My pimento cheese saga.

This thread is not for the real cooks who post to the forum.  I'm sure they already know about this.
This thread is for people (southerners like me) who love the made-from-scratch pimento cheese that granny used make but can't get it from any packaged version.

I've been trying to duplicate the taste of granny's pimento cheese for years.
I've used more cheese,  less cheese,  more pimento,  less pimento,  more mayo,  less mayo but it just never tastes like what granny made.

A week ago I discovered how to make it taste like granny's pimento cheese.
I noticed in internet recipes that some were adding cream cheese to it.
So I tried it.  And I bought whipped cream cheese because that's a lot softer and easier to mix with the shredded cheddar.

I have  now made pimento cheese which tastes very much like granny used to do it.

Now if I could just learn how to make some of the other stuff granny made.

good memory from my grandmother.

Awesome, Bob.

As long as you didn't make it w/ cottage cheese it should be good.

My aunt called it "pimenter" cheese.   

Southerners like to replace the ending vowel with "er" for instance ..... spatula is spatuler.

Bob wrote:This thread is not for the real cooks who post to the forum.  I'm sure they already know about this.
This thread is for people (southerners like me) who love the made-from-scratch pimento cheese that granny used make but can't get it from any packaged version.

I've been trying to duplicate the taste of granny's pimento cheese for years.
I've used more cheese,  less cheese,  more pimento,  less pimento,  more mayo,  less mayo but it just never tastes like what granny made.

A week ago I discovered how to make it taste like granny's pimento cheese.
I noticed in internet recipes that some were adding cream cheese to it.
So I tried it.  And I bought whipped cream cheese because that's a lot softer and easier to mix with the shredded cheddar.

I have  now made pimento cheese which tastes very much like granny used to do it.

Now if I could just learn how to make some of the other stuff granny made.

Many, many years ago my mom would send a recipe to me that I wanted to prepare. They were always in her impeccable, beautiful handwriting they once taught in school. They'd have notes on what she did different, or something she added. I kept them in a notebook of my own favorite recipes. Now I keep them in plastic sheets and are among my most treasured memories of her.

Markle wrote:

Many, many years ago my mom would send a recipe to me that I wanted to prepare.  They were always in her impeccable, beautiful handwriting they once taught in school.  They'd have notes on what she did different, or something she added.  I kept them in a notebook of my own favorite recipes.  Now I keep them in plastic sheets and are among my most treasured memories of her.

That's a beautifully written sentiment which makes me nostalgic for my past,  Markle.

And while every other word you have used to describe that period is exactly as I remember it,  I didn't share the experience of so many and have that old timey homemade-from-scratch cooking in my life.
My mother barely learned how to boil water.  She was the real-life Lucy Ricardo.  lol
She was the daughter of a medical doctor who had made a lot of money in the 20's in the stock market.  He and his family lived high.  His daughter (my mother) and her brother even had a full time chauffeur.  They were even chauffered back and forth to high school.  And hired cooks did all the cooking.  So she never learned anything about it.

But my grandmother had learned how to cook before she married the doctor.
And on family get-togethers when we traveled back and forth from here to Johnson City,  she laid out a spread for us herself.  
Best goddamn homemade bread I have ever eaten in my life.  But my mother didn't learn to make it  or anything else.  

By the way,  My grandfather lost all his money in the 29 crash.  What happens then sounds like something out of a novel but it actually happened.
He couldn't stand the thought of his family not being able to survive it.
So he conspired with some of his close colleagues to stage his accidental death so his family could collect on a big life insurance policy.
What my mother and me and most everybody else in the immediate family had always been told is he fell out a car and died.
But then when she was about 45,  my mother learned the truth.  That, with some help from his doctor friends,  her father had committed suicide and tricked the authorities and the life insurance company into paying off on the big "accidental" claim.
Broke her heart.  She was 15 when he died.

Didn't you say one of your uncles or something was in the Illuminati ?

TEOTWAWKI wrote:Didn't you say one of your uncles or something was in the Illuminati ?

I had 8 uncles.  Four on one side and four on the other.

On my mother's side, two died almost at the same time she lost her father.
One from a a brain tumor and epilepsy.  The other drowned at a local lake.
The third became an artist in Omaha.  And the fourth (his father's namesake) was a drunk and gambler and cheated on his wife.

On my father's side,  one was a naval aviator,  one was a north carolina state trooper (the youngest who was just barely too young for world war 2 so became a cop to make up for it),  and three of the four including my dad were tarheels who graduated with textile degrees and got jobs here.

I don't think any of them or my aunts either ever heard the word "illuminatti".  lol

Bob wrote:

TEOTWAWKI wrote:Didn't you say one of your uncles or something was in the Illuminati ?

I had 8 uncles.  Four on one side and four on the other.

On my mother's side, two died almost at the same time she lost her father.
One from a a brain tumor and epilepsy.  The other drowned at a local lake.
The third became an artist in Ohama.  And the fourth (his father's namesake) was a drunk and gambler and cheated on his wife.

On my father's side,  one was a naval aviator,  one was a north carolina state trooper (the youngest who was just barely too young for world war 2 so became a cop to make up for it),  and three of the four including my dad were tarheels who graduated with textile degrees and got jobs here.

I don't think any of them or my aunts either ever heard the word "illuminatti".  lol

Well in the past you said one of your relations was a rich banker...so

That's not blood. My first cousin who is two years younger than me and grew up in Panama City, married Jeff Greenberg. He's the son of Maurice Greenberg who is better known as Hank Greenberg.
For several decades, Hank Greenberg was one of the most powerful men on Wall Street. He built up AIG and was the Chairman and CEO.
At his peak his wealth was $6 billion.
He and Kissinger were Nixon's point men for "opening up China". AIG was the firstest and biggest American firm to get a foothold in China.

