To view a full index of all of the recipes I’ve posted (about three hundred), click here. Thank you so much for visiting! Gratefully, Christy For me, the ultimate Christmas treat (besides anything and everything my mother makes) is fudge! Decadent, rich, and so good you’d best not make it too many other times of [...]
This stuff is evil. Bad. Horrible. I cannot be left alone in the house with it ~takes a ragged breath and hangs her head in shame~ I love this stuff! Mama and Grandmama both have their own recipes for Chex mix but today I’m bringing you Mama’s because it is the quickest, easiest, and has [...]
I try to teach optimism to my kids. I’ve always felt that teaching children the benefits of a positive attitude is a vital lesson which will benefit them the rest of their lives. I tell them, “Each day when you wake up, you have a choice. You can have a good day or you can [...]
(Originally posted July 10, 2008. Please see letter at bottom) Tea rooms in the south are a far cry from formalized locales where you sit up straight, sip hot tea, and nibble on a scone. In the south, our tea rooms have a relaxed and bright atmosphere. They are filled with smiling ladies gathered together [...]
Throughout my childhood, this was our one must have cookie for Christmas. Mama would make a huge batch so we all had plenty to decorate. She cut them in shapes of trees, stars, and reindeer and each of us got our own platter full. She mixed up red, green, and yellow icing and always had [...]
Several readers have emailed me asking about ideas for Christmas entertaining when hosting gatherings. Seeing as how this is the best time of the year, we don’t want to be sweating away in the kitchen when our family comes to pay call! (Mama would object to me using the term “sweating”. She says ladies do [...]
This is my Dad’s favorite cake at Christmas time and Easter and its just divine beyond compare. Another great refrigerator cake, it can be made three days ahead of time and then left to sit in the fridge as it just grows moister with every passing minute. Coconut around the Holidays is a tradition in [...]
I made this a while back but wasn’t going to post it, thinking it was likely something everyone did and y’all might think I was crazy for actually doing a tutorial on it! Yesterday though, I went to my son’s school and sat with his class while the teacher’s had a gathering. I took a [...]
Life during the depression in rural Alabama wasn’t too different from any other time of year for my people. You see, they were sharecroppers – dirt farmers who didn’t even own their own dirt. They wouldn’t have known if the world had been prosperous, their lives had always been a struggle of hard work and [...]
Katy and I went out to lunch last week, while her daddy was at work and her brother in school. It was a little girl time and produced some great conversation. Anytime you get an almost-four year old to sit still long enough to be able to express their thoughts, you know you’re in for [...]
I am THRILLED to be able to post this recipe on Southern Plate from Laura over at Real Mom Kitchen! I asked Laura if she would like to be a guest blogger, knowing she’d bring us something wonderful, but I was not prepared for this level of splendor! As soon as she sent me her [...]
Today I’m bringing you another kid friendly recipe sure to please! I don’t know any child who doesn’t love hot chocolate, but very few who have gotten to make their own hot chocolate mix. This is a recipe from my first grade teacher, Mrs. Menotti. We made it as a class when I was six [...]
In the age of outlandish holidays with ever growing price tags, just about everyone appreciates a heartfelt gift personally made for them. Gift mixes are an excellent way of doing this. Baked goods are always well liked, but mixes offer even more time saving convenience on the part of the giver and give the receiver [...]
This mix is special for two very important reasons. 1. It is a coffee drink!! 2. Thanks to sugar free products, I can actually drink it! What a perfect gift for that person who is dieting or has to watch their sugar. At last, something for us!
I had planned on being a good girl and bringing you another mix yesterday and today, but you know how life can interrupt your plans! I was a wee bit under the weather yesterday and today we had a field trip with Katy’s preschool to Santa’s Village in Huntsville, AL. If you live in our [...]
I love making quick breads to give away. They make the perfect little gift and are always appreciated, especially at Christmas time. A few years back, I decided to try tossing some dried cranberries into our super moist banana bread recipe and this was born. My mother instantly fell in love and it has been [...]
While I dig in to do several tutorials today, two guest bloggers are here to bring you a great and inexpensive gift idea for classmates, young children, or even a thoughtful little gift for coworkers and neighbors! Even the youngest child can help put together these great treats and hand them out with pride, knowing [...]
Many of us are getting ready for our big dinner tomorrow and most of those will be starring our favorite bird! I thought y’all might be interested in how we cook our turkey. Mama actually took photographs of doing this for this post, but she high tailed it off to Gatlinburg and forgot to send [...]
Perfect Pecan Pie (Guaranteed not to be pecan soup!) With just two days until Thanksgiving, I thought I’d give y’all some last minute ideas by showing you Southern Plate recipes which will definitely be on our Thanksgiving table this year! We have an obscene amount of food but every family goes home with plenty of [...]
Alright, I know I always tell you how much I love everything I post here. Well, I decided when I started Southern Plate that if I didn’t love a recipe, I just wouldn’t post it. So I am always telling the truth when I go on and on about how good something is. This is [...]
These pecan pie muffins have been a huge hit on Southern Plate. I’ve had so many readers email me singing their praises that I thought they’d make the ideal gift mix for the holidays! For this packaging, I went for a more “retail” type look and had a good bit of fun making the tags! [...]
I don’t know how Thanksgiving works with your family but I imagine it is somewhat similar to how it works with mine. Siblings, spouses, kidders, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, and anyone else who happens to want a good meal that day gathers at my mother’s house. Most of us come in toting various dishes full of [...]
This year we all seem to be feeling or at least dreading the crunch on our wallets more than ever. Whether its fear of job security, more payments than usual, or a simple lack of money, one thing is clear : This is not what Christmas is supposed to be about. Christmas is about family, [...]
I don’t know if pumpkin is a southern thing. You always hear of pumpkin pie on Southern tables at Thanksgiving and such, but no one in my family has ever made a pumpkin pie to my knowledge. I had never tasted anything at all with pumpkin until about three years ago. While on a quilting [...]
As kids, one of our favorite Sunday desserts was pecan pie. It seemed like Mama made one almost every Sunday, too. That was the day when we always had even more dinner guests than usual. You see, people tended to gravitate towards our house at meal time (Mama has always made amazing meals) and my [...]
When I was a little girl, we didn’t have CD’s or even cassette tapes. This will come as no surprise to all of you but my nine year old simply can’t comprehend it. I imagine he envisions us sitting on the front porch with a washboard and set of spoons as our only means of [...]
This is the first of many cookies recipes to come! Tune in every week through December for a new (and unique) cookie recipe as well as a gift mix, complete with preprinted tag and instructions! This is the first of many cookie recipes I plan on bringing you this baking season so get those cookie [...]
Southerners LOVE congealed salads! We have recipes for them which include all manner of fruits AND vegetables. They are a throwback to days when food was scarce and gelatin was cheap. Door to door salesmen carried a wide array of it and my grandmothers used to delight in purchasing a multitude of what was likely [...]
