Fourth Ward Renovated homes

I could have stopped in front of every house and taken a picture. They were all spectacular!

Bird Houses in Fourth Ward park

There's just no words to explain these
artistic creations. I love them, but thank God for pictures! Enjoy!

A Day in Fourth Ward

Frog Friend Gail is a personal assistant to my elderly aunts who are 92 and 93. Thanks to her, they are able to continue living in their home. She cooks for them, runs errands, keeps their medicine straight, cleans...you name it. If they need it, she does it. Gail has another client in Charlotte two days a week. They scheduled in other support help in on those days, so it all works out. Things get a little hairy though when the Charlotte client goes on vacation. He has two dogs and two cats in his condo that have to be cared for. The dogs must be walked in inner city Charlotte several times a day. The area is known as Fourth Ward, near the Bobcats arena and Discovery Place. Fourth Ward has a historical heyday in the Gay Nineties...that would be the 1890's and early 1900. Most of the houses built during the turn of the century in that area were huge Victorians. After 80 or 90 years the area had fallen into disrepair. Entre Urban Renewal! It's so gorgeous there now. They're becoming Charleston and Savannah wannabes complete with carriage horses. (And I have a picture of one!)

My aunts live about 20 miles north of the city near Lake Norman. Poor Gail has kept her Chrysler cruiser in the wind, back and forth between the two places all week. Today we took the old girls to meet up with the dogs. We spent the day in Fourth Ward wheelchair pushing. Both dogs and oldsters had a great time. The cats? Well they're cats...so they just don't give a darn!

Sammy the dog is kinda cute don't you think? He loves Aunt Ruth and tries to "protect" her from the other resident house dog. It was so funny to watch him.

A good note to end on for tonight. Tune in tomorrow for more pictures of Fourth Ward.

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Fall Has Fell!

It's all over my yard! It makes an old farm girl's thoughts turn to sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and mulled apple cider. I can still smell those spices!


Life has been a little crazy these last few weeks. There's been so little time to update the blog.

But the holidays are coming and I'm already gathering ingredients for the baking seige that will definitely take place in my kitchen. My theory is to collect all the stuff and the time to bake will appear...simply because it has to! It will happen, you just watch! It will be different this year without Angie. She was my biggest fan during the holiday cooking. I miss her so much. Getting through the holidays will be an emotional challenge, but my heart has been on my sleeve since June 10. I can probably withstand about anything by now. If not, I know where the Kimberly Clark aisle is.
Stay tuned.

Ten Hearty Meals for the price of ONE!

I believe I've said this before; I love to cook! I have no children at home anymore. Thus, cooking for one can be a bit of a challenge. Buying for one at any grocery store is impossible! The smallest package of almost anything feeds at least four. Last but not least, to get the best prices, you have to buy in bulk. I couldn't cook for one without generating a lot of wasted food--so I stopped doing it.

I cook for 10 or 12 instead; eat one, and freeze the rest in individual meal containers. Tonight's menu: country style pork steak, mashed potatoes with gravy, and green beans times ten. The cubed pork steak was the deal of the week at the store, $1.98 per lb. The total cost of the ten meals was under $15...or about the price of one conservative dinner out.

Country Style Steak recipe:

4 lb. cubed steak (pork or beef)
1 Can Beef Broth
Salt and Pepper to taste
TBSP Kitchen Bouquet
Flour for dredging
Oil for frying

Salt and pepper steak pieces on both sides. Dredge in flour and fry steak in small batches until golden brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels and set aside. Pour grease off the frying pan through a strainer to save the browned bits. Add browned bits back to pan. Turn heat to high and add can of beef broth and a can of water. Bring to a rolling boil. Transfer the meat to a dutch oven or stock pot and pour the boiling pan drippings over. Add Kitchen Bouquet and just enough water to cover the meat. Simmer on low until steak is fork tender and gravy has thickened. Prepare mashed potatoes and green beans while the steak is cooking. Tonight I'll freeze them with the lids on the containers. Tomorrow, I will remove the lids and pack them in gallon vacuum ziplocks. Where can you get a good home-cooked meal for a buck- fifty a plate and 3 minutes in a microwave?

Do you see anything wrong with this picture that a 50K kitchen
renovation couldn't cure? I don't either, and I really really would LOVE a new kitchen. It's on the dream board, but I've not won the lotto yet. That's not what I meant anyway. This kitchen is too clean. It looks like food could happen here, but nothing is...yet. I'm going to trash it and FINALLY, yes FINALLY!, make CHICKEN PIE!

