Retro

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen, and today we're going back to the time when poodle skirts, hula hoops, and TV dinners were all the rage

I'm going to give you a taste of those good old times again. First, we're headed to my hometown of Albany, Georgia, to get the twist on some peppermint sticks

And then it's back to my kitchen where we're making Aunt Peggy's meatloaf. And then it's okra and tomatoes and cottage potatoes that are just the perfect sidecar for this meal

And finally, it's peppermint cream pie and peppermint bar, a dessert that's so refreshing and light, you'll feel like dancing all night

So open up the snack tables and invite a few friends over. We're going to be taking a trip down Comfort Food Lane

Hey, y'all

Today, I'm going to take y'all back to my past. I'm going to take you to visit Bob's Candy Company

where the McCormick family is king of peppermint. Y'all come along with me

and we're going to do the peppermint twist. Greg, I don't think I've ever seen so many candy canes in all my life in one spot

Well, you know, Paula, we make a billion candy canes. That's with a B per year

Paula, I want you to meet my two sisters that work in the business with me. This is Mary Helen

Hey, Mary Helen. Good to see you. Hello, I'm Julie Ruff. Hey, Julie

Welcome. Welcome to Bob's Candies. I can't hardly wait to get my hands in something

Let's get you some gloves and get going. Do I need my safety glasses back here

Most definitely. Now, those would be some styling safety glasses. What is this, Greg

That looks delicious. Now, Paula, that is the candy, the sugar and the corn syrup that we've taken off the cooling table

and we've put it onto the pulling machine. And just the air going inside the candy turns it that satiny white color

and that's where we put the peppermint flavor in. Okay, Paula, now he's taking the white, it's called the pin slab

And if you look, it's got little lines on there that's going to show him where to put the pinstripes on there

All right, now just stretch it and put it where? Right there

What? You make it look so easy, Charlie. What have you done for three years

Look, I'm going to have a crooked cane. Right about the center

All right. And the center, is that the center? What does that weigh

That weighs about 100 pounds. Now this is called the batch roller, Paula, and that takes that big batch of candy and

it's going to narrow it down to a lot smaller size where it goes through those rollers that

give you the exact size candy cane that you want. Now how long will it take

That will take about 20 minutes. Well now y'all will show me everything, Julie, but how do you get the handle in that candy cane

Well that's a secret that Bob's Candies is going to have to keep. Let's just suffice it to say it's not done by elves

Lola, we thank you for coming and we want you to take this back to your kitchen and do great things

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, McCormick, for a wonderful time in your candy shop

Y'all mean so much to Albany. And I'm going to put these to good use. Good to see you

Bye. Bye. I hope y'all had fun in my birthplace in Albany, Georgia

at Bob's Candy Company. It was so much fun. Really took me back to the 60s

I got some peppermint, and I'm going to put it to the side because we're going to move right on to our entree

which is a wonderful 50s and 60s dish, an old-fashioned meatloaf. Just like my mother and my Aunt Peggy and my grandmother used to make

Before we get started, I think I'm going to get rid of these fun glasses. We're going to start with a ground beef

a good ground beef, maybe an 80-20, something like that. All right, we're gonna kind of break it down just a little bit and we're gonna

add a teaspoon and about a quarter of salt and a deepened fourth of a teaspoon of the pepper

All right, now I've got like a half of a large onion and a diced bell pepper. We're just gonna

mix that in there with that. Oops, forgot to take my jewelry off. Did I show y'all my engagement ring

that Michael gave me. I don't want that meatloaf all in those rings

All right, so we're just gonna mash that bell pepper and onions up into the hamburger meat

kind of get that incorporated along with that salt and pepper. We're gonna take one egg

and give it just a few beats. Just a little bit And then we gonna add 1 fourth of a cup of oatmeal And this just gives your meatloaf a real light and fluffiness to it

And then we're gonna take a can of just diced tomatoes and their juice

Squish, squish. So you can see I'm starting to try to work that into kind of a loaf shape right now

I'm just going to take that out and put it into our dish

And the thing I like about my Aunt Peggy's meatloaf is she doesn't top it with just ketchup

She takes a fourth of a cup of ketchup and about a tablespoon of mustard

a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar, and just mixes those together

