ARTICLES, FOOD FACTS, AND FOOD QUOTES

This is sort of a hodgepodge of articles, food facts, foods that I recommend, a great poem, and food quotes! Enjoy!

“Whatever else you do today, find somebody to be nice to.” –Ludlow Porch

Some interesting food facts:

1.  Hostess Twinkies were invented in 1931 by James Dewar, manager of Continental Bakeries’ Chicago factory. He envisioned the product as a way of using the company’s thousands of shortcake pans which were otherwise employed only during the strawberry season. Originally called Little Shortcake Fingers, they were renamed Twinkie Fingers, and finally “Twinkies.”
2.  Don’t give your dog chocolate. It affects his heart and nervous system. It contains theobromine that is toxic to dogs in sufficient quantities.
3.   Sometimes Frozen Fruits And Vegetables Are More Nutritious Than Fresh! The longer fruits or vegetables sit around waiting to be sold or eaten, the more nutrients they lose. But fruits and vegetables grown for freezing are usually frozen right after they’re picked. Therefore, they have less time to lose their nutrients.
4.  Domesticated turkeys cannot fly.  Wild turkeys can fly for short distances at speeds up to 55 miles per hour.  Wild turkeys can run up to 25 m.p.h.
5.  More than 45 million turkeys are cooked and eaten in the U.S. at Thanksgiving!
6.  Animal Crackers, the animal shaped cookie treats were introduced in 1902 with a string handle as a Christmas novelty so they could be hung from the Christmas tree.
 7. Watermelon is an excellent source of vitamin A and C. It has more lycopene than tomatoes and by weight is the most consumed melon in the U.S.The first recorded watermelon harvest was 5,000 years ago in Egypt

Click a title to read the article. (these are articles posted on my blog other than recipes)

THE FANTASTIC EDIBLE EGG!

WHAT’S IN THE FOODS YOU EAT, FOOD SAFETY AND GUIDELINES

HONEY – A MIRACLE PRODUCT

DO RESTAURANTS RECYLE THE BREAD BASKET?

THE RISING COST OF FOOD!

CRANBERRIES ARE NOT JUST FOR THANKSGIVING!

TURKEY TALK ABOUT THANKSGIVING!

TURKEY TALK!

EXPIRATION DATES: SHOULD YOU PAY ATTENTION?

FOOD SAFETY HANDLING

FIFTEEN KITCHEN SAFETY TIPS!

EVER WONDER ABOUT YOUR CHILD’S PORTION SIZES???

HOW TO UNDERSTAND FOOD LABELS – HOW TO READ FOOD LABELS

SEPTEMBER THROUGH NOVEMBER – NATIONAL APPLE MONTHS!

HOW LONG CAN YOU KEEP CANNED GOODS?

Cast Iron Cookware Making a Comeback!

Four Myths About Eggs

PROPER TABLE SETTINGS

Some foods I really like and recommend to everyone!
SORGHUM MOLASSES – All us true southerners love sorghum. You will usually find a big jar in our cupboards. There is nothing any better than hot homemade buttermilk biscuits with butter and sorghum. It is a great source of potassium and has a deep, rich flavor. Old timers used to think sorghum was medicinal and take a spoonful a day to stay healthy! It is used to cook with and makes melt in your mouth cookies and cakes. There is nothing like sorghum on pancakes and waffles. If you don’t know about this wonderful southern product, rush right out and buy a jar. It will make your mouth water!
HONEY – I love honey. I totally believe it has medicinal powers and is one of the healthiest foods.  I try to eat honey at least 3 times a week. Honey can be used without any side effects for any kind of diseases.Today’s science says that even though honey is sweet, if taken in the right dosage as a medicine, it does not harm diabetic patients. I cook with honey all the time and use it to replace sugar in many recipes.  You can read a great article on honey by clicking here.
SPICES – I use spices in almost everything I cook. Besides just loving the taste they give to recipes, I think they are good for you, too.  My sister has used cinnamon for years for her cholesterol.  Cinnamon is supposed to be good for diabetes, too. I am blessed to be in good health and maybe these foods and spices have something to do with that.  You can read about the benefits of spices here.
Check out this great poem: The Gingerbread Man
This is a list of my favorite quotes about food and other stuff.  I usually put a quote on facebook every day and will add to the list often.
1.  Only a Southerner knows how many fish, collard greens, turnip greens, peas, beans, etc, make up ‘a mess.’
 
