It's That Nouveau Riche

Welcome to the nouveau riche version of my blog! The 1970s tapestry floral print just had to go, so I enlisted a very lovely lady (Jessica from www.DiamondDollDesign.com) to help me freshen ‘er up. Perhaps it was the previous lack of fanciness and pastel colors that caused me such distaste, but golly, I sure am LOVING the new look. It’s amazing what a splash of color and good design can do. I think it looks like the inside of one of those houses they feature inSouthern Living. You know; those gorgeous, professionally interior decorated houses that those women claim to have created all by themselves. When really, we all know they’ve got a designer on a permanent retainer to do the real work, and all they probably did was fluff a few pillows. Anyway, I digress.

In addition to the new look, I’ve got a few new bells and whistles to tell y’all about.

My first new whistle is my handy little list of links up above this post.

Now, you can click on my “Cookbook” page to see a listing of all the links to all my stolen recipes. If you reference my first ever blog post, you’ll notice that I disclose (rather plainly) that I don’t come up with my own recipes. However, I’m quite the connoisseur of FINDING good recipes and sharing them with y’all. I guess you could call me an acquisitioner of sorts. I acquire recipes from other places, try them out and post the good ones (with my notes, of course).

The next link of interest is the “Y’all Need This” page. This is the most exciting of my new additions and is devoted to the things I am currently IN LOVE with. That gotta-have-it, can’t-live-without-it kind of love that you only get from finding something truly magnificent. I also REALLY like getting a good deal so most of the stuff on here is gonna be cheap, or at the very least, MAJORLY on sale. My keen shopping/deal finding abilities are the way I am able to afford a mostly J.Crew and Banana Republic wardrobe on my measly corporate peon paycheck.

Whether it’s a new color of nail polish, new piece of jewelry or some fancy thing-a-ma-jig that’ll revolutionize your life, I’m going to plan on posting at least one thing that y’all need per month. Maybe more… depending on how often I’ve been able to go shopping.

The next two links are the boring ones: “About Me” and “Contact”. Woopty. It’s that normal, run of the mill stuff that every blog has to have. Other new additions are those cute little gray buttons on the top of the sidebar. Now you can click to follow me on twitter, shoot me an email, or sign up for my RSS feed. And feel free to share my blog with your friends! Sharing is caring, y’all!

Leave your comments and let me know what you think! Hopefully you enjoy the new look and features of the blog. I know I’m dang excited about it!

Oh… and HAPPY FOURTH, Y’ALL!

Recipe: My Family's Taters

First things first, let me say that I am so sorry that I haven't been blogging for like the last month. For those of you who are event planners, I'm sure you can relate. April and May are the atomic bombs of the event planning year.

However, I'm making it up to you all by posting a new recipe. It's one of my favorites that my daddy actually came up with. As a Southerner, he's great at creating his own one-of-a-kind completely unhealthy recipes. Plus, it's super easy! I call this recipe Cornbread Taters.

Cornbread Taters
Ingredients:
5-6 potatoes (you can do sweet potatoes or regular, or both)
1/2 onion (chopped coarsely)
Corn Meal

Peel the potatoes and cut into french fry-like shapes. My dad does this very coarsely so they look more like longer chunks of potatoes instead of fries, but how you cut them is up to you. Put the chunks into a gallon sized Ziploc bag. Then cut up the 1/2 onion coarsely and put into the Ziploc bag with the potatoes. Once you've got everything put into the bag, add about 1/2 to 1 cup of corn meal to the bag. Close the Ziploc bag and shake. It's like Shake-and-Bake for potatoes. Make sure the corn meal lightly coats the potatoes.

Then fry the mixture of potatoes, onions and corn meal. I like to fry my potatoes in an electric skillet because they cook more evenly, but it's also fine to do it over the stove. Just make sure you watch the temperature, because the sweet potatoes tend to burn easily.

Once they're done, pull them out and let them cool. Lightly salt. The corn meal on the potatoes gives them a little bit of a crunchy texture, and the onion gives it all a really great savory flavor. I'm telling y'all, these potatoes are the most requested recipe in our family.

Enjoy, y'all!

When Pumpkins Attack

You know that show called “When Animals Attack”? Sure you do. We’ve all seen those videos where some idiot gets too close to a crocodile and gets his leg bit clean off, or the ones of the idiots taunting the grizzly bear near their campsite before getting mauled to dang-near death. There are some things you just shouldn’t do. I get it; people think that since they’re the “more advanced” species they can out stealth a friggin’ bear. News flash people: regardless of how “advanced” you may be, you still can’t run from a 2 ton grizzly. That sucker’s gonna eat you and not think a thing about it. You quickly learn two lessons from watching about 10 minutes of these types of shows: A) don’t mess with wildlife, and B) acting like an idiot can get you in trouble.

