Mayhaw Man

Actually, you can "virtually" be there. Microsoft is doing a 6 hour "live" broadcast on Sunday afternoon, both weekends. You can read about it here. I think that it's a great idea and I wish that they had started doing this a long time ago.

Chris nails it on the head. Again. This is part of my plan for the weekend. I'll drive folks in through the back side, down St Bernard, onto DeSaix and into the neighborhood to park. That should do it. Long time since the storm. Long time. It's still a mess.

Knowing the little bit that I do about how all of this reality stuff works (a number of these have been filmed in NOLA and I have many friends who have worked on the production side of things), I would imagine that the Scott's were comped the whole thing as a trade off for being part of a commercial production. I mean, the Scotts did probably have some fun with it and I suspect that they knew what they were dealing with on some level, so it's hard to feel too bad for them. After all, there was probably some kind of newsprint or web thing that they responded to in order to get on the list so they pretty much knew the score going in, I would be willing to bet.

It's not just you.

I will be there, of course. Though today, if I make it out, I'm going to be very late. I have a bunch of food stuff in the new Offbeat, but it's not online yet, so you'll need to pick one up from a hawker in front of the Fairgrounds or somewhere else in town. Good weekend out there. It will be interesting to see how things fared with the Best Restaurant in the World. Happy Jazz Fest to you all! Your goal, if you are from out of town, should be to have only enough cash, or room on your credit cards, to get your car out of the airport parking lot. Beyond that, just do like Louis Armstrong used to do, "Leave it all behind you." Thanks for coming. We appreciate it. There aren't many people who can or would do this in a place this messed up. My hat's of to everyone who managed to get it together and participate-vendors, musicians, krewe, The Fairgrounds, everybody. Thanks. Have fun this week.

They are great. Stupendous. Plentiful. Better than everyone else's. Much better. All of those other shrimp? Inferior poseurs, at best. 50 lbs? Hell, just rent a truck. Take some back for everyone up there! They'll love you for it. Seriously, they are good, as is everything coming out of the Gulf right now. Frank Brigsten told me the other night that the availability was better than it had ever been since he started running restaurants. The prices have been good and if you go buy them directly from the folks catching them (Shrimp lot on the West Bank is a good place to look-call me if you want to go and tell you when and how) you can save a ton of dough. No middleman. You know?

Vote early and often!

Well, I think that ice cream cake-cake (they just neatly include the ice cream along with the cake) Boston Cream Pie-cake (but a big gooey mess-even the really good ones-imo) Ok with me. Also, blancmange (I saw it up there for a minute)-I'm thinking more in the gelatin/custardy category, kind of like flan. Not cake. Not pie. Good nevertheless.

we do not accept this answer. ← Good point. Thanks for handling this. No fence sitting allowed. Step up and make a choice (it doesn't mean that you can't eat both, it just means that, well, you are opinionated. In a good way. )

The Caramel Cake that started this whole mess(sorry for the rough icing job, but I no longer have a turntable). Remains. Most of it was gone by the end of the evening and the remains were part of a healthy breakfast the next day. Cake. It's better than pie.

I am a man. Spelled M....A....N. No B...O...Y. (apologies to Muddy) I like cake. Theory shot to hell. ← Thanks for the update. I was concerned, but thankfully, my fears have been abetted. ← Just keeping things clear. Clarity is all important in this form of information exchange. But, you know, it seems to me that you might have a leg to stand on. Tonight I will go through this thing and try and count the votes (though some people, despite my explicit warning, seem to have a hard time getting off of the fence and making up their minds) but it looks to me like men DO prefer pie. I'll try to get a more scientific count later in the evening.

I am a man. Spelled M....A....N. No B...O...Y. (apologies to Muddy) I like cake. Theory shot to hell.

Mint, I have discovered, unlike pecan and oak trees, is completely hurricane proof. In fact, now that the yard is basically as sunny as a cotton field, the stuff is going crazy. Another thing that I love about the South are Tamales! They are a staple where I come from and if there's a better, and more lovingly prepared fast food, I don't know what it is. I love the things. This weekend, on the Tamale Trail Tour, I ate more than my share, and then, just to top it off, ended the day with a really, really good steak at Lusco's All in all, one of my better eating days in the recent past. Rolaids should really consider getting on board as a sponsor.

We throw it all out on Friday p.m. (cleaning person does it after work). The condiments, the ones that are reasonable (mustard, etc) get left in the door, but this is a highly personal decision left to the cleaner, though I must say that most of the time she makes good decisions. Everyone knows it's going to happen, so, there's not much for them to complain about. The thing stays fairly clean this way.

What about em? A pie's a pie. Fried, baked, boiled, broiled, broasted, roasted, braised, or burnt. Whatever. Pies are still just a big pile of goo compared to a delicious, well thought out and executed cake. Cook those pies however you like. Eat some. Then look across the room at that guy with that big hunk of cake-that's the guy who will have the smile of the righteous on his face. He knows.

I knew, I just knew. I'll rest easy tonight. This vote, this single vote, was worth all of the senseless criticism from cake haters that cake lovers, clearly the more sophisticated, worldly group of the two, had to endure today. Sleep well, Marlene. Sleep well. You, my dear, have a fan in New Orleans. Never doubt it.

