{Throwback Series}...Farmer Family Christmas Card!

Proverbs 31 describes a woman of high character, a wife, a homemaker, a cherished lady and so amazingly too describes a beloved mother. This particular verse from Proverbs 31 kept running through my mind this past holiday season – our first without our Mama. But a thought kept running through my mind – a thought that pierced the chaos of the holidays, work, travel and life in general. It was a thought that the “Proverbs 31” woman was blessed – by her children. What a comfort and joy!!!

In the wake of losing a parent, kind words, delicious meals, warm thoughts, fond memories, heartfelt letters and cards and flowers and calls and texts and emails pour in after the fact. Then, there is the melting of the ice that packs around our mind and heart and you realize a month later, a few months later, a season or two later – whenever – that your parent is gone. And you are faced without the shield of shock with the brutal reality of your loss.

The “firsts” are the toughest I feel. The first birthdays, holidays, events and even simple life happenings without your Mama just wind your heart and soul into knots. Yet, you get through them. Peace finds its way amidst the disorder and disarray. Even your faith grows stronger too. Friends and family remember to call, write or simply send a text. Those notions mean the world you. And, somehow, you want to thank them all – thank them all from the bottom of a broken heart… but thank them nonetheless. You want to be as good a friend as they are to you – and you have refined their friendship like gold through a fire.

So, as Christmas came zooming at lightning speed towards us, I realized I just could not pull it together and send a card this year. Then, that verse in Proverbs kept pummeling through my mind and onto my heart. The Proverbs 31 woman is glorified by her duties, actions and love. So much so that even “her children rise up and call her blessed.” Blessed is the life – however it ends – for the children to rise up. That I feel is our honor, our duty and joy.

From the 2015 side of the holiday season, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year y’all! And thank you for all your love and support! Trust me, it means the world to us!

  

Thanksgiving Throwback!!

Fall is my favorite season – I say it over and over and love it just the same each year. I love too that fall is capped by a swansong holiday like Thanksgiving – a time set aside to simply give thanks.

Setting the table is probably my most enjoyable task for family gatherings, dinner parties and events. When you set your table, you get to quell all the design-desires at once! You pair linens with coordinating flatware and stemware. China and dinnerware and silver and flowers are all integral. Food and flavor and scents for the senses are all brought onto one tableau. When decorating a client’s home, it takes time to layer all the elements together. To set and decorate a table doesn’t usually involve such a process as an interiors project. To decorate my home takes nerve medicine. But that is another post, y’all!

When setting a table, instant gratification is achieved. That design “itch” is scratched and one is forced to dabble in all realms of aesthetics. As Mimi always said, “We eat with our eyes first.”  Before we have feasted, we must feast visually. So I relish in the chance to set the table. Whether it be grandly or simply, I love bringing together the home, kitchen and garden onto a level playing field.

Invite the generations to the table with your heirloom plates, silver and stemware. Bring in the fall bounty from outdoors. Add a new element or even element of surprise! (It is no surprise anymore when I place a piece of taxidermy as a centerpiece on my family’s table… oh well!) Get your fix for decorating by setting the table. I know it is my favorite part of the holidays and entertaining.

Here is my Thanksgiving table from 2014 and some food and family shots too! Nothing like talking turkey well into the New Year, y’all!

Farmer's Camo Pasta

I’m not a big hunter. My brother-in-law, cousins, uncle and friends make up for my lack of time spent in a deer stand or duck blind… But, I do love camo – it is surprisingly chic mixed with denim and I’ve seen it sported fashionably (albeit unknowingly) by many a gentleman in The South… and even a lady or two.

As hunting season waxes down here, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a favorite fall dish – my Camo Pasta. This pasta, mixed with Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale and mushrooms is about as fatigue-fashioned as they come. Even the whole wheat noodles join in the camo color scheme. All melded together, this combo makes for a delicious fall supper and I even love it better the next day – which so many things find themselves better. It is better the next day in my leather chair and Netflix binge-watching… which is where you’ll find me enjoying this dish over the deer stand I’m afraid- ha!

Here’s to autumn, its colors and hues and flavors – all mixed together in a pasta dish ready for the hunt. Add wild game or chicken or shrimp to your liking. Enjoy y’all!

Camo Pasta

1 box of whole wheat spaghetti or Angel Hair pasta

1 red onion, chopped

Olive oil

Butter

3 cups of white wine

About a pound of mushrooms, sliced

About a pound or less of Brussels sprouts, halved

1 head of cauliflower, sliced into florets and then sliced further

About a dozen whole garlic cloves

3-4 cups of kale, shredded or torn leaves

1 heaping cup of freshly grated mozzarella

Salt and pepper to taste

On a baking sheet or roasting pan, spread the cauliflower and Brussels sprouts and drizzle with olive oil and salt and pepper. Roast at 415 for about 15 minutes or until they are golden brown. I love the nuttiness that roasting these veggies creates. Don’t crowd the pan – use a couple pans if need be and keep an eye out on them. A little bit of butternut squash or sweet potato is good roasted too and adds a bit of sweetness.