A few posts ago, I wrote about how everyone in the South has a little bit of white trash in them. I also referenced how my husband and I throw our rotten fruit over the back fence “for the birds”. No judgments please. If you had an empty lot behind your house, you’d do it, too. I can’t even begin to describe how enjoyable it can be to have a mini Olympics in your backyard… Your old celery is the javelin event - your rotten oranges the shot-put. Perhaps not the classiest of afternoon activities, but fun nonetheless.

One day a few months ago, my husband finally decided to call my fall pumpkins in. They’d been serving as back patio decoration and managed to stay nice for several months, but now they looked a little over-ripe. I had given him permission to get rid of them since they were starting to smell, but I foolishly thought that since the pumpkins were so large, he would put them in a garbage bag and throw them into the big trash can. If only I had known…

I walked off to put in another load of laundry and heard the door open and close. Soon the hubs was standing in front of me asking if I knew where the hammer was. Here’s how the conversation went:

Hubs – “Hey, do we have a hammer somewhere?”

Me – “Sure, here.”

Hubs – “Be right back. Gotta fix the fence.”

Me – “What happened to the fence?!”

Hubs – “I hit it with a pumpkin.”

Me – “How did you do that?!”

Hubs – “I really underestimated the force I would need to chuck it over the fence.”

I, of course, busted into hysterical laughter. Then I knew I had to see what kind of hammer-needing damage a pumpkin could do to a fence. I walked outside and saw what looked like the gruesome murder of a pumpkin laying across our lawn, and three fence boards that had been jarred from their normal position on the fence line. One board had come darn near clean off. Apparently even a half-rot pumpkin won’t go down without a fight!

Pumpkin Devastation

Pumpkin Guts

Naturally, my husband righted his wrong by reattaching the boards to our fence, and we had a good long laugh. Now, do you think this would deter us from launching fruit over our fence in the future? Take it as a lesson in the negative effects of tomfoolery? Use the “advanced species” part of our brains to realize that was a bad idea? Nope. We just learned that next year, when launching our pumpkins, we’ve got to decrease the distance and increase the force to make sure the pumpkin makes it completely over the fence… with no ill effects or damage to our property…

It’s the South, Y’all!

The Toilet Saga: The Memorial

It is with a heavy heart that I inform you all that my toilet has officially been taken away. I’ve been hoping, unsuccessfully, that it would magically reappear, but I don’t think it’s coming back this time.

It left this world nearly two weeks ago. I should’ve known when I saw all the signs: the city trucks, the mowing crew... I should’ve been prepared to say my goodbyes, but I was in denial. It wasn’t until I drove home one day that I realized my toilet had been removed from its proud post in the median, never to be seen again. I can only assume that the mowing crew disposed of it, deeming it as “in the way”.

My one true hope now is that my beloved toilet is in a better place… Maybe on a ranch in the sky with other old toilets, where it can play Jenga and sip Mojitos all day; a befitting fate for a toilet so wonderful and mysterious. But wherever it is, I hope it’s bringing other people as much incredible happiness as it has brought to me over the past few months.

It's taught me a valuable lesson in never taking ANYTHING too seriously. Whenever life gets me down, I need to remember that some random toilet might just show up, disappear, reappear, get moved into the median of the highway and then sprout flowers. It seems only appropriate that during its last few days on the median, flowers were planted in its tank. Perhaps someone was giving it a proper send off. Or perhaps, it was just another awesome gesture by the toilet artist to put smiles on the faces of the overworked and underpaid.

Goodbye, sweet friend.

My toilet is a metaphor of sorts; a metaphor for the insane brilliance of the small things in life. Even the seemingly normal things we use every day - like our toilets - can bring us smiles. In honor of my toilet, I’m on a personal quest to find something that I can do to bring that much ridiculous joy to someone else’s life. Sort of like a pay-it-forward of ridiculously funny things.

I’d like us all to take this time to observe a moment of silence for my toilet, and the joy it has brought me and countless others.

It's the South, Y'all!

Back of The Bottle Recipe

I come from a long line of women who have learned how to make do with what they’ve got, whether in life or in the kitchen. My grandmother has always been able to whip up pretty much anything from the things she finds in the fridge and cupboard, but not my mom. Don’t get me wrong - my mom is a wonderful cook. She makes a mean meal. The thing is though, she’s always been a busy lady so she’s had to make do by finding awesome, easy recipes that someone else came up with. Now some people might frown on that since this is, of course, the south. However, I’m embracing my momma’s method as a busy-bee of an adult. I ain’t got time for that fancy stuff.

This brings me to the best advice I’ll ever give you: check the back of your bottles. Condiments, soups, sauces - anything with a label, you better be checking for recipes. Let me tell you, this is a fail proof method of finding some seriously delicious recipes that don’t take that long to make. How do I know they’re all easy recipes? Simple. Think of the size of the label on the back of an A1 bottle or a Campbell’s soup can. You can’t fit some long fancy recipe on there. It’s got to be good and straight to the point.

I’ve used the check the bottle method for years now, and I can’t say I’ve ever found a recipe that wasn’t easy and wonderful. I’m sure there’s one out there, but for now, I’m blissfully ignorant to it.

