Home At Last! with Patty Gironda

To celebrate Fat Tuesday at our house I cooked up some simple Louisiana fare! Oysters and shrimp. Simple, but, oh so good.  The oysters were consumed so quickly there was no time to snap a photo!  I cleaned and deveined a pound of shrimp, tossed them in a flour, cornmeal and cornstarch mixture for tempting taste of Louisiana! and a successful close to another Mardi Gras season all around the state!

I'm about ready to harvest my one lone sweet potato! I don't know about you but I love to know how my favorite foods are grown and what conditions are required to have good success. This was a sweet potato top that I was about to discard when I made the decision to plant it in about two inches of very dark soil in a raised garden bed recently struck by my neighbor's falling tree.  My big plans are cut ultra-thin sweet potato chips, deep fry them and serve them up with a Maytag blue cheese and enjoy my sweet potato as a delicious appetizer.  What's for dessert? Two watermelons grown from seeds!

Traveling with Home At Last! is one of the joys of my life and last week's adventure on Sapelo Island didn't disappoint!  I've been around seafood my whole life-fishing for alligator gar in the bayous of Louisiana, stringing rotten chicken necks in crab traps along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and fishing off the back of my dad's boat for any delicacy that might happen to swim by! Sampling the seafood of the Georgia coast was an exciting prospect and I was eager to sample the local favorites including Sapelo Clams prepared in a Geechee recipe of Clams and Gravy! Our new friend and featured cook, Cornelia Walker Bailey, shared her secrets for cleaning, chopping and cooking the clams in a simple, straightforward dish!  Cornelia shares that the fresh clams can easily be stored in the freezer for future use! Once brought to room temperature the clams open and can be cleaned and prepared in your favorit...