2.  Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.(Alice May Brock)
 
3.  Southerners can’t stand to eat alone. If we’re going to cook a mess of greens we want to eat them with a mess of people. — Julia Reed
 
4.  As the days grow short, some faces grow long. But not mine. Every autumn, when the wind turns cold and darkness comes early, I am suddenly happy. It’s time to start making soup again. ~Leslie Newman
 
5.  “No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”
 
6.  I doubt whether the world holds for anyone a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice cream – Heywood Broun
 
7.  Cookies are made of butter and love. ~Norwegian Proverb
 
8.  A bagel is a doughnut with the sin removed. ~George Rosenbaum
9.  There are four basic food groups: milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate truffles. ~Author Unknown
10. ”The Moon Pie is a bedrock of the country store and rural tradition. It is more than a snack. It is a cultural artifact.” – William Ferris
11.  Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. —-Julia Child
12.  The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook. —Julia Child
13.   Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, “No, thank you”, to dessert that night and for what! –Erma Bombeck
14.   If God had intended us to follow recipes, He wouldn’t have given us grandmothers —Linda Henley
15.   The correct time to order chocolate dishes: Any month whose name contains the letters A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate. —Sandra Boynton
16.   Vegetables are a must on a diet.  I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie. —–Jim Davis
17.  Stressed spelled backwards is desserts. Coincidence? I think not! – Author Unknown
18.  Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o`clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap. Al Hutchinson
19.  “In the childhood memories of every good cook, there’s a large kitchen, a warm stove, a simmering pot and a mom.”
Barbara Costikyan
20.  You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces – just good food from fresh ingredients. Julia Child
21.  I don’t like to say that my kitchen is a religious place, but I would say that if I were a voodoo priestess, I would conduct my rituals there.
– Pearl Bailey
22. “The smell of coffee cooking was a reason for growing up, because children were never allowed to have it and nothing haunted the nostrils all the way out to the barn as did the aroma of boiling coffee” -Edna Lewis, “The Taste of Country Cooking”
23. ” You might be a Southern cook if you can’t cook a small amount of anything, but cook like you expect to feed an army!” – Judy Parker Yeager, The Southern Lady
24.  “Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.” — Robert Redford, actor/director
25.   Fun-sized Snickers? Who’s this fun for? Not me. I need six or seven of these babies in a row to start having fun. – Jeff Carlin
26.  “The secret of good cooking is, first, having a love of it… If you’re convinced that cooking is drudgery, you’re never going to be good at it, and you might as well warm up something frozen.”~ James Beard
27.  As a child my family’s menu consisted of two choices:  take it or leave it.  ~Buddy Hackett
28.  I had a dream last night, I was eating a ten pound marshmallow. I woke up this morning and the pillow was gone. –Tommy Cooper
29.  When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, the real purpose of striving towards perfection becomes clear; to make people happy. That’s what cooking is all about. – Thomas Keller
30.  All sorrows are less with bread – Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
31.   ‎”Chocolate is the answer. Who cares what the questions is.” —Author Unknown
32.  Nothing is quite as intoxicating as the smell of bacon frying in the morning, save perhaps the smell of coffee brewing.”- James Beard
33.  “It is odd how all men develop the notion, as they grow older, that their mothers were wonderful cooks. I have yet to meet a man who will admit that his mother was a kitchen assassin and nearly poisoned him.” Robertson Davies, Canadian author (1913-1995)
34. The four food groups: Fast, Frozen, Instant, and Chocolate.
35. Inside me lives a skinny woman crying to get out, but I can usually shut her up with cookies……
36.  The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not – Mark Twain
37.  I feel a recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with a variation – Madam Benoit
38.   ‎”The most indispensable ingredient of all good home cooking: love, for those you are cooking for.” – Sophia Loren
39.  I’d give up chocolate but I’m no quitter! – Author Unknown
40.  A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand. – Author Unknown
41.  I figured if I was going to make the world a better place, I’d do it with cookies –Ana Pascal.
42.  Don’t wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty! —Lora Brody
43.  Once in a young lifetime one should be allowed to have as much sweetness as one can possibly want and hold –Judith Olney
44.  One of life’s mysteries is how a two-pound box of chocolates can make a person gain five pounds! — Author Unknown
45.  Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush. ~Doug Larson
46.  “Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts” —James Beard
47.  “My kitchen is a mystical place, a kind of temple for me. It is a place where the surfaces seem to have significance, where the sounds and odors carry meaning that transfers from the past and bridges to the future” – Pearl Bailey
48. Strawberries are the angels of the earth, innocent and sweet with green leafy wings reaching heavenward.  ~Terri Guillemets
49.  “Iced tea is too pure and natural a creation not to have been invented as soon as tea, ice, and hot weather crossed paths” –John Egerton
50.  “Dirty hands, iced tea, garden fragrances thick in the air and a blanket of color before me, who could ask for more?” –Beverly Adams
51.   Southerners have a strong sense of regional heritage. We are proud of our turnip greens, cornbread, sweet tea, rural pasts and Southern drawls. We are card-carrying Southerners. -Judy Yeager
52.  “He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.”
-Henry David Thoreau
53.  Southern cooking warms the heart and soothes the soul. –Judy Parker Yeager, The Southern Lady
54. Southerners know you can’t be considered a serious Southern cook if you don’t know how to make peach cobbler.  – Trisha Yearwood
55. A light wind swept over the corn, and all nature laughed in the sunshine. Anne Bronte
56.  You don’t need a silver fork to eat good food. -Paul Prudhomme
57. “The hot biscuit runs a poor second to cornbread, but is considered of higher social caste. We abrogate and deprecate cornbread when we have guests, but we should consider ourselves deficient in hospitality if we served a company meal without hot biscuits.”  Majorie Kinnan Rawlings, ‘Cross Creek’ (1942)
58. “Beans are highly nutritious and satisfying, they can also be delicious if and when properly prepared, and they posses over all vegetables the great advantage of being just as good, if not better, when kept waiting, an advantage in the case of people whose disposition or occupation makes it difficult for them to be punctual at mealtime.” Andre Simon (1877-1970)
59. Nothing is quite as intoxicating as the smell of bacon frying in the morning, save perhaps the smell of coffee brewing.” James Beard (1903-1985
60. Simply to wake up just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs. And, again I cry, how rarely it happens! But when it does happen — then what a moment, what a morning, what a delight!” J. B. Priestley, British author (1894-1984)
61.  “Laughter is brightest, in the place where the food is.” ~~Irish Proverb
62.  “All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast” – John Gunther
63.  “Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandonment or not at all”  ~~Harriet Van Horne
64.  “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well” ~~Virginia Woolf
65.  Cinnamon bites and kisses simultaneously. ~~Vanna Bonta
66.  Coffee makes it possible to get out of bed. Chocolate makes it worthwhile. ~~ Author Unknown
67. Number one, I absolutely love making chocolate chip cookies. I mean, it’s fun. It’s exciting. Beyond the fact that I love making them, I love eating them. Debbi Fields
68. Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”~ Edith Sitwell
69.  “Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty…they merely move it from their faces into their hearts.” ~ Martin Buxbaum
70.  Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them!
With time, women gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room, it distributes out to the rest of our bodies. So, we aren’t heavy, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy. Beginning today, when i look at my butt in the mirror I will think, Good Grief, look how smart I am, I must be a genius