Most recently, my husband and I were eating dinner and I was eating A1 with everything on my plate. Yes, I will eat A1 with any and everything. That stuff is dang good, and I buy it in bulk. That evening, I was enjoying some A1 with my steamed carrots (don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it, it’s the culinary pairing of the century), and I decided to turn the bottle of A1 around to see what was listed on the side of it. See, I’m so used to employing the check the bottle method that I just do it naturally without even thinking about it. Lo-and-behold, glued to the side of that beautiful brown bottle there was a recipe for a slow cooker pot roast seasoned with A1. As an avid A1 enthusiast, I wanted to try this new recipe. And try it we did. My husband made this recipe because he was off on spring break, and I’m a 40-hour-a-week cog in the corporate machine. Plus, every so often I like when he’s my househusband. If I’m gonna work all day every day to put him through med-school, I like to be pampered housewife-style sometimes, too. Anyway, back on track. My husband, who hates to cook, actually said the recipe was easy peezy. In our household, “easy peezy” translates to “it wasn’t hard and I’d do it again”.

The best part though was the meal itself. The A1 pot roast was a huge success. The meat tasted great and the vegetables had this really great sweet and savory flavor to them. My husband and I both went back for seconds and scraped every ounce of it out of the crock pot for leftovers. Even better, the leftovers were great tasting, too! Reheating leftovers is like the culinary version of playing chicken: it’s you facing off against the leftovers in a battle of who’s going to get scared and give up first. Sometimes when you make something, it just doesn’t keep well. Some things get all congealed and the mere thought of eating it again is sickening, or sometimes you get the stuff that was great fresh but tastes like garbage once it’s been nuked for a few minutes. The icing on the cake for our A1 pot roast was that it kept great and fed the two of us for a week straight.

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

½ cup A1 Original Steak Sauce

½ cup water

1 pkg onion soup mix (I used Lipton)

1 boneless beef chuck eye roast (2-2.5lbs)

1 lb. baby red potatoes (we just took 5-6 regular sized red potatoes, peeled and cut them up)

1 pkg baby carrots

1 onion, diced

Mix first 3 ingredients, place meat in slow cooker. Top with vegetables and sauce; cover. Cook on LOW 8-9 hours or on HIGH for 6-7 hours. After cooking, scoop out and enjoy!

The thing is, ladies, these recipes hide in plain sight. It’s just about training yourself to find them. And if you’re really desperate for a new meal idea, go to Walmart and scout out the back of the boxes, bottles and cans. If anyone asks what you’re doing, LIE. Tell them you’re on a diet and are checking the nutrition facts. When you find a recipe that peaks your interest, take a picture of it with your phone. Yes, I freely admit that I do this. It’s called southern resourcefulness.

What are y’alls favorite check the bottle recipes?

The Toilet Saga: Eclipse

I woke up this morning thinking it was going to be an ordinary boring day. I got in my car and was on my way to work when … DUH DUH DUH (that’s supposed to be the suspenseful movie music before something really crazy happens or the killer gets revealed) my toilet was gone. AGAIN. For those of you who haven’t been reading my blog for very long, you can read the first part of the toilet saga here.

See, normally when I drive up over this little hill in the road, I can see the side of the toilet sticking up just slightly. I always check to see if it’s still peeking up at me every morning and every evening on my way to and from work. This morning though, it was gone again. I started to get really panicky, because I knew that I would never see it’s beautiful porcelain sheen ever again. This had to mean that the city FINALLY came to take my toilet away. I started to worry about it. I hoped they had just decided to take it to a place where it could live happily with other roadside toilets and appliances, but I knew that my toilet was probably being crushed into a thousand pieces or thrown into some dump somewhere. My only hope was that it was being taken to a dump with a view. I mean, I am not lucky enough for someone to take and return my toilet twice. It’s like an eclipse or Halley’s comet; one of those things that only happens every so many years. That doesn’t happen twice in one lifetime. It’s like too much awesomeness for one soul to bare. So this time, I knew it had to be gone for good.

Then, all of sudden, I started to see something white off in the distance. Only, it was in the median in the middle of the road. HOT SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS!!! Could it be?! Could that be my beloved toilet’s striking white glare?!

As I got closer, I realized that I was staring at my toilet proudly positioned at the end of a median in the road. “MY TOILET!” I screamed. I was driving up on the backside of it, so the first chance I got, I whipped a U-ey in the road (screeching tires, cutting other cars off, the whole thing) and drove back up as fast as I could to get a better look. It sat there, like a monument to all things weird and white trash. It was beautiful and pristine.

Glorious.

As I sat staring in awe and trying to get a good picture, I got to thinking: who is this mystery toilet mover? What possessed them to move the toilet to that median? I mean, besides the obvious delight it will bring to the hundreds of overworked people who drive down this road every day. Do they read my blog? Were they the ones who moved it before? If they were, where did it disappear to for all that time? And how can I ever thank them for the joy they have brought to my life?

