A slow-stewed whole chicken finished with rolled buttermilk dumplings.

Chicken with Rolled Buttermilk Dumplings

I love chicken and dumplings but you know what? Although drop dumplings are and will always be my favorite, I'm not particularly married to chicken and dumplings done one way and one way only.

I'm just too adventurous for that!

There are so many different methods and even types of dumplings out there and I like trying them all. Hey, life is short, right?

One thing is for certain. A big bowl of stewed chicken with dumplings is comfort food 101.

A homemade buttermilk biscuit, with a very light touch of cornmeal, providing subtle corn flavor and a slight crunch.

Cornmeal Buttermilk Biscuits

I am a bread lover - especially yeast breads and rolls. But biscuits?

Yeah, biscuits are more common in my house and I make them fairly regularly. Certainly, biscuits are faster and easier, but still delicious all on their own, and the variety is endless, though classic buttermilk are still the ones I make the most.

 

A layered salad made with thick cut bacon, crunchy iceberg lettuce, summer ripened fresh red tomatoes and substantial and chunky croutons finished with a homemade Ranch dressing.

BLT Salad

Pasta salads aside (which I adore), I love bringing a fresh garden salad to an event, potluck or cookout. It sort of balances out what seems to always be an overabundance of meats.

In the summer, that is most likely some kind of a cucumber salad or a layered salad, and this BLT salad falls right into that category. I mean, who doesn't love a BLT sandwich to begin with, but turn those flavors into a salad and it's really a hit!

A basic recipe for buttermilk corn muffins.

Basic Buttermilk Corn Muffins

Sometimes you just want your cornbread in convenient little packages with crispy edges all around, rather than just a slice cut off of a pan, and corn muffins are just one of many ways to get that. There are quite a few specialty pans you can buy for this these days, but most everybody already has a muffin tin, making it the most convenient delivery system for these little bites of cornbread.

A quick biscuit bread, sometimes called hoecake bread, fried in bacon drippings in a screaming hot, cast iron skillet on top of the stove.

Old Fashioned Biscuit Bread

Though skillet bread has been around since pre-Colonial times, this biscuit bread was likely a staple during the Great Depression and probably most often eaten for breakfast, typically just torn from the cake, rather than cut.

Often referred to as a pantry pie because it can be made from pantry basics, chess pie is an old fashioned, southern favorite. I like to cut the sweetness of my chess pie with just a bit of buttermilk instead of sweet milk and fresh lemon juice and zest, instead of vinegar.

Old Fashioned Buttermilk Chess Pie

Old Fashioned Chess Pie is southern to the core. And sweet. A very sweet custard pie made with eggs, butter, a little flour, a bit of cornmeal, vanilla and sugar. Lots of sugar.  While not many folks include buttermilk in their chess pie recipe as I do, I happen to think that it only improves on the flavor of the chess pie. The tartness of the buttermilk helps to cut the sugary sweetness and makes for a simply perfect chess pie.