Patsy's Semi Homemade Dressing

I have always been envious of my sister’s ability to make dressing like my Aunt Grace. It was one of those “dishes” I was afraid to tackle. To tell the truth I was more terrified at failing at cooking something more than anything. I have a fairly good reputation as a cook so a lot was on the line. At Church dinner on the grounds, people hunt down my pots. Needless to say, I have heavy pressure to deliver only good, excuse me, great tasting food to my hunger crowd.

During lunch one day, I was discussing the fact that I needed a recipe for dressing. When my crazy friend Patsy exclaimed that she had the perfect and easiest recipe. Patsy is a fairly good cook, to be honest-- I have never tasted anything, Patsy has made and thought man that was gross. Instead I have sought out her recipes. So I trusted that she might just be my ticket to develop a tasty dish of dressing.


Now keep in mind that I am the kind of person that anytime dressing is served I gorge out. However, I am not a fan of just anybody’s dressing. Some pot stirrers like to put a little too much strong seasoning and extra things that don’t belong in the dressing pot like apples, sausage and even worse celery….yuck. Back to Patsy, So she started rattling off her recipe. I thought to myself—“Hey I think I can make Patsy’s Dressing”. I changed the recipe slightly to make it like Aunt Grace’s. I am pretty impressed with my dressing- if I must say. So here’s a copy of Patsy’ Semi Homemade Dressing with my additions.


Patsy’s Dressing

3 chicken breasts
1 bag of Pepperidge Cornbread Dressing (yellow bag)
1 can cream of chicken
Salt
Red pepper
Nature’s Seasoning
1 tsp or more Poultry Seasoning
1 small onion chopped really fine
6-8 boiled eggs
2 Tablespoon butter
1 skillet of cornbread recipe to follow


Boil the chicken in lots of water mixed with salt, pepper, and nature’s seasoning.
Remove the breast then add the following soup, poultry seasoning, butter and onion. Continue to simmer.

Save the broth to mix with dry ingredients later.
Mix the cornbread dressing bag with the fresh cornbread until all big pieces are broken.
Add chopped the eggs and shredded chicken to the dressing.

Stir in the broth until the desired consistency. I like mine soupy and slightly gummy.
Pour into a big deep dish.
Bake 350 for an hour and 10 minutes or longer.

Cornbread

2 cups Martha White Buttermilk Cornbread Mix
2 tablespoons Self-rising Flour
2 Eggs
1 ½ cups Buttermilk or a little more
Oil to cover the bottom of the skillet

Mix all dry ingredients then add the eggs and buttermilk. Pour into a cast iron skillet. Bake at 450 until golden brown.

Mrss. Steadman's Tiny Pecan Mufins

Last week, we went trick or treating with friends. Before the big event, everyone was munching and snacking in the kitchen. I popped one of these little muffin things in my mouth…needless to say I had to find the baker and get a hold of the recipe. The lady rambled off what she thought was in the recipe, but said she would call Wendy with the exact recipe . Often and on through the week I have thought “man I wish I could get a hold of that lady for that recipe”.

Saturday morning I was sitting on the floor franticallylooking in my cupboard for something sweet to cook for mom and dad, when the phone started ringing. Steven looked at the caller id and said “Who is Steadman?”. My first thought was Angela’s first grade teachers. But I was wrong. Steven handled the phone to me…it was the mystery baker. My meal was saved and my craving was cured. The recipe makes 36. Thirty minutes after baking these little bite size delights 2 are remaining.

Hopefully they will have the same satisfactory rate as the ones last week at the Halloween Party and today at lunch.

Enjoy and lick the bowl clean,

Kimberly

Tiny Pecan Muffins

½ cup Self Rising Flour
1 cup Light Brown Sugar
1 stick Melted Butter
2 Beaten Eggs
1 tsp. Vanilla
1 cup Chopped Pecans



Mix all ingredients together and then stir in pecans. Bake in mini muffin tins at 350 for15 minutes. Yield: not near enough or 36 bites.

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Cream Cheese Pastry

This is one of my most requested recipes. The dish is always licked clean. I remember years ago someone at Pine Grove made this dessert. Angela and I fixed it often, then like most recipes, we found a new one and forgot about the old one. My friend Wendy made it for some event at school and flash back of goodness crossed my mind. The recipe is from the Mount Pleasant Baptist Cookbook, in which Connie Hines submitted. Enjoy....

Cream Cheese Pastry

2 packages crescent rolls

2 packages (8 oz) cream cheese

1 cup sugar

1 can of pie filling (I like cherry)

Preheat oven to 375

Press one of the crescent rolls in the bottom of a 9x13.

Mix the cream cheese and sugar until fluffy.

Spread over the crescent roll. Spoon the cherries over the filling.

Place the second crescent roll over the top. Press the seams together.

Bake until golden brown.

Melt 3 tablespoons of butter, mix with powdered sugar and a little milk to make a glaze for the top. Serve hot.

Fried Eggplant

I love eggplant from my head right down to my bossy toe. I could eat it everyday; almost anyway you want to fix it. Thanks to my dad’s outstanding eggplant growing abilities, I am able to have them all summer long. As I said before, dad grows a fairly BIG garden for all his church friends, sisters (and sister in-law), and ME…. Thank the LORD he loves me enough to plant, hoe, spray, pick and bring me eggplant all summer long.

