Mayhaw Man

Renting cars can be very expensive in Mexico, as Jaymes stated, but if you are willing to do a little shopping on the internet and make a reservation ahead of time (and have a credit card balance to put up the usual rediculously large deposit) you can get a car at a reasonable rate. The Yucatan is wonderful and there are plenty of places that will make you happy that you went to all of the trouble. The last time I was there I rented a Volkswagen Thing for something that I remember as reasonable (maybe $50 US ?). It was a very fun little car and kind of nice having a convertible as well.

I am currently working some rediculous hours implementing a new process and my cooking has all been arranged around my stupid schedule (the hours aren't long, but they are weird and occur at odd and inconvenient times of the day-like Sunday morining). Yesterday I got home and put a small turkey that I purchased at some rediculous price in the oven. I used the cooking method listed as "Marie Snelling's Perfect Turkey" in the Cotton Country Collection for those of you that have that fine book. The basic process is that the bird is stuffed with onions, celery, and apples. The turkey is rubbed HEAVILY with kosher salt and cracked pepper. Bacon strips (good bacon) are laid on top of the bird and a linen cloth soaked in evoo is laid over the breasts of the bird. Turkey is baked and the rag is removed for the last 45 minutes of cooking. This process produces an unbelievably moist turkey. This was served with a salad the last of the winter greens out of my garden (mainly butter lettuce), rice and giblet gravy, squash casserole and a little homemade strawberry i.c. for dessert. It was just like a holiday meal except that most of it cooked while I slept. Very tasty and now I have sandwich meat for school lunches for the rest of the week.

Please tell an unsophisticated butterbean fan the process for "butterbean crostini". Hard to go wrong with bacon and butterbeans and that looks really tasty. Those are some fine looking victuals you put together. Nice work.

Well, this is probably better than the audience throwing up afterwards.

Everybody sing along! You can hone your silly accents and viking dialect here.

Anybody wanta here my story about Secret Lake in Teton National Park, pan fried chicken, cheese grits, pickled green beans, and a very large, very hungry bear? It's an ugly tale of fried chicken and mountain climbing (google on that and I bet you don't get many hits ) gone horribly wrong (although the bear probably had a different opinion )

If you can find it, try soaking your bird pieces in Crystal Wing Sauce. It is a kind of thinned out version of the Hot Sauce and I have become fairly addicted to it. It is good as a condiment on any kind of meat and particularly good as mixed in egg wash for a wet/dry batter situation (like chicken, shrimp, etc.)

The draft Guniness here in the US is from St James Gate. THe problem is that it is often mishandled all the way down the line from the brewery to the exporter to the importer to the retailer. It is still very often a sublime experience. I kind of love it. When in New Orleans head over to the Kerry (on Decatur across from Tower Records). It is run by Irishmen for Irishmen and has the look and feel (and the conversational fun that goes along with it) of a decent local in Galway. In Ireland I will drink Murphy's if it is available, but it is often hard to get out of big cities (with the exception of the South and some of the West of Ireland). I like Smith's for the occasional quaff, but as Sam pointed out one of the fine things about Guiness is that it is fairly light bodied and low in Alcohol (although with beer that is all pretty relative, in terms of ABV and amount consumed a percent or two doesn't mean much)

Looking for a huge rain tonight (same storm that creamed Texas yesterday. If things go well, most of the garden will get planted on Sunday p.m. Ground is ready and the plants (partiicularly eggplants, tomatoes of various sorts, and cucumbers are all doing nicely and are ready for transplanting).

$1.50-$1.75 currently. The supply is good, but it is so early in the season that you have to order sacks several days in advance to be guaranteed a supply. Last year they got down to .90 at the height of the season. We are having a small boil on Sunday p.m. and have 2 sacks (roughly eighty pounds) reserved. Where did you get them in Atlanta? Where did they say they came from.

You dip the eggplant in it. It's delicious. In fact, it is pretty much the only way my kids like fried eggplant anymore.

Even more importantly, are they tasty?

That is a very cool looking plate

I catered a Gallery Meet and Greet tonight for 100 ppl. and dinner was the same thing the hipster art patrons ate for chat snacks Crawfish Tarts Smoked Salmon on herbed flatbread rounds w sundried tom. pesto, capers, micro thin lemon slice Gorgonzola Mousse w breadsticks (same dough as the flatbread) Lemon Loves and Hazelnut/Chocolate Puffs (picture sugar cookies with baking powder-really good)

Vanadium Japan is from a very famous manufacturing family. His brother, Made In, has his signature on all manner of goods.