And the brown sugar is so good in there. You know, it just kind of gives that meatloaf

just a little sweetness on the outside. And we're just going to brush that on our meat

Doesn't that look yummy? So this one's ready to go in the oven, and we're going to put it in a 350 preheated oven

and we're going to let it cook for about 45 minutes to an hour. before we know it

We're going to have a wonderful aroma coming from the oven. But while we're waiting on that to cook

I want to show you another favorite from the 50s and 60s

and that's okra and tomatoes. Now, I've started with some chopped up bacon

and I'm going to add to the bacon one chopped onion, and you see how much garlic, a good bit

So we're going to dump all that in. So we're gonna saute until it's kind of transparent

And I'm gonna put in a large can of diced tomatoes. Now if it's tomato seasoned, by all means use fresh

All right, now we're gonna add a tablespoon of chicken base. And we're gonna use about a tablespoon of sugar

Just give it a little tin of sweetness. Now, we're gonna let this cook for about 20 minutes

In fact, now, I already have some tomatoes right here that have been cooking

So we're just gonna throw our okra over in here, and I'm probably using two cups of okra

Look at the colors. Aren't they pretty? So we're just gonna put the lid on that

and let that cook until the okra's done, probably about 10 or 15 minutes

And let's see what we've got right here. and see how they've lightened out in color

So that lets us know that they're done. So that really completes that dish

That's how simple it is. Let's check that oven and see how the other meatloaf

that I've got in the other oven's doing. Oh, it looks so good

Look at that meatloaf. Doesn't that look good? Well, I can smell those bell peppers

I'm gonna just try one of those little end pieces. Come over here and get me some of that okra and tomatoes

Doesn't it look just yummy? Mmm. It's so hot. So good

Takes me back to my Aunt Peggy's table. When we come back, we're going to be doing the peppermint twist

in a peppermint pie. Hi, y'all caught me just gathering everything up to make our peppermint pie

This is going to be a perfect ending to our meal. We're going to start with heavy cream and a cup of crushed peppermint

And I'm going to do this the old-fashioned way. Okay, that looks to be about a cup

I'm gonna mix my gelatin with a little bit of water and let that dissolve for a second

We're gonna pour our peppermint into our cream and we're gonna stir this until our milk gets totally incorporated

We're gonna add our gelatin and this is gonna act as our thickening agent for our pie

And you don't want to walk away from your pan on this one. it shouldn't take too long for that candy to melt

I actually have some ready right here We just switch eyes and let it melt And you find that when you melt your peppermint that it turns a real pretty caramel color

Now our candy and our cream has cooled off nicely. We're going to fold it into whipped cream

that's been whipped to a nice peak. I'm just going to make sure I get all the goody

out of this sauce pot. Now you want to be careful when folding in your melted candy because you don't want to

break down your whipping cream. We've got that mixed in so all we're going to do is pile this into a store-bought chocolate

cracker crumb crust. And if you want to, you can make your own out of Oreo cookies

They're so good. And we're just going to pile this in and stick this in the refrigerator until it's set

And you see how when it's mixed with the whipping cream, it almost has a little light pinkish

cast to it. Okay, so we're just going to stick this in the fridge and let it set, which it won't take

long because it's got that gelatin in it. And while that's setting up, I'm going to show you how to make the easiest peppermint

pine bark. So simple. For this one now, I've chosen some of the just hard candy canes

and you can use any kind of peppermint you want for this, but we're gonna take, oh, about that many

and we're gonna just take this and break them up. And I'm not gonna break these up very fine

because I like to really crunch into the peppermint. Now, I've got a couple of pounds of good white chocolate

melting over the heat, doesn't that look delicious? See how that's just smoothing right on out

with that little bit of flame going to it? And I'm going to put about maybe a half a teaspoon of peppermint flavoring

But we're going to have the peppermint from the candy and the peppermint from the flavorings

That white chocolate was yummy, though. All right, and all we're going to do, we don't want to melt our peppermint

So we're not going to stir it in until we're totally done with the heat

And I've got just an ordinary cookie sheet lined with a parchment paper

And I'm just going to fold that candy into that chocolate. And then we're just going to spread it onto our pan

Now you can make it as thick with the candy as you like. Just going to spread that out

You can just hold onto your piece of paper so it won't slide away with you

Isn't that pretty the way you can see the pieces of candy? All we're going to do is chill that

