Terrifying

BabyDaddy and I scored some excellent, fresh lady peas from the green grocer yesterday. We also got baby sweet potatoes and the Best Tomatoes In The History of Man. Here’s what I do with super fresh lady peas (my favorite cowpea variety):

Fresh Lady/Purple Hull/Cow/Black-eyed Pea:

Legumes

Water to cover

Salt to taste

Wash peas and remove leaves and strings and shell fragments (It ain’t Grammaw pickin’ them clean anymore, kids. Machines can now sit on the glider on the front porch in the heat.) Cover peas with water by one inch. Add one tsp of salt per inch of water. Bring to a boil. Test after 10 minutes. Fresh peas are done when there is a bit of resistance to the tooth and a slight grassy flavor in the end product. Serve with cornbread/biscuits, butter, and hot sauce. Greens and sliced garden tomatoes are mandatory.

You are now a Southerner. Congratulations. Now go support the Dixie Chicks. Sketchy LOVES them.

THIS RECIPE IS NOT CORRECT. PLEASE SEE FIFI’S COMMENT FOR THE REAL LIPSMACKER.

BabyDaddy ate himself sick and wanted more.

I saw the recipe and would still feed it to my family.

Meet the epitome of Bad-For-You-Food.

Sharon Ritz by Way of Aunt Bunny’s Vermicelli Salad v. Fifi 2.0

14 oz vermicelli, broken into pieces

2 t Accent aka MSG

Nature’s Seasoning to taste (I think this is an herbal MSG vehicle)

1 10oz jar sliced green olives, drained well

1 15oz can sliced black olives, drained well

1 bunch green onions, sliced

1/2 c shredded carrots

2 c mayonnaise

Cook pasta according to directions. Drain. Add Accent & Nature’s Seasonings while pasta is warm. Chill. Add olives, onions, and carrot, mixing well. Add mayo to taste. Chill well.

Warm up the defibrillator.

She was my grandmother, but so much more.

A real life force, Honey was the best person I’ve ever known. She was so kind, so gentle, so honorable. The last 10 years of her life were a blur of trying to keep her happy, in a good way. She loved her great grandchildren so much. It was almost more than she could take. She paid Mary, Mary and me to pick worms off of her Catawbas when we were kids. She was number one in the grandparent department, unconditionally. BabyDaddy knew it. We all did.

Miss Mary made horrible food, but she was the best person I’ve ever known. Fifi is allowed to have issues with her mom, but she was good nail polish, cheap paperbacks, terrible gossip rags, diamond watches, dirty Playskool toys, and white picket fences to me.

What a legacy.

The Last Thing Honey Made for Me

1 avocado, mashed

1 onion, diced

1 c mayonnaise

Mix all together. Let turn gray. Inform your grandchild you have made her favorite dish. Heap a 2 c scoop on her plate with saltines. Take 24 different prescriptions.

I love my Honey, but this was a Therapy Worthy meal. She would love that, lol.

Here she is, holding a bunch of random stuff a 4 year old gave her:

*A Cautionary Tale*

First the bizarre! I bought 62 food items from my grocer, including produce, dairy, & meat, and the total was $134.00. TRUST ME, that has never, ever, ever happened in the Recipe house. That is about one hippie/canvas/reusable bag for us. We can economize!

Now the tragic. The SR method of potato bakery involves a spud, a cotton towel, and a microwave. Then you wrap the hot tater in foil and let it percolate for about 15 minutes.

Had I known that this towel had a martyr complex,

or wanted to make a statement about the environmental effects of casual microwave use,

I would have listened and kept it in general dish drying rotation. But NOOOOOOO. It had to catch on fire, causing me to throw it out the back door, panic, and douse it with a carafe of water.

What The Hell? - I don’t mind telling you that I have had to have an extra glass of box wine to get through this. And I’m not the only one who is traumatized.

Hey, I live on the Sun. It’s hot. It’s humid. The Recipe house is not well cooled and it was built before 1935. I don’t like using the oven for about 7 months out of the year.

BUT

I will make my baked beans. They’re the best that processed foods can give us. One day, the sky will blacken and we’ll all be choosing between red and blue pills, but for now, we have my Party Beans.

Party Beans

2 cans Bush’s Vegetarian Baked beans

1 BIG OLE can, Durkee’s (I don’t care IF they’re called French’s now) fried onions

mustard, to taste (I use Dijon because I’m snooty.)

Mrs. Butterworth’s - that’s right, Mrs. Like all good things, she’s taken, boys - to taste

Caveat: Do Not Use Good Maple Syrup. For some insane reason, Mrs. Butterworth’s works best in this.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Pour beans into rational size baking dish. Add mustard and syrup. Stir and taste. Correct terrifying seasonings. Add equally frightening fried onions to oniony saturation point. Bake until bubbly.

Try to hold back tears as people you have handmade puff pastry for ooh and aah over this pile of scrumptious chemicals.