Cook the pasta according to instructions – always salt the water and add a splash of olive oil too.

In a heavy bottom Dutch oven or large pan, brown the onion in some olive oil and butter. I always go by what Mimi said: “Oil for temperature, butter for flavor.” The butter will be a part of the sauce so a good half stick works just fine. Season the onion with salt and pepper.

Once the onion begins to brown, add the garlic cloves and mushrooms. I like to get said ingredients browned quite well – their flavor is much more intense when sautéed to a golden brown. Plus, the garlic cloves get soft and sweet – a great complement in this savory dish.  Season with salt and pepper at this step too. I season with the layers of ingredients.

Combine the browned veggies with the roasted veggies and add the wine. Allow the wine to deglaze the pan and reduce by at least a third. This wine with the deglazed bits and butter is your sauce.

Add the kale and allow the kale to cook (which it will rather quickly) in the wine sauce.

In a baking dish, thoroughly combine the veggies and pasta and sprinkle with the mozz – bake until melted and slightly browned. Enjoy!

She's a Brick....House

Sticks and stones... Well hand-hewn cedar beams and antique bricks more so.

Farmdale is coming along. Each day brings a new element to life. Slowly and surely it will come together and a home - my home - will be ready to move in! I cannot wait!

Though I have lived in Middle Georgia my entire life, I have always loved A. Hays Town's architecture and his perfect capturing of the Arcadian, Creole and Louisiana vernacular. Though Farmdale is not a bayou cottage, I did take some inspiration from those fantasist, soul-stirring homes with my bricks and beams - hopefully evoking some of that Louisiana/Hays Town essence. Thankfully, my fantastic architects poised my home to adapt to such a style.

 

Bricks and beams are from the earth and land. These elements can be awesome bridges to connect our homes to our land, thus keeping our homes grounded, in tune with place and apropos for their settings. I love the tints and textures of the antique bricks and how they were further blended with a new brick in my blend from my friends at Cherokee Brick in Macon - still keeping it local and Southern. But these bricks tell a story...

My bricks are molded from the clay and dirt of Middle Georgia - a constitution many of us can relate too. When we boast dirt on our hands, we boast a connection to our past. These bricks are reminders of the hands before mine that were stained and dirtied and even nourished by our native soil. These bricks have heard hymns and sermons, witnessed weddings and funerals, and now they will now be a part of dinner parties, holidays and fun times for family and friends. I believe Southerners are keen on knowing our people - knowing our people's roots and the soil they run and grow in is so special too.

 

The bricks above the foundation are going to be painted - 

I adore painted brick and had to have some at Farmdale!

Farmdale is sited in a glade within my family's wooded land. Lots and lots of oaks from live to red to water to laurel canopy the woodland terrain and large pines and cedars dot the wooded landscape - these are some of my favorite trees and a natural choice for my home.

Cedar beams (stamped with my initials mind you) will span my living room and heart pine beams from a cotton warehouse will don the ceiling in the kitchen. My floors are planed from the same heart pine beams - ancient lumber structuring a Southern agrarian mainstay in one life and giving me a floor and foundation for mine.

 

My back hallway - a narrow gallery - boasts the antique brick, a handsome hewned cedar beam and sturdy cedar columns. Their perfume is intoxicating - clean, woody, earthy and soulful. These sticks and stones - bricks and beams - are probably my favorite elements of the home's construction. Sure, I can't wait for fabrics and furnishings, but there's just something so everlasting and timeless and meaningful about the earth and land forming foundations for my home.

As any true Southern gent, I know my people and where they're from.  Furthermore, I know my bricks and heart pine - and where they're from too... true Southern fashion.

Farmdale

If any of y’all have ever built a house from the ground up, you KNOW it is a process. You pay lots and lots of money for things you don’t even see – foundations, encapsulation, ductwork, bracing, cinderblocks that you’re just going to cover with brick... but… you’ve got to have these things before you can have your Georgia pine board and batten siding, your antique bricks (and their expensive mortar mind you), your “tin” roof and your shutters. Ahhh, shutters. Those will probably be a post in and of themselves.

 

To build from the ground up or renovate or whatever your house’s project may be, you must have a great team. Thankfully, I have such a team. Every morning, they see me bouncing out of my suburban (clad in plaid and some sort of loafer), and they know that I’ll scale any scaffolding, race across any roof, load up any ladder or meet them wherever their working to investigate the progress. Pester – maybe – but that has such a negative connotation. I prefer “check in” for that allows me to “check out” and let them finish their task at hand. If I didn’t “check out” and head back to JFI, then I’d probably stay all day on the job site and rearrange the kitchen layout a dozen times, move the steps at least once and start painting. I am terrific at starting a paint job – finishing one is NOT my strong suit. I am good with color, so maybe I should stick with selection rather than application.

