​Almost every southern cook I know has a recipe box or binder full of cards and slips of paper collected over the years from family, friends, and magazines. This is in addition to a cabinet full of cookbooks - from beautiful glossy picture-filled hardback books to spiral bound paperbacks filled with covered dish supper favorites and the name of the cook. My Mama had a dark wooden recipe box with a cornucopia painted on the top. She would pull it down from the cabinet above the stove, and we would know something delicious was about to happen in that kitchen.

When I got married, I received a recipe box, a couple of binders, and plenty of blank recipe cards. At the time, I had no recipes of my own to write on the cards and put in the binders or box! My mother-in-law gave me an old binder full of her and her mother’s recipes. This binder has become precious to me. Over the years, I have learned to make a few of those recipes, including my husband’s favorite - fresh peach cake for his birthday. (I shared this recipe in my blog Peach Cake.) ​

Last year, my Mama gave me the sweetest birthday present - her wooden recipe box! She included the card for my favorite meal as a child - Chicken Spaghetti! She’s also been working on typing up her other recipes to add to my collection. Of course, those in her own handwriting are the ones that are so dear to my heart. I have such sweet memories and feelings of home every time I look at that box.

Now that I have learned how to cook, I have lots of recipes in my everyday repertoire, and love gathering more. My problem is I have not organized all those recipes. I have a shelf full of cookbooks I’ve collected and lots of recipes scribbled here and there, but I don’t really have a system to organize them all. That’s one of those goals I’ve always hoped to get done, but never have! So, I’m trying to get my act together now, starting with our favorite recipe box from Rifle Paper Company. Choose from three different designs to match your kitchen and personality. We also have a cute Berry Basket Recipe Box you may prefer with its open top. And, all our recipes in the Recipe Archive are available in a printable format perfect for 4”x6” recipe cards to fit!

In 2002, Chris Paulk came home to start a new venture on his family’s farm and muscadine vineyard: creating products made from muscadines that would highlight their flavor and health benefits. ​

Making the jellies has become a joint effort, as The Southern Mercantile actually produces Paulk’s Pride Muscadine Jelly, Sauce, and Preserves, and they’re available in our store!

And, yes, Chris is Jorjanne’s husband! You can read more about their story in Jorjanne’s blogs "Muscadines, Grandma, & a Husband" or "Faithful in the Little Things".

​With Easter around the corner, I started thinking about what recipe to share with y’all. A couple of years ago, I wrote about Deviled Eggs. You can even find our Blue Cheese and Bacon Deviled Eggs Recipe Card in our Recipe Archive.

Click here to go to our Recipe Archive to find the Carrot Cake Recipe Card to print! We’d love to know if you use Brenda’s Carrot Cake recipe this Easter or any other time, for that matter! Take a picture and tag us on Facebook, so we can celebrate with you! If you have any other tips or ideas for Easter, feel free to share those with us, too!

I mentioned in my blog “Faithful in the Little Things” that my father grew up on the Irwinville Farms Project. Since many of you have probably never heard of it, I thought I’d take the time to explain it and the impact it made on a rural community.​
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The Irwinville Farms Project was successful in that nearly all the families who participated were able to purchase their farms from the government and continued to do well for their families. It truly was a helping hand, not just a hand-out. If you’d like to read more about it, you can read the report from 1939 in the National Archives by clicking here, or you can purchase the book, Irwinville Farms Project, written by Joy Wilson McDaniel at www.amazon.com. Another fantastic resource, from where most of these pictures came, is Irwinville Farms, A Digital Archive Curated by Brian Brown.

I grew up in a small town. Scratch that. I grew up in a rural community outside of a small town. Next door to my grandparents’ farm and within a mile of the county line, I was the first one on the school bus every morning and the last one off every afternoon. Keep in mind, we have one elementary school, while the middle and high schools share a campus, for the entire county! ​

The following spring (2002), Chris’s family farm was featured on a Food Network show called “Food Finds.” If you’ve read my blog “Muscadines, Grandma, and a Husband,” you’ll know that his family grows muscadine grapes. Chris’s grandfather, father, and uncle were interviewed for the show, which focused on the capsules “Papa Jacob” was making from the seeds of the muscadines and the health benefits they offered. At the time, he was making them by hand in his home office. I remember watching the show in our little apartment with one of our friends from Ocilla who also lived in Atlanta. Afterward, we all just giggled and stared at each other, amazed and bewildered at what we had just seen on TV! 