Have you ever seen anything like it? Bet not.

If I ever figure out who you are, toilet artist, I will buy you a meal. But please don’t be offended if I refuse to shake your hand. Can y’all imagine the germs on that thing?! Whoever they are, I sure hope they wore gloves.

It’s the South, Y’all!

Down Here, We're All A Little White Trash

It’s a well-known fact that the South is filled with a rare breed of humans that we like to lovingly call “white trash”. White trash has been around forever and has, in many ways, plagued and enriched all of our lives. We laugh at the white trash on TV shows such as Raising Hope and My Name is Earl, but what I don’t think you all realize is that you laugh because deep down inside of you, there’s a little bit of white trash, too.

Every Southerner, born, bred or otherwise transplanted here, has something they do that is in some way considered WT. In my neighborhood, we have an entire family of people who I would consider to be WT. And it’s not just because their 3 year old son runs naked through the neighborhood at least once a day, or the fact that we see him stand on the top of their minivan and watch traffic go by, or that he uprooted the dead mini tree out of their front yard and proceeded to hit the other kids and their minivan with it. They do other WT things, too. My husband and I lovingly call their child “naked baby”. We’re sure his name is something spectacularly WT like Cletus or Jimmy Bob, but "naked baby" just stuck. They have a thousand cars parked around their house, and sometimes we drive by and their front door is standing wide open for hours while they let their pack of WT kids roam around unsupervised like little yard apes. But here’s the thing... we really know nothing about them. For all we know, the dad could be some genius nuclear engineer or the mom could be the heir to a huge old Southern fortune. Not likely, but the point is that we all have our white trash tendencies.

My husband and I are offenders, too. If you sat on the other side of my subdivision on a Sunday afternoon, you’d see rotten fruit flying over the back of our fence and landing in the empty lot behind our house. At first glance, you’d think “Wow, what white trash people. They’re throwing rotten fruit into the empty lot instead of just throwing it in the trash.” But in reality, my husband is “feeding the birds”. A lot of it has to do with wanting to chuck fruit as far as we can throw it, but we’re also helping to preserve the local bird population. The thing is, after watching us shot-put oranges, apples and pumpkins over our fence, you’d never know my husband is studying to become a surgeon and that I work in finance. Around Christmas time, when you look into our neighborhood and see the house with the MILLIONS of cheap-looking Christmas yard ornaments all strung up and shining so bright that it knocks out half the town's power, you might think “WOW! So white trash.” But again, it’s just us. Whether naturally ingrained in us or bestowed through our raising, we all exhibit some signs and symptoms.

My dad is a math whiz. He can literally compute things in his head like a human calculator, which is to be expected since he’s an accountant. But you’d never know he has a deep dark secret: he burns trash. My mother works at a school and used to teach autistic children and English as a second language. The woman’s a saint, but she also likes to shoot Starlings (they're demon black birds, don't feel bad for them) off of the back porch … in town.

  

A plague on the classiness of the Old South, or a natural instinct passed down through generations of Southerners? I say, look inside yourself and decide.  Perhaps you’re a garbage burner, an I-like-to-use-my-yard-as-a-parking-lot person, or even one of those people who walk into Walmart wearing pajamas and fuzzy bunny slippers.

Or you have a car that looks like this.  

Whichever white trash poison you choose, accepting and embracing it may be the first step towards the full growth of your true Southern roots. What are your white trash tendencies?

Now if you’re sitting there thinking “I don’t do anything that’s even remotely white trash,” you are a dirty rotten liar … and probably not much fun.

It's the South, Y'all!

My First Recipe: It Ain't Rocket Science

There is nothing I love more than some good, warm comfort food on a rainy day like today. And what better comfort food is there than mushroom steak with gravy and mashed potatoes?! Okay… fried chicken, but for the purposes of this post, it’s MUSHROOM STEAK! Go with it, y’all.

Anyway, this is my momma’s recipe (which means it probably came off of a Campbell’s soup can). I know traditionally this kind of thing is made with ground beef, but I’m not a super huge fan of meat that looks like brains, so we always make it with round steak instead.

For those of you who don’t know me personally, I am quite possibly the most particular eater you’ve ever met. I’m not picky per-say, because I will try everything once. However, if I don’t like it, I will never touch it again. I also won’t eat anything with <insert nasty food> in it. For example: you will never convince me that something made with mayonnaise is good, because mayonnaise in itself is vomit-inducing. Sorry to use the word vomit in a recipe post, but it had to happen.

The great thing about this recipe is that it’s a man favorite, because it’s literally just steak, potatoes and gravy. That’s all 3 of the main man food groups. It’s definitely a husband/boyfriend recipe. And for you women, it uses the three secret weapons of quick home cooking – onion soup mix, cream of mushroom soup and a crock pot.

