BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Southern Cooking Favorite Southern meal!

My favorite Southern meal is dressing (not stuffing), fried chicken, fresh white peas (straight from the field), potato salad (like mine warm), fried corn bread, and chocolate cake with the icing made on the stove to finish. I love sweet ice tea to go with it. Can you tell I am needing a mom's cooking fix?

Chicken and dumplings (real dumplings made with flour and chicken broth), white rice, and biscuits. And, yes, sweet iced tea is the only beverage that will satisfy!

Fried pork-chops, mashed potatos (with lumps) and white gravy, corn salad or 3-bean salad, and buttermilk biscuits. My husband would add greens to that list, but I'm not a fan mushy green stuff. For dessert, sweet-potato pie.

I spent Easter with my husband's family, so I didn't get my Mom's Easter meal. It was good, but it just isn't the same.

fried chicken and waffles...

Oh bepart, you've to it!

My great-grandmother's chicken and dumplins - nobody can make them like she could (not even my brother the chef!)
But for me you have to have fried okra (hand made with corn meal - not those frozen things that are all dough!), and fresh tomatoes and corn from the garden. And of course iced sweet tea. Homemade banana puddinf for dessert (my great-grandmother's as well).

And natturally, since my bypass, I can't eat any of this! <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

You can't beat a bit of sausage. Bit of mustard, bit of gravy*, can't go wrong with that matey. Have it with a huge flagoon of beer, or wine if you're posh.

*Gravy is a thickened sauce, usually made from a base of juices and extractives. There are two basic types of meat gravy: thickened and unthickened. Nice if contains plenty of fat and runny meat.

corn on the cob, fried patty pan squash, sliced tomatoes, fried chicken.

Fried green tomatoes, sweet potato pie, chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, sawmill gravy & biscuits.

Ok, now I'm hungry.

I've got a brilliant recipe for sawmill gravy:

1/2 lb big juicy pork sausage (or a carrot if you're a vegetarian)
1/4 cup butter or any old fat
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 1/4 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning (optional*)

Cook your big sausage in a large skillet over medium heat, crumbling and cooking until no longer pink (we don't want to eat a raw sausage, do we ladies?).
Remove sausage and wipe skillet (this is like a frying pan).
Melt butter or fat in same skillet (see above) over low heat.
Whisk in flour and stir until smooth, about 1 minute (although obviously this depends how fast you stir....I go like a rocket but you're probably slower**).
Whisk in milk gradually and cook, stirring constantly until thickened and bubbly (about 12 minutes).
Stir in sausage, salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning if desired. Then cock-a-doodle-do you've got brilliant gravy. pour it over any old meat you have and serve with beer.

* you don't have to if you don't want to...if you really think it'll taste better than my brillaint recipe

** no offence