We need pie crust! You can get it at the store, or you can do like me, make your own from scratch. It's really not that hard to do with a foolproof recipe. I happen to have access to one of those. You'll find it on Suzanne McMinn's blog, Chickens in the Road, at http://www.suzannemcminn.com. Suzanne is a romance writer and she lives on a farm in the hills of West Virginia. Check out her Foolproof Pie Crust recipe, and don't turn your nose up that it has vinegar in it. Vinegar is the "foolproof" secret and you'll never taste it once it's baked. Once you get your dough into a ball like this, it must be wrapped in plastic and put in the fridge for at least 15 minutes before you attempt to roll it out. Did I mention that I make little pies and freeze them? I'm an empty-nester, so making a whole pie would be a lot of waste. I make them in small individual sized cake pans. The batch makes a dozen small pies, or three regular sized pies.

You can put vegetables in the pies if you like, I just prefer my vegetables on the side. Usually the night before pie-making I rotisserie two chickens and take the meat from the bones.

Filling Recipe:

Meat from two cooked chickens, chopped
2 Cans Chicken Broth (or homemade stock)
1 Can Cream of Chicken Soup
1 Cup whole milk (I use half and half)
2 TBSP Flour
2 TBSP butter
1/2 Knorr Chicken Bouillon cube
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp poultry seasoning
1/2 tsp crushed rosemary

In a large stockpot, melt the butter and make a roux with the flour. Do not brown the roux. Once the flour is dissolved in the butter add the chicken broth, soup, milk and bouillon. Simmer until smooth and thickened, add cooked chicken and seasonings. Keep in mind that the broth (if you used canned) and the bouillon have lots of sodium in them. Taste before you add salt. Otherwise, you may get it too salty!

Here we go, finished pies ready for the freezer, with a ball of pie crust left over. I freeze them solid on the cookie sheet first, and then package them in ziplock freezer bags. They're so handy to have around and so good!

As you can see, a couple of these didn't make it to the freezer!
After craving chicken pie for weeks now, I just couldn't freeze them all. Yum!

Eat Your Heart Out Paula Deen Chocolate Mousse Cake

Don't get me wrong. I love Paula Deen. Everything about her makes her a hero to me. She's a home-town Georgia girl success story, and I've only had one of her recipes to bomb on me. That would be the one pictured on this cover, her (more likely her magazine's) version of the "Chocolate Mousse Cake." The picture alone would sell magazines, but I didn't like the recipe. To be fair, perhaps I just don't like bitter devil's food cake. That's the base of the recipe. Neither the texture nor the taste was pleasing to me. Sorry, Paula, but I dumped the whole thing in the trash. The picture was a visual my mind would not let go of. Someday, I thought, I'll make that cake MY way...and just filed it away for future reference. I think I unconsciously gathered ingredients if you want to know the truth.

How else could it be that when Gail (whom I'd hired to help redeem me from housewreck hell) wanted "something sweet" I had 3 bars of German chocolate holed up in the cabinet? "You cook," she said, "I'll clean."

What a deal! Thus, "(Eat Your Heart Out Paula Deen) Chocolate Mousse Cake" was born on the fly. It's my original adaptation that has never before been published, and I'm going to share it now with my readers.

For the layer cake:
From inside the box of Baker's German Chocolate, prepare the traditional German Chocolate Cake recipe according to package directions.

For the Mousse:
1 packet of Knox unflavored gelatin dissolved in a TBSP of very warm water. Cool to room temp.
1 pint whipping cream
1 box instant chocolate fudge pudding
1/4 to 1/3 C sugar (to your taste)

Add cream to mixing bowl and start to whip at a medium-low speed. Add gelatin and sugar while whipping, then gradually add the chocolate pudding continuing to whip until it sets up in a nice mousse texture. This makes an impressive mousse to be so easy, AND there's no raw egg worry.

For the chocolate frosting:
Prepare the traditional cooked coconut/pecan frosting (also inside the box of German chocolate)...but leave out the coconut and pecans. We're going for pure chocolate decadence here. As soon as it comes off the 12 minute cook on the stovetop, add a full bar of German chocolate and stir until melted. Cool.

Assemble the layers with the chocolate mousse between the layers and the frosting over the outside. Decorate the top with chocolate curls from the third bar of German chocolate.

To make chocolate curls: Microwave the chocolate at 5-second intervals. About two 5-second turns in the nuker makes it just right. Draw a vegetable peeler down the length of the chocolate bar and heavenly curls roll right up just like magic. (In the magazine are detailed instructions for making chocolate curls.)

Enjoy! Trust me...it's wonderful even if I do say so myself. :)