Southern Style

Last night I conquered my fears and decided to make fried chicken.  The night before I put it in buttermilk to soak... no idea why, it's just recommended.  I think it tenderizes it.  And I decided why not go all in and use up the huge sweet potato we had and make sweet potato pie while I was at it...another first. 

Well, the sweet potato pie lived up to it's 5 stars on allrecipes, and was delicious.  Garret, a huge fan of the traditional pumpkin pie at holidays, kindly requested we start making this instead.  If you've never had it, and you can get your hand on some sweet potatoes (I know not all of my international readers can), then I suggest trying this for a sweet treat.  I followed the recipe exactly, with the exception of using 2/3 raw sugar (the non-white, white kind), and 1/3 dark brown sugar.  I think it was a good call, gave it a little more depth. 

The fried chicken recipe was The Pioneer Woman's recipe and I found it on another blog here.  I have the cookbook, but as I was keeping things pulled up on the iPad for cooking, I looked it up online instead of going upstairs to get the book.  The flavor was really, really good and even if I was vegetarian, I'd be looking for things to fry up coated in it.  We used peanut oil (for it's high smoke point) and that worked really well. 

I just added a plateful of my great-grandmother's buttermilk biscuits, some fresh tomatoes, and some sauteed chard for greens.  Eleanor is whoa into anything green, so she gobbled the greens up.  Add in some sweet tea and you have a scrumptious southern meal. 

And for your enjoyment...if you add in just a wee bit of sweet tea to a wee little one who is exhausted you get a hilarious little girl.  Hop on over to Facebook to check it out!