By Popular Demand...Cornbread Recipe

It has come to our attention, some cyberspace cadets out there are accessing this blog because it turns up when "Google"-ing recipes for home baked cornbread. Imagine the disappointment:  no recipes here -only  pictures of hawks and an almost stalker worthy devotion to Rosanne Cash. Congratulations on that Grammy nomination, Mrs. L.

By way of explanation to the baffled bakers, some philosophy behind our blog title.

Cornbread itself is an ordinary, homey, tasty carbohydrate.  At the onset, we envisioned our blog that way:  simple, readable not pretentious.  Also, we actually bake cornbread often, if not every day.  This is where the blog/bread analogy gets half-baked.  We have failed in our effort to post daily or often. 

I baked cornbread for dinner last night in a cast iron skillet that belonged to my grandmother.  Here is my half-baked attempt at a recipe post.


SOUTHERN EVERYDAY CORNBREAD

Ingredients:  3 TBLS vegetable oil  (Grandma used lard; I use Canola)
                     1 c. self-rising cornmeal  (Martha White with Hot Rize*)
                     3/4 c. buttermilk (non-fat)
                     1 egg (I use pasteurized eggs.  Paranoid? maybe.)
     
Directions:  1.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.  In a well seasoned 8 inch iron skillet (preferably one
                         your Grandma used) heat oil.
 
                    2.  In a medium bowl, mix together cornmeal, buttermilk & egg.  Stir in hot oil.
                         Spoon mixture into hot skillet.

                    3.  Bake for 20 minutes or until brown on top.  Serve hot!

Cook's note:  Adding sugar, honey or molasses to this recipe changes Southern Cornbread into 'Yankee' Cornbread thus making it unfit for human consumption.

Composed: A Memoir

“Someone once told me to perform to the six percent of the audience who are poets. I often have to find that six percent by looking past those who are yawning, glazed over, distracted, unsettled; those who come to try to look through me to see my dad.”

Groucho, Rosanne & A Blue Bird of Happiness

Joining a club is one thing I rarely fall victim to. The few times I've ventured into an organized group dynamic resulted in canceled memberships and ill feelings. Groucho Marx nailed my philosophy: "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members". What would Groucho think of these social networks luring me into their clutches with promises of virtual anonymity? Facebook snagged me last year. Now, every day I dutifully check in with my 200 'friends'. In a bout of cabin fever last winter, beved started this blog. We post at least twice a year. (BTW, thanks to all who check regularly for new posts. Stay the course. Winter is coming around again. ) Recently, I discovered Twitter. Here’s endorsement that hooked me: "If Jane Austen had a Twitter feed, she would be known as Rosanne Cash". Reel me in! How could I resist? Especially when I found out Twitter allows one to ‘follow’ microblogs without ‘joining’ the feed. HEAVEN!!! Call me a lurker if you must, but I enjoy the sound of the Twitter notification when Rosanne Cash literally chimes in on my iphone. Averaging 10 ‘tweets’ a day, she regales her "Tweeps" from the recording studio, limos, The Waldorf, The Plaza Hotel & the kitchen table. She is the master of the 140-character count. Her regular feature, “Fun with Diacritics”, is home schooling at it’s best. Umlauts, anyone? Last Friday night when I had the pleasure of meeting Ms Cash in Birmingham, I introduced myself as a “tweep”. She asked my Twitter name. I told her I was a ‘follower’ & a name not required for laconic lurkers. While she admired my alliteration, she went on to childe me about not being a ‘joiner’. Have I heard that before? From almost every teacher I ever had? Yes, but never so graciously…in 140 characters.

ReTweet of the week
Rosannecash: In taxi on Madison. In four blocks saw 12 dresses I desperately need. Thank god will totally forget about them by noon. #Hormones

Got some 'splainin' to do

Among the many things lacking on our hobby farm is a computer. While fencing and farm equipment are necessities, BEVED decided a computer at the farm would lead to distraction. “The world is too much with us” as Wordsworth put it. After all, we bought the place for a return to the simple life. Our plan was to experience the country life on weekends, blog about what rubes we are from the computer in the suburbs on weekdays. The iphone would suffice for Internet emergencies in the country. It’s a smartphone! As some of our followers noted, the blog seemed to dry up during the hottest summer on record. Blogs wither on the vine when half of the BEVED blogger team spends 6 weeks straight at the farm without a computer. Even if the world had been with me, words were not. My time was spent looking after my mother who suffered a puzzling array of health issues from early June until August. Ours was a summer of ambulances, trips to the ER, medical tests, hospital stays, more medical tests, cardiologists, and neurologists. We are grateful she is back on her feet again and able to return to the normal lifestyle of a very active 86 year old. It was one long hot summer. One in which everybody learned it is unwise to ignore hydrating. At least we had the place in the country for cool, quiet recuperation thanks to the valiant 10-year-old A/C unit & the fabulous Easy Set pool! The iphone overheated! Smart…smart!

