A Trip Back to Mayberry

I’m a huge fan of the Andy Griffith show and watch it often with my son. It’s just good old fashioned entertainment, definitely a show I can watch over and over.

Being the fan that I am, I purchased Aunt Bee’s Mayberry Cookbook a few months ago. I thought it might be fun to cook my way through it (in no particular order) and post about my experience. A lot of the recipes are familiar, some long forgot, and some with ingredients that may be quite hard to come by so it should be quite entertaining.

The first two recipes I picked were Hog Winslow’s Sausage Casserole and Ellie’s Confetti Vegetables.

For this recipe, I used Country style sausage. I ditched the water chestnuts (because I hate them) and I got a little creative with the rice (because I forgot to get raw brown rice at the store). Also, I wasn’t sure what a spring onion was but assumed it was similar to a green onion so that’s what I used.

In place of the brown rice I used a packet of Minute Rice (brown, red, wild, and quinoa) and 3/4 cup raw white rice (Because of this switch, I shortened the cooking time by to 1 hour).

For Ellie’s Confetti Vegetables I used canned carrots to make the carrot mash and I used vegetable Ritz crackers for the cracker crumbs.

This isn’t going to be a ’cooking’ blog, but I would like to give my review of what I’ve made! The casserole looked like it was going to be so bland and I was guessing I’d never make it again. I was so wrong!! It was awesome! And will probably be one of my go-to meals. My son loved it and despite all the rice, it re-heats very nicely. And works mixed in with scrambled eggs for a lunch!

Also, I think any flavor/type of sausage would work well with this.

The vegetables were also great! I had to increase my cooking time because the dish I used was quite deep. I’ll make this again too. I think I will add more broccoli next time, it’s seemed very sparse. It’s very similar to corn pudding, if you’ve ever had that.

All in all, both of these recipes were very good and I look forward to trying more! Looking through the cookbook, there are some fun things I’m excited to try. That being said, if you know where I can find a young opossum (about 2.5 lbs dressed), let me know!