How to Make Southern Sweet Tea

Tea Bags

What kind of tea you use is important,if you ask most folk who live in the south they will say they recommend Luzianne because it’s made specifically for iced tea.Next is Lipton, Tetley, or even store brand tea bags will work. When in doubt, buy quality tea.

HOW many tea bags? it’s really a matter of personal preference. For a gallon of real Southern sweet tea, you’ll need six to eight single cup tea bags or two to three family size tea bags.

Never, ever boil water with tea bags in it. At the very least, you may singe the tea and make it bitter. At the worst, the tea bags will split or burst, creating a nasty mess. Instead, place a medium pot of water on to boil alone. Three to four cups is plenty.

Once the water reaches a low boil, remove it from the heat. Place the tea bags in to steep and cover. Let tea bags steep for roughly 10-15 minutes. The longer you steep, the stronger the finished tea. However, over-steeping makes bitter tea.

If you want or need decaf tea, you can buy decaf tea bags or simply decaffeinate regular tea. To accomplish this, boil two pots of water. Steep the tea bags for less than a minute in the first pot of water. Remove the bags and discard the water. Steep the tea bags in the second pot of water as normal. The result is 90-95% caffeine free tea.

Simple Syrup for Convenience

While the tea is brewing, make a batch of simple syrup. Dissolve two or more cups of sugar in three cups of hot tap water for a gallon of sweet tea. Stir until the water is clear.

The Final Mix

Once the tea steeps long enough to reach your desired strength, pour it and your simple syrup into a pitcher. Stir the tea and syrup gently, adding enough water to make a full gallon. Taste test for sweetness and add more sugar, if needed. Cover and let stand until the tea reaches room temperature.

Don’t just add ice and throw it in the fridge, this can make for cloudy tea that sours quickly. Serve cold with ice and a lemon wedge on the rim.

Traditional sweet tea is a Southern staple, but that doesn’t mean you can’t experiment with flavor. Adding mint sprigs, flavored syrups, and throwing in some flavored tea bags during steeping are just a few ways to add variety.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

When company is coming and you need a quick dessert...I got one for you. A pineapple upside down cake.
It's is one of  the easy cake to fix for your guess who coming to dinner?

I like a warm sweet tart cake sometime and this cake fix the bill. I have a wonderful friend who love this cake so much.she can eat is every other day.( I think she like the candy pineapple).

Now let me show you how easy...

1 box Super Moist yellow cake mix or your best recipe for yellow cake
Follow the cake mix instruction, instead of water use the pineapple juice from the pineapples.

You Will Need
Pineapple rounds in a can
Crushed Pineapple 
Maraschino red cherries without stems.If it xmas time use green and red ones
Light brown sugar (Not dark) if you used dark the syrup with be dark and the pineapple will look burn.

Melt 1 stick butter in case iron pan. place a cup and 1/2 light brown sugar spreading over the butter and add cup crushed pineapple spreading over the brown sugar and butter add  pineapple rounds on top. in each hole of the pineapple place a cherry.

Pour Batter on top

 Bake 30 mins

Wait about 5 mins and place serving plate on top and turn over

Please serve warm.

Green Beans And Red Potatoes

Green Beans and Potatoes: will carry two veggies to your dinner table.serving with meat, fish or lamb. if you don't eat meat just serve with a nice piece of bread and a light dessert.

I like to cook fresh green beans and adding those red potatoes to them. you can also used the can green beans but sometime the can have that can taste.

I love planting a garden every summer. I never planted green beans. well, I decided to plant green beans one summer.as I started together the ready veggies, never seen my green beans bearing. the green beans plants had nice bright leaves and no green beans.

I was out done.so one day my daughters and I was just outside have a picnic laying on the ground on a blanket. my oldest daughter saw the green beans hang down from the vines.There was lots and lots of them.hanging under the leaves.

Two pounds fresh green beans

2 pound small red potatoes.

1/2 cup bacon dripping

Salt and pepper to taste

Adding Garlic Flakes and Onion flakes

Cutting Potatoes in fourth rubbing two tablespoon bacon dripping and salt and pepper to taste placing in a hot oven 375 until tender, after dashing the potatoes with garlic flakes and onion flakes.to your liking

Saute green bean in a pan with the bacon dripping until tender salt and pepper to taste
blend red potatoes and green beans.If you like you can add garlic flakes and onion flakes.

