Help needed for a lazy Southern cook

Hey y’all – I’m jonesing for some biscuit. I was going on about it all day yesterday and I’m still wanting it today. Mmmmm….biscuit.

But my biscuits are SUB-PAR. I have to confess:

Hello, my name is the Vol Abroad…and….[sob]…I can’t bake biscuits.

Now, I know I’m not alone in my poor biscuit making skills, but for the Southerner at home there are many ways to compensate. There are the fast food restaurants, there are those biscuits in a can (blechhhh – though flaking apart a Hungry Jack biscuit is oddly satisfying) and there are those frozen biscuits which are actually pretty good. And, of course, best of all there are networking skills – i.e. get to know somebody who can bake biscuits.

Sadly, none of these options are open to me.

Now, I know there are mixes that make kick-ass biscuits. For example, when a cousin of mine worked at a well-known fast food restaurant she stole some of the biscuit mix and baked it up for our Christmas eve dinner which that year was fried chicken and fixin’s. Mmmmm – they were good.

You can buy Bisquick in England. But I don’t like it. I mean, it’s OK, but it’s not what I’m going for. I want a biscuit that looks like this.

What dry mix do you suggest? I need suggestions this week, ’cause my dad and brother are arriving on Saturday. They live in South Georgia and East Tennessee, in case there are some regional specialties.

experimental pork

I don’t post about recipes or food very often, but I just had to share this.

Last night, for Christmas Eve dinner, I marinated pork loin in Dale’s sauce (smuggled from America)and oven roasted it with acorn squash, a sliced fennel bulb and a sweet red pepper. I also baked a quick cheesy grits loaf (or polenta if you must).

It really didn’t take very long to prepare – it does take a while to actually cook. I did pre-cook the acorn squash as it takes a little while to get to the perfect soft/sweet stage.

Wow!

I just coarsely chopped the veggies, so mine didn’t end up that pretty – but this dish could be presented beautifully.

baby food

Pureed lentils come out about the same way they went in.

health visits

In the UK baby care is split between General Practitioners and nurses called Health Visitors (because they see healthy babies and they visit you in your home during the very early days). For any enquiries about whether something is wrong with your baby, you see a GP who may or may not refer you to a pediatrician. For weight checks and questions about growth and hitting milestones and weaning, you see the health visitor.

As far as feeding goes, the UK National Health Service takes the World Health Organization line of 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding, no solids til 6 months. So that’s the advice given to average moms of average babies. That’s in theory. In practice, things are different.

Cletus is breastfed, mostly. He gets one bottle of formula a day. It’s largely for convenience. We did have to supplement early on because my milk was slow to come in and I was sick and exhausted. But we continued with the bottles because it’s kind of nice for the Vol-in-Law to feed the baby and for me not to. Expressing hasn’t worked out very well for me – so formula it is.

We also continued because of the number one advantage to bottle feeding: You can see exactly how much he’s getting.

And that’s reassuring when you have a baby who’s a little bit of lightweight like Cletus. He’s been gaining steadily, but he’s in the 9th percentile for weight – that is about 90% of babies weigh more than he does. This past week he went up a bit to maybe 15th percentile – he’d gained 6 oz each week since his last weigh-in at the Health Visitor Clinic which was terrific.

So anyway, the HV said it was a good weight gain. But then she said I might want to give him another bottle of formula each day. She never once asked me about my breast feeding practice or my supply. I thought the NHS was supposed to be supporting breastfeeding!!?? How about having a chat about why I’m using formula to start with (convenience) and how I might ensure that Cletus is getting plenty of nice breastmilk rather than suggesting even more formula which would probably hurt my supply.

Then she said that he might want to start food soon, too to get his weight up. (He’s not even four months old yet and is still sleeping through and doesn’t seem ready for food) So I said, well maybe I’ll start him on avocado or sweet potato when he seems more ready – as these are amongst the highest calorie weaning foods. She was adamant that I should start him on baby rice.Nothing against rice, but given his situation I don’t want to fill him up on baby rice which has fewer calories than either breast milk or formula. So, then she said early weaning was not about quantity or quality but rather about getting them used to eating.

So why would I want to give my low-weight baby cereal which might see him getting fewer rather than more calories in a day? Well, I don’t guess I would.

I think this advice is bad. I’m not arguing against flexibility. I’m not an adherent to the no solids til six months guideline. And clearly I’m not against mixed feeding, since I do it myself. But I think this advice goes against even the spirit of the feeding recommendations – more human milk for human babies for as long as possible.

A limited success

I finally gave up on the tomatoes – and pulled up the sole remaining plant this afternoon to be replaced with a winter bedding scheme.

That one red ‘un is nearly the extent of my harvest. I got a couple of cherry tomatoes earlier in the season, but that’s it. It’s just been too damp, too cool and too gray for much ripening.

Oh well, better luck next year. Anyone know a good recipe that calls for one bowl of green ta-maters?

A good day

Hurray – the Vols win!

Not that we weren’t expecting it – what with Cletus wearing his lucky Tennessee hat and all. I hope the winning doesn’t run out any time soon, ’cause the lucky hat is getting smaller and smaller.