The older I get, the more I grow to love Fall! Cooler mornings, turning leaves, the scent of freshly-dug peanuts have all become a few of my favorite things. I love how going back to school puts our family back in a routine after the freedom of summer. I also love celebrating the season at family reunions, fall festivals, really any holiday gathering. 

Our family truly enjoys participating in our church’s “Trick-Or-Trunk,” which is our Halloween/Fall Festival type celebration. Since our church is located way out in the country, most children in our church don't get to go trick-or-treating. (Side note: I went trick-or-treating one time when I was a kid. My mama had to call ahead to let folks know we were coming to their house so they would be prepared to pass out candy. I think we drove around for two hours, visited 4-5 houses, and received a handful of candy. I did have an awesome “Bride of Frankenstein” costume, thanks to my crafty mama!) Stories like mine are what inspired “Trick-or-Trunk.” Church members park their cars in a circle, with their trunks facing inside the circle. They open and decorate their trunks, then once it gets dark, pass out candy to the children as they walk around the circle in their cute costumes. For many of these kids, it’s the only chance they have to trick-or-treat. For many of the adults, it’s a fun time to get dressed up, escape reality, and just enjoy themselves for a little while! 

Throughout the years, our family has dressed up in various themes, usually in homemade costumes. It’s become a sort of tradition to decide what we’re going to be, then figure out how to make the costumes. Many times we’ve been superheroes and villains, but also movie characters, and this year - a family of trophies! My boys were champion tennis and soccer player trophies, while my husband and I snuck in a bit of adult humor: his plaque read “I Tried (participation award),” and mine read “World’s Okayest Runner!” We just love to have fun together!

This fall, we’ve already had two family reunions, are helping host a church youth retreat, have attended two festivals with more on the calendar, in addition to regular family and church holiday celebrations coming up. Now, you know that here in the South, we enjoy our celebrations, and the fact that they always revolve around food! And, confession time: I, like so many others, love pumpkin-flavored anything - I get positively giddy at my first pumpkin-spiced latte of the season! Since we have so many gatherings, I have a few recipes that I keep in mind to bring to the table. Harvest Cobb Salad is a great one, with sliced apples and pears, toasted pecans, dried cranberries, boiled eggs, and poppy seed dressing. Of course, green bean or hash brown casseroles are traditional, and usually enjoyed by most folks. I always like to bring something a little different, though. This year, I took a bread pudding recipe I’ve made many times and swapped a out a few ingredients to make a yummy Pumpkin Raisin-Bread Pudding! Even my boys, who don’t care much for bread pudding, loved it! It always makes me happy to make something my boys really enjoy!

Be sure to join our Recipe Club to receive a free printable recipe card with my Pumpkin Raisin-Bread Pudding recipe on it. This is a great dish to serve as dessert, but it’s also delicious for brunch!

After much research (read: way too much time spent on Pinterest), I created a system where they can pack their own lunches. I had everything all set up at the beginning of last school year, and it worked great! For a couple of weeks. Then, my car decided to wrap itself around a tree. Since I had just stocked everything, my system worked well for my husband who suddenly found himself playing the role of “Mr. Mom.” Then, suddenly, the baskets were empty. And, since my loving church family kept bringing food so my family would survive without me in the kitchen, there was no room for baskets in my over-flowing refrigerator! I couldn’t drive or work, so I didn’t have any place to be at any particular time. Because of that, packing lunches didn't stress me out like it once did, and that was one thing I could do to be helpful.

Here we are, a year later, and I’m trying to get my system back into place. Now that my older son is in middle school where there are more options, and all our schools now have free lunch (high-fives all around!), he usually eats in the cafeteria. That helps me tremendously! My younger son tends to be a little more picky. Not like he’ll only eat chicken tenders and french fries, but more like he sometimes wants all fruit in his lunchbox. He usually doesn’t care for his foods to be mixed together, although he loves nachos. And, texture plays a big part in whether or not he likes a food - french fries and oven roasted potatoes are fine, baked or mashed potatoes are not. He has eaten a whole tomato like an apple and entire containers of cherry tomatoes, loves chili and spaghetti, but doesn’t like “cooked” tomatoes. Somehow, all his food preferences make sense to me, but because the school cafeteria that has hundreds of kids to feed every day doesn’t tend to cater to what one child likes, if I don’t want him to go hungry, then we’re packing his lunch. 

So, my system is pretty simple. I fix the “entree” of his lunchbox, whether it’s leftover taco soup in a thermos, a turkey bacon ranch wrap, a chef salad, or his all-time favorite, the old standby, PB&J, with Southern Mercantile Jam (any flavor, he loves them all!). Sometimes, on super busy mornings (or when I’m moving especially slowly) he’ll just grab a nachos or pizza Lunchable. Really, I’m just trying to give him something with protein that will fill him up. He also really likes cheese (real cheese, not string cheese) and yogurt, so I encourage him to grab one of those if I think he needs a little more protein or dairy. 

