Peeled russet potatoes, cut into chunks and gently boiled in water until tender and reduced, thickened with a slurry.

Creamed Potatoes with Thickening

Potatoes are a staple across the country I suppose, but like rice, they sure are a pretty big part of life in the South.

Not only do they act as a side dish, they can also serve as an inexpensive and filling main dish for those times when the money has fallen short of the month. In fact, this meal topped with whatever leftovers were in the house, or whatever was on hand from the pantry, actually comes from the Depression Era.

Hand-formed pones of dense and sturdy fried cornmeal patties, a perfect companion for a bowl of greens and pot likker.

Corn Dodgers

If you look up corn dodgers on the internet, you'll find a huge variety of recipes that may differ significantly from one another.

I suppose that's true of a lot of dishes in Southern cooking - like corn casseroles for instance. In truth, it really all depends on one thing, and one thing only.

What you grew up with and how your Mama cooked things!

A delicious sandwich made with sweet bell peppers and onions caramelized in olive oil, topped with eggs and served on French bread or thick slices of sandwich bread.

Italian Peppers and Eggs Sandwich

Y'all. This sandwich has become one of my favorites anytime because it's filled with all the goodness that I love - eggs and lots of caramelized peppers and onion. The flavor is outstanding!

I don't know much about the origins of this recipe, except that it apparently was common during the Depression, since most folks baked bread from scratch, raised chickens and grew their own backyard vegetables, making eggs and peppers readily available.

Hot water cornbread is a fried cornbread, tender on the inside, thanks to a precook of the cornmeal with boiling water, and crispy on the outside from a quick fry in a blazing hot cast iron skillet.

Hot Water Cornbread

What sets this fried cornbread apart from its cornbread cousins, is the boiling water, giving the meal a head start on cooking and resulting in an inner creamy texture, with an outside crunchy crust.

Goes well with chili, beans and southern peas, though I'll be honest with you. I can make a meal from a plate of them!

Classic cornmeal-coated fried green tomatoes with a twist! Instead of slices, these are cut into chunks but breaded the same way, creating bite-sized fried green tomato nuggets with more of that surface crunch we love.

Fried Green Tomato Nuggets

First, a little housekeeping nugget before we move on to the recipe!

If you are already signed up to get notifications of new posts by email, the notification summary that you were receiving, has changed. The Feedburner service I was using is being discontinued, but no worries. I have found a Feedburner replacement in a service called follow.it. If you aren't yet signed up for notifications when I post a new recipe and you'd like to, click here to sign up. If you change your mind, no worries there either. It's easy to unsubscribe too.

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Couche Couche - Cajun Breakfast Cereal

This Cajun Breakfast Cereal, known as Couche Couche, Cush Cush or Coush Coush, is made from a cornbread batter, poured into a hot, cast iron skillet, crusted and turned several times, then covered and steam cooked to finish and served with milk or cream.

Couche Couche

Unless you live down in this part of the Deep South, you've probably never heard of this dish. Often referred to as a Cajun breakfast, cornmeal cereal, though it's enjoyed just about any time of the day. It comes under a few different names, including  Cush Cush, Couche Couche or Coush Coush, all pronounced "coosh-coosh."

Although some folks will want to compare this to a cornmeal mush, it's actually quite different.

A simple dish of lightly seasoned pasta with potatoes, onions and peas. Simple, filling, comfort food and one of my year-round favorites, but a great option for Lent too.

Pasta with Peas and Potatoes

Lent has arrived, so I'll be sharing some very simple, non-recipe "recipes" over the next couple weeks to add to my list of Lent-friendly meal ideas. Some you will likely be familiar with already for Lent, others may be a reminder of recipes you've forgotten about.

Most of them, like this one, actually come from the Depression-era, when meals were simple, cheap, filling and meat free. They are actually meals that I eat throughout the year, especially if I'm on my own for dinner.

A Deep South fry bread, called Galettes, made from simply flour and whole milk, shaped into biscuits and fried in a skillet. Serve with butter, jam, jelly, preserves, honey or cane syrup.

Galettes Skillet Biscuits

These skillet biscuits, what we call galettes down here along the coastal south, are for those times when you just want a biscuit but don't feel like all the mixing, cutting in, rolling and baking. They are quick and delicious, whether it's with a dab of butter alone, or served with jam, jelly, preserves, honey or cane syrup.

The term galette can cover a lot of culinary territory from pies to flat pastries, to pancakes, to cakes, to biscuits. Just depends on the culture, I guess. For us, it comes from the French Gulf Coast population in the form of a hand shaped biscuit, fried in a skillet, like a fry bread.

