They are serious about the state motto on Florida, it really IS the Sunshine State! We have never been to Disney World when it was this hot before. It was as if the sun had a direct beam spotlighted on each one of us the entire time. WHEW, were we ever hot! You can imagine the thrill I felt when I heard there was a cold front in Alabama!
Other than the heat, we had a WONDERFUL time in Disney World and I got some GREAT recipes to share with you. I am going to do tutorials on them in the upcoming weeks. I’m so excited! Still, as good as the food was, we were all happy to get home and get some plain old homecooking again. I woke up at six Sunday morning and put a pork roast and some potatoes in the crock pot for lunch. Once it was ready, my son ate three plates of it! He said “Mama, your cooking is better than the best cooking at any restaurant in Disney World!”. Its just good to be home again!
Katy LOVED the Dumbo Elephant ride. It was second only to “It’s A Small World”. Brady rode every roller coaster and thrill ride in the park and got a big thrill out of the Indiana Jones stunt show. He is doing his best Indiana Jones “serious” face in the pic with his authentic fedora!
We just had a wonderful trip and I really enjoyed getting to hear from you all during the week. Thank you so much for commenting while I was away! I am getting started on catching up today, but I don’t think I am too far behind, thank goodness! I did manage to answer my emails while away and respond to most comments during Kate’s naps. I hope y’all had a wonderful week as well and I am looking forward to this week and all of the great things in store now that we are home again!
I plan on having my canning tutorial up by midweek, so stay tuned!
There’s a chill in the air, time to start my fall cooking!!
Gratefully,
Christy
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August 7, 2008
I received the hard copy proof of my cookbook in the mail today. It is just gorgeous. the quality of the printing, ink, paper, and coverstock floored me. I am so very pleased with it! There were a few spacing issues that we corrected tonight but everything should be a go to begin printing tomorrow or the first part of next week at best.
I should have cookbooks in hand easily in under two weeks. Everyone is urging me to order more than I had planned on in my first order but I can always reorder later so I am sticking with my initial number.
I have a waiting list of thirty already! I’m so very pleased with how this is turning out. I almost wish it wasn’t mine because I would so love to discover it and flip through the pages, being able to see each recipe as a new discovery! To me, cookbooks are better than novels!
School started today for Brady and Monday for Katy. Her preschool open house is tomorrow. Things are a little bit hectic right now but will slow down next week once I have a few hours to myself each week while Brady is in school and Katy in preschool. I hope to keep expanding Southern Plate, adding more tutorials and useful information.
This website is a lot of work, but I’m loving every minute of it!
Christy
July 27, 2008 Little Trip To The Tennessee Aquarium
We spent today at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga. All of these pics were taken with my iPhone. There is a line behind me to use the internet connection in our hotel room so I gotta hurry! You know, out of my entire family, the three year old is the only one who doesn’t blog!
Kidders outside
Wow, giant crab.. 
dun dun…dun dun…DUN DUN..DUN DUN..DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN!! AGGHH!
(that was supposed to be Jaws music)
Thank you all for reading my blog!!
Christy
July 26, 2008
Got my final draft of the cookbook as well as front and back cover pdf files in to the printer/publisher today. The lady I’m working with is super nice and has been so helpful the entire time. It was set into motion today (yes, they work on Saturdays!) and I should expect a pdf electronic proof in a few days. Once I approve that they will make me a print copy proof and mail it to me for final approval before they print the books. She says it will only take about five days to print them all and get them shipped out. So, either way you look at it, I’ll have the first order of my cookbooks in well under three weeks!
I made chicken and dumplings tonight and later am making fried apples. We tend to gorge on chicken and dumplings so I am giving us an hour or two in between :).
I can’t WAIT for fall!!! I have so many stew and apple recipes!!! Come September, I start making things with apples like mad! Thats when they come in at Scott’s Orchard in Toney, Alabama and we always make a big trip up there with the kids. I’ve done that ever since I was a little girl. I’m really looking forward to posting tutorials on apple spice muffins, apple snack cake, apple crisp, and most importantly: Mama’s Apple Dapple Cake.
I am so very tempted to go ahead and put up the chicken stew recipe, because it is just so very good and always requested when anyone in our family makes it. Still, I can put that idea aside when I walk outside into hundred plus weather.
