Garden Club Meeting

Hi there y'all. I'm Paula Deen and I love to garden almost as much as I love to cook

And today I'm entertaining some of the ladies from my garden club

First I think we'll whip up this tangy shrimp marinade. And next I'll give you a recipe courtesy of a friend of mine for tomato sandwiches

that'll take just about all and every herb you can throw at them

And finally, my minty watermelon salad. It's so refreshing. So prune back the front walk, because the ladies are coming to lunch

I started cooking when I was 18 years old as a new bride

I'm very lucky because I came from a family of wonderful southern cooks

And at 42 years old, I was faced with having to support myself and my two sons, so I turned

to my first love, which is cooking, and so I started cooking for a living. I think food is such a big part of family, and I hope that y'all can watch me and learn

to have fun with yours while building wonderful memories around the food that you're preparing

Oh, hi. You caught me going through my herb cabinet

I'm having my girlfriends over today for a nice, healthy lunch, and I'm going to need some herbs, and I'm just sick of these dried herbs

So I think right here at the last minute, I'm going to dash out of here and try to find some fresh ones, and I hope y'all will come with me

The absolute best place to find anything fresh is at the farmer's market

So I headed straight to the Monkhood nursery booth where I knew my friend David Rowley would have exactly what I needed

Hello. Hey, David. How are you, Paula? I'm fine. How are you? Good, thank you

I'll be better if you can help me with some herbs today, though. Certainly. I am making a tangy marinated shrimp that I'm going to need some fresh parsley for

Okay. I'm making tomato sandwiches that I'll either use dill or basil with

I haven't made up my mind, so I want both. Okay. And I'm making a fresh watermelon salad

Some mint. Yes, yes. I'm putting mint in it. Okay. Well, let's start off with the parsley here

We have the regular curly parsley, which is great for decoration. And we have the Italian parsley

Love the Italian. Which is stronger in flavor and has more vitamin C in it. Okay

For the mint, we have regular spearmint, which is absolutely great flavor-wise, very profuse grower, helps settle upset stomachs

And you know what else? I may need some chives. Okay. I have regular chives, which is just the normal onion flavor

Yeah. And then I also have the garlic chives, which is garlic and onion together

Which do you like the best? I like the garlic chives the best. Oh, see, I love garlic too

and basil today we have sweet genovese which is a very sweet tangy the basil

everybody uses for everything then I have the spicy globe which grows like a

globe and tastes kind of spicy red Reuben and I just love the color of it

great flavor and very attractive to add to like tomato salads and stuff well

before I leave today I want you to show me how to put together an indoor herb pot

for the pot very important to have a drainage hole yes to let the excess

water out. Then we're just going to put in compost. We'll put some garlic chives in the

side. So you're kind of putting the low growers down, is that right

Yep, the low growers in the sides. Then when these are in here, I'm just going to fill it

up with soil on top. Tell me just a few quick tips for people at home that don't live in

the weather like I live in. To keep them in the house on the window sill, don't let them

sit in water for too long and harvesting, for example, basil to harvest, just pinch out

just above the leaves there and you get twice as much next time. I love big stuff. You know, big hair, big plants, big everything. Can you stick me some

big ones in there? Yeah, we have this red reuben basil. It's going to get two and a half foot tall. It's

going to look huge in this part after a while. And the more you harvest it, the more it's

going to get big. And we could put maybe some dill in the top too. I love dill

is going to get to about three or four foot tall. Good. Now you're going to help me get

this to my car. Certainly. Because I have requested a big pot from you and it's heavy

I sure do appreciate it, David. No problem. Thank you. Thanks so much. My car is right

over here. Okay. We had great luck today at the garden shop, didn't we? I was so fortunate

to run into David, and I was thrilled that he taught me how to set up a herb garden for my house

All my herbs being outside, I just love this idea. I've got everything I think I'm gonna need

for today's dishes. In fact, the first dish that I'm doing today

is a tangy marinated shrimp And this is just a easy tasty recipe and I serve it at so many cocktail parties Olive oil

White vinegar. House seasoning. And we're just going to blend that together like that

And the recipe calls for mayonnaise, but since the girls and I are thinking about our waistlines today

I'm gonna go with yogurt. Or if you wanted to, you could go with a lighter

a fat-free mayonnaise. We're gonna do a couple of tablespoons of coarse mustard

And that looks about right. And we're gonna do two scant tablespoons of anchovy paste

