1. Southern Plate Is Getting Around!

2. Whats coming up on Southern Plate
(How I’m going to make your Christmas easier, less expensive, and more meaningful!)

3. Whose Cooking With Southern Plate!

4.What I want for Christmas…

5. Merry Christmas! Free shipping!

6. Your Input

7. Comments and Emails

8. A Little Bit About Me, My Grandparent Surplus, And Why I LOVE Generics

I am amazed, stunned, thrilled, flabbergasted, and grateful as all get out to every single one of you WONDERFUL people who read Southern Plate! Since Southern Plate began the second week of July (not quite four months ago), we’ve had over 300,000 visitors!  During the month of October alone, I received 749 emails! (I really do want to answer each one of them, hang in there, I’m tryin’!)

My first food column ran last week in the Athens Courier. If you’d like to see it, just click here!
Y’all, I have ALWAYS wanted to be in print. I should probably say that I read it calmly and put it up for safekeeping with little reaction, but y’all know me better than that! I left early to get the kids to school so I could stop by a newspaper stand and get one (Hmmm, maybe I should subscribe to it at this point?) and hurried back into the car with my paper. I flipped through that thing like wildfire until I came to my page and then SQUEALED so loudly that even my youngest said “Geez mom, you’re hurting my ears”.

Jennifer Hill, the lifestyles editor, wrote a column about me and WOW, by the time I was done reading it I almost wanted to meet myself! Thank you for your kindness and generosity with that column, Jennifer! Y’all hang on to your hats, if this keeps up folks will actually start taking thinking I know what I’m doing here!

I also write a Southern Plate column for al.com, the largest website in Alabama devoted to all things Alabama. OH and Southern Plate was featured on Foodbuzz as one of the 24 participants in the 24/24/24 event this month! You can view my post on the Dixie Brunch that I made for that event (along with all of the recipes, of course!) here.

I hope you all know how grateful I am for you taking the time to read SP, telling your friends, commenting, emailing, and trying out your recipes. Southern Plate is a direct result of the AMAZINGLY wonderful people who read it. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!

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Beginning this week, EACH WEEK through December I am going to bring you a new cookie recipe AND instructions for a gift mix COMPLETE with printable tags (which include instructions, just attach to your gift and go!) and inexpensive wrapping ideas!

Don’t you just hate it when you see a great homemade gift idea and they wrap it in a ten dollar package? Goodness, I could have bought a gift! My packagings will cost no more than $1.50, with most of them costing less than fifty cents to wrap…seriously! Its homemade gifts that mean the most so stay tuned, I have plenty of ideas coming up to keep the money in your pocketbook and put MORE meaning into your gifts!

Tipnut (One of my all time favorite sites) featured our Taco Soup! Thanks, Tip nut!

Tina at Mommy’s Kitchen posted about Strawberry Punch Bowl Cake and Tea Cakes!

Yellow Jeep Blonde posted about pecan pie muffins.
(I have such fun reading her blog!)

Growing Up Gabel posted about Crock Pot Oatmeal!

Almost Frugal Food posted about pintos and cornbread.

You have a treat coming as you’ll learn about by reading Mama Belle’s post over at Bayou Belle’s And Their Beau. She’s speaking with her readers about her upcoming guest spot on Southern Plate and what delicious cajun dish she is going to bring us!

Bodhi Baby posted about our Chicken Stew.I went to her site to read about the stew and ended up sitting there for half an hour! LOL!

Y2K Hippie made tea cakes, and her husband sure was happy!

Adventures of A Working Mom included our pintos and cornbread on her meal plan monday!She also posted about cooking large quantities of ground beef using this method.

Southern Plate was also listed in the Carnival Of Chicken Recipes for Chicken Stew.

A Common Book made hoe cakes, looking yummy!

Dee of Dee’s Divine Designs made Dixie Cornbread (always a favorite!)

There is the sweetest post written about Southern Plate at Life At The Lake. So very sweet!


The Adventures Of Heather made apple butter and canned it using the canning tutorial!

Zesty Cook featured Southern Plate twice on his weekly favorites list! Zesty is a blogging buddy who is just as nice as they come. He also has a picky eater in his house…just like I do. I wonder which one of us has made the most peanut butter sandwiches? Hmm…

Stephanie is at it again! She just about did me in with her french onion soup because I WANTED IT SO BAD. She made hoe cake again on her blog along with oodles of other goodness.

~Takes a deep breath and whispers~ “Y’all, I would just love to win this”. I know its not likely and all but if I did…I’d buy myself that Ego light I’ve been wanting for my food photographs. You see, you….you...~looks around to make sure no one is listening but you~ You win money…and..I actually kinda like money, but just sometimes, mind you! ~grins~

Anyway, I would just love so much to be able to win this and thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to vote for me. I appreciate your help, your kindness, and the time you put into voting!! If you get a chance and wouldn’t mind, I would really appreciate your vote as well!

Its a fun website to nose around on, too! There is a short registration process to vote but you don’t have to sign up for anything and they won’t hound you afterward, promise!

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If you buy two or more Cookbooks now through Christmas, you’ll get FREE Shipping via media rate postal service! In order to take advantage of this offer you must purchase more than one cookbook and use the button on the right sidebar, above the table of contents. To purchase a single cookbook or to preview entire table of contents and several pages, continue to use this link.

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I’ve thought about doing videos or podcasts for some of Southern Plate’s content. If you think this would be a good idea (or if anyone would have a need for them), let me know your ideas for this in the comments section. I’m kind of on the fence as to whether or not it is neccesary. If you have any other ideas for increasing readership, I’d love to hear those in the comments section as well! Mostly, I need ideas which don’t require much more time than I’m already putting into it. I LOVE writing Southern Plate and am having the time of my life, but its already taking up a good five hours or so a day so ….how can I continue to get word out without needing more time to put into it?
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Every day, the thing I look forward to the most with Southern Plate is reading the comments and emails I recieve. If it weren’t for those, I’d have no idea if I was hitting homers or pitching to an empty stadium, THANK YOU  SO MUCH! Earlier this week, my email subscribers know I had a freak glitch (Thank you, Google!) in which my feed address was changed without my prior knowledge. My subscription service picked this up as being a new feed from me and automatically sent out every post I had put up for the month of October…in a matter of about two minutes. I was absolutely mortified.

I sent out an apology letter to each email subscriber and sat back, just waiting on the nasty emails to come with dread and a churning stomach. Emails did come alright….and they came in a big way. By the next day I had over four hundred emails from my readers with words of assurance, gratitude, and kindness unlike I could have ever imagined. Truly, you are the most wonderful people on the planet. I am hoping to respond to each one, but if I don’t get to, please know that I read every single one of those blessed replies to my letter and each one added to the happiness and gratitude that I have for all of you. I don’t know how I got so lucky, I truly don’t.

I don’t always get to answer each comment like I would like to do. Mostly this happens on weeks where a lot is going on at my son’s or daughter’s school or where I get busy with other things (I’ve been working on Southern Plate posts for the holidays as well as a holiday cookbook for y’all). Please know that I do appreciate and read every single comment. Y’all make me laugh, y’all make me smile, y’all let me into your homes and I count each one of you as a friend.

Heinz Ketchup - Wal Mart brand trumped them…so that one no longer applies!