Suburban wildlife

"Red tail hawk...settin' on a limb"

If only I had Randy Owen's proclivity toward lyrical inspiration, I'd have a country hit quicker than Randy could get legalized gambling in the State of Alabama. Seems ol' Randy beat me to the hit, though. He wrote about red tail hawks in "DIXIELAND DELIGHT", a bucolic word picture of country back roads, white tail bucks & home grown country girls. This hawk was not the one in Randy's song because this one made his perch a limb in my backyard right behind a neighborhood of Alabama mac mansions. Poor hawk. Guess he's been away awhile. The mc mansions are perched on a former pasture which was home to horses and cows for many wonderful years and the barbed wire fence marking our back yard. Several years ago bulldozers showed up in the pasture subdividing it into prime building plots in a subdivision coined "Nature's Perfection". I'm not kidding. The horses and cows relocated. Raccoons, skunks and coyote wandered around looking for the nature that once was perfect for them. The hawks all but disappeared. About a month ago, a red tailed hawk unexpectedly swooped down into my back yard and grabbed a dove as it fed on the ground around the bird feeder. As quick as a wink, the hawk flew south with the dove in it's talons.

Perhaps he was heading for the country Randy sang about, bringing with him something delectable from the big city. Perhaps the residents of all the million dollar mc mansions are delighted with their perfect piece of DIXIELAND. As for me I couldn't feel better down on the farm where the hawks soar high above the tree line as part of nature's true perfection. Ol' Randy is down in Mon'gom'ry really tryin' to get that gambling bill through the Alabama legislature. He thinks it has a chance if we "let the people of Alabama vote". Really. He thinks so. I'm not kidding. And, I'm not bettin' on it.

"lucky as a seven...living in heaven
With my Dixieland Delight."

New Kid in Town

A week ago yesterday, this big guy was born at my cousin's place just down the road a piece in Weogufka, AL. While we weren't there for the birth, we did witness his first steps outside the barn. After taking a few tenuous steps at his mother's side, he broke into a full run, darting back and forth with remarkable agility. Seventy-five pounds of new born grace.

Home Brew

It's not a copper kettle. You won't find Dooley, slippin' up a holler. It's a Can-O-Worms Composter. This Spring we harvested our first batch of worm tea, a rich by-product of vermicomposting. Hundreds of red wiggler worms nestled in the stacked bins of the can feeding on kitchen waste, animal hair & mysterious debris from the vacuum cleaner. Yum. Yum. After about a year, the worms, acting a nature's best recyclers, produced dark composted castings for our garden soil and several gallons of tea to use in foliar feeding. The nutritious elixir is so concentrated that it must be diluted 4:1. Wow! It's better than a V-8! One guy paid all his college expenses by selling worm tea fertilizer. At least that's what we read on the website. We are happily giving friends all they want, while supplies last. Or until the revenuers catch up with us.

Follow up...

Mother peeks out the church door on Easter Sunday to assure the cross is flowered sufficiently. 100% natural. No fillers necessary!

Easter Traditions

Every afternoon around 4:30, through the wonder of AT&T's family plan, my mother & I enjoy a pleasant conversation about the weather or the latest happenings in her exercise class. It's enjoyable even when the chat occasionally veers toward the obligatory melancholia: hospitals; nursing homes; funerals; worthless doctors. Yesterday, Mother sounded uncharacteristically dismayed: "What are we going to do?" I'm thinking, uh-oh...who died? "About what, Mother?" "How can we flower the cross Sunday," she wonders, "Nothing is blooming here now!" Now there's a topic I wasn't expecting. Further conversation reveals the question had come up before. The renowned Pete of PETE'S FEED & SEED paid a visit to Mother's yard prior to 4:30 chat but after AS THE WORLD TURNS. He commented on the lack of abundant blooming around town. Pete is an eminent scholar in local gardening circles. If Pete is concerned about the shortage of flowers, then Mother is downright alarmed. "When are you coming? Can you bring something from your yard in Madison?", she asked me. Madison is in the north of Alabama- a different gardening zone. We might have a few daffodils left; some droopy hyacinths-nothing that will survive two days until Sunday. I suggested we go to Piggy Wiggly Saturday afternoon, buy a bouquet and select a few appropriate flowers for the cross. Obviously that is a bad plan. Mother has another idea: ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS-the bane of my existence! Holy Sunday, Batman! Chartreuse carnations? Fuchsia roses? Does Pete know about this? Maybe she'll buy silk Easter lilies. Oh, well. The cross will be 'flowered'. The tradition lives on.

