Mine Too

My kittens are fascinated by the bathroom too.  I think I'd get along quite well with this guy.  Having two calico kittens myself, why not make it three.  Whereas his kitten is not out of my league, he sure is, but I'm a cat charmer and I might could win him over.  Now if I just had a body like his...

I admit that the first part of this post is a bit silly, but I was too tired to right much of a post after an exhausting day yesterday.  In total, I spent eighteen hours cooking (six of those were spent sleeping, but the black-eyed peas were in the crockpot during that time).  I started the night before by boiling the chicken for the dumplings and making some extra broth for the greens.  Once I got up at 7am I was cooking solidly from then until lunch was served at 12:30.  Everything seemed to turn out deliciously, at least I enjoyed it and everyone else said that they did.  Some of the older family members had been cooking this meal for over sixty years, so if it met with their seal of approval, I think I did pretty good.

There was only one food item that I was not happy with and that was the cracklin cornbread.  I foolishly used a cracklin cornbread mix from the grocery store instead of making cornbread and adding cracklins.  It turned out to be sweet cornbread, which I personally hate.  Cracklin cornbread needs to be savory, not sweet.  Luckily most people ate it with their turnip greens which are naturally bitter and hid the sweet taste.  I won't be making that mistake again.  I did sneak over to the neighbors for a few minutes, and I ate a piece of her cracklin bread and it was delicious and perfect.  It bothers me when I serve something that is less than perfect.  When it comes to cooking, I am very much a perfectionist.