It’s A Brand New Blog!

Aunt Patty’s Porch is a food and tea blog written and run by Maryland mother-daughter team Aunt Patty and Sister Yaya. While located on the East Coast, the family is steeped in good ol’ Southern tradition, particularly food and drink. This blog comes from a place of good food, Afternoon Tea, and Southern hospitality. Welcome!

The Bloggers

Aunt Patty

A lot of my childhood memories revolve around food. At the tender age of six, my 17 year-old cousin stuck me behind the wheel of a huge flatbed farm truck. After setting the speed by placing a brick on the gas pedal, he instructed me to keep the tires in the rows that they were currently in. Ten minutes later, my Aunt returned from the errand she was running to find a six year-old driving her truck, while my brothers, male cousins, and farm hands loaded bales of straw onto the flat bed truck. I don’t remember what she said to him, but afterwards I was relegated to kitchen duty with my grandmother. It was harvest time. Every hand was needed, even a six year-old.

Looking back at that time I wish that I had been smart enough to take notes. My grandmother was considered an exceptional cook, especially for her fried chicken, biscuits, chicken pie, and cakes. Oh… what I could have learned from her. She tried on a several occasions to teach me, but I was just too young to care about much more than eating. But she did impress upon me the need to be able to feed people.

My brothers are all much older than I, so they were off to college by the time I was 10. My father made it clear to me that I should have dinner on the table by the time he and my mother got home from work. Thank God for a little invention called Hamburger Helper. Those early meals were somewhat atrocious, but my father never complained. The quality of the meal was represented by the number of peanut butter sandwiches that he consumed for dessert.

I got better through the years, mostly by trial and error. About seven years ago, having sent Sister Yaya off to college, I enrolled in Cooking Basic at La Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, MD. Chef Sandy Patterson skillfully molded 40 years of cooking errors into some actual practical knowledge. About that time my son’s sports teams started requiring food for morning practices. I gleefully answered the call. One thing led to another, and I was getting more and more requests.

So that brings me here. I have had so many requests for recipes that my middle daughter suggested I put them on Pinterest. I haven’t figured that out quite yet, but Sister Yaya has agreed to help me with a Blog. So everything I post here is the result of years of practice and some skillful guidance from Sandy. (Thank You Sandy!)

Sister Yaya

Greetings, my ducks! As the (moderately) tech-savvy half of Aunt Patty’s Porch, it is my pleasure to welcome you to our Mother-daughter food and tea blog! Look for delicious things to come!

As a lifelong tea enthusiast and loose-leaf snob, I will be bringing you weekly updates and reviews on all things tea. If you’re not a tea drinker, stop whatever you’re doing now, and convert. Tea is a wonderful, delicate beverage with complex flavors and a multitude of health benefits. In the words of W.E. Gladstone, “If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated, it will cool you; if you are depressed, it will cheer you; if you are excited it will calm you.” With a variety of aromas, flavors, and ingredients, there’s really no excuse for not being a tea drinker.

Also, I’m just a huge geek in general, not just for tea. Please direct all of your “Earl Grey, hot” jokes my way.