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Loosening the Belts: Finding Relief for the South’s Health Problems UAB Magazine
Neurosurgery Becomes Publication Powerhouse UAB Medicine Magazine
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Fathers and Sons: Three Generations of Dentists UAB Dentistry Magazine (p. 17)
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Space Invaders Alabama Living
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Food
Good Grit April 28 2016
Christy Jordan: Getting to Know the "Southern Plate" Chef
Christy Jordan is hiding a cake in her garage.
The Huntsville writer and creator of Southernplate.com food blog has for the last eight years taught millions of readers how to cook southern. She has published cookbooks and appeared in national magazines and on the “Today Show,” Hallmark Channel, Fox News and “700 Club.” This morning, however, she is at home planning a birthday dinner for her husband, Ricky, and the yellow Duncan Hines cake with her homemade chocolate icing and chocolate-dipped strawberries on top is stashed away inside the extra refrigerator in the garage.
“And I’ve got all the evidence cleaned up so I can surprise him,” she says.
Jordan celebrates food and family on her “Southern Plate” blog, which features recipes for items such as black eyed peas, fried green tomatoes and Depression bread pudding and dishes with names like “Aunt Looney’s Macaroni Salad” and “Mama’s Hoe Cakes.” Besides the recipes, she also shares stories about her extended family and what it was like growing up in north Alabama. She has written two cookbooks and now has a third book due out this fall, although she cannot say much about it yet, she says.
She started writing the blog in 2008. Since then, it has grown from having just a few hundred pageviews a month to having close to 40 million today.
The success of Jordan’s blog led to her first book deal, and in 2010 she published the cookbook, “Southern Plate,” featuring family recipes and personal stories. Three years later in 2013, she debuted her second cookbook, “Come Home to Supper” where she showcased her favorite casseroles, skillet meals and side dishes.
Jordan comes from a long line of good cooks, she says. She credits her mother with helping her to hone her skills in the kitchen.
“I remember being 3 years old and sitting at the table making peach crisp,” she says. “Mama had me doing it, I think, because I was always underfoot and always talking constantly, and I was in her way, and she needed to get supper done. So she would open a can of peaches and pour it into a dish and give me the ingredients to mix up for the toppings. Being 3, it took me quite a while, and that gave her the chance to get supper done.”
Although she celebrates southern-style dishes like peach crisp, she is quick to dispel misconceptions that she says people often have about southern cooking such as the notion that southerners are consumed with fried chicken. On her blog, Jordan regularly features recipes for dishes such as corn salad, roasted vegetables, squash cooked on the stovetop and one-skillet meals. Most recently, she posted a recipe for a superfood salad.
“There’s a difference between the stereotype of southern cooking and the reality of southern cooking,” she says. “The reality of southern cooking is that we love food that’s in season. We love fruits and fresh vegetables and growing our own and cooking from scratch. We love all that stuff and raising our own food. The classic southern menu is what so many people around the country are trying to get back to. Growing your own. Raising your own. Being more natural. Being in season. Southerners have been doing that all along. I may fry something once a month. I’m not a big frying person.”
Besides dispelling misconceptions about southern cooking, Jordan is just as passionate about making sure her books are a source of inspiration for her readers. She says she wants her new book to encourage others.
“If you’re going to give me even five minutes of your time,” she says, “I don’t want to give you just a recipe. I want to give you a recipe and lift up your heart a little bit, and I want you to leave with a smile on your face. That’s important to me.”
Jordan attempts to serve up encouragement to students in her cooking classes, too. She started teaching the classes last fall, and aspiring home cooks have enrolled to learn how to make dishes like homemade biscuits and gravy and an assortment of desserts. Every class has sold out, which, she says, still surprises her.
“I’m just dumbfounded,” she says. “I’m grateful, but always amazed.”
But despite her growing fame, the upcoming book tour and her cooking classes, the blogger and mother of two says spending time with her family at home is her priority.
“We can get so distracted, and have so much going on,” she says, “and I think that’s what intrigues people about southern culture. It calls you back. We talk a little slower and our words are a little more rounded and a little more laced with honey, but it’s all done out of love and it calls you back to simpler times and helps you realize that your roots are still there. All you’ve got to do is spend a little more time tending and watering them and you can grow from that.”
