Lotta Leftovers!

So, Demontray (my god-son) and I were making or should I say getting ready to make Brookins Beef Stroganoff (from the American Beach Cookbook for those of you who haven't read any of the other posts)I tripled the recipe.  With two men in the house and Daddy taking  leftovers for work I thought this would be just right.  We went to Publix and bought a huge package of very cheap meat (bottom round) and brought it home and ran it through the tenderizer.  The recipe calls for beef shoulder or top round, but they were practically giving the bottom away so....bottom it was!  Anyway we cut our meat into the One inch wide and one-quarter inch thick strips just like it said.....all five pounds of it, and Demontray declares, "I want to go home today".  What!! I have five pounds of beef....ready to be browned!  We had washed it and lovingly patted it dry with paper  towels....all five pounds.....each piece....(everyone should know by now that if you don't dry the meat "it won't brown properly"  Juila Child taught us that.)  What do you mean you want to go home?, I asked. I'm sure I had a look on my face.  We just got started. What about browning this stuff?  With his usual fabulous smile and extremely loving hug, he looked me dead in the eyes and said..Oh that's okay.....you can do it.  I promise I'll be back on Monday!  And off he scooted....not before telling me ...I love you so much as he exited!  So I browned beef. All afternoon!  Montray is usually the browner of the family.  It's his thing..well one of them.  He feels like it's real cooking if you have to flip it in grease.  ....We do live in the south!  This recipe didn't call for dredging the meat in flour first.  Thank heaven!  Anyway it was absolutely delicious!  I'm a grits....you know girl raised in the south.  My southern cooking skills ARE what they should be!  But this cookbook takes my souther-ness cooking to a new level!  Imagine actually browning meat without flour! I had never heard of such a thing.  But there must be something to it. I was out of this world good.  Creamy gravy with wonderful savory flavors with a zing of lemon from the marinade.  Over egg noodles! Yummy!  The recipe was submitted by Melba Brookins Sunday.  Before the recipe it talks about Mrs. Sunday a bit.  Seems she cooks it just like her mother did years ago when they still used a wood stove.  It talks about her father being a builder of homes in our area.  It mentions that when the kids were in high school He bought them cars and when they finished college and decided to marry he built them homes.  It also shows a picture of Mrs. Sunday when she was still a Brookins from 1935.....putting on the sass a little with a new car.  In case you haven't seen this cookbook yet it's more like a memoir....that's what my girlfriend Kim says anyway.  It gives a lot of history on American Beach and having three God-children from a different race I thought it would be nice to give them a little local history that talks about their race also and not just what the white folks are doing all the time.  With  that said I think we all know that it is a very deep subject and history always involves everyone.  Speaking of everyone I'm getting ready to pass out my notebooks to some of the men involved in my book.  I'll start posting about them soon I hope.  I'm giving them notebooks with the instructions of writing down a bible verse each day and commenting on it.  What ever it means to them. The book is all about Jesus and the black male.  How He works in the lives of these particular men  or in some cases how He is not allowed to work for whatever reason.  The portraits will really speak to the readers I hope and give some insights into how we are all the same....yet different. And just because we're different doesn't mean you have to be afraid of one another.   The pictures will be accompanied by bible verses and bio-type text in the back.  It has been a major trip taking these pictures and getting to know the men and their families.  I am so grateful that our heavenly Father knew I would love  this, because I never could have come up with this on my own.  Commit your works to the LORD, and your thoughts will be established.  Proverbs 16:3

Psa 1:3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water, That bringeth forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also doth not wither; And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

Sunday morning Demontray ,my god-son,  and I were driving to church and he said, for about the 1000th time,do you smell that? I smell something burning.  This is not what I want to hear. No I don't smell anything!  Then I had to laugh.  You see, my grandmother used to be known for her keen sense of smell.  She always smelled "something"  She would scrunch up her face and say,"Something smells hummee".  The rest of the family never smelled anything.  My son Randy could not smell a dead skunk if I rubbed his face in it.  I was the lucky one in the family, or should I say blessed.  Strangely when my grandmother died.....I started smelling things. But unlike her I don't say,"Something smells Humm-ie".  Everything I smell... that's strange ...smells like cat pee.  Don't ask me why, but my whole family responds when I say, I smell.....they all chime in with Cat Pee.  So I had to laugh at Demontray. Even though he is not a blood relative he seems to have the smell genes that run so deep in our family tree.  Oddly enough my god-daughter, Trelinda, hums, just like I do.  I have been annoying my family for years with my humming!  Apparently I get quite loud and really add some off-beat rhythms with it.  You know accenting in-between  the beats.  This REALLY DRIVES MY MOTHER NUTS.  Since she is not musical she can't appreciate my syncopation.  Anyway, I never knew how maddening  humming could be until my sweet Trelinda came along.  I love her dearly, but I swear one day I'm gonna get her for that constant humming!!!  God thinks this is funny I'm sure. I don't.  Smelling... humming... humming ...smelling!!   I guess the Lord really picked out the perfect god-children for me.  Did I mention that Daddy and I are empty-nesters?   I think this makes the smelling and humming especially pertinent! Don't you?  Our heavenly Father is certainly working on my patience and obedience!  I suppose I'm glad.  Actually I'm thrilled. I feel so sorry for all of the fifty year olds out there who don't get to start over. Just when the house is reallllllllyyyy starting to be nice and quiet.  I guess I'm just blessed to roll  that way!

