Penny Sanford Designs

"Peeling, Slicing and Cleaning Tomatoes fresh from the Garden"

Here is some footage I shot of Penny during this canning season. She and her Uncle Charles (age 83) have been happily making preserves and Penny has been absorbing as much as she can about the various ways one can preserve tomatoes, pears, etc... A big hit has also been something new, one of Penny's blog friends translated a new delicacy to english and Penny was eager to try it. What was this new sensation you may ask? Tomato Jam! Neither had heard of it before but upon further examination, both love it and Mr. Charles has been proudly giving away some of it and has had great feedback from all. Another delicacy they both have enjoyed is chestnut jam. Penny loves it! Mr. Charles had been picking chestnuts off the ground each morning, which had fallen from the tree here on the farm. I've even helped pick them from the prickly hull in which they grow. We hope you enjoy and would love to hear what you think. Gordon

Butterbean Bliss

Today was the first day Unc picked enough butter beans for us to freeze. He picked two gallon buckets for me to shell. That yielded two shy quart packages. I think we will freeze them in pint bags from now on.

I love shelling butter beans and peas. If we could grow English peas, I would adore shelling them because I LOVE, love to eat English peas!

One thing I learned that I will pass along to you. On a whim, I asked Unc if we could feed the butter bean hulls to a cow (I'm storing information for when we get a milk cow or a couple of little steers to fatten up for the freezer). He said the sharp point of the butter bean hull might puncture a cow's intestinal tract.

Good information to have. So he has been putting the butter bean hulls around various plants in the garden as mulch.

Until today we have only had enough butter beans or green beans on any given day to shell for one meal.

Those first fresh picked representatives of each garden vegetable are always THE best, THE most tender, THE most flavorful you can imagine!

Unc, age 83, planted this garden, has tended it, and is picking the produce.  All I am doing is helping put up the veggies and fruit. Not a bad bargain, huh? 

One more fun discover during this butter bean adventure...the Westies LOVE the taste of raw butter beans! That is great! We try to give our dogs as much raw meat, veggies and fruit as possible.

So far, the Westies love carrots, squash, butter beans, figs, banana and orange! The raw meat part was not a problem for them to embrace. Raw egg, buttermilk and yogurt are also favorites. Google the "BARF" diet for dogs if you want to learn more.

Unc picks our green beans small and tender (see the Chapstick for size comparison), have been so wonderful! They are small enough that they do not have any strings to be pulled off. TENDER! All we do is cut of the ends of the beans.

We boil them with salt in the water and add a little butter when they are tender. That's it. That fresh-from-the-garden flavor is so nutty and green! We've not picked enough green beans to have enough to freeze yet. Unc will be planting green beans again very soon for the fall garden!

A Southern Woman's First Southern Fried Chicken

Tonight I am a card-carrying member of the Sorority of Southern Women Who Fry Chicken!

I'm 46 years old, and today was the very first time I have ever attempted to fry chicken.

To be honest, I've been afraid to fry anything since my attempt to make french fries back in 1984 or 1985. My girlfriend's husband made some comment like, "Do you think you could have added more grease to these?"

That was my last attempt to fry anything until today.

Today's rite of passage has brought back so many wonderful memories. As a little tyke, I watched Grandma make fried chicken, sitting on a tall stool by the stove so that I could watch her work her magic.

I can see her twisted arthritic fingers flicking a tiny pinch of flour into the hot oil in a big cast iron skillet to test it's readiness for the chicken. I think that was the same cast iron skillet that I used today.

So many years later (Grandma died in 1979) I can just smell that  heavenly aroma that permeated her house and floated onto the porches around her house!

The anticipation for that first piece of Grandma's chicken was so intense that I always picked off pieces of the crust as the freshly fried chicken was cooling on its metal cooling  rack on the kitchen counter.

Thighs were (and still are) my favorite piece, along with the gizzard and the chicken heart!