Galettes are sometimes made into one big biscuit, as with my biscuit bread, but mostly they are like a fry bread or a fritter. In some places around the country, they are called flitters, or flitter bread. Pinches of dough are pulled off, rolled into balls and then flattened to about 1/4 inch thick. To avoid overcrowding skillet and chilling the oil, cook them in batches in hot oil until browned on both sides.

Classic macaroni and tomatoes pairs up with spicy andouille for a little Cajun kick.

Macaroni and Tomatoes with Andouille

Macaroni and tomatoes is a depression era dish that so many folks still have fond memories of.

In its purest form, it's simply lightly stewed fresh garden tomatoes or home canned tomatoes, and pasta, usually elbow macaroni, stirred in, maybe a little butter, and salt and pepper.

That's about it.

Fried green tomatoes dipped in milk, then dredged in a combination of flour, cornmeal and crumbled saltine crackers, then pan fried.

Fried Green Tomatoes II

I was looking for a sturdier coating for my fried green tomatoes to use with another recipe that I was working on, so I played around with the way I've been making them for years, and finally settled on this new combination. These green tomatoes turned out fantastic topped with the shrimp with fresh tomato and basil cream sauce I made.

The original coating is a basic blend of cornmeal and all purpose flour, that frankly the perfectionist in me has vacillated between adding to, subtracting from, and changing around anyway over the years. There is only a small window of time to experiment with fried green tomatoes and a gal can only consume so many, after all!

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.

A classic southern recipe, cornmeal hoecakes are little pan fried cornmeal medallions that are at home as breakfast, as much as they are as a side dish with a mess o' greens, and just about anything else!

Fried Cornbread - Southern Cornmeal Hoecakes

Fried cornbread, is also known as cornmeal hoe cakes and corn cakes, and sometimes Johnnycakes, is a sort of fried cornmeal flatbread - kind of like if you took cornbread batter and skillet fried it like a pancake. The inside puffs up like cornbread, while the outside gets nice and crispy from frying it in the oil. It's the perfect companion to a mess o'greens, or for breakfast or as a sweet treat when drizzled with a bit of syrup.

Classic Southern Fried Green Tomatoes

Sliced green tomatoes, seasoned with salt, pepper, marinated in buttermilk, and dredged in a cornmeal and flour mixture tossed with Cajun seasoning, then fried - they are a true Southern Classic.

Southern Fried Green Tomatoes

Everybody likely remembers the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, based on the book by Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. It certainly popularized the common green tomato for sure and lots of restaurants jumped on that green tomato wagon shortly after the movie was released.

"There's not a tomato safe
south of the Mason-Dixon line." Fannie Flagg.

Amish White Bread for the KitchenAid

A fantastic recipe for homemade white bread that produces a beautiful fluffy, tender and light loaf that just melts in your mouth.

Amish White Bread

I know that it's a bit of a contradiction in terms to put the words Amish and KitchenAid together, but this is an Amish bread recipe I found from a clipping that I adapted to use my KitchenAid stand mixer.

I love using my bread machine and it's handy for sure, but frankly using a KitchenAid stand mixer really makes the process of bread making so much more simple and the result is two large loaves instead of just one small one. Of course if you don't own a stand mixer you can certainly still make this by hand - with a little more elbow grease.

The Secrets to the Best Ever, Perfect Southern Buttermilk Biscuits

There's not a lot that separates most Southern biscuit recipes from each other. They all include flour, buttermilk or milk, and some kind of fat - but there are a few southern secrets that'll help you make the best homemade biscuits ever, including using the right southern biscuit flour.

Classic 3-Ingredient Southern Buttermilk Biscuits

Perfect, light and fluffy, homemade buttermilk biscuits used to elude me until I learned a few "secrets" and I have perfect biscuits every time now.

Hand Formed Biscuits

Iron Skillet Biscuits

Back in the day, when folks ate biscuits multiple times a day, every day, a large lidded bowl, filled with self-rising flour was typically used for biscuit making.

A good basic white yeast bread perfect for sandwiches.

Basic White Sandwich Bread

Last night - despite the fact that it would take at minimum 3 hours, at 9:00 p.m. - I decided that I just had to have some homemade bread! If there is anything I am foodie-wise it's a carb gal for sure, and bread is one of my biggest loves. Hand me some sweet cream butter and I can literally go through a hot loaf of fresh, yeast bread in record time.

I ran across this bread at the King Arthur website and wanted to give it a try. I must say I absolutely loved it! It's a definite keeper. As soon as I pick up some more instant potato flakes, I will be making this again.

Here's how to make it.