Birmingham residents had an opportunity to have the Made South experience this weekend at the Hoover Met. I have been following the Made South and Southern Makers phenomena for a couple of years now on Instagram, so I jumped at a chance to go to the show when a friend told me about it coming to Birmingham. It was a perfect show to meet the entrepreneurs I have been following on social media. I also got the chance to support some of them with purchases of Southern-made goods.
There were several vendors and products that caught my eye. I loved to seeing two Alabama distillers participating in the show: Redmont Distilling and John Emerald Distilling Company. I sampled the Redmont Vodka again I had sampled it at Birmingham’s Sloss Fest last year. It didn’t disappoint. I have been following the progress of Emerald Distilling on social media and I really was looking forward to trying their products. I am not particularly fond of whiskey, but their Alabama Single Malt Whiskey is smooth! I highly recommend it!
Other vendors I found interesting at the show were:
The vendor Red Land Cotton sells sheets, pillow covers and other Alabama cotton items from cotton grown on a farm located in Moulton, Alabama near the foot of the Bankhead National Forest.
Statesboro, Georgia’s H.L. Franklin’s Healthy Honey is to die for! I’d never heard of Creamed Honey until today. It was so good and unfortunately it had sold out. I did, however, buy their Crystallized Cotton Honey, my second favorite.
I tried the tasty Delta Blues Rice grits from Mississippi. I learn something new every day, and found out that rice was grown in northern Mississippi.
Marc Nelson’s custom-made denim out of Knoxville, Tennessee had samples of hand-made jeans and denim items.
Of course, I sipped on sweet tea from the Alabama Sweet Company and Honest coffee.
One of the highlights of the show for me was meeting an Instagram friend, Here A Chick There a Chick, a company owned by Kerry Leasure. She is an artist who makes jewelry out of vintage items and with each piece also comes a story about vintage piece that makes up the jewelry.
And what southern maker show would be completed without a Forrest Gump impersonator, none of course!
When you get a chance, you should go to a Made South show.
It’s Thanksgiving again, and most southerners, including me, love to serve casseroles at holiday dinners. Whether it’s the famous green bean casserole my sister makes or the sweet potato casserole, topped with marshmallows, my mom makes, casseroles are a quick and easy addition to any meal. I found a corn casserole recipe last year that I love, and have cooked it again for this year’s Thanksgiving feast. Once I find a recipe I like, I typically add it to my book and use it over and over. This casserole is quick and easy to cook! Enjoy!
Admittedly, I believe that most people who know me think I am too busy working and focusing on my job, to know how to cook or let alone enjoying cooking. But, I am here to tell you that these thoughts couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, I spent most of my childhood in the small Alabama town of Opelika, which is the twin city to Auburn. My father was the basketball coach at Opelika High and so my childhood was surrounded by everything that had to do with small-town America and the activities one finds to do in a small town. That being said, there were certain activities my mother insisted my sister and I be involved in; one was dancing, ballet, tap and jazz classes twice a week and the other was Girl Scouts. My sister and I were very involved in Girl Scouts, and it was up to my mother to see that we filled up our sashes with every possible badge there was to get in the organization. This meant that we worked towards badges during our regular meetings as well as at camp in the summer. Every summer we were carted off to Camp Concharty in Pine Mountain, Georgia. For two straight weeks we worked tirelessly to earn the badges we were supposed to while living outside in the mountains of Georgia. Camp is where I learned to cook on a modified Crisco can with a wood fire underneath that you had to build and keep it burning yourself. Eggs and bacon were practically the only thing you could cook on the small cooktop. Determined to get the cooking badge and after a couple of tries on actually cooking the eggs and bacon, I was successful.