For those of you who want to add a vegetable, try adding some fresh mushrooms to the gravy mixture or make a side of steamed broccoli/carrots. Now on to the recipe…

It Ain’t Rocket Science Mushroom Steak and Taters

Ingredients:

1 packet of onion soup mix

1 can cream of mushroom soup

2-3 round steaks

¼ to ½ cup of water

If you’d like – half a package of fresh sliced mushrooms

5-6 red potatoes

For the potatoes – the norm: milk, butter, salt and pepper

You’re going to make this recipe in a crock pot, so make sure yours is clean and sprayed with a little Pam.

First, pull your round steaks out of the package and place in the bottom of the crock pot. It’s best if they aren’t touching, but they can be squeezed in there pretty tight if you’ve got a smaller crock pot.

Next, mix the cream of mushroom soup and the packet of onion soup mix into a bowl. If you’re adding fresh sliced mushrooms, mix those in too. After mixing thoroughly, pour the mixture over the top of the round steaks in the crock pot. Make sure to cover each steak. Pour the ¼ to ½ cup of water in the crock pot but not on top of the steaks. Depending on how long you plan to cook this or how hot your crock pot heats, you’ll want to adjust the water. For hotter crock pots, or if you’re leaving it in a little longer, use ½ cup. I just pour my water down the side so it gets in the bottom but doesn’t disturb my gravy mixture on top of the steaks. Put the lid on and cook it on high for 4 hours. You could do it on low for 6 hours if you choose, but make sure to add extra water so that it doesn’t dry out.

Also another note on making the gravy: if you are like my husband and LOVE gravy then you can double the amount of mushroom soup, mushrooms and onion soup mix. And make sure to add extra water!

After your meat is finished cooking or 30 minutes before it should be done (for those of you with a crock pot timer), start making your mashed potatoes. Southerners should already know how to do this, but for those of you who don’t…

Peel and cut up about 5-6 good sized potatoes (disclaimer: I make a LOT of mashed potatoes). When I cut up the potatoes, I try to cut them into about 1 inch chunks, but this is not an exact science. Once they’re cut up, place into a pot/pan that’s filled with water up to about 2 inches below the rim to avoid overflow, and add a few shakes of salt to the water. Place the potato chunks into the water and turn on the heat to about high to get the water boiling. Once the water is boiling, turn the temperature down to about medium (or to whatever temperature doesn’t foam up and overflow for you). I don’t know the exact time of how long you should cook your potatoes (I just let them go, checking periodically with a fork to see if they are soft), but my mom says around 20 minutes. You want them to be so soft that they fall apart whenever you stick a fork in them. Once they reach that consistency, drain the water off with a colander/strainer and then put the potatoes back in the pot/pan. Add about a ¼ cup of milk and 2-3 tablespoons of butter (this is taste specific, so add or remove as you like). You can also add salt and pepper to taste. To mash my potatoes, I use a hand mixer to beat them into a smooth consistency. It makes them ULTRA creamy. My grandmomma just puts the milk/butter/salt/pepper in there and then stirs it up real good with a spoon. If you get your potatoes good and cooked, this makes for a chunkier mashed potato. But they’re great either way.

After you finish making the mashed potatoes and your meat is done cooking, go over and break up the meat inside the crock pot. It should be pretty easy to do. Mix the chunks of meat and gravy together in the crock pot and then serve on top of the mashed potatoes. It’ll look a little like beef stroganoff over mashed potatoes. In fact, my husband wants to try it with egg noodles some time… but being Southern, I can’t give up my taters.

Finished Product - Tastes better than it looks. Promise.

Hope you enjoy it! And don’t forget to let me know what you think!

The Toilet Saga: I can't make this stuff up...

Part of the reason I started my Twitter account and this blog is because I find myself, more often than not, seeing/doing things that make me say  “Oh yeah, it’s the South”.

Let’s be honest - this place is the most wonderful, beautiful place in the world. It’s filled with the most respectable hospitality, the thickest accents and the absolute BEST food (times infinity). Can I get an Amen? But we also have our fair share of just plain bizarre stuff. Maybe it’s the diet of fried food or the fact that we’re all hopped up on sweet tea 99.9% of the time, but you run into some weird folks and see some weird things here. And if you’ve read my previous posts, you know I quite like it that way.

Every time I walk into Walmart after dark, it’s like a zoo of people who I’m not sure have ever even seen the light of day. They’re weird. But god love them, I know I do, they make my trips to the grocery store so…. well… interesting. I can almost guarantee you that all of those pictures of “People of Walmart” came from the South. The robust girl in tight leopard pants, yeah, it happens here. The crazy old man who forgot to wear pants in public, I’ve seen it. And if you live in the South, I’m sure you have too.

I say, let your freak flags fly, Southerners. I love you for your pant-less wrinkled old legs and your strange aversion to loose-fitting clothing. You make life here interesting.

Most recently, the odd thing that’s caught my attention is the random full porcelain toilet that sits on the side of the road on my way to work.