SOME AUTUMN QUOTES:

A few days ago I walked along the edge of
the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I
made. The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter how
hushed, are as crisp as autumn air.
— Eric Sloane
All those golden autumn days the sky was
full of wings. Wings beating low over the blue water of Silver Lake, wings
beating high in the blue air far above it . . . bearing them all away to the
green fields in the South.– Laura Ingalls Wilder
Autumn is a second spring where every leaf
is a flower.
— Albert Camus
Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is
ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth,
and distance. What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the
span of his world and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far
horizon?
— Hal Borland
Autumn, the year’s last, loveliest
smile.
— William Cullen Bryant
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded
to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive
autumns.
— George Eliot
Everyone must take time to sit and watch
the leaves turn.
— Elizabeth Lawrence
For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of
gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering
abroad.
— Edwin Way Teale
I cannot endure to waste anything as
precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the
daylight hours in the open air.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the
crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought and
care and toil. And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such
superb colour effects as from August to November.
— Rose G. Kingsley
I’ve never known anyone yet who doesn’t
suffer a certain restlessness when autumn rolls around… We’re all eight years
old again and anything is possible.
— Sue Grafton
No spring nor summer beauty hath such
grace As I have seen in one autumnal face.
— John Donne
October is a symphony of permanence and
change.
— Bonaro W. Overstreet
The foliage has been losing its freshness
through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like
the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too
many.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
The lands are lit with all the autumn
blaze of golden-rod, and everywhere the purple asters nod and bend and wave and
flit.
— Helen Hunt
There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster
in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not
be, as if it had not been!
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor,
summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.
— Stanley Horowitz
Youth is like spring, an over praised
season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the
mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in
fruits.
— Samuel Butler

5 Secrets to Old-Fashioned
Southern Cooking

Tips, tricks & recipes to cook Southern food just like Grandma used to!

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