Next, I have a basket of fruits and veggies from which he can pick two. I try to prepare ahead of time and have bags of cut-up celery, baby carrots, or grapes ready to go, but there are also apples and clementines..

 As a little girl, my sisters and I were forced to pick whatever fruit or vegetable was in season, wherever my parents or other family members grew it. I even remember stopping on the side of the road not far from the house I grew up in just to pick blackberries so Mama could make a cobbler. (It was delicious!) Since I was a lazy baby sister, I never enjoyed these trips to the garden or orchard or friend’s backyard because they meant working in the sun rather than reading in my room. I did, however, enjoy the “fruits” of all our labor! Now, as an adult, I realize the value of hard work and am grateful for these memories.

One of my favorite memories is of going over to Grandma Willa Ree Tucker’s house at the end of every summer to pick muscadines and scuppernongs. She had quite a few rows of those beautiful vines that were always loaded with the sweet fruit of a southern summer. And, Grandma Ree loved nothing more than to share all that she had. There was always a debate among my sisters and I as to which was better - the purple muscadines or the bronze/green scuppernongs? As a child, the purple were always my favorite, but as I’ve grown older, I tend to love the bronze. I can still remember popping the skins with my teeth, sucking out the juicy pulp, then spitting out the seeds, all while I was supposed to be putting the muscadines in my bucket. For some reason, my bucket never seemed to fill up.

Little did I know that across the county, another family was growing muscadines and raising a little boy into the man I would marry! ​

 I guess it’s a good thing I fell in love with muscadines before I fell in love with him, since they would become such a large part of my adult life! We built our home right in the middle of his family’s muscadine vineyard, and my husband has taken the family business from growing and selling fresh muscadines to creating products made from muscadines. Now, I help with the social media for the family businesses and even make the jellies that we sell. 

We talk to a lot of people about muscadines, some to educate on what they are, how to eat them, and how good they are for you. For most who grew up in the south, though, it’s to reminisce about their time in the woods or their grandmother’s backyard, or how their grandfather made homemade muscadine wine! I always love seeing their faces when they eat a muscadine or try our juice or jelly, then hearing their stories. You can see how the taste and scent take them back to the innocence of childhood and the joy they felt in a simpler time. I love being able to provide people with such a nostalgic experience!

Since it is muscadine season, we’d love to hear your stories and memories! If you need a little inspiration and don’t have access to muscadines, you can always order a jar of Paulk’s Pride Muscadine Jelly, Preserves, or Sauce from us here at The Southern Mercantile! In case you’re wondering the differences, the Jelly is made from muscadine juice for a smoother texture, while the preserves and sauce have the skins for a chunkier texture. The sauce also has spices like cinnamon and cloves, which makes it delicious on pork or with turkey and dressing - it’s my personal favorite! Either way, we’d love to hear your stories and how you serve muscadines!

I enjoy picking on my husband, who is fairly simple in his wardrobe choices, about how much he likes to “accessorize his food.” If there is a gravy, sauce, relish, or any other condiment anywhere nearby, he will find something to put it on! 

Of all the possibilities, I believe his favorite is peas with relish. There are many options, from the type of peas to the type of relish. Black-eyed peas are a favorite here in the south, but other varieties include Cream Forty or Cream 8, Pink-eyed Purple Hulls, Zipper peas, Crowder peas, or Ladyfinger.

 Now’s the time of year to put up peas in the freezer. After shelling the peas, blanch them in hot water for 1 1/2 - 2 minutes. Drain the peas and shock them in an ice-water bath, then drain again. Scoop the peas into freezer bags, label the bags, then store the bags in your freezer. If you don’t have time to shell your own peas, contact your local canning plant. They may have a sheller machine, or they may know someone like our friend, Owen Paulk, who will purchase shelled peas and even get them in freezer bags for you!

