Southern Cornbread

It seems that the difference between Southern cornbread & Northern (Yankee!) cornbread is the sugar. At least, that's what I've heard. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. We don't usually do sweet cornbread down here, although some do. My mama did not & this is the sort of cornbread I grew up on. Buttery good!
Now, I can't claim to be an expert on cornbread, since I haven't made it all that much, but me & the hubby love to have cornbread with soup this time of year, so I did get an iron skillet just for that reason. Iron skillets cook the best cornbread ever. My mama cooks her in an iron skillet, so it must be right.
Recently made some homemade vegetable beef soup in the new crockpot.
With cornbread on the side. Yeah, it was good! On New Year's Day, I fixed the "New Year's Luck" dish of greens, black-eyed peas & cornbread. My greens & peas sure weren't up to my mama's standards, but hubby liked it fine. Our local Birmingham paper ran a whole article recently on cornbread, so I found a good recipe in there & tried it. It's definitely a good 'un, as we say down South! Thought you might like to have a good Southern tried & true cornbread recipe for your files. This recipe called for stone-ground cornmeal, which I am going to look for. I know I sure like my stone-ground grits.

Nora's Memaw's Alabama Cornbread (yes, that really is the title)

Vegetable all cooking spray
1 cup white cornmeal (I used yellow, that's what I had, but prefer white)
1/2 cup white flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. sugar (just a touch, doesn't make it sweet)
1 cup milk
1/2 cup buttermilk (I used all 1 1/2 cups buttermilk)
1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil (I use canola oil)

Preheat the oven to 450*. Spray a 10x16 baking dish (of course, I used the 8" iron skillet & put about 2-3 TBS of oil in bottom, heat it in the oven as the oven is preheating, so the batter sizzles when you put it in). Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl, whisking or stirring well to mix. In a small bowl, beat together the milk, egg & oil. Add the wet mixture to the dry, using the absolute minimum number of strokes needed to moisten dry with wet.

Transfer the batter to the prepared baking dish (or skillet!) & bake until the top of the cornbread is golden brown & springs back when touched, about 20 min. Serve hot from the pan, with butter (of course!).

You can see the only changes I made are noted in ( ). This cornbread is soft & yummy in the middle & crispy on the outside.

Good Eatin' Y'all!

Lampshades & Painting: 101

Several of you asked about learning how to cover a lampshade, so here's a quick little tutorial on how I did mine. It's really pretty easy, not rocket science by any means. Above you'll see the toile shade & the seam where it came together in the back. This seam can be folded under and using fabric glue, pressed into place. The seam will then be at the back of the lamp. On this shade I cut the fabric to go just around the top & bottom of the lampshade & then covered the raw edges with trim on top & bottom.
Here's a square shade I covered in our master bedroom. Same method, seam to the corner & folded under & glued down with fabric glue. I'll go through all the steps below. If you are adding trim, you don't have to be as careful, as the trim will hide a lot of little mistakes. You can see with a check like this, your seams will not match up in the back, but it will look fine from the front. On this shade, I cut the fabric a little bigger than the shade & wrapped it inside & glued down. Again, covered with trim at the bottom & none at the top. You can really do whatever you'd like, trim or no trim.

Silk one finished. You can see just a little bit of wrinkling. If you put enough spray adhesive, it should smooth most of the wrinkles out. Not a big deal. See, the checks look good here from the frontside, which is the side you are most concerned about.
Underneath the lampshade, you can see where I turned the edges under & glued them down.
OK, let's get started! First, you'll need some sort of paper to make a pattern with. Tissue paper is fine, craft paper, anything big enough to hold your lampshade completely. Make sure your paper is big enough (tape pieces together if necessary) that when you place the lampshade on it & roll it completely around the diameter (staying flat on the surface as you're rolling), that you'll have enough paper to complete the circle. Make sense?? Then, you'll place the shade down & either cut it exactly to fit your shade or make it a bit bigger to overlap...either way works, again depending on if trim is being used. Trace your pattern (top & bottom of shade) as you are rolling the lampshade all the way around, making sure to meet where you started from & make the pattern big enough that you can trim any excess. You don't want to skimp & end up cutting your fabric too short.
Your shade will roll all the way across the paper as you are tracing the pattern. Once you complete rolling the lampshade,it will look like a circle.
And your pattern should end up looking something like this, only twice this size. I didn't use a large piece & the pattern should end up looking like a circle with a hole in the middle. Next, you'll put the pattern on your fabric & cut the shape out. If you have a patterned fabric, it won't match up at all, but something without a pattern will be fine. I just don't worry about the matching part (like the toile or check) & put that to the back of the shade where it won't be seen.