OVER COOKED GREEN BEANS

TWO CAN FLAT GREEN BEANS

1/4 CUP COOKING OIL

SALT AND PEPPER TO TASTE

1 CAN WATER AND THE GREEN BEANS WATER TOO

BOIL GREEN BEANS 30 MINS ADD POTATOES AND COOK UNTIL TENDER

Easy Pie Crust

There’s nothing more American than homemade pie with a good homemade tender flakey crust! I am giving you three of the best recipe crust I found so you can try them.

If you fail don't give up! you can always buy kroger ready made Pie crust In the red box....my back up!

Martha Steward:
Shortcut your way to wonderful pies all summer. Prepare the crust and topping ahead, and keep them in the freezer.

    prep: 40 mins
    total time: 1 hour    40 mins
    yield: Makes 2

   
           
Ingredients

    2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
    1 teaspoon salt
    1 teaspoon sugar
    2 sticks chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Directions

    Step 1

    To make the dough for the pie crust, mix 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour and 1 teaspoon each salt and sugar in a medium-size bowl. Cut 2 sticks chilled unsalted butter into pieces. With a pastry blender, cut in butter, working until mixture resembles coarse meal.
    Step 2

    Add 4 tablespoons ice water; work with hands until dough comes together. If dough is still crumbly, add more ice water a tablespoon at a time (up to 4 more tablespoons). Do not overwork.
    Step 3

    Divide dough in half, and flatten halves into disks. Wrap disks separately in plastic; refrigerate at least 1 hour.
    Step 4

    To form the pie shell, roll the dough on a floured surface into a 14-inch round. Wrap around rolling pin and carefully unroll over a 9-inch pie plate.
    Step 5

    Fit gently into bottom and side of plate. Use kitchen shears to trim dough to a 1-inch overhang; fold under, and seal to form a rim.
    Step 6

    Crimp rim with fingertips and knuckle. Repeat with remaining dough; wrap each with plastic, stack, and freeze.

Lynne's Pie Crust Improv Guide: One Formula, Three tricks

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by Lynne Rossetto Kasper

Ingredients

Pie crust has intimidation written all over it. So let's bring it down to where it belongs — you only need a few key pieces of information. For me it comes down to one formula plus three tricks. Trust me, you can do this.

So when you make this crust, fill it with sweetened fruit and you have homemade pie. Just take it step by step — and then show off like crazy.
The Formula:
For one single-crust 9 to 10 inch pie, which holds 4 to 6 cups of fruit, you'll need:

• 1 1/4 cups flour, measured by dipping into the flour and leveling off (preferably all-purpose, unbleached and organic)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 stick stone-cold unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch chunks

1. For a food processor, put all of this into the bowl with steel blade (if they've been chilled, all the better). Pulse until you get a really rough mixture that looks like big peas on steroids in crumbles of flour.
2. If you're doing it by hand, put everything into a mixing bowl, and smoosh the butter chunks and flour mix together quickly with your fingers (work fast because you don't want to melt the butter, you want it in big flakes) until the mixture looks like what's described above.
Next, we add something wet:

• 4-5 tablespoons ice water
• 1 tablespoon vinegar (which helps make the crust tender)

Now the tricks to finish up the crust:

TRICK #1: Don't overmix. Toss the wet and dry together with a fork (in the mixing bowl) or with a very few pulses (in food processor). You want it clumpy. You do not want it to look like cookie dough.
TRICK #2: Chill, Chill, Chill. Every time you mix or handle the dough, chill it again. That's how it gets tender. This means once it's mixed, gather it in a ball and flatten it into a disk, wrap it in plastic wrap and chill 30 minutes to overnight. Once you've rolled it out and put it in a pie pan (use shiny metal, not dark or glass), or a cookie sheet, chill it again 30 minutes to overnight.
TRICK #3: Don't let the dough get warm until it's in the oven.
That's it — you have pie crust dough.
To make a pie, you don't even need a pie pan. You could use a skillet, or cookie sheet, or upside down roasting pan — yeah, any flat metal surface will do.
Roll out the dough, chill it, then pile lots of sweetened fruit in the center (4 to 5 cups), flip over the sides, and you have a pie ready to bake. Bake at 400ºF until the juices are bubbling, and the crust is rich golden brown.
And there you have it — the pie crust formula with three tricks.