Not sure where I bought the “Carolina Bright Leaf Brand – Old Fashioned Hickory Smoked Sliced Bacon” but may have been at Publix. [Not Publix, I checked.] I’m thinking that most of the other bacon seemed to be higher priced and that is why I went with this cheaper brand. When I opened the package this morning, I noted how much fat appeared in the slices and how little lean, and I thought that this bacon would “cook away to nothing,” but I was pleasantly surprised when the bacon cooked perfectly. I would buy this again, if I can recall where I purchased it.

I sliced up an Envy apple for frying. I use an apple corer, but am never sure how to make sure the corer goes straight down through the apple’s core. I’ve also started to cut the apple in half, after coring, and then slice the halves. *I bought several Envy apples at Publix. Publix appears to have higher prices on their veggies/fruits, but I noted that the Envy apples were on sale for about $1.49 / lb. They appeared firm, and larger.

I use my pumpkin pie spices: cinnamon, mace, nutmeg and cloves, and sprinkle some Splenda sweetner on the cooked apple slices.

[ADDENDUM 01/05/25]: For a while, I liked the Pepper Bacon (about $14 for two pounds of bacon) that I got from Lee’s Fresh Market near Benson, North Carolina, but I’ve gone back to the Bright Leaf brand. IGA is not the only store that carries Bright Leaf. Pate’s has Bright Leaf, but it is more expensive than IGA.

I have tried one cheaper brand of bacon than Bright Leaf. I got it at Lee’s, but it ended up being too fatty and was inconsistent in the sizes of each bacon strip. Not worth the cheaper price.

My ritual for quite a while was to sift each spice from it’s jar, but then it came to me to get a separate empty spice jar and mix all the spices I used each time into the one jar. That way I just sift the Splenda sweetener on the fried apples and then use the one mixed spices over that. (Mix: cinnamon, cloves, coriander, mace, nutmeg, and pumpkin spice {a blend that already has all the other spices, except for the coriander in it}). The coriander is not one of the “warm spices,” but it adds just a hint of citrus.

[end]

This is one of those memory meals that mom would cook every so often for breakfast. She really didn’t like to cook and preferred to be outside doing yard work… or perhaps sewing a dress for work. Butterick Patterns

Memory Meals handed down from my mom: fried chicken, ham & rice soup, fried apples, corned beef/potatoes/onions

But, my mom’s sister, we called her “Sis” could really cook. Mom and I lived with Sis, in Hubert, starting about 7th grade (moved up from the old home place, where Burger King is now located in Swansboro). When I came home from school, the bus ride took about an hour total (have to go from Middle or High School to Elementary School and then back past my school to almost Jacksonville (in Hubert), Sis would always have two meats and about three vegetables on the stove. And Sis knew how to cycle these through, so that she might combine a meat and several of the left-over veggies at the end of the week into a soup. Sis was a business woman, running a large trailer park that catered to a large Marine population.

I’ve said it before, but both Sis and her daughter, Mary Ann were good cooks. I don’t recall the differences in the way they cooked, and I would say that both were “country cooks,” but only once do I remember something that tasted awful, and that was a clear (?) sauce that Mary Ann made, just once, and it wasn’t good. Everything else was delicious! I love a ‘mess’ of black-eyed peas and seasoning meat, maybe later extended by adding potatoes. Or, butter beans and ham hock with some pastry.

I recall some green beans with potatoes and seasoning meat (not Sis or Mary Ann) that I had at a seniors community meeting down in Bear Creek once (my Region “P” days). I think it may have been Essie Davis (not the Australian actress, but one of mom’s carpool people when Gilbert Trott used to drive his old black Chevy to work) that fixed the green beans, and they were so good that I went back for a second helping instead of getting dessert. But, the Seaboard Station Restaurant in Hamlet, NC makes some delicious steamed cabbage that is sweet, but not too sweet. I don’t think they use any seasoning meat in the cabbage, but they must add just a pinch of sugar. Their black-eyed peas aren’t seasoned and not as good as they could be. I fix better at home.

NOTE: After school and a long bus ride, I would get to Sis’s in Hubert around 4 pm, which was when the “Dark Shadows” TV show came on.

ADDENDUM [10/17/21]: The Envy apple was good for frying. I’ve also tried the Ambrosia and Gala apples. Ambrosia seems to cook more quickly. I think it was the Gala apple that had a tartness that I didn’t like in the fried apple finished product.

NOTE [09/26/22]: I now use the Gala apple for frying. I’ve realized another trick that speeds up the process. Instead of frying the bacon in the same pan as the apples… bacon first & then apples, I only fry the apples in the pan. I cook the bacon in the microwave and it takes about four minutes total cooking time. The bacon comes out perfectly cooked. Not too crunchy nor limp. I can also heat some water in the microwave for hot tea during the cooking time for the apples.

If I haven’t noted it elsewhere, I now cut the apple in half first, and then use the apple corer to removed the hard parts from each half. Normally this entails slicing in from both ends and the hard part comes out in the corer. [end note]