Now, you're ready to use the spray adhesive (pictured below). This works great for keeping fabric in place & you can still move things around with no problem. Just spray the shade really well with the spray adhesive (might want to go outside for this). Place the fabric in place and start smoothing it out. If it wrinkles, work the wrinkles out and keep moving all around the shade until it's in place. It takes a little bit of work, but you can pull it off & keep working it if you need to. After you get it all smoothed out, then go back with scissors & start trimming the edges. Again, make it even with the lampshade top & bottom OR overlap and glue down from the inside. Trim it out with some trim & fabric glue (pictured below) and you've got a whole new look for an old lampshade. These shades I used were flat fabric or those paper shades you see around. Those work really well for adding fabric if they are flat to begin with.

Here's my bunny lamp again. See how I added fabric from my window treatment & added some special trim to it. A designer look for a fraction of the cost!
Kitchen Window Treatment

Fabri-Tac fabric glue (great stuff, JoAnn's has it!), Spray adhesive, & Sophisticated Finishes Blackened Bronze which I'm about to tell you about. This is great stuff too!
Someone asked about painting shiny brass. YES! It can be painted very easily. Here's one of the light fixtures that was in our house when we moved in...they were all shiny brass. I'm in the process of changing them out to bronze. Some of them I've found already bronze at yardsales & have picked those up for cheap & others, I've painted with craft paint or the above product, Sophisticated Finishes. Either way works well. This particular fixture was shiny brass & I used satin black spray paint, then added bronze over the top with bronze craft paint, mixed with another rusty color called Burnt Sienna. You just spray the whole thing black, let dry, then daub on the craft paint with a damp sponge until you get the bronze look you want. Very easy project! I have changed so many things over the years from shiny brass to black or bronze. Edited to add: If the brass is something that you will be touching, then use a spray primer on it before you spray it black & do the bronze finish on it. Things hold up really well if you don't touch them, but items that are handled are subject to chip (like door knobs). So the primer will help it stick better.

Like this bunny! Remember, I found this at a yardsale & it's shiny brass.

No more! I used the Sophisticated Finishes Blackened Bronze on this one. I wouldn't totally recommend using this on shiny brass for a big thing, like a light fixture. The spray paint method above works best for larger items. SF works great on smaller things. You can find Sophisticated Finishes at Michaels & I'm not sure where else. I had to buy a craft kit (with 2 other colors) to find the color I wanted, but they do carry larger bottles of other colors. I love this Blackened Bronze!

This is the old ceiling fan from my old house in GA. It too was shiny brass & white. I used the spray paint method above for this too. Took the whole fan down, painted it all & hung it back up. You know the old fan I'm talking about...shiny brass & white, which is all over the place still! It really made a huge difference in this old thing. Changed out the glass globes to the pretty alabaster-type ones too & that always looks better.

Here's another lamp before & after. This one's in my foyer & as you can see above it was a bright gold. I used Sophisticated Finishes in Blackened Bronze on this too. It wasn't brass, but some sort of resin material, so the SF sticks to it very well. Looks much better, don't you think?

So, that's my quick little tutorial on lampshades & painting things! It's a great way to update some old things you have laying around the house. Start looking around & you will probably have something you can paint. I do it all the time! Picture frames, lamps, anything brass or gold can be painted to whatever you want it to be. It's such a frugal money saver & a great way to get a new look!

Paint it or cover it!

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Andrea at SouthernHeart tagged me for some Southern Thangs, so I'm gonna add my list here. Some of these may have been covered. I got a little help with these, but they are oh, so true!

In the South:

1. A true Southerner makes friends standing in line. We don't do "queues", we do "lines". And when we're in line, we talk to everybody.
   
2. A true Southerner never goes snipe hunting twice. (I really did have this done to me growing up, anyone else?!)
   
3. A true Atlanta Southerner knows that all directions start with "Go down Peachtree" & includes the phrase "when you see the Waffle House" & when you're in Cobb County, all directions begin with "go to the Big Chicken". (this one is totally true...see pic below!)
   
4. The North has double last names, the South has double first names.
   
5. You may hear a Southerner say "ought" to a dog or a child. This is short for "y'all ought not do that" and is the equivalent of saying "No!"
   
6. If there is the prediction of even the slightest chance of snow, we must go to the grocery store. It doesn't matter if we need anything or not, we just have to go and pick up bread & milk.
   