He grows his garden along side his 80 acres of watermelons. He finished loading melons about the middle of June, but has continued to reap the goodness from his garden. A couple of weeks ago, he commented that the cows were needing to be turned on the melon patch, but he knew how much I loved the eggplant and had decided to wait a little longer. I hope it’s after the eggplant bushes quit producing before he turns the cows in the field. Usually after a visit with my mom and dad, mysteriously eggplants are left on my counter or in my car…yum yum.


Fried Eggplant

1 medium eggplant
1 cup milk
lots of flour self rising or all purpose will do
salt
HOT grease.

Cut the prickly end and bottom off . Peel the purple skin off. Cut the eggplant in to thin slices about ¼ in inch thick.
Recently, I have started cutting them into strips like French fries. I think my family likes them better in the strips. Then lay them on paper towels. First sprinkle salt on the eggplants.

The secret to excellent fried eggplant is DRY**WET**DRY.

Then coat them with flour.

When your grease is good and hot, dip the eggplant into the milk, then flour a second time. Place in the HOT grease. Cook until lightly brown and flip over.

Place on a cookie sheet or plate lined with paper towel to drain off the excess grease. Sample to see if they need additional salt added. Serve immediately. I love them so much, that I eat them cold.

Bacon Wrapped Chicken

This is a recipe I had gotten from a friend of mine, Wendy, when she was on the Atkins’s Diet. My family enjoys this during summer grilling months. It is quick and easy but most important—it is delicious.

Bacon Wrapped Chicken on the George Forman

2-3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
½ cup soy sauce
thinner sliced bacon
salt
pepper
Morton’s Nature’s seasoning

Cut the chicken breast into thirds.
Marinate the chicken in the soy sauce and season to taste.

Soak for twenty minutes.
Preheat the George Forman.

Wrap the chicken in slice of bacon.
Place on the grill and cook until done.

Wendy cooks hers in the oven. A few minutes before the chicken is done, she places cheese on the top.

Marsha's Eggplant Casserole

Recipes and friends have a lot in common. If you find a good one you better keep it. Marsha is a great friend and regardless of what she says she can cook.

This is a recipe for a dish she made for my family after I had Charlee. For over five years, it has been one of our family’s summer favorites. It really helps that my dad has a plethora of eggplants to satisfy our hunger for this delicious dish.

Marsha’s Eggplant Casserole

2 eggplants diced
½ onions sliced
Bacon drippings or butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook over a medium heat in a non stick skillet until tender and sort of translucent.

If it begins to stick add about ¼ cup of water.

Add a can of whole tomatoes continue cooking for 5 minutes.

Pour mixture into a baking dish. Bake a 350 for 20 minutes. Top with grated cheddar cheese. Cook until the cheese melts.

Steven’s Aunt Betty makes a similar dishes but uses zucchini instead of the eggplant and then tops it with mozzarella cheese for the top.

Aunt Judy's Fudge Cake

Aunt Judy’s Fudge Cake was the first recipe I added to my collection when I was about 8. Therefore, I feel as though it should be the first within the collection on my blog.I have heard this cake called all sorts of names ---but I prefer to call it “Aunt Judy’s Fudge Cake”.




When I was a little girl, I always loved going to my Uncle Dutton and Aunt Judy’s house in Ocala. I remember the hospitality and excitement that came with our visits. Her kitchen counters would be lined with the most scrumptious dishes. We typically visited on the BIG holidays, when my mom’s brother’s families would gather. If you know anything about my mom, you know she is not a cook. Having holidays with the Long’s provided great opportunities, for our family to try dishes made from real recipes. In other words, my mom cooked the same mundane meals---- a fried meat, a starch, and 1 vegetable. When we visited with the Longs, we also became “cultured”. I remember one Thanksgiving eating the most amazing cake I had ever tasted. My mom’s cakes, if she baked one, came out of a box. I asked Aunt Judy for the recipe. After that Thanksgiving, I entered the cake in the Suwannee River Fair and received a blue ribbon (the only Home Eco blue I received). This cake also serves as my faithful standby. At any given time, I have the ingredients needed to make the cake. Very seldom, do I have leftovers. But if I do –they just get better with age. Over thirty years later, it is still by far, my favorite cake.



Aunt Judy has always been an inspiration to me. She was a success educator, fantastic mother to 5 children, and divine cook. As a child, I loved to visit her home. She never seemed to mind our wild country family barging into her home. She encouraged Angela and me to play the piano while she listened. She would make it a point to talk individually with each of us and discuss our life happenings. She always had the fluffiest towels and coldest drinks for us when we got out of the pool. Needless to say, Aunt Judy taught me the essence of being a great hostess.


Aunt Judy’s Fudge Cake

1 cup water
½ cup oil
1 stick butter
¼ cup cocoa

Heat to boiling on the stove

In a mixing bowl, mix together
2 cups all purpose flour (or cake)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups sugar

Add heated mixture. Then mix the following
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup sour milk (or buttermilk)

Bake 350 degrees in a greased 9 X 13 pan for 40 minutes.


Icing

Heat to boiling
1 stick butter
¼ cup cocoa
6 tablespoons milk

Turn Off heat add

1 box powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Chopped nuts

Pour icing over hot cake and enjoy