Grandma and Unc would save me the gizzard and heart to enjoy when Mama and I stopped by Grandma's house on the way back home from school.  Before we walked through Grandma's front door, I could smell that fabulous Southern fried chicken aroma, and I would practically run to the kitchen for my thigh, gizzard and heart!

So, today, bolstered by good advice from my friends on Facebook, I joined the esteemed ranks of Southern Women Who Fry Chicken!

Today, Unc cut up the big ten pound bag of chicken and provided a second opinion on the hotness of the oil and the readiness of the pieces to be turned or taken out of the skillet. I was very thankful for his help and advice!

He even tasted that first piece with me to evaluate my technique. 

What I learned is that I really want my fried chicken to taste just like Grandma's fried chicken. I thought I wanted to make crunchy chicken with thick crust like one of the fast food chicken chain restaurants. To make Grandma's chicken will necessitate a few changes in my recipe for next time.

Here is a synopsis of what I learned (that might help you join me in this tradition):

1. Soaking in buttermilk gives the chicken a faint sour/tart flavor reminiscent of fried dill pickles. Soaking in buttermilk helps the meat stay moist and juicy, and helps hold onto the flour coating.

2. Next time I will soak our chicken in sweet milk with an egg.  This is what Grandma did...I'm pretty sure.

3. I did add a little corn starch to the flour today to make crunchier crust like the fast food chicken. It REALLY does do that, but I realize that I want Grandma's chicken, so I will not add the corn starch next time.

4. For a bit more crust (especially since we remove the chicken skin), I could soak the pieces in milk/egg, dredge through the flour, dip again into the milk and dredge again in the flour.

5. I've read numerous techniques for seasoning the chicken, including soaking the chicken in brine (salty water) or adding the salt/seasoning AFTER the chicken has been fried. 

What I will do next time is rub salt and pepper into the chicken meat before soaking it in the milk/egg....OR, it may work best to rub the salt/pepper into the chicken meat AFTER it soaks in the milk/egg. I have yet to experiment with those two techniques.

At any rate, the flesh today was not seasoned as I remember Grandma's chicken, or Mama's chicken or Louise's chicken or Dollie's chicken...four ladies who have spoiled my family with superior Southern Fried Chicken. (By the way, Miss Dollie said she uses a little seasoned salt instead of plain salt. I called her when my first piece was not flavored like her fried chicken or like Grandma's fried chicken.

6. I also learned today that keeping the hot oil at the proper temperature for optimum frying is more of an art than it is about following directions.  I just need some more practice in this area.

7. I just learned from my friend Teresa that leaving the skin on the chicken will give it more flavor. Today the dogs got the chicken backs and chicken skin...raw...look up BARF diet for dogs to understand.

I would rate my first attempt at fried chicken at a 5 out of a maximum of 10. The meat was moist and cooked well. A couple of pieces were cooked a little too much. None of it was undercooked. The crust was crunchier than I wanted, and the salt/pepper did not reach the meat as well as I wanted.

When I achieve the Southern Fried Chicken that Grandma, Mama, Louise or Dollie have cooked in the past, then I will proudly accept a rating of 10!

Unc and Gordon were so supportive! Mr. Wardell was here tonight to go with Unc for some late afternoon fishing for catfish, and he said the chicken was delicious. Mr. Wardell is a sweetheart, and he knew this was my first fried chicken. *grin*

So tonight, I am again flooded with happy memories of watching these four women cook Southern Fried Chicken. I feel a bit chagrined that my chicken was only a 5, even though I KNOW I will achieve that perfect 10 with some practice.

Today's cooking adventure has awakened deep feelings in me of wanting to earn my place in a long, long line of excellent Southern cooks, my genetic foremothers. I want my two fellas to be sneaking a freshly fried piece of chicken to eat almost as soon as it comes out of the skillet.

There are some nuances of emotions to today's experience that I don't fully understand yet...something I can't quite see...but this rite of passage today has moved me deeply. Maybe it has something to do with Mama's death in January and taking my place as Top Female in our little family of three. If you know what I'm experiencing, please email me and help me understand these emotions.

