The basics: main dish
By Staff
Suzanne Langcuster
Southerners are great at planning main dishes.
I guess it started with people who had wonderful vegetable gardens and plenty of good fresh produce to prepare and they just mixed this wonderful assortment of vegetables with the main dish of fried chicken or delicious pork and beef recipes and made a hardy meal.
Main dishes are great to make ahead or to prepare and slip into the refrigerator until family or guests arrive. Just warm them up in the oven or microwave and serve.
When selecting side dishes to go with your main dish, remember the importance of making your meal healthy . Add vegetables and salads with ingredients not included in the main dish.
You can make a very healthhy choice by adding a salad chocked full of raw vegetables such as carrots,radishes, cucumbers, olives, tomatoes, squash, purple onion and healthy choices of greens.
This makes an easy addition for the cook. Also baked stuffed white potatoes with cheese, chopped onion and sour cream or a sweet potato with brown sugar and butter make good side dishes.
Even jello salads can hide some fruits or vegetables that we need to consume to have our 5 to 8 fruits and vegetables a day. When you serve those fruits and vegetables you going to make them feel better.
If you have prepared beef for your main dish Italian bread is great with beef servings. Delicious frozen rolls can be purchased now and only take browning before mealtime.
These rolls have been pre-baked and make things easy for the cook. Look for these rolls in the frozen section of your grogery store. I like them because you can just get out a few and re-package the others for later.
Cornbread is a good bread choice with a main dish that is made of vegetables. You can't beat cornbread with a Southern vegetable dinner.
O.K., we have the main dish, we have the side dishes, we know what kind of bread we will serve, now what beverage will we serve?
It is always nice to give them a choice. That is good if you have it on hand. If you don't, rely on good ol' sweet tea, the beverage of the South.
Suzanne Langcuster is a special guest food columnist to the Franklin County Times. Her recipes can be found each Sunday.