Alabama Magazine
In recent years, several of Alabama’s newest cafes and restaurants have embraced the English tradition of afternoon tea.
Afternoon tea is a beloved English custom in which diners gather tea, tea sandwiches, desserts and scones with jam or clotted cream, a rich dairy spread. Often it’s all served on fine china or an elegant, three-tier tray. Historians say the practice began in the Victorian era when the Duchess of Bedford, Anna Maria Stanhope, (1783-1857) ordered her servants to prepare tea and cakes when she felt famished before a late supper.
The popularity of afternoon tea continues today. Tearooms are scattered throughout England and the United States, from the cozy neighborhood spots to the elegant, four-star hotels. “What’s neat about a tearoom is that each one is different,” says Sarah Smith who owns the Sarabella Café and Tea Room in Tuscaloosa with her husband, David. “The food is different. The atmosphere is different, but there’s always something special and memorable.”
In Alabama, a number of small restaurants are establishing tearooms that balance English tradition with southern tastes.
Sarabella, open since 2008, offers guests an afternoon tea service by reservation. Smith’s customers can order black, green, oolong, white or herbal tea, and she offers a variety of tea sandwiches, including roast beef and chive and cucumber with cream cheese. She prepares butterscotch scones with butterscotch chips and serves it warm with clotted cream and makes chess pie squares, a southern favorite. About once a month, she hosts a children’s birthday tea party where girls wear “fancy dress-up dresses” that she provides, drink tea from glass teacups and eat turkey, ham and cheese and peanut butter and jelly tea sandwiches, she says.
In Huntsville, Rebekah Klein serves afternoon tea for her guests at Emma’s Tea Room. The restaurant, open since 2005, is named after her daughter, she says. A trip to England as a graduate student provided inspiration for the business, “and I’ve always been attracted to pretty things, tea pots and tea,” she says.
Afternoon tea is 3:30-5:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays by reservation. The tea service includes a pot of tea, tea sandwiches and delectable, homemade scones, including apricot, cinnamon and chocolate, served with jam, clotted cream or rich lemon curd, which is a tart, spreadable cream with a sweet flavor. Klein also hosts children’s birthday tea parties, bridal teas and baby showers.
In 2010, Rebekah Mills and Darlene Self opened the Townhouse Tea Shoppe in Mt. Laurel near Birmingham. Since then, the pair has set out to give customers an elegant, afternoon tea experience. Afternoon tea is 2-4 p.m. with a reservation. Their stunning, three-tier formal tea services includes a pot of tea, scones, muffins, tea sandwiches, sweets and fruit served on Royal Albert Old Country Rose china. The scones include mouthwatering butter pecan, cinnamon brickle and orange zesty raisin. A customer favorite, says Mills, is the peach apricot flavored black tea. “We have trouble keeping it on the shelf.”
In Prattville, Beth and David Melling’s Smith-Byrd House Bed & Breakfast and Tea Room, open since 2008, is a Victorian-style house built in the 1880s. The tearoom, which Beth Melling describes as a “traditional, Victorian tearoom,” provides options such as the Princess Tea, which includes tea, scones, tea sandwiches and desserts, and the Queen’s Tea, which adds a quiche and salad course. The specialties include creamy chicken salad tea sandwiches, cinnamon scones and rich, pecan pie bars. Their extensive tea menu includes black, white, green, oolong, herbal and fruit infusions. Peach apricot tea, says Melling, is a customer favorite.
In 2007, Bill and Rhonda McGinnis opened the Shamrock Rose and Thistle Tea Room and Gastro Pub in Mobile, calling it “a cross between a British pub, a southern family restaurant and an English tearoom.” Besides the traditional English style afternoon tea on a three-tier tray they also offer an afternoon tea served with champagne mimosas. Tea sandwiches offerings include cucumber, egg salad and roast beef and horseradish. For children with less sophisticated tastes, a Wee Tea Menu features kid-friendly peanut butter and jelly and ham and cheese.
They sell more than 50 different tea varieties. “And where would southerners be without their sweet tea?” says Rhonda McGinnis. Customers can order iced tea, sweet or unsweetened.
The couple modeled their tearoom after the country inn tearooms they visited in England, Bill’s boyhood home, she says. “What they all had in common was that it was a chance to sit and relax,” she says. “You weren’t rushed. You just enjoyed the moment."
