She certainly doesn't throw away the feed sacks, their woven and fused plastic material awaiting some repurposing.  Appealing to her "use it up, wear it out" sensibility, I brought the newest feed sack up from the barn, cut it, set up her sewing machine, and gave her the pieces. 

We dug out a cloth tote to see how the base was squared.  The prototype of Havard Lane Totes was sewn.

Mama and I gathered all the feed sacks out of the barn, crib, shop, and kindergarten building.  I wash them at the pump when the weather is warmer; in her tub when the cold wind blows.  They're hung on a line to dry.

Mama wipes each one off and out to remove any small debris.  I use her rolling Fiskars cutter and quilt board to cut them.  Scissors work fine but are slow.  A yard stick is used to get a straight cut.

Mama turns the bags inside out, autographs them, and turns under the top hem, clothes pinning it in place until it can be sewn.  She folds the swath of handle material into thirds and clothes pins it also.  She'll turn them right side out again when they're completed.   This consumes a large amount of her time on our sewing days, the other bits are spent feeding the heater more wood and cooking us a bite to eat.  She insists on cooking for us.  She is, after all, Mama.

It's a good project for her.  It's a better project for the both of us.  Together.  Mama's mama, called Aunt May or Aunt MayRob by the locals, fancied herself something on a stick, I'm finding out.  Another story for another time...  She tells more and more of her thoughts from childhood and adolescence.  I'm wondering if the slow release will ease some of that passive-aggressiveness but after 84 years of it I'm not holding my breath.

Internet orders are slowly but constantly coming in.  Local souls are hearing about the totes and are dropping by to purchase them.   We've a small order going into a local gift shop soon and another friend with a gift shop in Lucedale wants a few also.  Havard Lane Totes are within a day of opening on Etsy.

Mama's shuffling walk is a little faster these days.  She's been tireder going to bed but sleeping better and longer.  She's cooking and eating again, something she's not done for months.  She's excited to be putting a few more pennies in the bank and hasn't mentioned needing to do it again.

She's brimming with busy-ness.  I'd like to think it's the business of living...

The heart of Pine Level, Mississippi resides at 11 Havard Lane.

A natural recycler from her days as a toddler during

The Great Depression, Mama's kicking it up a notch and

making it profitable.  These are Perlena's Peculiar Critters

Feed Sack Totes, also known as Havard Lane Totes.

Tomato Gravy: Southern Ambrosia (and I don't mean that orange/coconut stuff either)

See the lumpy reddish gravy at 6:00 on the plate?  That's tomato gravy, not the prettiest I've made but the first made that the camera was remembered and the process photographed.

I like to think of it as Southern Ambrosia, food of the gods.  Or something very pleasing to taste and smell.  It's a fambly favorite with or without Christmas breakfast.

Christmas breakfast?  Yep.  Breakfast.  Twenty-four years ago Thanksgiving morning in a small one bedroom apartment on Mount Moriah Boulevard in Memphis, Tennessee I awoke to smell nothing.  No thing.  It was different, not having smells of anything cooking when holiday memories previously were infused with scents of deliciousness coming from the kitchen.  Most times the smells would hurl me out of bed and to the kitchen where Mama would welcome the help, ignoring the fact the middle pecan missing from the pie was concomitant with my arrival there.   Mama would put the turkey on the top rack early in the morning when the brothers were awakened to go deer hunting, sent out the door with biscuit and link sausage.  Pecan pies would follow fowl into the oven, squash or pumpkin pies took their turn following the nuts, then casseroles and dressing.  The kitchen was rich with love of fambly, the smells coming from it a happy byproduct.

That first Thanksgiving away from home was difficult to salvage.  I was so excited to finally be out of the Deep South - away from everything I knew.  It should have been cookies (notice I didn't say cake - I can do cake).   It should have been a grand adventure.  Except there were no smells to wake up to.  There was nothing cooking in the kitchen.  It was awful.  I was homesick.  Me!  Homesick!  A vow was made that it would never happen again.  It hasn't, either.  Christmas Breakfast was created.