We're going to stick it in the refrigerator. And I happen to have some already cooling in here

that's ready to break out. And I've got a pie ready

and I've even got some more whipping cream. So see how simple that was

And you have a great candy, and it just lifted right off. Now all you have to do is just break this

into any shape you want, in as big a piece as you want

This is a fun little thing to have the children do. So our peppermint bark is ready

Now I like my pies like I do my hairdo real high

So I'm going to bring this one up a little bit by adding whipped cream to it

Now I'm using heavy cream that's been sweetened with a little sugar

And I'm just going to pile that nice and high on it. Almost looks like meringue doesn't it

Now to finish our pie off, I have some crushed peppermint candies

And I'm just gonna give it a... little sprinkle. Doesn't that look delicious

So simple and easy. You'll want to work your crust away from your container

I'm gonna put me just a few sprinkles on my plate. Doesn't that look good

And I think I ought to chase that piece of pie with some peppermint bark, don't y'all

Oh gosh, it looks delicious. See why I put those crumbs on that plate

So I could take my fork and go around and get me a few extra. See the crunch

So delicious. This is hard to beat, but coming up next, we're going to do some old-timey cottage potatoes

So I'll see y'all in a few minutes. music No retro meal would be complete without a potato

So we're fixing to make an old-timey dish, cottage potatoes, but I'm going to show you a new twist to them

Now we're going to use three large bacon potatoes. These are more like a medium

so I'm probably gonna use about five of these. So all we're gonna do is slice them

and you don't have to be perfect because we're actually gonna wind up mashing these up

But you want them close in size so they'll all be done about the same time

All right, now all we're gonna do is cover those with water, and I'm gonna throw a little salt in the pot with them

and just boil those until they're tender. Those look just delicious. We're gonna add a little salt to them, and I'm using a nice kosher on these, and a little

black pepper. All right, now the recipe calls for two tablespoons of butter

That looks like two tablespoons to me, doesn't it, to you? You know, I never was real good at measuring

All right, so we're gonna take our masher, and you can see I'm using an old-timey masher

instead of an electric mixer, because I don't want these real creamy. I still kind of want them in chunks

I just love a potato. I know y'all have heard me say it before. If you were going to send me off to an island and say

Paula, you can only have one food, I would choose the tater. And that's about how I like them

Now we're going to take just ordinary cottage cheese and stir into those

Those look good just like that, don't they? Let's see. I've got some onions sitting around here

To throw in that, let me find my onion. Here it is. We're going to just toss in some onion

And those will still be kind of crunchy and good. I'm just going to pile them into the casserole dish

I'm going to spray it so they won't stick too, too badly on us

Now, if you wanted to, you could actually even jazz this up with some sour cream with a little mayonnaise or milk

It would be delicious on it. But I'm gonna do this just like the recipe calls for in my cookbook

Gonna mash those down in there. And if you liked it hot, you can even add some jalapeno

We're just gonna sprinkle this with paprika, and the paprika will give it a nice brown look

And why don't we just for good measure take the rest of our butter

That two tablespoons doesn't need to be sitting there by itself. So we'll just dot the top of this with a little bit more butter

And we're going to stick this in a 350 degree preheated oven

and we're going to bake it for about 30 or 35 minutes. And I have one over here that should be ready

And it is. Look how good it looks. It's sizzling. Hear it sizzling

It's so good, y'all. Coming up next, some old-timey tips for today's great foods

You know, some folks just don't like a greasy meatloaf

Well, let me tell you how to solve that problem. You just line your baking dish with whatever kind of loaf bread you've got in the house

and it soaks up all your grease, and you just take your spatula and lift your meatloaf out onto your platter

Just that simple. And on the okra, if you can't find fresh okra, it's not a problem because the fresh frozen okra is so very good

You can buy it in whole pods or you can buy it already cut up, whatever your dish calls for

Hope these tips will help you. I hope y'all have had fun with me today going back into the past with some fun old meals from the 50s and 60s

I hope you'll love my Aunt Peggy's meatloaf and the cottage potatoes and Bob's peppermint candy pie

and the peppermint bark. And of course my okra and tomatoes. Hope you have a great time at your own party

In the meantime America, I wish you best dishes from my kitchen to yours