 

 

I’ve known several of the guys building Farmdale Cottage since we were kids. Most all of them have worked with me on clients’ homes around Middle Georgia, and I find that very comforting. There is a trust factor and comradery almost with these guys, for we’ve moved furniture and walls together, transformed outdated bathrooms and kitchens together and now, we’re building Farmdale together.

 

My sister Maggie captured all these action shots and some construction details. I don’t covet the guys from Wall 2 Wall Construction working in this summer heat, but I do appreciate them doing so. The brick foundation is almost complete, the roof is starting this week, windows and doors arrived and some are even being installed. I’m still a good ways away from planning my first dinner party (which I’m afraid will probably be delivery pizza and paper plates until I get all moved and settled in), but I cannot wait nonetheless. Big Napp had a slogan when our church was moving from the old sanctuary to the new one – “joy of the journey.” It is a journey – amen to that right? But the joy comes in the little things – the little steps – that all slowly but surely come together and create the journey proper. The journey is the story.

 

 

 

So, from the Georgia Red Clay piles of Farmdale to you, thanks y’all for letting me share some of my joy on this journey.

Farmdale Inspiration

This a rendering of the Leroy Post Office, Leroy, Alabama - Big Napp's hometown.

 

My cousin, Julia Harwell Segar, captured in watercolor and pencil the very essence of this timber framed, metal roof clad building back in 1977 - five years before I was born. This painting has hung at my Mimi and Granddaddy's house my entire life, yet it wasn't until design classes at Auburn would I learn that roofline was a "clipped hip" type of gable... I just knew I liked the look of it.

When I first saw Spitzmiller and Norris' rendering of Farmdale Cottage, I knew it was meant to be the "look" of my home. Farmdale boasts a prominent center gable with a clipped hip: a feature I've longed for with that sense of longing a home can bring to a Southerner's nostalgic mindset. And I didn't tell my architects this either - serendipitous and divine perhaps...

We are a people influenced by our people. Genetics don't lend us eye color and balding patterns alone, they give us our taste and even design prowess I think. An artist friend of mine who moved from The South after college said longingly that he "thought Southerners were innately good artists and designers. It's in blood. Just look at their homes!"

I concur with my friend. My family has a saying we refer to as "seed corn." Meaning, that an ear of corn can drop "seed" or it's kernels and generations can sprout forth from there. Yet, the seed corn may produce exact genetic replicas or maybe even different versions. Taller stalked, longer leaved, speckled kernels ... Whatever the outcome of the seed corn's germination, sometimes something really interesting happens a generation or two later.

I love cooking, design, blue and white china, gardening and walking down our country road (not running mind you). I love my family and love feeding them. These aren't unique qualities by any stretch, but my great-grandmother, Eugenia Tate Granade, loved all these things too. These exact same things.

I'm her seed corn. Though I never knew her, my affinity for birds, love of country, bucolic landscapes, admiration for pansies and violas and nandina berries and walks in the country are directly from her. Big Napp has always told me I reminded him of his mama - one of my highest complements and honors.

Mrs. Genie Granade is my great-grandmother of mention while Jeanie Granade Farmer was my mother - a little more seed corn for y'all. Mrs. Genie loved writing too - and was a stickler for grammar. I get that from her too. Mrs. Genie would quickly correct anyone out of love, for she loved the King's English and her students too much to speak incorrectly. She believed as I do that it is absolutely and perfectly wonderful to be from towns like Leroy or Perry or Hawkinsville - just don't give those towns a bad reputation with your speech! I've terrified too many friends with grammatical corrections. I'm not a grammar saint by any measure, but I do believe that folks do not know they're using the pronoun "I" incorrectly - it's a rampant epidemic!!! Another post for another time y'all.

Mrs. Genie walked everyday from her small farmhouse to the Leroy post office. She also drank one small "co-cola" everyday too. This several mile walk was her exercise, and she tread this path nearly year round and well into her twilight years. Akin to Miss Elizabeth Bennett's belief in the nobility of walking the English countryside, Mrs. Genie's jaunts to the post office were parallel in her belief too that these walks were enlightening, dignified and superb for one's mental and physical well being.

Now, as Farmdale Cottage is taking shape, I'm seeing the roofline come to life and can't help but be reminded of the Leroy post office. Maybe this seed corn has indeed sprouted up like his great-grandmother in a landscape he loves and surrounded by family too. And maybe, just maybe, if I look down my country road with hope and whimsy and nostalgia, I might see Mrs. Genie walking towards Farmdale. I'll have a "co-cola" in a small glass bottle awaiting her.