O Cold Woman of the Northcountry, First of all, I've seen you in your skivvies on your blog, but I don't believe there was any cake involved-though cheesecake, maybe. Secondly, there is nothing better for breakfast than toasted poundcake with a bit of butter melted into it. Delicious. Of course, you would have to have some poundcake around, and you pie people will never be able to experience this bliss for yourselves. It's all very sad.

Cheesecake-pie, sort of. Boston Cream Pie-cake, sort of. Gooey mess-surely.

Et tu, Shug? Et tu?

Life is full of tough choices. Buck up and get with the program.

You aren't the first, by any means, to question this.

And Cakewalk, your name reminds me of another bit of evidence that proves the power of cake: Have you ever, ever heard of a "piewalk?" No, of course you haven't. Who would be silly enough to walk around in circles just to get a pan full of goo? No one, that's who. That's what a cakewalk is all about. People hungry for a better life walking in circles, for as long as it takes, just to get a light, airy, slice of heaven.

No, not that night. But I will. Nevertheless, this isn't about photos. It's about cake vs. pie. You'll need to decide if you want to play along.

First a story, then, on to the rules of this important survey concerning one of the burning issues of our times. The other night I went with my friend Pableaux for a first dinner at Cochon, Donald Link's (owner of the superb Herbsaint Restaurant) new place dedicated to one of my favorite things-meat. It's in New Orleans in the most uptown part of the Warehouse District and it seems to be doing very well indeed. The food was really great, extremely reasonably priced, and the service was excellent. PLUS! They are putting together a moonshine program (details later when I get them). Anyway, over the course of dinner everyone that I knew in New Orleans showed up. Every foodwriter for every publication and a couple of them were towing guests, Alice Waters (who was in town to work on a School Garden Project-it's happening and I will be writing lots about it. It's pretty heartening and not a little exciting) and Davia Nelson (1/2 of NPR's The Kitchen Sisters). So, the meal ended up being like old home week, or a Southern Foodways Alliance meeting, or a lecture-any of the above would probably be accurate. By the time dessert rolled around, we were more or less piled up around one table. The desserts that evening included several cakes (pineapple upside down, German chocolate) and some pies (humorously, I can't even remember what they were-but that's kind of my point, as you will see). Everyone ordered, selections came, were enjoyed (Link's desserts are always simple, always outstanding), and conversation continued. I had enjoyed the pineapple upside down cake-alot-and it occured to me that most of my fellow diners had gone with something other than cake (in fairness, there was an excellent iced dessert selection-cream, sorbet, etc-but that is not to enter into the query at the end of this little tale). So I posed this simple question: Given the choice of great pie or great cake, all things being more or less equal in terms of quality and flavor, which would you choose? There can be no, wishy washy, namby pamby, "I like both" answers (though Alice Waters managed to explain why she liked both, so I'm giving her a pass-but no one else can have one). You have to choose. On this evening, what became apparent to me, is that I am in an extreme minority as a lover of cake. I will always choose a well made cake over a well made pie. Now, I like both, mind you. I'm not crazy (or maybe I am, but that has no bearing on this particular argument) and I will happily eat a piece of pie when offered one. The point here is that if I am offered both, I'm going for the cake every time. I love cake. I love all cakes. Most of all, I like caramel cake. I like it so much that, at a dinner the other night, several days after a round of blistering and opinionated emails popped up in mailboxes all over the country concerning this important question (this reading is not for the faint of heart or the politically sensitive-but those emails were very entertaining), I brought my favorite cake-Caramel Cake. I also brought some delicious Creole Cream Cheese Ice Cream from Creole Creamery to back it up. I made the cake from a recipe I managed to pry from a friend, Ann Cashion, (a pie person, for God's sake) who is a big deal chef and who is kind of famous for this cake. It's really good. Really, really good. It was served at the Southern Foodways Alliance Conference in Oxford, MS in 04 (scroll down a bit to see the cake and the whole, fabulous meal) at the end of the single best mass served meal that I, or most of the people sitting there, had ever eaten. That cake has become the stuff of legend among those of us who were there and I was really happy to be able to take a crack at making it. I did, it was a pain in that ass, lots of steps, lots of caramel icing making (you have to do it twice-so it's time consuming), and because it's caramel icing, you have to work fast, as it pretty quickly becomes unspreadable. But, in the end, it's pretty delicious. Three layers of light moist cake, each seperated by a layer of tooth achingly sweet caramel. The thing is the bomb. And coupled with a little not so sweet Creole Cream Cheese Ice Cream, well, you can't ask for a better dessert-or you wouldn't want or need to, anyway. The cake was a hit, of course, and those pie lovers scarfed it up, but even then, at the end of the evening, the lovers of pie stood unchanged. When asked, simply, "cake or pie?" they still went with the pie. Now, this could be because they were embarrassed to admit that they might have been wrong all of their lives, or perhaps, cake is just too complex for simple people such as my friends to enjoy, or, just maybe, they really do like pie better than cake. Whatever the reason, the question remains: Cake or pie? Both is NOT a good answer.

I loved this piece, Maggie. Alot. Thanks. I love a "little roast", as my grandmother, the one who couldn't cook a lick, used to say as we arrived for Sunday lunch at her house. It was usually as dry as a bucket of sand, and served with mashed potatoes, little green peas, accompanied by some jello salad with miracle whip artfully placed on top. Too bad about the industrial garter belts, though. I guess they went the way of vent windows in cars and knobs on radios (two things that engineers should revisit, immediately).