Tuesday Tip: Frying Screen

Last week I began reading Consuming Passions: A Food Obsessed Life (Ginger’s suggestion).  This book includes family recipes from southern based author Michael Lee West (Ginger reviewed her recent book Mermaids in the Basement, to read, click here), and includes tales of food, its place in southern life and the relationships established out of the love of food.  It is an easy read, but if you are anything like me, the pages will be riddled with dog eared corners.

Taking a note from the author, who doesn’t take kindly to frying, I might suggest using a fryer screen with your cast iron skillet.  Realizing a screen cannot be used at every moment in the process, you might find it useful and spare yourself a burn or two!

                                     

30 (or so) Things Every Southerner Ought to Do!

While I’m not the biggest fan of the word “ought” (I think we Southerners pay too much mind sometimes to what we “ought” to be doing… brought about by years of Southern mommas telling us this and that – that soap box, was free), there are just some things that every Southerner just ought to do.

 

This summer, we plan on bossing you around a bit. Some of these things I’ve done, some, not yet… but let’s all make a plan together to dig into some deep, cool Southern grit and become truly, truly Southern (like we know y’all are anyway).

 

We must admit, the idea came from a wonderfully inspiring article that appeared in Southern Living a while back. And while we’re confessing things here, some of these ideas were just ripped right from it. But we’ve already established that sharing is what the South is all about, so I don’t think they’ll mind the sincerest form of flattery – our imitation (I can’t much think of a better model of Southern perfection than our good friends over at Southern Living anyhow).

 

We’ll give you a couple Southern suggestions every week, so if there’s something you haven’t yet done, well get out there and get to it! And if there’s something you haven’t gotten around to in a while, why not make a plan to use these nice long summer days to plan a potluck, learn the lyrics (all of them) to Sweet Home Alabama, or brush up on your Southern manners (hint, hint… these might all be things included in our list)?

 

And don’t worry – there’s plenty other Southern goodness that’ll still be here in the mix: our Tuesday Tips, some great cities to travel to, and much much more!

 

Is there anything you just have to see included in our list?

 

Happy June!