Delight also in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart Psalm 37:4

As of this writing my  god-daughters have gone home for two weeks and I'm left with one god-son, Demontray.....   and Daddy.   Demontray  loves to cook and thinks he will make a pretty darn good chef one day. Daddy loves to eat and also thinks Demontray will make a pretty darn good chef one day.  We have been telling him about the Whitehouse chef gig, but he said he didn't want that job because we don't live in Washington. (he's just eleven....he still thinks we're great)   So we told him that if he gets the Whitehouse job one day....we'll move with him.  And he said  "ok ".
 Now with the girls out of his way he is thrilled to have the kitchen to himself or should I say ourselves.  We have become addicted to the movie Julie&Julia and decided we should try cooking our way through a cookbook also.  Although I grew up on Julia Child he really doesn't have a clue on her greatness!  Even though we have watched the movie at least twenty times.  So we (I) decided to pick a more relevant one for us to use.....The American Beach Cookbook by Marsha Dean Phelts.  Unlike Julie from Julie&Julia we opped out of a deadline.  It is summer, right?  NO DEADLINES!!

Our first endeavor was SHRIMP&GRITS!!   It was delicious.  I know I should have put  a picture of the finished product...but we were tired.  We had been having fun all day and after we ate, and we ate ALOT, we were ready to crash.  We did have one fo'pa .....that's southern for mistake...We double-doubled some of the ingredients and only doubled some others.  The only bad outcome though was we had way too many grits. Which really isn't a bad thang!  For some reason i wasn't expecting this dinner to be tasty.  I have tried several Shrimp and Grits recipes before and just have not gotten the results that I wanted.  But I was surprised. The meal was fabulous! Easy easy to make. Perfect for company if you can afford to feed shrimp to a crowd!  Fast Easy and SOOOOOOOO Good!  You may be wondering,or not , what we did with all the left over grits....we had at least a gallon.  We moved on to a fried grits recipe .  Hot Diggety Grits...the recipe was summited in the book by Harriett Bazzell Graham.  The book has a photo of Mrs. Graham from 1939 and talks a smidgen about her. Very cool!  The dish was just a wonderful as the previous one!  Definitely on our menu for life.  We will be eating fried grits every morning and maybe even lunch for at least three days.  But I'm not complaining! 

Summer 2010

I suppose I should give a short background on who I am. Okay....From the ages of 1-18....all I thought about was me.me.me.me .me. 19--35...me.me.me.me.me. Then at the age of thirty-five I met my Phillip. My love. I usually just call him Daddy. That's when I started to get the concept that the whole earth didn't revolve around me. I was a late bloomer..(in that area)....saddly it took a few more years after that for it to really sink in. And I'm sorry to say that it still hasn't sunk in completely. So that's me, for the most part.

I have always believed in God. But if you didn't know me very well you most likely would not have known this about me. I didn't live like I was a believer. I would pray all night and half the day for Him to show me what He wanted me to do with my life. For years I did this. Then... during the time I wasn't praying....I was out ...basically doing whatever made me happy....not giving much thought to whether it was pleasing to my heavenly Father or not. I always read my bible. I loved to read it. I believed everything it said. So why could I not figure out what my heavenly Father wanted me to do? Why was I not hearing from Him? Okay, I did say a short background didn't I? The gist of it is that one day my heavenly Father let me know that I had to LIVE like I wanted to serve Him. How could He send me out as His ambassador (i read that in a book....that we are his ambassadors and have always liked the sound of it) if I didn't live the way he wanted me to. He then gave me specific instructions to follow....like start praying for my neighborhood (of whom i didn't know many ) We are white......my community is black and until that day I thought never the two should meet. It's not that I didn't like my community....I just didn't know them and they didn't know me. I didn't really think they wanted to either. He changed that after I started praying. Quickly! Soon I knew just about everyone . He was giving me a chance to serve them as well.....laundry....grocery shopping.....you name it i was doing it . Someone said.....It's great to be a servant of the LORD.....until they start treating you like one. True That! These pictures are some of the people that have come into my life in the last five years. There's much more, but I did say the short version. I'll re-live things along and along, but for now just know that I'm writing a book about Jesus and how he works in the lives of people. The first book is on the black male.....complete with pictures and scripture. I'll be blogging about working on this as well as how it has changed my life! DAILY it changes my life! So for now know that we in the southern United States are enjoying summer....Hot Hot summer. WE (Daddy and I) are in the possession of our wonderful God-children! For most if not all of the summer. So far we've done nothing but cook....swim.....eat....and watch the cake boss and man vs food ......over and over again. When will I work on my book this summer? I'm not sure!