First Butterbeans and Snap Beans of the year

Nothing can possibly taste any better than the first snap beans of the year. Even if one cans or freezes vegetables to enjoy year round, that flavor of veggies fresh from the garden, still warm from the sunshine...is impossible to capture in words or seasonings!

We like to eat our green beans/string beans/snap beans very small, before they develop any "strings" to pull off. We boil them with salt and butter. That is it. They have THE BEST nutty flavor.

Then yesterday and today, Unc brought in the first butterbeans for us this year. Again, we pick them small, definitely smaller than a dime. They are so tender and flavorful when they are small like that. A delicacy to be able to harvest one's vegetables at the size one prefers.

Same with squash. We like them at five to seven inches long. Nice pretty quarter-sized slices. Tender. Flavorful!

Today Unc pulled one okra pod. Just one. We cooked it with the green beans. It was divine! We'll start freezing the baby green beans and baby butterbeans as soon as we are picking more than a one-day's serving of each of these veggies.

Unc's garden has done well this year. He has had to plant a few vegetables twice because of the heavy spring rains, so we have not had the quantity of vegetables we want to share with friends. He plans to start planting some things for a fall garden, so our canning and freezing season will last for months more!

I'm thankful for every morsel of home-grown, chemical-free food that goes in our freezers!

I'll have to photograph and share the squash casserole recipe with you. We tweaked it a little from Grandma's recipe, and Unc and I are besotted with it. Gordon still will not eat veggies. What do I do with him to convince him to eat veggies? *sigh*

Cooking by Kerosene Lamplight!

Whooo weeee!!!! We had a humdinger of a storm this afternoon, and the power was out for almost five hours! We were three hot humans and seven hot dogs!

At least we could continue cooking because the stove and oven are powered by propane! We were well into making beef and chicken enchiladas...and cooking squash to freeze...and making some squash and chicken soup to put on the dog food every day.

That was a lot of cooking putting out a lot of heat without air conditioning! Phew! The four kerosene lamps also put out their fair share of heat!

Because we are the LAST customer on this power line, we have experienced plenty of power outages over the years, some of which have lasted days! A 117 hour outage is our record so far, and thankfully that occurred in the winter! We stayed warm with propane and wood heat!

Gordon and Unc, as always, pitched in this afternoon, and we got it all done with squash frozen and a couple of casseroles of enchiladas in the freezer, ready to cook another time. I do like to make enough of whatever we are cooking to freeze for an easy meal another day!

The food photos are from some time this month! I need to take more photos to share with you as the squash and green beans and as of today, cucumbers, are beginning to come in. Unc and I had a cucumber sandwich at tea time...even though we do not have a formal tea time every day. LOL

Magnificent Mulberries

The mulberries are coming in.  Have you ever eaten a mulberry right from the tree, warm from the sunshine? It is like a very mild, sweet, soft blackberry without the tart and without the seed.

The heavy rains earlier this year probably washed the pollen off of the trees, Unc told me, resulting in a very sparse crop of mulberries this year.

We have one large mulberry tree on the west side of the farmhouse. The birds and deer eat most of those mulberries, so there are very few mulberries left for us humans. I also love the tree for its fall foliage also, so we continue to plant baby mulberry trees around the homeplace, knowing the wildlife will feast on the berries.

One year we even had a family of skunks come to visit and gorge themselves on mulberries  every night.

That was back when we used window fans in the bedrooms to pull in cooler air at night. Skunks travel in a cloud of their infamous odor, even if they have not been startled. I can still remember waking up to the pungent, undeniable odor of skunk in my bedroom. It is a rather alarming way to wake up! One does not go back to sleep easily while breathing eau de skunk!

Plus, in those days, our border collies lived outside, so I was always afraid the dogs would wake up and decide to chase away the skunks! Fun memories!

I love Mulberries so much, to eat and for the tree's beautiful fall foliage, that I sculpted an ornament and a brooch of the mulberry leaf. The angel is darting between the mulberry leaves in this sculpture. Her wings and skirt are made of mulberry leaves.