Every Christmas Eve I'll put a ham in the oven to slow roast the entire night.  Years ago, about the time the babies were waking up the ham would be done.  Everybody knows youngsters don't sleep past five Christmas morning.  

This year's breakfast was a little lighter than previous ones although I did find yellow grits at the Pig.

There is always (I know - no such thing as always but really there always has been) tomato gravy, one of everyone's favorite food.  To make it you'll need:

tomatoes - these are home grown, home canned Marglobe tomatoes, two pints
1/2 cup oil or bacon grease
3/4 cup flour
sugar to taste
salt to taste

See the ham to the left and grits on the back right

burner? MMmmmm...

Put the oil and flour in the skillet and turn on medium heat.

 When there's lots of bacon to be cooked

I bake it in the oven.  It turns out

nice and flat and you don't have to 

stand there and fry it.

With the heat up like this it won't take but a few moments for the flour to brown.

 

Almost there...

Yep!  I hope you've opened the tomatoes already.  If you haven't, take the dark roux off the heat or else it's going to scorch and make a bitter mess of a gravy.

Add the tomatoes and stir.  It really won't take but two or three minutes for them to thicken.

Add salt to taste and sugar to taste.   Home canned tomatoes don't require much sugar to take the acidic edge off.  GranGranny liked anything made with tomatoes to be very sweet.  My fambly enjoys it without all the sweetness.  Add as little or none at all for your family.   I have a half-cup of sugar in the photo.  I actually sweetened the coffee with a shake of it, using probably 1/4 cup in the gravy.

Here you go.  Christmas breakfast.  

 Can you tell?  I like black pepper.  I learned

a long time ago not to add pepper to the pot

or no one else will be able to eat!

Don't keep tomato gravy in reserve just for Christmas.  Our fambly also enjoys breakfast for supper where it requires little more than a pan of biscuits.  Make breakfast for your bunch tonight!

---------------------------------------

Since Christmas breakfast was actually on Friday this year so the Oldest Fellow could eat with us, I had Youngest Fellow run to the Pig and pick up a pack of bacon for our REAL Christmas day breakfast, which I put in the oven on warm.  It baked perfectly.   I wasn't waking up on Christmas day without smelling anything - not even in my own house!

Melted Chocolate Chips Chocolate Buttercream: Incredible Edible Invention of Necessity

Meh.  It's later than normal getting a post up.  And I wouldn't even bother but it's kind of sort of a happy accident that worked for the good in the kitchen tonight.  Y'all know I'm the Queen of Make Do.  I'm also the Empress of Stack.  Did y'all know that?  Yep.  I challenge anyone to come in my kitchen and wash and stack as many clean dishes as I can in the sink (the key word there is wash).

 

I'm all distracted.  It happens when Harry Connick, Jr is the Pandora station playing and there's still an hour of cakery business to get done before laying a weary head down.  I'll shuffle and sing and make icing and fillings and entertain myself with silly thoughts all while Harry croons to me from the lap top on the kitchen counter.

I was thoroughly distracted this evening coming back from Pine Level.  I'd 'helped' Mama sew her Perlena's Peculiar Critters Feed Sack Totes the whhhhole day long.

Aren't they so stinkin' cute???

I thought I had everything necessary to make cakes, peanut butter cream filling, and chocolate butter cream icing.  That's what I get for trying to think after working with the Tzarina 0f Making-Everyone-Else-Multitask-While-Micromanaging.  Don't let that sweet smile of hers fool you...

I didn't have cocoa powder.  It was eleven o'clock.  Post meridiem.  The Pig is closed.  Yikes!  What to do what to do???

I'll tell y'all what this Queen of Make Do did.  I made do splendidly with chocolate chips instead of cocoa for the chocolate butter cream.  I've read all over the internet of using melted bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate to make icings with.  It never occurred to me, though, that it might taste worth a flip.

