Cookbooks and adventures in cooking

I love cookbooks, almost as much as I love regular books. I love flipping through various cookbooks, imagining all the meals I could create, all the challenges I could try. It's fun for me. I know, probably not all that exciting for most of you, but it's my thing. But not only do I love cookbooks, I love the ones that have stories, and history and interesting tidbits in them. Like the Sweety Pie one I blogged about recently, with all the "womanish observations", I loved it! I recently found another one kinda like it, but on the opposite end of the spectrum (sweety pie was written by a black woman and is full of "soul food" kinda stuff with stories of strong wonderful black women)

Here is the Cracker Kitchen.



Yes, Cracker as in redneck, hillbilly, etc. It too was full of wonderful nostalgic stories from another time and place, full of humor and entertainment. AND wonderful recipes!!

hilarious.... it goes on here with a story about one of her daughters finding a recipe about "cooters" in a southern magazine and sharing it with her sisters and they all died laughing for quite some time. If you aren't familiar with what "cooter" is referring to,....well I'll just leave it at that.



It honestly had a section with recipe's for stuff like squirrel, possum, turtle, etc.! But it also had other good stuff in it too.

I am so drawn to the 50's-60's era of time, a simpler pace of life, where moms stayed home and baked all day, and dad's worked 9 to 5 and came home to read the newspaper, lol. I can see myself as the devoted 50's housewife, but then again, I can also see me at the protests burning my bra in the 60's! Hee hee. I always say I'm a walking contradiction, I can easily see myself at the opposite ends of the spectrum all the time.

Anyways, Alan has been working super-duper hard this week, so I wanted to show him some of that devoted housewife stuff. Monday when he came home at like 8pm, after 16 hours of work, I had Wrestling on the TV (his equivilent to "the game" being on) and a TV tray set up with his yummy dinner (which was breakfast for dinner that day). And yesterday I wanted to spoil him by making his favorite meal of fried chicken, even though the last time I tried was about 5 or 6 years ago, and it went horribly wrong somewhere, lol. But I was ready to master this culinary classic. And he loves pecan pie, so I wanted to make him a homemade, from scratch pie as well.

my first made from scratch pie crust. I'm usually a pilsbury ready crust kinda gal. :)




Chocolate Bourbon pecan pie




Here goes nothing........




Woo hoo!! I think I did it! Alan gave it a thumbs up, and Bourbon even said "This might even be better than KFC!" lol





Dinner is served! Fried Chicken, cheddar garlic mashed potatos, green beans and cornbread muffins with honey butter. And then of course... pie!



of course my dinner looked significantly different! I had baked tilapia with asparagus. Still yummy, but not the same! I think I have mastered the self-control thing. I make yummy food all the time now and don't touch it at all. Woo hoo, I actually can have self-control!! Go me!