And we don't wanna put too much there, because you know this is salty

and we've already got our salt in there. can always go back and add a little bit more of that. We're just going to whisk that up

and we're going to use the juice of one lemon. This little reamer is just great. It'll get

every drop of that juice out. And lemon is so, so good with shrimp. And for color, I'm

going to just slice up some red bell pepper and we're going to drop the rings in there

Now you can do anything you want to. Lots of times I'll even put sliced fresh mushrooms in mine

and it just gives it a different texture and just adds one more nice flavor to the pot

This is another one of those dishes that you can just have fun with

And I'm going to put some green onions, just chopped green onions

and I'm using perfectly cooked ball shrimp. And you see I'm leaving the tails on

because we're going to eat these with our fingers. So we're just going to toss all that in there

and I'm just going to toss those shrimp and vegetables in the marinade

Isn't that pretty? The red and the green and the coral color from the shrimp

Well, I think all this needs now is some coarse ground black pepper and, of course, the herbs that we went out to get

And I think I'm going to do chives. And let me show you while we're down here how to clip those

You clip them right at the top of the white. And then those will come back and give me lots, lots more chives

And I'm going to do some fresh parsley. And this dish is all done just in a matter of a few minutes

And you know I'm a snipper with scissors, so that's the way I'm going to do it, because

I want to kind of keep them in fairly big pieces. And I'm going to cut these at an angle

I don't know, that's just a polar quirk. That's just the way I like them cut

Okay, we've got those herbs that we went for. Now we're just going to top this off with some fresh ground black pepper

So we're going to cover this and stick it in the fridge and we're going to marinate it

anywhere from two hours to overnight, whatever time it will allow for you

Okay, we're going to let that one rest, but I have another one over here ready for you

and I want to just show you how I would serve it and plate it. Yes, this one has been soaking, and he's just drank in all those wonderful flavors

Make a nice full plate of lettuce, and I'm just going to mound this up and get a little

of the marinade and drizzle over it, and that'll help dress that lettuce

because we'll be eating that too. I'm gonna stick a few more fresh chives on it

Aren't they pretty? And a couple of tomato wedges and a lemon twist

and it's ready to be eaten. These marinaded shrimp are a great start to a light lunch

Coming up next, I'm gonna be fixing Lucille Wright's tomato sandwiches. Savannah would never dream of having a party or having the girls over without them

So stick around. The next dish we're going to be working on is such a simple dish

It's just incredibly simple. But Savannah would not dream of having the girls over for lunch

or a cocktail party without these delicate, tasty little sandwiches. In fact, I don't know if you've read John Barrett's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

but it talks about the parties that Jim Williams used to throw

And there was one lady in town that was the only person that was allowed to cater his parties

And her name was Miss Lucille Wright. and I'm sorry to say that she's no longer with us

But Jim would not have a party without her, and people would just die to get an invitation to his parties

And we going to make Miss Lucille tomato sandwiches today I going to start by dropping our tomatoes in some boiling water just until the skin splits We not gonna keep them in there very long And now we gonna dunk them in ice water very quickly

because we don't want the tomato to cook because we're using a fresh ripe tomato

This is just gonna help us slip the skin off easier. And if you don't wanna do this

you could actually peel the skin with a paring knife. Miss Lucille was so highly sought after

by Savannah Society that if a lady called to book a party with Miss Lucille and she

was already booked, the ladies wouldn't go find another caterer. They would reschedule

their party. Now that's how much they thought of Miss Lucille and all of her food. All right

we can see that the skin is split and that's the last one. So I'm going to turn that off

All right, we're going to get these peeled now. I've got them good and chilled. But these

parties that Jim Williams threw were the height of Savannah society. Everybody sat around at

Christmas time just waiting, hoping and praying that they wouldn't be called from the Christmas

list. All right, we're going to take these out and let them drain a little bit. This

is a very, very simple sandwich to make, but I just want to give you a couple of tips that

will make your tomato sandwiches even better. You'll want to size up your bread with your

tomatoes. So you wouldn't want to go out and buy a tomato this big when you're making tomato

sandwiches. And you can see that I've got my biscuit cutter over here, and you see that

the sizes are going to match real good. So all we're going to do now is put these tomatoes

on a paper towel to drain. And we're just going to sprinkle these with a little seasoning

And that salt is going to pull the water out of the tomato so that we won't have soggy

tomato sandwiches and plus it'll give it a zippy little flavor. We're gonna take our

bread and I like to do only one slice at the time which is a little slower but

that's just the way I like to do it and don't throw away these because you can

save them and put them in the skillet in the morning and put your child's egg in

the center and have Popeyes for breakfast. They also make great croutons

This is a nice fresh bread. Speaking of fresh bread, you have to be careful that it's not too, too fresh, because it'll

be hard to cut. But this is just right. And you can do all this the day before

You can get you a plastic container and cut your bread and then dampen you very, very lightly