7. It is not a shopping cart, it is a buggy.
   
8. "Jeet" is actually a phrase meaning, "Did you eat?" (a personal favorite of my hubby, LOL!)

I should have just included this pic of the Big Chicken in my post originally (See #3)! You really have to get a visual of it to really appreciate the magnitude of this thing. I grew up a few miles from the Big Chicken, so it's always been a part of my life. This landmark started back in the 60's as a chicken restaurant, which eventually went out of business & was sold to KFC in 1974. They kept it as is & it was finally renovated in 1996, with the help of Pepsi. Back in the early 90's, there was talk of tearing down the Big Chicken & those of us who grew up with it launched a campaign to save it & we won! There was actually voting, help from polticians, the whole nine yards, but we who have a soft spot for the Big Chicken prevailed & here she stands to this day!

Hope you had a good laugh! We are pretty predictable down here in the South!

Old Southern towns....

There's something really special about these old Southern towns. Today, I had the pleasure of going with a group of ladies down to Tuscaloosa, AL (home of the world famous Crimson Tide...ROLL TIDE!) and taking a tour of some of the historical buildings around town. We only had time to visit 2 today, since there were 15 of us, so we will have to go back another day to see the rest.

One of the historical homes we visited was the Gorgas house on campus at UA. It was originally built as the dining hall for the college back in the mid-1800's & then used as a residence for several families. The gentlemen who was the curator of the house was so enthusiastic about telling us all the history & all about the family who had lived there & he was very interesting. His thick Southern drawl was delightful & he really knew how to tell a good story...as so many do in the South.

The other house we visited was the Jemison-Van de Graaf mansion (picture above). This mansion (constructed 1859-1862) was one of the last and one of the most elaborate great houses to be built in Alabama before the state's economy was devastated by the Civil War. The builder, wealthy planter and business man , Robert Jemison, Jr., spared no expense to create a "state of the art" home for his family. The Italianate style house was designed by Philadelphia architect John Stewart who was in Tuscaloosa supervising the construction of the Alabama Insane Hospital (now Bryce Hospital). This enormous structure had been designed by Stewart's partner Samuel Sloan, who also designed famous "Longwood" in Natchez, Mississippi. Jemison's home incorporated the latest innovations in design and technology including an elaborate plumbing system which included running water, flush toilets, and a copper bathtub. It also featured a large conservatory to be warmed by a central heating plant (unfortunately never installed because of the Yankee blockades), and indoor lighting fueled by coal gas manufactured in a machine located in the basement. Other modern features incorporated in the design were a boiler for producing hot water, a gas stove, an early form of "refrigerator" consisting of a deep dry well in the basement that kept food fresh even in hot Alabama summers.

The Jemison-Van de Graaff Mansion was almost burned during the waning days of the Civil War. When Tuscaloosa and The University of Alabama were threatened by Union troops, Senator Jemison fled for his life and spent several days hiding in the swamp near his plantation. In retribution, Union soldiers sought to burn the home of this leading Confederate senator. Mrs. Jemison was given fifteen minutes to take what possessions she needed from the house before it was put to the torch. Fortunately, during those few minutes young boys, playing a trick on the invading Yankees, rode down Greensboro Avenue crying, "Forrest is coming, hurrah for Forrest!" The Yankee commander, fearful of this legendary rebel general, ordered his troops to retreat. In their haste, they neglected to burn down the Jemison Mansion. The Jemison-Van de Graaff Mansion remained in the family well into the twentieth century. In the 1940s the house was purchased by J.P. and Nell Burchfield who undertook a major restoration of the structure. From 1955 to1979 the mansion served a generation of Tuscaloosans as the Friedman Public Library. With the construction of a new library on the Jack Warner Parkway, the structure became the home of two national publications, Antique Monthly and Horizon. In 1991 the mansion was acquired by the Jemison-Van de Graaff Mansion Foundation. Using grants and generous contributions from private citizens, this not for profit foundation is in the process of carefully researching and restoring this beautiful and historic house to its original appearance.

Description courtesy of the website for this mansion...hope you enjoy a little bit of history today. I know I was inspired! I love to visit old homes & really enjoy imagining how it must have been to live back in those days. I'm thankful for the modern conveniences we have today, but somehow think that we are missing so much of what they enjoyed & that is a sense of peace & community that is missing so much in our society today. We are such a busy country, whereas they took the time to sit & visit on the porch! Ahhhh, for the good ole' days again.