Food & Recipes - grace grits and gardening

Paula Deen’s Family Kitchen (and John!)

May 4, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

Hey y’all. This is a true story. While I was slaving away at Dairy Hollow making edits to the book I WILL finish, my husband was hobnobbing with the one and only Paula Deen. (How adorable is she?!) Yes, John was on a business trip, and yes, he was invited to the grand opening of Paula Deen’s Family Kitchen, her newest restaurant located at the Island in Pigeon Forge. That’s in Tennessee.

She served him fried green tomatoes. I’ve been training John to take pictures of his food. Ahem, I believe there’s only one tomato left on this plate.

What’s left of Grandmama Paul’s Fried Green Tomatoes…

And that last tomato? It went into co-worker Roddy’s mouth.

He did better with this picture. If I know John, he ordered double collards.

I’m not gonna lie, I was a little (a lot) jealous to miss this opportunity (not that I was actually invited, but I don’t know why a blogger wouldn’t be invited to document every business trip).

John returned bearing gifts—an autographed Hey Y’all t-shirt and apron!

I plan to be at Paula Deen’s next grand opening, if I have to stow away. Fair warning, y’all.

(And not that I need one, but I love an excuse to say y’all.)

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

[tweetthis]That time my husband hung out with @Paula_Deen and all I got was an apron. #PaulaDeensFamilyKitchen @My_PigeonForge[/tweetthis]

P.S. I’m not sure if this clip is the exact fried green tomato recipe served at Paula Deen’s Family Kitchen, but it sounds and looks delicious.

And Paula, I can make fried green tomatoes too:)) Shameless plug, I know.

Fried Green Tomato Recipe

Musical Pairing:

Zac Brown Band & Jimmy Buffett, Chicken Fried

Fancy Raspberry S’mores

April 15, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

Did I mention these Fancy Raspberry S’mores were made with marshmallow Peeps? Oh, yes. Leftover Easter Peeps. And of course, there’s a story, a foodie challenge of sorts. What could I do with the Peeps my sister-in-law sent home with me after Easter lunch?

Before I get to the recipe I created, first the backstory.

My sister-in-law made an incredible Easter lunch including salmon, wild rice, asparagus and all the trimmings included mystery flavored Peeps (just for fun y’all). Since Peeps introduced mystery flavored chicks and bunnies for Easter, we did our own taste-tasting and flavor-guessing, washing everything down with champagne. We guessed the bunny flavor correctly—green apple—but the chick was tricky considering it wasn’t a true flavor at all but fruit punch. Hmmm.)

Anyway…

I couldn’t let the leftovers go to waste, so I came up with a different sort of s’mores. The fancy sort. Something perfect for glamping with the girls or sitting around the backyard fire pit on a nice spring evening. Dessert for our weekly girlfriend supper.

Fancy Raspberry S’mores ingredients.

I used Jules Destrooper Butter Crisps which are thin, perfect for fancy s’mores, and sold in the deli area of my regular grocery store (Harp’s). A few years ago, The Bald Gourmet did a review of these cookies. Even though no mention was made of Peeps, he said they are perfect served with fruit, goat cheese and honey, yogurt, pudding, or with your favorite hot beverage. I concur!

butter crisps - perfect for making fancy s'mores

I wish I had one with my coffee this morning.

Look at that deliciously gooey melted peep. Of course, you could use a regular marshmallow.

I used my garlic baker (perfect size to make four s’mores) and broiled them in the oven.

Fancy Raspberry S’mores

Print Recipe

Ingredients Method

Ingredients

Thin Vanilla Waffle Cookies
1 Hershey Chocolate Bar
Fresh Raspberries
Marshmallow Peeps I used fruit punch chicks
Balsamic Vinegar

Method

Prep: Cut peeps into two pieces. Half raspberries. Break candy bar into sections. Depending upon size of cookies, you may need to break cookies into two pieces.
Set oven to broil.
Place one layer of cookies on cookie sheet. Top with one section of chocolate and one piece of marshmallow.
Broil for 2-3 minutes until melted. This takes no time! Keep a constant watch.
Remove from broiler. Place two raspberry pieces on marshmallow. Top with cookie. Press.
Drizzle with a smidgen of balsamic vinegar.

Decadent and rich. The raspberry makes it extra tasty. The waffle cookie is buttery and lighter than a graham cracker which sound oxymoronic but is true. Just a drizzle of balsamic vinegar cuts the sweet.

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

[tweetthis]Fancy Raspberry S’mores made with leftover Easter #Peeps! Decadent #glamping #dessert. @PEEPSBrand @Hersheys[/tweetthis]

Musical Pairing (perfect glamping song):

Otis Redding, The Dock of the Bay

Gardening, Writing and Making Enchiladas.

March 31, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

Gardening, writing and making enchiladas will keep a girl busy. My mother (aka The Bat) thought I had either croaked, lost my phone, or dropped it in the toilet because she had texted me several times over two days, and I hadn’t responded. I hadn’t posted on Facebook or blogged either.

First of all, I never received the texts because of a mysterious change in my iPhone settings. How does that happen? Anyway, after a bit of research, I fixed it without a call to AT&T (which would have severely cut into gardening, writing and making enchilada time, for sure). Yay me.

As far as being absent on social media, I’ve been on a self-imposed schedule that involves a) working on my book in the mornings, and b) gardening in the afternoons. And yes, I did make enchiladas the other day, but more on that later. So here’s an update. The book? I think it’s going well, but it’s taking longer than I expected. That’s mostly okay by me because when I’m done, well there’s the whole finding-a-publisher-thing which is way harder than breathing life into dead pansies.

And the gardening? You already know it’s one of my most favorite things to do in this life.

Here are a few of the plants John and I bought at Westwood Gardens, my go-to local (Fayetteville) garden center. A trunk full of plants leads to an afternoon well spent.

One of the things I did yesterday was attempt to spruce up our front porch pots. After the snow and ice, last fall’s pansies were soggy and shriveled and looking rather pathetic, BUT since the pansy growing season in Fayetteville is soooo much longer than Dallas, I decided to revive them instead of throw them away. I dug them up, trimmed the dead leaves, added more soil, and replanted them with snapdragons and asparagus fern. The pots look much happier now, and I believe the pansies will make a recovery.

Believing is an essential part of gardening.

End of Winter (left pot) / Beginning of Spring (right pot)

Here’s another before and after shot showing my pansies going from pitiful to perky.

Check out this cute little succulent. This one is named “Pig Ear”. Perfect for Razorback land, don’t you think? I put him in one of our most unique pots, a container we purchased at Redenta’s in Dallas. (It was handmade by an Arizona artisan whose name I don’t know, or I’ll tell you.)

My sister-in-law gave me lots of irises, day lilies and onion sets from her yard! “Dig up whatever you want,” she said. Now that’s a gardeners dream, right? Receiving plants from someone else makes the world even more special, and some of these plants originally came from my mother-in-law’s garden which makes me happyhappyhappyyyyy.

I planted a row of them along our rock wall. This is a hot spot, so they should flourish.

Others I planted around this boulder (along with phlox).

So where does making enchiladas come into this story? I made a big platter of chicken enchiladas last weekend using an old favorite recipe from my Baylor Cookbook (recipe tweaked a bit and coming later, maybe). We ate supper outside around the fire pit while enjoying the beginning of spring.