Football Food

Some events just draw a crowd. Some crowds are hungrier than others. If you ever find yourself needing to feed a high school football team before a home game, this recipe might help you out.

Sloppy Joes for 50

8 lbs. ground beef
8 cups chopped onion
8 cups chopped celery
8 teaspoons chili powder
4 teaspoons salt
black pepper to taste
8 Tablespoons shortening
8 cans tomato soup
8 Tablespoons worchestershire sauce

Brown beef in shortening. Add remaining ingredients and simmer at least one hour, stirring frequently. Serve over hamburger buns. I prefer mine toasted.

Notes and variations:
This recipe is easily doubled.
A food processor makes short work of the onion and celery.
Green pepper makes a nice addition, too.
You can prepare the ingredients in advance and freeze them. Thaw in the refrigerator and put together the day of the event.

Don't Put Sugar in the Cornbread

My husband is the reason that I can make a good cornbread. He loves it. When we were first married I tried any number of recipes, but they were not "nearly as good as Granny Treat's". Well, that was a throw down if I ever heard one! I asked Mom for her recipe, but she doesn't have one. I tried all the recipes in the southern cookbooks I have to no avail. They just weren't quite right. After much trial and error, I now have a recipe that is "almost as good as Granny Treat's." That's good enough for me!

Terry likes cornbread with chicken and dumplings, my dad likes it with sweet milk, I like it with beans or chili. Or just put lots of butter on it and eat it all by itself -- add honey if you're eating it for breakfast!

Save the mix for that broccoli casserole thing. Make cornbread from scratch. It's way easy.
Just remember, you HAVE to use a cast iron skillet, and you won't get a good crisp crust if you don't preheat the skillet and the oil.

Heat a 8" cast iron skillet with 2 Tablespoons of oil or bacon grease to 375 degrees.

Mix the following dry ingredients:
1/3 cup flour
2/3 cup white cornmeal
1/2 Tablespoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon salt.

Add wet ingredients:
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk

Blend until well mixed. Add carefully to hot skillet. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Variations:
Use soured milk instead of buttermilk by adding a few drops of vinegar or lemon juice to milk.
Add 1/2 - 1 cup grated cheese to batter.
Add a small can of chopped geen chiles (mild) or 1 jalepeno chile (hot) to the batter.
Triple the recipe for a 12" skillet (which you'll need for dressing).

Promise

I'm given to packrat tendencies. Okay, okay. I am a packrat. See? I can admit it. I have little bits and pieces of this and that in every nook and cranny of this house.

How does that relate to this blog? Well, a lot of this clutter has to do with recipes. I keep the entire food section if there's even one tiny recipe I like. Same with magazines. Three shelves worth of cookbooks that are threatening to spill over into four.

I keep all that stuff because I've learned that cutting them out doesn't help all that much either. I'm not organized enough to get them into a notebook or any other form of logical system in a timely manner.

Hence, the blog -- and the promise: I will not post any recipe here that has not been tried and found wonderful. This space is for quality, not quantity.

So here goes:

"Snickerdoodle" finished his high school diploma this week. We're all proud of him and this recipe is posted in his honor.

My mother has made 100's of these cookies, and I suppose I have, too. I have never met a kid or grandchild who did not love rolling cookie dough in cinnamon and sugar. Usually, we get two in the mouth to every one on the baking sheet, but that's ok, too. Grandmother probably started it!


Snickerdoodles
1 cup butter-flavored soft shortening
1-1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2-3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix shortening, sugar, and eggs. Sift together flour, cream of tartar, soda, and salt. Add to the first mixture. Chill dough. Roll into small balls. Roll in mixture of equal parts cinnamon and sugar. Bake at 400 degrees for 8 - 10 minutes.

This Feels Good

For a long time now I've wanted to write a recipe book. In this book I wanted to collect family recipes and the stories that go along with them. But I couldn't make it happen. I would start writing and get a recipe and a story and that would lead to another and another. Sounds good, but it wasn't. I couldn't wrap my mind around the organization. It didn't flow. So I would stop.

Then when I was e-mailing Margaret about my other blog, it hit me: the perfect format for what I want to accomplish is a blog! I can just write what I want when I want. I don't have to worry about chapters or organization. Or tables of content. Or indices. I just let the recipes and the stories flow.

So here goes:

We all like Banana Blueberry Pie, but it's my dad's favorite. He gets it in place of birthday cake. It's so easy that you can explain it over the phone to boys at college or stationed far away and they can successfully make a taste of home for themselves, their roommates, and/or girlfriends.

Banana Blueberry Pie

1 rolled pie crust, baked unfilled according to package directions and cooled
1 can blueberry pie filling
2 - 3 ripe bananas
1 8-oz container of whipped topping

Slice the bananas into the bottom of the baked and cooled pie crust. Top the bananas with the pie filling. Cover with whipped topping.

This pie can be eaten immediately. Be sure to refrigerate any leftovers.

Variations:
*Use a ready-made graham cracker crust if you're in a hurry.
*For more blueberry taste, drain a can of blueberries and stir them into the pie filling before spreading it over the blueberries.
*Whip 1 cup of heavy whipping cream with 1 teaspoon of vanilla and 2 -3 tablespoons of sugar. Use in place of commercial whipped topping.