In recent years, several of Alabama’s newest cafes and restaurants have embraced the English tradition of afternoon tea.
Afternoon tea is a beloved English custom in which diners gather tea, tea sandwiches, desserts and scones with jam or clotted cream, a rich dairy spread. Often it’s all served on fine china or an elegant, three-tier tray. Historians say the practice began in the Victorian era when the Duchess of Bedford, Anna Maria Stanhope, (1783-1857) ordered her servants to prepare tea and cakes when she felt famished before a late supper.
The popularity of afternoon tea continues today. Tearooms are scattered throughout England and the United States, from the cozy neighborhood spots to the elegant, four-star hotels. “What’s neat about a tearoom is that each one is different,” says Sarah Smith who owns the Sarabella Café and Tea Room in Tuscaloosa with her husband, David. “The food is different. The atmosphere is different, but there’s always something special and memorable.”
In Alabama, a number of small restaurants are establishing tearooms that balance English tradition with southern tastes.
Sarabella, open since 2008, offers guests an afternoon tea service by reservation. Smith’s customers can order black, green, oolong, white or herbal tea, and she offers a variety of tea sandwiches, including roast beef and chive and cucumber with cream cheese. She prepares butterscotch scones with butterscotch chips and serves it warm with clotted cream and makes chess pie squares, a southern favorite. About once a month, she hosts a children’s birthday tea party where girls wear “fancy dress-up dresses” that she provides, drink tea from glass teacups and eat turkey, ham and cheese and peanut butter and jelly tea sandwiches, she says.
In Huntsville, Rebekah Klein serves afternoon tea for her guests at Emma’s Tea Room. The restaurant, open since 2005, is named after her daughter, she says. A trip to England as a graduate student provided inspiration for the business, “and I’ve always been attracted to pretty things, tea pots and tea,” she says.
Afternoon tea is 3:30-5:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays by reservation. The tea service includes a pot of tea, tea sandwiches and delectable, homemade scones, including apricot, cinnamon and chocolate, served with jam, clotted cream or rich lemon curd, which is a tart, spreadable cream with a sweet flavor. Klein also hosts children’s birthday tea parties, bridal teas and baby showers.
In 2010, Rebekah Mills and Darlene Self opened the Townhouse Tea Shoppe in Mt. Laurel near Birmingham. Since then, the pair has set out to give customers an elegant, afternoon tea experience. Afternoon tea is 2-4 p.m. with a reservation. Their stunning, three-tier formal tea services includes a pot of tea, scones, muffins, tea sandwiches, sweets and fruit served on Royal Albert Old Country Rose china. The scones include mouthwatering butter pecan, cinnamon brickle and orange zesty raisin. A customer favorite, says Mills, is the peach apricot flavored black tea. “We have trouble keeping it on the shelf.”
In Prattville, Beth and David Melling’s Smith-Byrd House Bed & Breakfast and Tea Room, open since 2008, is a Victorian-style house built in the 1880s. The tearoom, which Beth Melling describes as a “traditional, Victorian tearoom,” provides options such as the Princess Tea, which includes tea, scones, tea sandwiches and desserts, and the Queen’s Tea, which adds a quiche and salad course. The specialties include creamy chicken salad tea sandwiches, cinnamon scones and rich, pecan pie bars. Their extensive tea menu includes black, white, green, oolong, herbal and fruit infusions. Peach apricot tea, says Melling, is a customer favorite.
In 2007, Bill and Rhonda McGinnis opened the Shamrock Rose and Thistle Tea Room and Gastro Pub in Mobile, calling it “a cross between a British pub, a southern family restaurant and an English tearoom.” Besides the traditional English style afternoon tea on a three-tier tray they also offer an afternoon tea served with champagne mimosas. Tea sandwiches offerings include cucumber, egg salad and roast beef and horseradish. For children with less sophisticated tastes, a Wee Tea Menu features kid-friendly peanut butter and jelly and ham and cheese.
They sell more than 50 different tea varieties. “And where would southerners be without their sweet tea?” says Rhonda McGinnis. Customers can order iced tea, sweet or unsweetened.
The couple modeled their tearoom after the country inn tearooms they visited in England, Bill’s boyhood home, she says. “What they all had in common was that it was a chance to sit and relax,” she says. “You weren’t rushed. You just enjoyed the moment."
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