Guess what?  It is MayyyyreeeLICIOUS!  It's super smooth and the butter kind of stands out.  I love it!  It can't be used all the time.  The cakery is a primary source of income without WORK work right now and profit margins have to be maintained.  But wow!  If somebody wants something extra special?  I'll definitely do this again.

See the time getting on towards one in the morning?  You're going to have to use your imagination with the photos.  I'd only decided to make it a post after the icing was made.  I really was only going for adequate chocolate butter cream icing, having no clue it was going to be exceptional.  

It's not terribly more troublesome than measuring cocoa powder.

I had a bag of Hershey's Special Dark chocolate chips.

You're seeing a full bag.  Really.  You are.

I melted them in the microwave.

That's a full cup of melted chocolate chips.  Seriously.

I licked the spoon, by the way...

I added the melted chocolate (half of it per mixer) to one cup of shortening, one cup of butter, and two teaspoons vanilla that had been whipped 

until it was thoroughly blended.  

**Big imagination necessary to see photo.**

When blended add a two pound bag of sugar and almost one third cup milk.  It will take a little sploosh more milk to get to spreading consistency but not much.

Tadadaaaaaaa!

Kitch in action.

Aid is finished!

In the morning it will go on these.  

**Yawwwwn** Icing is finished, filling is finished, cakes are out of the oven, cardboard is cut.  Nothing left but to get to bed and then up in the morning to put everything together!  You'll have to see the finished products on Facebook.  I'll give you a hint - they're covered in candy...

Y'all have a good one.  I'll be along in a couple of hours to make us some different hot spiced cider and share it.

And do me a favor - don't tell Mama I called her a micromanager.  She'll think it's something ugly and I'll be in trouble!

Knotty Yeast Rolls

Yeast rolls.  Knotty yeast rolls.  

Yum.

I made these for a catered meal today.  I say I made them.  I think a better verb for what happened to them is: repurposed.  I repurposed something.  It was quick.  It was easy.  And the ladies and one gentleman consuming them had little clue the rolls hadn't taken hours to make.

Here's what you need:

 

Yep.  Canned breadsticks.

Cooking spray for the muffin tins

Herb butter for slathering.  Or not. It's entirely optional.

I like zaatar mixed in with margarine on Texas toast, on other breads, and on these rolls.  The heavy oregano flavor in it is a welcome change from the previous 48 years of garlic butter on every toasted bread that wasn't for breakfast.  

 

What's leftover from this batch will be saved for when The Fellows come in next week. What's that got to do with anything?  I make naan dough;  Oldest Fellow rolls it out and cooks it.  Zaatar butter with naan?  Ohhhh yeah!

Annnnyways.  Mix whatever herb flavors your fambly likes with your favorite form of slathering ingredient.  

These are Pillsbury Bread sticks.  I don't usually purchase the premium brand but they were on sale.  Don't forget to cut off and save the Boxtops for Education points!

 Unroll the dough

Take a piece of it and stretch it a little

Tie it in a knot

Put it in a lightly sprayed muffin pan, tucking under the ends.  

That's one...

three...

twelve...

twenty-four!

Put in pre-heated 400 F. oven for ten minutes.

 

When the dinger dings, take them out of the oven and slather with flavorful stuff.

 Pricey pastry brushes from Williams Sonoma?

I don't think so.  Inexpensive multi-pack from

the dollar store works great.

Return to the oven for another ten minutes.

MMmmm....

Loaded mashed potatoes.....

When they come out, slather them again!  No point in not claiming double indemnity when it comes to food, right?

Yum.  Thirty minutes, start to finish, for knotty yeast rolls.  Y'all can't beat 'em with a stick!!!

Don't you like the cute cute tablecloth

I found at Dirt Cheap?  Yep.

Four bucks...

Will these be making an appearance at our fambly's Christmas meal?  Yep.  I'll make at least two dozen of them, too, because half of them will be eaten coming right out of the oven with The Fellows home.  Make them for your fambly:  easy, quick, economical -- y'all are going to love them!