Now for my tradition: GOOD FRIDAY by Black Crowes

I will see you on Good Friday
On Good Friday

I'm sorry I couldn't do this yesterday
And tomorrow I am busy and what
It is I can't say
And Saturday's no good
I got a show
So it's got to be Good Friday
Then it's so long...

A Poem by Henry Gibson

Or maybe Wordsworth? I forget.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
a host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Saturday, March 20 is Daffodil Day in Bell Buckle, TN

http://bellbucklechamber.com/Daffodil.Day.2010.html

Naturally speaking: Lenten Rose (helleborus orientalis)

According to legend, a young girl visited the Christ child in Bethlehem. She found herself in a situation similar to the Little Drummer Boy. She had no gift to bring...rumpa-pum-pum. She wept and her tears shed at the foot of the manger nurtured dormant seeds which sprouted and burst into bloom a couple of months later. Rumor has it that Alexander the Great died of Hellebore overdose when he took it as a medication to purge lingering miasma. Also, the Greek army poisoned the water supply of an entire city with Helebore juice. A population weakened by diarrhea is easily conquered!

Enough with the rumor mill. Here's the truth as I know it. Every year, around Ash Wednesday, the Lenten Rose (Helleborus Orientalis) blooms in my backyard. It is truly a thing of beauty because it is the first sign of new life and a promise that things are looking up. Except the blooms, which are facing downward like delicate umbrellas against the spring rains. Don't cry about it; don't eat or drink it! Plant it and enjoy for what it really is...a sign.

Results are in

CSI: Coosa County has determined deer are the culprits of the theft of more than 50 daffodil bulbs newly scattered on the hillside. Next year, I will take the time to lay chicken wire down over the bulbs so the criminals can't get their thieving noses in there! By the way, thanks for leaving these three, Bambi!

Music Musings: "along the rutted road"

"Music is playing inside my head/Over and over and again/My friend, there's no end/To the music"

Today is Carole King's birthday. She is 68. For more years than I can recall, her music played inside my head. Childhood was the transistor radio dangling from my bicycle handlebars broadcasting shiny pop music from the Brill building to the brick ranchers of my neighborhood. Certainly never knowing Carole's contribution to Little Eva, the Crystals, Bobby Vee and Neil Sedaka- the soundtrack of my life. "Oh, Carole"- you were always there! In February, 1971, the monumental Tapestry was released. I was a senior in high school and I played that LP on the stereo every single day much to my parents' dismay. Tapestry remained on the Billboard charts for six years-a record broken by Michael Jackson. It swept the Grammy Awards winning in every nominated category winning world wide acclaim. Carole King declined attending the Grammy ceremony opting instead to stay home with her children. According to Sheila Weller in her book GIRLS LIKE US, Carol Klein changed her name to Carole King, romanticizing fame at age 14, then ran from fame most of her life. She saw herself as a wife and mother first; just like the work a day songwriting in the Brill Building. However, composing her own music & lyrics, performing them with honest emotion made Carole King the Earth Mother to a generation of women. "Oh, Carole"! Happy Birthday!

Nothing spins like a Deere!

This is the hardest working fella in the country. From his perch atop northern knoll, he keeps a watch on the winter wind speed and direction. Hold on to your hats.

Spring is just around the corner

Lots to do and a short time to get there. There's a garden to plan, plow, and plant. There's a fence to build to create a boundary. There's a pond to push up. The road is about all washed away from the monsoon season we call winter in Alabama. So there's gravel to buy and spread. The lawn tractor needs its winter maintenance. More brush to haul and burn. A boat to pull out of the marsh. Don't know where it came from but it's there. Beverly and I discovered the county dump on one of our recent reconnaissance outings. So now we can haul the leftover trash from the previous owner to a legal destination. The daffodil bulbs we planted back in the fall are missing in action .. probably dug up by the passing family of deer. The blackberry bushes we bush hogged back in the fall are lying in wait for warmer weather .. herbicides. Good time to plant some tree seedlings for some future shade. More to come.

It's a start

It's been almost a year since we bought 20 acres of land in rural Coosa County, AL. Such an unpredictable turn of events certainly provoked no small amount of wondering among the friends and neighbors. What were they thinking? Ed and Beverly are North Alabamians! Why, they've lived in the same town almost thirty years! In the same house for 25 years! Didn't they just remodel that house? Is Ed retiring? They're living in both places? A doublewide?!?!?!?! Oh, yes...a doublewide! We are off on the adventure we've planned since we were newlyweds - never dreaming the blogosphere would be part of it. Here's hoping you enjoy the country as much as we do. Y'all come on and follow. We're glad to have you - provided you don't get all snooty about the doublewide.