Happy Hour

Hey, y'all

I'm just out here spending a few minutes with Lady Bird, and it's time for happy hour

So Lady Bird is sitting here patiently waiting for me to make some yummy sweet and sour meatballs

and some Cajun fried okra with a chili sauce and squash and zucchini cakes

And Mama is going to wash it down today with a sherbet punch

So come on in the kitchen with me and let's get to cooking. All right, I've got a recipe that I want to share with y'all today

It was sent in by a viewer, somebody that really loves the show

His name is Shane, and he lives in Miami Beach. And the recipe is a sweet and sour meatball

Now, Shane starts off with meatballs. You can buy these frozen or you can make your own

I'm gonna be using frozen meatballs today. All right, now I'm gonna make up two different sauces

for these meatballs. The first sauce I'm gonna make, I'm gonna use one diced onion

And then I'm gonna add a half a cup of Dijon mustard

And then I'm going to use six cloves of garlic that has been minced

Okay, and all that goes together. Okay. Now I'm going to dice up, slice up, whatever, about a half a cup of green onions

Perfect, that looks like about a half a cup. In that goes

Now I'm gonna take two cans, two short cans of pineapple, eight ounce cans of pineapple chunks

and I'm gonna drain that pineapple juice off of the pineapples. You'll want to be careful not to cut yourself with these tops right here

They can be real, real sharp. All right, now I'm going to take two tablespoons of my pineapple juice and I'm going to bring them

I'm gonna bring them over to my saucepan because I'm gonna make now the sweet sauce

to go over these meatballs. All right. All right, we've got that mixed up

Now we're gonna come over here for our sweet sauce, and we're gonna start with four cups of ketchup

All right. So I've got my two tablespoons of pineapple juice. I've got my four cups of ketchup

And to this, I'm going to add one cup of sugar, a fourth of a cup of white vinegar

a fourth of a cup of water, two tablespoons of Worcestershire, and two tablespoons of black pepper

All right, just a couple of minutes for this sauce. Not long

And while that's cooking, I'm going to get our meatballs ready. Now, I've got our pineapple chunks that I drained the juice out of

and I'm just going to add those to the meatballs. And then I'm going to just stir in that first sauce that we made

right over our meatballs. This is looking good, Shane. Yum, I love the mustard and the garlic and all that together

All right, now our red sweet sauce is ready. So all we're going to do is pour this over our meatballs

There we go. All we're gonna do y'all is put this in the oven for one hour

and then we're gonna take it out and we're gonna pour the rest of our

pineapple juice from our canned pineapple into this and we're gonna stir

it up and Shane says put it back in the oven and let it bake for another 30

minutes and he said we're gonna have an over-the-top sweet and sour meatball but

But you know what? We're fixing to check him out because I've got some ready

I have never tasted these before, Shane. So right here, I'm fixing to check out your recipe

Ooh they look good Shane Let bring them down here And I going to serve these with some little toothpicks

so that everybody can just come by and quickly grab them a meatball

in case they don't want to put it on their plate. Mmm

Shame, shame, shame, shame. Shame on you, boy. These are delicious. Mmm

But y'all don't go anywhere, because guess what I'm doing next? A Cajun fried okra with a creamy chili sauce

And later, I'm gonna be making some delicious zucchini cakes and some yummy sherbet punch

Okay, y'all, I started without you

I waited and I waited and you weren't here. So I went ahead and I finished up cutting my okra

because I promised y'all that I was going to fry you up

some Cajun fried okra. Now, I'm using fresh for my recipe today

But you know you can buy a frozen okra. It makes great fried okra

All right. Now we like to put a nice little batter on our fried okra down here

It's really, really funny. My mother used flour on her fried okra

My grandmother Paul always used cornmeal. And you know I really liked my mother's best

But sometimes I mix the two. You know, I'm loyal to Grandma and I'm loyal to Mama

So that's the way I'm going to do this Cajun fried okra today. I'm going to use one cup of all-purpose flour

a half a cup of cornmeal, two teaspoons of house seasoning, and a fourth of a teaspoon of Cajun seasoning

Now I'm just gonna mix those up, and I've got my grease in my Dutch oven over here

and I'm wanting to heat that up to about 350. All right, so I'm gonna transfer my okra to a big bowl

So I've got plenty of room to work in some buttermilk. And this is about a half a cup

Now, this buttermilk is gonna give it a wonderful flavor, and it's also gonna help that flour and meal mixture

to stick to it. That is the secret to good fried okra

So, I'm gonna take our flour and our cornmeal, and I'm just gonna toss our okra in that

Okay, and here we go. And you'll want to be very, very careful that you don't burn yourself when you're putting

in your okra. Now I'm gonna run down here. Y'all don't go anywhere because I'm just gonna run down here and wash the goop off my hands

Y'all watch the pot for me. All right, how's it looking, y'all

Is it all right? Let me see. Whoa! It's better than all right

It's beautiful. Oh, yum. All right. So this is frying up nicely on its own

So while it finishes up, come on down here, because I told you I was cooking a Cajun-fried okra

with a creamy chili sauce. Now, this sauce is very easy to put together

I'm gonna start with one cup of mayonnaise, and I'm gonna add to the mayonnaise

three tablespoons of a sweet chili sauce. And you can find this in the Mexican section

of your grocery store. And now I'm gonna add one tablespoon of a garlic chili sauce