~sighs~
Hurry up fall, I have so much cooking I want to do!
~Christy
7-23
AWARDS!
Leslie at the Hungry Housewife: I know I am sounding like a broken record at this point, but SHE IS SUCH A NICE PERSON! In addition to stunning food photography, I love her recipes! She’s also fun to watch goof off in her videos! LOL Brilliant, simply brilliant Dahling!
7-15
I woke up wondering what I could make for the site today. I have tutorials already done up for squash casserole, mandarin orange cake, and a few others, but noooooo I wanted to do something new. I’m saving those for a day I’m “not in the mood” to cook anyway.
I tossed around sweet potato pie, rice pudding, breakfast rice, and milk gravy over biscuits. The milk gravy got ruled out because someone specifically requested I do a tutorial on sausage gravy and I don’t have any sausage right now…the others got ruled out because I walked into my kitchen and saw the wondrous site of ripening bananas ~grins~.
I am baking banana bread as we speak and plan on showing some of the wondrously sinful things you can do to it tomorrow when I have “leftovers”. I use that term…rather lightly. Who are we kidding? No one actually has leftover banana bread. What I am going to do is hide a loaf of it and pretend I only made one in order to have some for tomorrow’s tutorial.
The cutest thing happened this morning. My three year old, Katy, was sitting at the table eating yogurt. She finished and started calling “More yogurt! More yogurt!”. I asked her, “What’s the magic word?” Without missing a beat, she looked up and smiled proudly and announced “Abracadabra!!”.
😀
I hope you enjoy the recipe today, but I know you will enjoy tomorrow’s even more. Trust me, its sinfully good. If you have any requests or questions, please do let me know. I want this blog to be as helpful as possible and will always do my very best to do any requested tutorials and answer every question as quickly as possible!
Thank you for stopping by! Y’all come back!
Christy
7-14
That post about the yellow cake with peanut butter icing just about did me in today. I swear I can almost see the three of them, Grandaddy, Red, and Lela standing around my table looking down at my kids eating the cake. My son is named after Grandaddy.
This weekend was absolutely amazing. I’ve had a record of 77 visits in one day to my site. Saturday I was hoping for a hundred. We had to run some errands and got home around noon. I checked my stats and 3,659 people had visited!!! By the end of the day on Saturday, I had over eleven thousand visits! Sunday there were over seven thousand and I made the list on popurls.com too!
I am stunned, amazed, and thrilled!!! YAY!!! Someone likes my cooking!!!!!! This makes me feel SOOOOOOO good and my list of things I want to do is growing by the minute.
I wonder if anyone notices that I use different measuring spoons in practically every tutorial. Each time I get ready to cook I have to go hunt down measuring cups and spoons. They are in my daughters room, the bathtub, all over the house, I swear. My dream is to have a sponsor who likes my website so much that they do nothing but send me a new set of measuring cups and spoons in the mail each week! Just in case that person exists……I like red. ~grins~
7-12
I’ve had a lot of interest in my mother’s bread pudding recipe so I thought I’d post that recipe for the time being and do a tutorial on it as soon as I get a chance. This is based off of the bread pudding we used to be able to get at the Cracker Barrel restaurants around here.
It is so good……ice cream makes it even better!
I would say this is my very favorite bread pudding recipe. Make those buttermilk biscuits in the tutorial for breakfast and save a few for this as a dessert following dinner!
Mama’s Bread Pudding
2 C homemade biscuits, crumbled
4 C milk
2 eggs
3/4 C sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 C raisins
3/4 C coconut
Layer biscuit crumbs, coconut, and raising twice, ending with another layer of crumbled biscuits. Mix remaining ingredients together. Pour over biscuit layers. Sprinkle with two tablespoons of sugar. Bake at 350 for one hour. Serve hot with ice cream!
Now the recipe made with the biscuits at the bottom was the one I was looking for. My Grandma made one similar to that one except she didn’t put the coconut, raison, or cinnamon in it. She made a plain vanilla bread pudding for the adults and put chocolate in the one for the kids. That’s right, Chocolate Bread Pudding. We loved it! That along with tea cakes are some of my fondest memories… Aletta Owens, Johnsonville, SC.
Kudos to you! This is a really good blog here and I love your style of writing. How did you get so good at blogging?