Amaretto Peach Bake with Honey-Lemon Olive Oil Cake

Almond and peach flavors are totally apropos for one another – probably because they’re cousins! Peaches are in the almond family. Just take a gander at a peach pit’s inner pit or the blossoms even – you’ll see the family connection for sure! I won’t bore you with the horticultural nomenclature, Latin naming, bark similarities and inner cambium layers of their trunks: just trust me – they’re related!

My sisters and I had the best extension of siblings with our first cousins growing and still do today! Something about having your own playmates from your own family tree is so fun. Growing up in a small town, we often were mistaken as “oh he’s one of those Brantley kids” or “she’s that Farmer girl isn’t she?” and for the sake of not splitting hairs, we’d just answer “ yes’m or yes sir” accordingly. We’ve always been glad to be the from the same tribe!

The kissin’ cousins in this recipe are the amaretto cookies, almond liqueur and the peaches. They are a household of flavor all to themselves! I can remember my Mema, my great-grandmother, and my Mimi, my grandmother, being the most temperate of ladies – “lips that touch wine shan’t touch mine!” was often exclaimed. Yet, there was always a bottle of almond liqueur, grand manier, sherry or Lydia Pinkum cough syrup somewhere in the pantry or medicine cabinet! I guess they had to say such an expression because they married Baptists. I digress…

Taking inspiration from close relations, my Amaretto Peach Bake in Dinner on the Grounds is that familial combination of flavor relations baked together with the freshness of the season and complementary tastes. Plus, it couldn’t be an easier dessert (or breakfast) for the summertime. I even serve it with ice cream, whipped cream or even with a side slice of cake! However you decide to serve it, just make sure you have plenty! You’ll realize how MANY cousins you have when you make a dessert like this!

Amaretto Peach Bake with Honey-Lemon Olive Oil Cake

Recipe from Dinner on the Grounds – Southern Suppers and Soirées

Photography by Emily Followill  

Amaretto Peach Bake

4 peaches, halved and pitted (peeled, if desired)

1 1/2 cups amaretto liqueur

2 dozen small amaretto cookies, crushed

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter

Whipped cream, optional

Mint or basil for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place peaches in baking dish, pit side up. Fill each pit with a heaping tablespoon of cookies and top with 1 tablespoon butter.

Pour amaretto around peaches, making a vat of liqueur.

Cover loosely with foil and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until peaches are completely soft.

Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Garnish with mint or basil. I love the essence the basil gives off with the warm peaches.

Farmer's Note: I like the keep the skin on because it helps the peaches hold together. 

Honey-Lemon Olive Oil Cake 

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups plain yogurt (not low-fat)

2/3 cup olive oil

1 cup honey

1 teaspoon good vanilla

2 heaping tablespoons grated lemon zest (from 2 large lemons)

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

2 1/2 cups flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9-inch springform pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk eggs lightly. Add yogurt, olive oil, honey, vanilla, lemon zest and juice, whisking till combined. Add remaining ingredients and whisk until just smooth and no lumps remain - but do not over whisk though. 

Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake for 60-70 minutes, until a tester comes out clean (cover with foil if the top is getting too dark toward the end). Cool in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes; remove from pan and let cool completely.

This cake will stay fresh for several days, well wrapped.

Giddy Up, Yee Haw, Y’all!

Baby Napp turned one this past January. So naturally, when you turn one, you have a square dance, right? RIGHT!!!

Napp loves to dance. And, fortunately for him, he was born into the perfect family. We all love to dance – especially when no one is looking… that’s when my best moves, I feel, are perfected. I digress…

Whether one of us holds him and waltzes around the living room, or sashays around the dining room table with him, sways, shags, line dances or just grooves, this baby lights up and joins the fun! He just loves to dance. “Dance, Dance” we call it and he performs on cue. Since we have a pole barn pavilion on our land, a square dance was totally apropos.

From a fantastic Lisa Mae Cake (she makes all our special occasion confections) to hamburgers, hot dogs and all the fixins, we ate and danced and played with all our friends all afternoon long! Pine trees in planter boxes and quilts and hay bales (and space heaters since it did get chilly) all filled the pavilion – along with the laughter of so many other babies and children.

I loved seeing Napp’s face light up when he saw his friends surround him and dance and even help him open his birthday presents. Many of his friends are the children of our friends - this simply makes the circles of friendship grow tighter and more special with each generation. Having our friends there along with their precious babies was fulfilling and heartwarming as it could be.

The kid in all of us did a dosey doe, clapped our heels and ate too much cake – and enjoyed Napp time… and nap time too afterwards!!!