And this sauce is not sweet. It's gonna bring some heat to our mayonnaise

mayonnaise in our sweet chili sauce. And now I'm gonna add an eighth of a teaspoon

of ground red pepper. So, you know, it's gonna be spicy. There we go, just that simple, our sauce is ready

Just dump and stir. All right, now let's come down here and see if our okra is ready to come up Yeah Doesn that look perfectly yummy There ain nothing like it y

I remember years ago, my children's daddy and I would plant a garden

Gosh, and I'd grow that okra, and I would blanch it and put it in the freezer

So I'd have to throw over fresh peas and butter beans, and then I'd slice them up to fry it

Oh, that was the sweetest okra in the whole world. I wish you were here

Oh. Mm. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it

When we come back, y'all, more good southern yummy vegetables. It's squashing zucchini cakes

And to top it all off, sherbet punch. So I'll see you back in a minute

Y'all don't go far. Hey, y'all

I told you I was going to be cooking us up some zucchini and squash

which zucchini and the yellow squash is both squash. But I'm going to be cooking up zucchini and yellow squash cakes

So I've got a little olive oil in my pan. I've got a stick of butter

All right. And over here in my bowl, I have grated up three medium zucchinis and three medium yellow summer squash

Now, I want to make sure that there's no water in this

So I'm going to pour it in my colander. And I'm just going to squeeze it with some paper towels

Just try to absorb that water out of there and just kind of pull it out

Now, we're going to have to have some things in our squash cakes

It's going to help bind them and hold them together. So in this bowl, I'm going to add one egg

one cup of shredded Parmesan cheese, a third of a cup of diced Vidalia onions

and one and a half teaspoons of Italian seasoning. All right, I'm just going to mix that up together

Can y'all hear Lady Bird? She knows it's happy hour. I'm going to fix her a plate, though, in a little while

I'm going to take her one of those sweet and sour meatballs and one of these zucchini and squash cakes

and she's going to be one happy little bird. All right, I'm going to add a little fresh ground pepper to it

You know, and it depends on how much you like. And when it hot or add a little bit more

And I'm going to add, oh gosh, probably a half a teaspoon of salt

All right, now to this, I'm going to add one cup of breadcrumbs. Okay

All right, I'm just going to mix these ingredients together. I've got all those crumbs good and moist

So I'm gonna come over here and I'm gonna take my shredded zucchini

and I'm just gonna dump it into my bread crumb mixture. And now I'm gonna make about a two inch patty

I don't want them real, real big. I want them just so people can pick them up

To grate your squashes, you don't want to put this in a blender

You can take just a regular old stand grater and have these grated up in no time flat

And you don't even have to peel them. Now leave that peeling on because the peeling has a lot of vitamins and nutrients in it

But aren't these looking good? All right. Now, we're going to cook these for about three minutes on each side, not very long at all

All right, let's see if we can. Doesn't that look good? Do you see it

Look at that. Now, these are just our appetizers tonight, but these would be wonderful with barbecue

barbecue chicken or with a steak. They would be wonderful with a piece of grilled fish

Whoa Oh gosh Those look delicious Now over here I got my platter ready for our squash and zucchini cakes

and I'm serving along with it tonight, charred marinara sauce. I think these are about ready to, oops, come up

I'm gonna just drain them for a second. Mmm

Ooh. These are hot. Hot. Whoa

Don't those look delicious? Hot as fire, but delicious. Mmm

Don't want to burn my mouth. Mmm

It's yummy. Lady Bird's gonna love it, and I think y'all will too

I'm gonna take a quick break, y'all, and when I come back, I wanna share with y'all

a recipe that is near and dear to my heart. It's the punch that my mother made

for my wedding reception in 1965. So I'll see you back here in a minute

I want to share with y'all a recipe that just, you know, touches my heart when I think about it

Do you know the last time I had this punch? I was 18 years old

I had just said my vows with Jamie and Bobby's father, Jimmy Dean, back in 1965

And my daddy wasn't well, so we just had a reception there at the house

and Mama fixed some wonderful foods, and I said, Mama, the only thing that I want to drink

is that yummy lime sherbet punch. So that's what she made me, and I loved it back then

and I know I'm gonna love it just as much today. Now, you can use several different kinds of sherbet

My favorite was the lime, but you can also use an orange sherbet or a pineapple sherbet

And I'm going to start with two quarts of lime sherbet, and I'm just going to put it down in my punch bowl

I say we might just eat the sherbet and forget the punch. All right

All right. All right, now all I have to do at this point

is pour over two liters of ginger ale, and I'm just gonna pour it right on top of that sherbet

Yum. All right, now I'm gonna add one 46-ounce can of pineapple juice

And now I'm gonna just float some lemons and limes in it

Okay, this looks so good. Brings back so many memories. All right

I'm just adding a few maraschino cherries. I was gonna just pour this up in a punch cup

but... I deserve a sherbet punch

I love it. I loved it then, and I love it now

Well, Lady Bird, it's finally happy hour time. I've got a nice squash and zucchini cake for you, ladybird

I've got sweet and sour meatballs, and I've got Cajun-fried okra with a chili sauce

and last but not least, the punch from my wedding when I was 18 years old

I hope that the recipes that we've made today for you will make your happy hour as happy as our happy hour's been

We send y'all best dishes and love from our kitchen to yours

Right, Lady Bird? Right, Lady Bird