But when the Wall Street shit hit the fan, AIG was found out to be the culprit.
As a result, Greenberg lost all but about one billion. But worse than that he was labeled one of the main players who caused the financial collapse.
He went from family hero to as bad a skeleton in the closet or insane granny in the basement as it gets.

dang that's rough...only a billion dollars left...how will he survive ? whoever said crime doesn't pay was never a banker or a politician..

TEOTWAWKI wrote:dang that's rough...only a billion dollars left...how will he survive ? whoever said crime doesn't pay was never a banker or a politician..

Well actually according to this he's now down to $300 million.
But what is hilarious about this page is, they have the wrong picture on it.
They have a picture of the baseball player Hank Greenberg on the page for the robber baron Hank Greenberg. lol

Here's what the robber baron looks like...

Sorry, I accidentally left the link out of that last post.

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/ceos/hank-greenberg-net-worth/

Joanimaroni wrote:Southerners like to replace the ending vowel with "er" for instance ..... spatula is spatuler.

She was from Mississippi and definitely ended everything with an "er."

I'm Southern and I find myself, on lazy days, ending things with "uh." Winduh instead of window. Going is replaced by goin'. We traveled and lived in lots of places so I tried not to sound uneducated. Never lost the accent but did try to put the correct endings on words. But like I said...on lazy days...   

SheWrites wrote:

Joanimaroni wrote:Southerners like to replace the ending vowel with "er" for instance ..... spatula is spatuler.

She was from Mississippi and definitely ended everything with an "er."

I'm Southern and I find myself, on lazy days, ending things with "uh." Winduh instead of window.  Going is replaced by goin'.  We traveled and lived in lots of places so I tried not to sound uneducated.  Never lost the accent but did try to put the correct endings on words.  But like I said...on lazy days...    

I was taught by the Dominican nuns and they were all from the north.....or nawth. Gone were the days of "sayin  yes, ma' am"  pronounced may-um. No more "uh-huh" or "fix-in" to do or go anywhere, and certainly no "look-a-here".  Our colloquialism changed.

We have tapes made prior to 1st grade with the nuns....our southern drawl is very pronounced. It was a very heavy southern accent, the southern drawl is the voice that still remains in my head just spoken differently.

That's a interesting assumption about southern talk. I can see where maybe people from Alabama do that, but I have never said, spatuler or winder for window, or winduh. And I have a EXTREMLY southern accent. or maybe I just think I don't sound that way lol

Do you think people who have accents sound uneducated? or is it just people with southern accents?

I don't see people saying the same stereo type about people from boston with strong accents calling the roof a ruuf, etc.

I still say spatuler....pronounced spatch-u-lur and syrup is sur-up.

We were raised to say yes ma'am and yes sir. I still do but it is not pronounced yes may-um. Like Shewrites said, occasionally some things slip out like, "it's fixin to rain and the deep southern non- word tump.....as in "tump it out over there."

Joanimaroni wrote:I still say spatuler....pronounced spatch-u-lur and syrup is sur-up.

We were raised to say yes ma'am and yes sir. I still do but it is not pronounced yes may-um.  Like Shewrites said, occasionally some things slip out like, "it's fixin to rain and the deep southern non- word tump.....as in "tump it out over there."

LOL I say that.

I think I told you the story when I first moved down here, people were like where is she from LOL .... Apparently you can move so far down south it is no longer the south. The south appears to stop in north florida, then it becomes either another country or North yankeeville again..

Chrissy wrote:

Joanimaroni wrote:I still say spatuler....pronounced spatch-u-lur and syrup is sur-up.

We were raised to say yes ma'am and yes sir. I still do but it is not pronounced yes may-um.  Like Shewrites said, occasionally some things slip out like, "it's fixin to rain and the deep southern non- word tump.....as in "tump it out over there."

LOL I say that.

I think I told you the story when I first moved down here, people were like where is she from LOL .... Apparently you can move so far down south it is no longer the south. The south appears to stop in north florida, then it becomes either another country or North yankeeville again..

I catch myself all the time saying " icebox or put it on ice" instead of refrigerator. I never say soda, pop, or soft drink.....they are all cokes.

Joanimaroni wrote:

Chrissy wrote:

Joanimaroni wrote:I still say spatuler....pronounced spatch-u-lur and syrup is sur-up.

We were raised to say yes ma'am and yes sir. I still do but it is not pronounced yes may-um.  Like Shewrites said, occasionally some things slip out like, "it's fixin to rain and the deep southern non- word tump.....as in "tump it out over there."

LOL I say that.

I think I told you the story when I first moved down here, people were like where is she from LOL .... Apparently you can move so far down south it is no longer the south. The south appears to stop in north florida, then it becomes either another country or North yankeeville again..

I catch myself all the time saying " icebox or put it on ice" instead of refrigerator. I never say soda, pop, or soft drink.....they are all cokes.

Lol again, me too. if I recall correctly, you don't sound like you have a accent tome, which could mean you and I have similar accents.

I tried to explain that all soft drinks were called cokes once, didn't go over well.

I have two accents.  One sounds like Gomer Pyle.  The other sounds like if Gomer Pyle was trying to exaggerate his southern accent.  lol
Except it's not a central Alabama accent like Pyle's,  it's an accent that is a combination of east tennessee and western north carolina which is my heritage.  It's full out hillbilly.

I don't really know why,  but 10 or 15 years ago I started drifting towards the exaggerated version and now that's about all I use.
My girlfriend was a yankee navy brat (although she was born in the Conch Republic but moved away after a few months).  But hell the Conch Republic is populated by all yankees anyway.
She doesn't know what to make of my accent and especially when I go back and forth between the regular and exaggerated versions.  But since I have a larger vocabulary than she does she puts up with it grudgingly.  lol