-0-

We listened to the football game this morning. It was a good solid win by the end, of course, but there were some worrying moments early on. Still…onwards and upwards – right?

I got the Vol-in-Law to load the game up for me so I wouldn’t be in any danger of seeing the score. I kinda knew the Vols won just by his demeanor. There was no evil glint in his eye. I hate to say it, but I think my husband enjoys a bad Tennessee season.

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To celebrate, and just cause we felt like it we went to Bodeans BBQ in Clapham. The meal was pretty good, re-runs of yesterday’s college football games were on the TV where Steve Spurrier was looking gloomy and Cletus slept on a blanket on the booth seat through the whole meal. Wooohooo! And on the way home I realised that today marks my first anniversary of quitting smoking.

hyperactive

Back in the 70s, one of the kids in my day care group was forbidden from eating additives and preservatives. That meant that he was on a special diet. He couldn’t eat the food that the rest of us ate. Like hotdogs. The only reason it sticks in my mind was that I remember he was served a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a hot dog bun – that seemed to so wrong to me. I still hate non-purposive bun usage.

And why couldn’t he eat the hot dog for which the bun was intended? Because his parents claimed the chemicals in it would make him hyper. Crazy hippies. He wasn’t badly behaved, at least from what I can remember. But he had to suffer a PBJ on the wrong bread.

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Turns out my nursery mate’s parents had the right idea. Apparently all that gook in the food will make kids go crazy. I heard about this in the news briefly and thought – hmmm, as a parent*, maybe I should check that out, maybe you know – do an Internet search. But I didn’t, I couldn’t seem to stay focused. I dunno, coulda been the fruit loops.

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Fortunately, The Crone Speaks did link the story.

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* hey, I think that’s the first time I’ve used the “as a parent” phrase.

Blood sugar bonanza

An article in Wednesday’s Tennessean provides recipes using some of the MidSouth’s favorite sweeties. Including a cake recipe using SunDrop , that nectar of the gods, which the Tennessean describes thusly:

Quench that thirst

Another popular local soda pop, Sun Drop, which originated in St. Louis, started like many drinks of the day, with the parent company selling its formula to small bottlers across the country. One of the largest bottlers remains in nearby Pulaski, which feeds a strong and fiercely loyal pocket of fans in the counties south of Nashville that buffer the Alabama line.

Fiercely loyal? Addicted more like. Mmmmm – SunDrop. Once only available in a limited area – now you can order the stuff online. Do you think they ship transatlantic? In exchange for a permanent advertising space on this blog?

Hmmm, I think VolMom might know the Pulaski bottler – hook me up, let’s make a deal.

Did the eggplant work?

I made the famous labor-inducing eggplant recipe last night. Maybe the flavors need more time to blend. It was really delicious, but like many such things – it will be even better today. And the recipe is huge – so there’s a lot left over.

And no – no sign of baby.

Scalini’s labor inducing eggplant

Here’s an update from the previous countdown post. The eggplant parmesan, made to Scalini’s labor inducing eggplant recipe – is in the oven – the flavors blending, the cheese melting, the perfect goodness of al forno. (Hmm…al forno sounds a lot like how I got myself into this position in the first place.)

Accept no substitutions
VolMom suggested a simpler, easier recipe in the comments section of the previous post. That might be all well and good, but I’m afraid I need every step and part of the ritual to take full advantage of the sympathetic magic. Plus, they say that the active stuff is probably in the herbs. The recipe calls for fresh herbs, so I got me some fresh herbs – and no jar sauce – no matter how good it is will be able to compare.

I have tasted the marinara – and it is divine.

It’s a lot of work
This recipe takes a lot of effort. There are many stages. But luckily, I had two helpers.

The Vol-in-Law

who grated the cheese.

And Fancy…

…who frankly provided the kind of help I didn’t need.

Now, don’t worry about cat hair in the sauce – because basically I’m doing this for Cletus. He needs to have exposure to dander and dirt to prevent asthma. I’m just looking after the health of my unborn baby.

And here are some more stages in the process…

The panfried eggplant slices:

and the first layer of the construction:

I’m getting pretty hungry.

Of course, now the kitchen is a total tip. And normally that wouldn’t matter, but I am planning a home birth. I just hope the early stages of labor (brought on by the eggplant of course) are easy enough that I can supervise the ViL in a little kitchen tidying.

It’s ready!

I just heard my oven beeping. So that’s it for this post, I have to go.

UPDATE: I’ve just noticed that people are landing on this post from a Google search. So… did it work? No. It did not.

I made and ate this at 3 days past my due date. I had it for lunch the second day. We had leftovers again several days later. I am still pregnant 9 days later. I am very overdue.

Was it good? Yes – it was effin’ unbelievably tasty. The marinara sauce was great and in itself wasn’t that much trouble. I will use that again. If I made this again, I would probably oven roast the eggplant slices with a light seasoning of Italian herbs and a drizzle of olive oil rather than pan fry and I would cut back (a bit) on the cheese. This would save about a million calories and I think it would tast a bit “fresher”. That’s just me. And the most trouble about the whole recipe was the frying up of the eggplant slices.