The first time I laid eyes on it, I thought “Wow, this gives new meaning to the term Port-o-Potty (or is it Port-a-Potty?).” My second thought: Sigh… “It’s the South.” I mean, really? Who leaves a full sized (I’m sure used) potty on the side of some road? I would’ve at least taken the time to go dump it off in a random dumpster behind a business or apartment complex. Isn’t that what everyone does when they need to get rid of some big appliance/piece of furniture? No…? Just me… Okay. Anyway, the reason I know the toilet was intentionally placed there is because for the first several weeks of its existence on this road, it was standing upright and was fully intact. If it had fallen out of some guy’s truck bed, it would’ve been on its side and probably in a million tiny porcelain pieces. So every day as I drove by, I would wonder about that lone commode’s story. Until one day…

After standing proud on the side of the road for at least a few weeks, I was driving to work one morning and it was gone!! I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was sad to see that it had mysteriously vanished, but I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t going to be able to marvel at its weirdness everyday as I drove by anymore. I wasn’t kidding myself either. I knew at some point the city was probably going to send a garbage truck to come get the “eyesore” off of the side of their beautiful new road. I was just hoping I would get to enjoy it a few weeks longer. Or get a decent enough picture to prove it was there, but driving and photographing on an iPhone is IMPOSSIBLE.

But here’s where it gets weird. My toilet had been gone for at least a solid 10 days, long enough for me to move onto a fixation with the Junkyard Man’s new keyboard, when it REAPPEARED!!! Shock and awe does not even begin to describe what I was feeling. Where did it disappear to for TEN WHOLE DAYS? Did someone come get it, try it out, and then return it? First off, gross. And if they returned it, why did they bring it back to the same spot? My head was spinning with all of these questions. I think I even got a little faint at one point from all the excitement. Luckily for you all, I managed to snap a few half-decent photos of the traffic-side toilet. 

Toilet View 1- From the Road

Toilet View 2 - Close enough to touch. But that would be gross.

Anyway, the morale of the story is this: take time to appreciate the craziness of the things you see in the South… and then, take out your camera phone out of that purse/pocket and send me pictures.  

It’s the South, Y’all!

Grinding My Beans

If you feel like your home-brewed coffee is a little lackluster, you may be a coffee idiot like myself. Apparently for the last 25 years of my life (yes, I’ve been drinking coffee since birth), I’ve been doing it all wrong.

My normal morning routine is to get up, pull out my designer-brand ground coffee (what a fool I was), toss it lovingly into my coffee maker and walk off. After it’s done brewing, I come back, throw some sugar and cream into a cup, pour in my coffee and then wonder why my coffee always tastes like it was made with dishwater and cat urine. I frequently spend my mornings sitting in the never-ending line at the Starbucks drive thru, because I just cannot bring myself to drink that crap from my coffee maker.

I’m now a Gold Member at Starbucks. For those of you who aren’t bordering on caffeine crackhead - in order to become a Gold Member, you have to spend at least 10% of your annual income at their stores. In return, they reward you with a shiny new card and the chance to get a free drink after you purchase 15. When I was first inducted into this Gold society of over-caffeinated individuals, I thought to myself “It’ll take for-freaking-ever to get to 15 drinks!” Not so, my friends. I do it quite frequently. In fact, during a really rough month at work, I can down enough calorie-packed beverages to get three free drink cards in the mail. But recently, I’ve grown tired of reloading my Starbucks Gold card every 2-3 days. Watching $10 to $20 from my bank account disappear into a Venti Caramel Macchiato just hasn’t been as satisfying lately.

Enter my dear friend, Rachel T. Quick aside: I have multiple friends named Rachel/Rachael, so I have to designate them with different renditions of their oh-so-common name.

Rachel T works at Starbucks. Sweet gig, right? Well, Rachel T being the goddess that she is, brought me a HUGE bag of Starbucks Guatemalan Blend. I was thrilled until I felt the bag and realized that it was whole beans. At first I was all “What the heck am I going to do with whole beans!? I can’t take this into Starbucks and have them grind it; they’ll think I stole it! Or worse, try to make me pay for it.” But then I realized I could just buy a coffee grinder and be an uppity coffee lady like Rachel T, who I’m sure looked down on me for buying pre-ground coffee. Ever the elitist, I broke down and bought a beautiful red Kitchenaid coffee grinder from Target. It matches my beautiful professional-grade Kitchenaid stand mixer.

This morning in my delirious haze of Daylight Saving Time sleep deprivation, I busted that sucker out and ground me up some coffee. Not only was I prepping my morning coffee, but I was also finding great joy in seeing how fine I could get the grounds to be. I’m actually not sure if grinding your coffee beans into the consistency of baby powder is how you’re supposed to do it, but what a fun new gadget. Also, did I mention it matches my mixer?

The Bean Pulverizer 2000

And it wasn’t just the great experience of pulverizing beans, but it actually made some of the most delicious coffee I’ve ever had. I’d apparently been hiding under a pre-ground coffee rock. Eat that, Starbucks baristas. No longer am I tied to your delicious $5 beverages.