Dampen some paper towels and cover them in that and they'll be just as fresh tomorrow

you really don't want to make your sandwiches ahead of time. You want to kind of do them

at the last minute. In fact, I've done many a party where I'm behind the scenes in the

back putting these tomato sandwiches together just as quickly as I can. Now, you can play

with this, but I'm going to follow this just like Miss Lucille did it. And that's mayonnaise

A little salt. Fresh ground pepper. A little shake of accent. And some fresh grated onion will really produce

a lot, a lot of strong onion flavor. In fact, I can feel it running down my fingers right now

This one's got a lot of juice in it. So just a little

You know, I never knew Jim Williams. When I moved to Savannah back in the 80s, I can't remember if he had just gone to jail

or he had just died. Either way, it was bad news. So we're just gonna smear just a little on the bread

So this is all we're gonna do. and just top them. And aren't they pretty? And I'm going to do one thing that Miss Lucille

doesn't do. And I just found that this makes my plate pretty. All we're going to do is

dab my finger ever so lightly in mayonnaise, dab it onto the breads, and this is going

to act as a glue. I'm gonna take a little petal of parsley and stick on each of those

dabs of mayonnaise. And it just adds a nice little touch of color. So that gets them all

ready. And Rennie, you look so sad, girl, but I'm sorry, these are for me. I'm sorry

Stick around, cause watermelon salad's coming up. I just gathering up the rest of my ingredients for this watermelon salad We just going to trim that meat

And I'm just going to finish cubing this. All right, now we're going to make our dressing

We're going to start with an olive oil. A good olive oil

Red wine vinegar. Pepper. And I love the pepper. I love what it does to the watermelon

This recipe was given to me by Damon Fowler, a buddy that lives in Savannah

And I'm just crazy about Damon. We have the best time when we get together

Down south, we go watermelon crazy for a few months. We're gonna let that sit and just mix up a little bit

and we're gonna just slice some onion rings. Purple onion would be real pretty in this if you had it

You could even add some green onion tops for color. We're just going to drop those rings over in there like so

So all we're going to do at this point is pour the dressing over it

This is a great way to enjoy watermelon, especially if you get tired of just eating it plain

Plus, it's good for you. Let's see if we can just toss that around and just let that watermelon get around in

that olive oil. And we're going to use some fresh mint. And I'm going to get that right now

Now to get the full flavor of mint, you need to crush it

And if you want to, I like mine whole so you can see it. But if you want to, you can just snap those leaves off and just do a quick chop, chop

chop on them. And that'll also help release that flavor. So that's good

Now that'll give us some different sizes of mint. And we're just gonna toss that up just a little bit

Now we're gonna add the last ingredient that really makes this kind of a funky little dish

And that's feta cheese. Just gonna crumble it up in there. Look what that does to that watermelon

You can see I'm not doing it very fine. I'm leaving it in big chunks too

Doesn't that look so good? Such an interesting way to eat watermelon

Now I love, as I said earlier, I love the black pepper with it. So I'm just going to top it with a little bit more. Mmm

The flavors are between the mint and the cheese and the onions, you just..

what in the world is that gonna taste like? And the answer is wonderful

And what goes just perfect with this delicious salad is a cool, fresh glass of my homemade iced tea

How refreshing. It's so good. When we come back, we're gonna show you

how to use the right herb the right way. Before we go today, though, I want to talk to you a little about fresh herbs versus dried herbs

The dried herbs that you get in the store, like the ones that I decided not to use today, like these, are very, very potent

They're very, very strong. you would need to use twice as many fresh as you would the dried

And remember, when you're buying your herbs, to buy them in small pots

so that you can bring them into your kitchen and sit them in the window and you can enjoy them all winter long

And another way to preserve some of your fresh herbs is picking off your leaves, letting them dry out, store them in a jar

and then you can pull them out on a cold, cold winter day

and enjoy them right on. And remember, when you're using dried herbs

to just kind of re-crush them with your fingers to release that flavor

But do remember, these are twice as strong as these. I'm so glad y'all dropped in on me today

I really had fun hanging out with you, and I hope that I've given you some good ideas

and some good tips for your day in the garden with the girls

The tomato sandwiches and the marinated shrimp salad and the watermelon salad are all perfect dishes

for a nice summer day. And of course, don't forget a cool, refreshing glass

of sweetened iced tea. And until next time, America, I wish you best dishes

from my kitchen to yours