Most folks cook their peas with ham-hocks or a few pieces of bacon, but in an effort to be a little more healthy, we’ve switched to using Goya seasoning or just cooking them in chicken broth. You still get that meaty flavor without all the fat and sodium. Adding relish to peas gives them extra flavor, and you can use relish made from just about anything. My mama always made pear relish when I was growing up because we had pear trees. My mother-in-law makes green tomato relish from the piles of tomatoes they grow or have been given. A few years ago, my sister and I made a vegetable relish from zucchini, tomatoes, and onions, which I believe has become my husband’s favorite (Shhh! Don’t tell his mama! :) ​

A few years ago, my family began doing something we never thought we’d do - camping! Now, we didn’t want to invest in a camper or RV because we knew we’d feel like we had to use it for every single trip we took, and I still enjoy sleeping in a hotel room for some trips! Instead, we purchased a tent, which claims to sleep 6 people, but in reality has just enough room for the four of us. As our boys grow taller and taller, that tent gets smaller and smaller!

I love going camping in our little tent, though. Not because I’m really that "outdoorsy," although I do appreciate the natural surroundings. I love it because it’s time spent with my family with little to no distractions! When we’re at home, we don’t stop to look for fireflies or build a fire to roast marshmallows. My boys enjoy riding their bikes through the woods so much more than they do at home. Just the simple things like playing cards or eating hot dogs are so much more fun than they would be at home.

On a camping trip, we’re in close quarters with each other, which would be annoying at home. Even when we go on vacation and stay in a hotel room, we have more space. And, since we’re physically closer, I think it also brings us closer together in our relationships with each other. We go on adventures together, doing things we’ve never done and seeing things we’ve never seen before. I love knowing that we are building memories with our boys that they will have for a lifetime.

I’d like to share with you some of our favorite camping spots so far. We’d love to hear from you if you’ve had great experiences at the same locations! Since we’re really just getting started with camping, we’d also love to hear your suggestions for our next camping trip!

1. Tybee Island
http://www.riversendcampground.com

This was our first tent camping experience, and it was a great one! We went with my sister’s family, who had actually been tent camping before, which was a big help. Tybee’s beaches are a lot more natural and less "tourist-y" than many beaches, but we liked that. There are lots of cute little shops and our favorite seafood place, "The Crab Shack." Of course, Tybee is also just minutes away from Savannah, so there’s plenty to do!

2. Anastasia Island State Park
https://www.floridastateparks.org/park/anastasia

Anastasia Island is just across the Bridge of Lions from St. Augustine, with a more natural and less crowded beach. Of course, the trip to St. Augustine is quick, so we enjoyed touring the St. Augustine Pirate Museum, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and Castillo de San Marcos. Of course, my boys’ favorite moment was when they fired the cannons from the fort!

3. Red Top Mountain State Park
www.gastateparks.org/RedTopMountain

We loved Red Top Mountain because our tent site was right on the banks of Lake Allatoona! My boys just slipped right off the rocks and in to the cool water! We visited the Booth Western Art Museum and The Etowah Indian Mounds. Both were fun and informative field trips that even my boys could appreciate.

4. O’Leno State Park
https://www.floridastateparks.org/park/Oleno

We just visited O’Leno State Park recently, and again, my sister’s family came with us. Located in North Florida, O’Leno is apparently short for "Old Leno," which was once a bustling little town in the late 1800s, until the railroad was diverted around it. We took a short hike from the park area to see where the Santa Fe River actually disappears underground! The river continues underground for three miles before it resurfaces in River Rise Preserve State Park. This time, we didn’t plan much in the way of activities, but we did kayak down the Santa Fe River and saw several springs, including Lilly Springs, where we found "Naked Ed." Yes, he is naked, as my son discovered in attempting to be the first to arrive at the springs! He has a small dock where he sits with a wall to protect your eyes, and he is happy to talk with visitors about his life and family and how he came to be "Naked Ed." It was certainly an experience we’d never have anywhere else!

5. FDR State Park
www.gastateparks.org/FDRoosevelt

Our family has made several trips to Callaway Gardens, but hadn’t really taken notice of FDR State Park. Boy, had we been missing out! There were so many places to hike and picnic and just take in the beautiful views! Of course, we saw Callaway Gardens again and enjoyed the Butterfly Center and the Birds of Prey show, but we also visited Warm Springs to see President Roosevelt’s Little White House and learn a little more about his life. And, we drove a little farther to Pine Mountain to the Wild Animal Safari! That was one of the most interesting and fun adventures we’ve had! If you go, rent a van - I promise, it’s worth it!

One thing that has always bothered me when we camp is the amount of trash we accumulate by using paper cups and plates. I don’t really like using plastic (just personal preference) and I certainly don’t trust my packing skills enough to take anything breakable! I’ve found the perfect solution here at The Southern Mercantile - our beautiful enamelware! By investing $36 in a set of four plates and four mugs, I’ll cut down on our trash for years to come, and I’m sure I’ve already spent that much on paper goods in the past!