So ladies and gents, if your home-brewed coffee is less than awesome, maybe you should try buying a grinder and grinding your whole beans daily. I mean, that’s how the people at Starbucks do it. How I’m just catching on is beyond me. I blame Rachel T.

My Recipes: A Study in Plagiarism

One of the most important things in the South is food. If you live here, you know that all too well. If you don’t live here, you’ll learn fast enough. Anyway, how can I write a blog about the South without having any recipes? I can’t. I would be a disgrace.

Here’s the thing though; I’m not even going to pretend to be one of those women with a God-given gift for creating her own recipes. I am not the perfect 1950s housewife. I’m a modern lady who has a 40-hour workweek, a husband in college, a cat that’s as needy as a child and some semblance of a social life. I don’t have time to be concocting these wonderful recipes that should be featured in the June issue of Southern Living. But here’s what I am – a DARN good recipe critic.

I want to feature the recipes from my momma, grandmomma and dad (he’s actually a DANG good cook/baker). Plus I’ll have some random recipes that I’ve found in Southern Living, Better Homes and Gardens, various recipe books, and on the back of Campbell Soup cans that I thought were quite tasty. Like I said, I’m no professional chef. I’m a girl plagiarizing the crap out of recipes that I think you’ll enjoy… because I did. The stuff I try that tastes like absolute frou-frou garbage won’t get a place on this blog, unless I’m warning you to stay away from some really interesting looking recipe in this month’s Southern Living that blew up in my face.

I’ll post them periodically with a commentary on that recipe. I feel like most recipes need a warning label anyway. For example: “don’t get the oil too hot” OR “if you sub in Splenda on this recipe you’ll gag yourself blue.” That kind of stuff. That way you know what you’re getting yourself into before you even start.

On a side note, I never make anything with Splenda because I feel like everything made with Splenda causes the reaction referred to above.

One Mans Trash, Another Mans Treasure

I have this neighbor (neighbor is a loose term, he actually lives probably 4 blocks away) who’s yard is a total garbage heap. The man has multiple RVs, cars (ancient, broken down and smashed to pieces), trucks, tractors, ditch-diggers (not sure of the exact name, but those yellow things with the scooper on the front), trailers, signs, an electric keyboard and stand, all kinds of other random stuff, and a cannon. One of these days I’m going to go to his house and do an inventory of all the junk he has just sittin’ in his front yard. The vastness of his collection is nothing short of awesome.

My favorite of all his treasures is the cannon. My husband thinks it’s some random tool… a pressure something… I can’t remember what he thought it was. But I’m here to tell you, it’s a cannon plain as day. I think my husband just can’t face the fact that down here sometimes people keep cannons in their yard. It’s like Russian roulette on whether that thing actually works or not, but who’s gonna mess with the guy who has a cannon beside his garage? Definitely not this girl, which is why I haven’t gone to take a formal inventory of his yard for the purpose of this post.

We frequently notice that he moves things around, replaces new junk with old junk and old junk with new junk. It’s sort of like a constant game of I-Spy. Every time we drive by, I’m saying “Look at that guy’s new (insert treasure/piece of garbage)!” This week it was a tan colored electric keyboard and stand perfectly placed at the very front of his yard. I like to think he did this just for me. Surely by now he has noticed that I slow down to see what new beautiful pieces of junk he’s put out.

I’m not going to lie to you either; I seriously enjoy the quirkiness of it all. It’s just a guy who loves his garbage and wants to proudly display it for all to see. Junkyard man, I salute you. And thanks for giving me another reason to love this absolutely crazy little Southern town.

If I ever manage to gain enough courage to stop and take a picture, I’ll post it. But it’s not likely, because as much as he thrills me, I’m also secretly afraid he’s a serial killer. I watch too much Criminal Minds.

Shall We Start With Introductions

Perhaps y’all should know the writer behind the blog, or perhaps you could give a crap less. Regardless, you’re going to know a little more about me whether you give a rat’s caboose or not.

My name is not important, but my credentials are. You’re probably thinking, “What qualifies this girl to write a blog about the South?” Well, let me tell you…

I was born and raised in a quiet town south of the Mason Dixon line. I grew up catchin’ crawdads in a crick (yes, this is spelled right), getting my afternoon snack from the wild honeysuckle and blackberry bushes, helping my dad raise bees for fresh honey, drinking from a garden hose, and praying it would snow so we could get JUST ONE DANG snow day off school (we were lucky if we got one stinkin’ flake of snow). This last part was important because I think growing up in a place where snow was not the norm was what drove me to apply to a college up north. That white fluffy stuff sure did look like a lot of fun… at the time. I learned later that it’s a nuisance and my southern roots rendered me plum useless in the cold weather. But that’s neither here nor there; let’s get back on track…

In high school, everyone drove a truck and we spent most weekends by a campfire in the woods. I learned to drive a 4-wheeler at a very young age, and it wasn’t uncommon to spend a weekend at the hunting cabin in the “Deer Woods.” Although we’re not all trucks and guns, part of growing up in the South meant attending Cotillion. Yes, at a certain age your mother would enroll you in a class and you would spend 3+ years of your life learning etiquette, ballroom dancing, how to properly serve/take afternoon tea, how to write thank you notes, curtsy and answer the telephone properly. This was the most normal thing, and none of us thought a darn thing about it.

