I have always loved gingerbread cookies and over the past twenty years have tried several different recipes for my Christmas cookie bags. This is a lovingly adapted recipe from the now defunct Gourmet Magazine. It is the best that I have stumbled upon in terms of the balance of the spices and the degree of fluffiness. It is also a very forgiving dough…so you can mess up and re-roll it several times which is great for toddlers.
These are not the meatballs of my childhood. But these are the meatballs of my son’s childhood. And that is the whole point of this food blog…to preserve the flavors of my son’s childhood so that he can replicate them in the future so that these flavored memories are not lost.
Chicken and dumplings are a southern staple. I have heard fairy tales of my grandmother’s famed chicken and dumplings that were as light as air since I was a child. Of course, no one ever wrote the recipe down or taught the next generation to make the angelic dumplings. So, here I am almost seventy years later trying to recreate the flavors of my mother’s childhood.
In Mississippi, we have festivals and beauty queens to celebrate regions based on their respective produce, including Vardaman Sweet Potatoes, Smith County Watermelons, and Delta Catfish, to name a few. Everybody knows the best sweet potatoes in the world come from Vardaman, MS. Seriously, they are the sweetest potatoes with the best texture on the market.
Greens are the one thing that I could eat every day and not get tired of them. Collards, turnips, mustard, kale, cabbage, etc. I love them all! Sometimes, I mix turnip greens, roots, and mustard to add bite. You may be wondering where is the water? But…I don’t boil them. Most greens have enough water in the leaves to cook without adding much water, if any. You keep more flavor and nutrients this way. Some people call this method “frying” the greens, but it’s more like a stir fry. I also like to stop the cooking while they are just tender, but still bright green.
