[Hoot Gibson]

My grand daughter entered the hospital an hour ago, in labor with my great grandson.  Since I can't be at the hospital, I'm going down to start cooking.  I plan on having food for them for a week before I come back home.  Making all their favorites!!  Chicken n dumplings, pork chops, a ton of various vegetables (all fresh from Farmer's Market) and their favorite deserts.  That will include, caramel apple pie, ho-ho cake and mandarin orange cake.  Looking forward to the celebration.  Also looking forward to coming back home to rest!!   

That sounds, great, Granny. I don't think that I have had chicken and dumplings since I left Mississippi about a dozen years ago. I am assuming that the Ho Ho cake was inspired by Hostess Ho Hos before bankruptcy forced the company's sell to a Mexican group that has destroyed the flavor of Ho Hos, Twinkies, and my favorites, Suzy-Qs.

There was a small drive-through restaurant in Jackson named Tony's Tamales that served chicken and dumplings and other dishes like tamales, pot roast, meatloaf, red beans and rice, gumbo, and pulled pork. The restaurant was located in a very dangerous part of town, so we limited our runs to Tony's to daylight hours.

Tony's real name is Robert Mosley, and he is an African-American whose business has thrived since we left Jackson. Mosley has closed his original restaurant and opened two restaurants in Jackson suburbs. He also wholesales tamales to Mexican restaurants across Mississippi. His Jackson restaurant was a small shack with a window like you would find in an old wooden house. The number of items on his menu was amazing and the quality of the food was as good as I have found anywhere.

Your post reminded me of Tony's and got me wondering if he was still around. I always thought that a restaurant like his would do a booming business in any town in eastern Kentucky. Unfortunately, Tony's menu no longer includes a long list of dishes and is more focused on their great tamales. (Tamales are very popular in Mississippi and not just in Mexican restaurants.) The tiny restaurant that I remember was larger than two earlier locations that he operated before I moved to Jackson.

Thinking about chicken and dumplings made me hungry but I am too lazy to fix them from scratch, so I settled for my version of an Egg McMuffin, which is two scrambled eggs, ham, and melted cheese (Gouda this morning), served on a toasted English muffin.