When I left for college, I decided to attend a small private college NORTH of the Mason Dixon line. THAT right there is what qualifies me to write about the South. I know what the North is like and I know what us Southerners do differently. None of my friends from college had a grandmother who would shoot at the bears to scare them out of her back yard. None of their grandfathers were moonshiners. None of them knew that to make proper sweet tea you must mix in the sugar while the tea is still hot. And goodness knows, not one of them ever attended Cotillion. It’s knowing the differences between us and them that gives me the professional edge to write this blog. Plus I’m constantly inspired because I married a Yankee (hold your judgments). Luckily, he’s adapting well to southern life. I may even go so far as to say he actually fits in rather nicely.

I’m starting this blog because I find the South to not only be the warmest, kindest place in the world, but also because it is the quirkiest and craziest. Hopefully you’ll enjoy my misadventures/recipes/theories/advice/southernisms, but if you don’t… Well, I’m sorry but you can go kick rocks.

It’s the South, y’all!

Hey Y'all!

Welcome to the South! If you’ve never been here before, perhaps you’ll need a little bit of an introduction. And yes, like Reese Witherspoon says in Sweet Home Alabama, you do probably need a passport to come down here. In fact, maybe we should suggest that to our State Representatives so we can better manage the Yankee-to-Southerner ratio… Regardless, this place is full of hospitality. So sit back and enjoy the sights, sounds, smells and sugar-filled deserts of “God’s Country.”

Stepping onto Southern Soil is stepping into a place where tradition has always been the norm - chicken is fried at someone’s house every Sunday, the Sweet Tea recipe never changes, and we’ll always have more churches than we do people. This place is our home, so please don’t scoff, stare or judge our lifestyle. If you do, we’ll have to resort to chasing you off of our property with a shotgun. And I don’t know if anyone’s ever actually proven it, but I have it on good authority that one time a Southerner actually chased a Yankee clear over the Mason Dixon line… from Florida. Don’t make us angry - it can get real ugly, and we don’t like to take things there. It’s not in our nature.

If you’re here to eat, well, you’ve come to the right place. Might I suggest you try everything fried, pickled, jammed, jellied, baked, sugared, spiced and dressed. I promise you won’t regret it. Although, you may leave with a nasty case of heartburn… See, we Southerners have become accustomed to our horrible eating habits. We have literally been eating grease and unconscionable amounts of sugar since we were in the womb. In fact, some people say that if a Southerner is deprived of greasy foods for too long then they shrivel up and die. Now, I don’t know if that’s ever actually happened, but I did hear that this one guy in Georgia tried it once and he landed himself in the hospital. Something about the fact that there was nothing to keep his insides good and greased. Whether you believe that story or not, just know you probably aren’t going to find a whole lot of good home-cooked “healthy” meals down here. So just leave your calorie counting and Weight Watchers points at home. You won’t need them here.

Which brings me to my next point: while you are here, you must learn to gossip well. You may think that gossiping is just gossiping, but you are SO wrong. There is an art form to gossiping in the South, and if you don’t do it correctly then you may doom yourself to become a social pariah. A good Southerner would never intentionally hurt someone’s feelings. So when we gossip, we spin it so it always sounds polite and proper… and we never say it to your face. We are NEVER rude, crude or socially unacceptable.

So let’s pretend you see a girl with mom jeans on. A horrible offense, I know. But you can’t just start blurting out obscene things about this woman. You don’t know her. Shoot, she could be a pastor’s wife, so it’s important to tread lightly. Here’s how a Southerner would address this situation: you turn slightly to your friend/colleague/husband/boyfriend/whatever and quietly say, “Did you just see that lady wearing those nasty Jordache jeans? Bless her heart, she just has no clue those jeans are giving her a mom butt.” The most important part: sound concerned for her well being while you talk about her fashion offenses. You’ve got to channel genuine concern for her - try to imagine you’re talking about how bad you feel that her husband just left her or her dog died.

The other super duper important thing of all important things to remember while in the South, DO NOT ORDER UNSWEET TEA!! You will not only receive a dirty look from your waiter/waitress, but you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. Southerners can spot a Yankee from a mile away, so you probably shouldn’t draw too much attention to yourself. That’s not to say that being a Yankee is a bad thing, but you’re in the South now and should try to acclimate as best you can. Your accents annoy us, and a little respect for our national beverage will go a long way.

So now that you are adequately prepped for your time here, I hope you enjoy it! Just remember – guests, like fish, begin to smell after 3 days.