Good Suggestion. I almost forgot. Flames are always a great way to end a fine meal

As to Southern Cookbooks, you are right, it can be a bit contentious as there are some pretty definite regions of the South and cooking styles vary- A couple of good all around books would be: on Country Collection Southern Sideboards The River Road Cookbook Winning Seasons-Tuscaloosa, AL Jr. League (although they might want to change the name of the book to "We Can't Hang on to a Coach all Season" ) This one is available through the University of Alabama Website. These all contain plenty of regional favorites and The Cotton Country and River Road are both full of seafood recipes as well. Good Luck

Whatever you do make sure you order the Fried eggplant appetizer. It is fried in a very frothy batter (kind of like tempura, but not exactly) and served with powdered sugar that will get all over everything. Not to worry, those power brokers next to you and their lunch lady wives are eating exactly the same thing and getting it all over the place too. Oysters Rockefeller is a ver dependable (and totally classic0 app. choice and if there is any baked, broiled, fried, etc, speckled trout on the menu-order it. They cook specks like one else. And I don't know if you like it, alot of people don't, but Galitoire's is one of the few places around that still does full blown Escargot service. It is great (if you like snails and that sort of thing ) and I still think they are good and alot of fun to eat. The place is truly an experience. Hard to explain a local culture unless you see it and Galitoire's is as local as it gets. Antoine's is older, but not nearly as good not even close to as much fun. Enjoy.

It's an amazing thing, this internet stuff. Poche's is literally "in the middle of nowhere" (just ask Rachel P., she can tell you all about it ). Still hard for me to believe that they can do anything overnight from their local. Glad to hear that it showed up in good shape. I am doing a small catering job tonight (75 people -cocktail snacks-sweets) and am using andoullie from Poche's as part of my crawfish pie filling (I went and picked it up Saturday p.m., easy for me to say ) Menu tonight- Crawfish Tarts (2 inch crawfish pies in pate brisee) Smoked Salmon on flatbread w/sun dried tom. pesto, creole creme cheese and capers Gorganzola Mousse w/homemade breadsticks (served in large sourdough loaves hollowed out with all of these sticks coming out if it, looks very cool) Hazlenut/Chocolate Puffs Lemon Loves Gotta Go. Need to put together 100 crawfish tarts.

I have to admit that I find this subject strangely fascinating. After we get done with this, let's move on to what's in the cabinet under the sink. O.k. I did an inventory today and I am pretty sure that I have not looked in those two cabinets in several years. I have: 8 Flexible Ice Trays (don't know why, I have had fridges with ice makers for at least ten years. 1 really old bottle Tabasco Bloody Mix 1/2 bottle Triple Sec 9 Cookie Tins (I thought I had lost them, they were my grandmothers and I missed them. They are old peppermint tins with the Lion on them, can't remember the brand) Christmas Bevnaps (they will be handy next year if I remember them ) Ziplock full of various cookie cutters (I had lost them too) A misdemeanor amount of a now unidentifiable leafy green matter that never belonged to me, I swear. 4 bottles Andygator (this was worth the whole process, even though I can't drink it-it will make a nice treat for some guest or another. This beer ages as well as any I have ever run across. Lots of dust.

Your welcome. Would you mind telling us what kind of shape it was in when it showed up? Was it still hard frozen? How was it packed? Etc. It would be very helpful to those thinking about ordering. Thanks

You can go after the races!

Things go better with Coke

Kristen- Is $5.44USD a scoop a redicuous price, or is this pretty much par for the course on premium ice cream in Japan? That cup of framboises did look pretty tasty though. I would probably pay it.....once.

As the great (!???!) Marv Throneberry once said, " That place is so popular that nobody goes there anymore". It's the damn tourists. They should just stay home and let us eat ourselves to death in our squalid little backwater and stay out of the sandwich line! edited to say that I was just kidding. We need the tourist dollars worse than they need us. We love them and treat them very well. Please come visit our fair city and bring your mini bank cards. You are the only viable industry we have left.