I’m re-gifting…
…a present given to me by my Mother. Last Christmas she made my sister and I each a recipe book made up of all our family’s recipes she’d collected over the years. She had hand written over 100+ of these recipes (2X’s) so that my sister and I could carry some southern cuisine with us to Charlotte and Los Angeles, respectively. She included in each of our new recipe books a table of contents, an ingredients list, and detailed directions for each recipe. She made sure that the recipe was credited to the correct family member or family friend and wrote little notes throughout about each of them:
“Pam Bolan grew up in Whistler, Alabama. She lived in Aunt Willie Mae’s house after us and kept your sister for me while I worked at the insurance company until we moved to Savannah, Georgia. She had a daughter Shelley. They moved to Birmingham and we kinda lost touch. You will see losts of recipes from her. Her mother, Mrs. Peterson was a fantastic cook! It’s sad how we sometimes loose touch with the people we were once so close to.”
This little book has embedded in it a beautiful history of family and friendships from all over the Southeast. Each recipe has been reworked and updated through the years by many generations of great southern cooks. I am publishing all of them on this website for all of ya’ll to enjoy — with hopes that with each bite, you’ll taste a little bit of the southern hospitality we’ve been so fortunate to enjoy our whole lives.
The website was named after the cherished and delicate skill it takes to make a dark gumbo roux in a cast iron skillet without burning the flour — like my Grandmother has done so effortlessly over the years. The roux was originally brought to the South by the French upon settling in New Orleans. The Cajuns combined the technique with local ingredients (and whatever swamp animal was at arms reach) as the foundation to make our beloved gumbo. So, like the roux, by sharing this book I hope it will be the foundation of the kind of meals and memories its recipes have spawned over the years.
I’ve broken the recipes down by cuisine (hopefully you know the difference between Cajun and Creole), course (yep, it’s called “Supper“), and dish. You’ll find everything from the super easy, like “Microwave Peanut Brittle”; to the more decadent “Mawmaw’s Red Velvet Cake“.
So, you’ve stumbled upon a true family venture here and we hope you stay for a while and come back often. Please feel free to leave us a comment or two and we’d really like to hear any feedback you might have — you can do that with the form below.
Sincerely,
The Re-Gifter (Jonny)