Mayhaw Man

If Ruth was around this never would have happened. Nothing like corporate loyalty. Her son Randy is a great guya and a major supporter of the SFA, but I don't think that he controls the board, just the Fertel Foundation. I am sure that there will be more and more of this as we go along. Hibernia seems to have made a major move to Houston, and with it's pending sale, I am sure that last Friday afternoon Hibernia made the last transactions that will be made under that old New Orleans logo. I wonder what will happen to the Hibernia building and the lights on top?

PS-The okra and Tomatoes looks great!

It looks like a great time was had by all. I missed you guys. Maybe next year we can have something at my house. Maybe a big shrimp and crawfish extravaganza with music and beer made about 300 yards from my house. And moonshine made somewhere near my house. We'll work on it and look forward to it. Brooks

Dave needs some to practice with. Better get three dozen.

"Green Splodge" pretty much describes it, though you might want to back out a bit with the focus. If you do, you will then be able to see "green splodge with blue roof". It's amazing technology, though. I spent an hour with my 15 year old last night, who pretty much won't do anything with me for an hour other than play tennis, looking at cities and landmarks. The Great Wall, The Kremlin, D.C., New York, all of the places in the world that I have lived, Mt Everest, tons of pyramid sites , Mt St Helen's, Danali, Everest. I am just stunned by the technology. I especially like putting in a new destination and "lifting off" (youngest son's term) to go to the next destination. Moscow to Los Angeles in 10 seconds-and the on board meals served are much better than any airline today. Last night they served grilled pork chops and corn with asparagus and watermelon sorbet for dessert. ← Excuse me, but how does one play tennis while looking at cities and landmarks? Pretty shoddy tennis match I should think. *Plimp* "look there's the Eiffel Tower" *Plimp* "There's the Louvre" *Plimp* "There's the very angry Gendarme running towards us with a tennis ball in his mouth!" All right maybe I shouldn't have opened that beer bottle. - Weka ← You should go back through all of my other posts. It would take a while, but you seemed to enjoy this one so much I am sure that you can find some entertainment in many of the others.

This is so gross. OK, it's two gross! ← We might have hit on the solution to the gas crisis.

Nothing like a few "brainblasta's" to top off a long week. I used to hate that drive back to Enfield on the weekends. But I did love the Porterhouse. A great place.

Well done. Except for the last two words. "Thanks Steven, and you can read more of his writing at eGullet.com" .org dammit!

no fan am I, but I fail to see how this is any worse than any other over the top dessert. You just don't eat alot of it. It's a dessert. Something sweet to follow some savory dishes and, if you wish, accompany coffee or dessert drinks. This is not something that I am going to make ( I don't like Krispy Kreme, at all, but that is a personal taste thing-I don't even like doughnuts very much, so this would not be an appealing thing for me to persue). On the other hand, if it's about making bread pudding the right way, well, I make it with ginger cake from Lejeune's Bakery in Jeanerette all the time. It's not traditional, but it's damn good. Does that make me like Sandra Lee? I think not. There is also a level where everyone jumps to this conclusion that EVERYONE in the South eats this kind of stuff at every meal. Suprise! We don't. Sure, out food is, on whole, traditionally more calorie laden than what people in other parts of the country tend to eat, but we also probably consume more fresh vegetables, thanks to culture and availablity, than other parts of the country. In my part of the South, we have two full growing seasons. I have just completed planting a fall garden that will make, some years, well into December. In fact, the lettuces and other greens will make until the Spring if well tended. And though I am not her biggest fan, Paula Deen and Sandra Lee are, in my mind, an apples and oranges comparison.

It's a good interview. This Shaw guy is pretty funny. He seems to know a bit about restauraunts as well. THe show is turning into a defense of front of house staff vs. back of house. Pretty interesting.

OMG! We still have one of those and it's in use at this very moment. Does the spikey thing actually do anything? I don't know if you can still buy them. =R= ← I have one of those that came from my grandmother's house. We use it all the time. She had lots of cool plastic stuff that all seemed to be dated around the early to mid sixties, meaning that she kind of collected new stuff as her grandchildren were being born, because unlike my mother's mother, she couldn't cook for love or money (though she could bake like a French guy and made all kinds of great things with sugar). There is this really cool cylindrical Minute Made brand juice thing that probably came with a coupon. I love that thing. I saw one on eBay for an insane $40 a while back. We don't eat thousand island much, but I remember that as being the first dressing that I ever liked. We do make homemade green goddess occasionally and I really like it. In fact, green goddess on cabbage makes an interesting slaw type salad.

Here's my new one. At some point, maybe tonight, I will try, really I will, to get my kitchen thread going again as it is actually happening as we speak (along with a gut of the rest of the place, which is why I have no time or energy (not to mention money) to get the thread restarted. But that stove is sitting in a box somewhere on a loading dock in New Orleans awaiting the floor in the kitchen to go down. Hopefully sometime next week I will be setting this big dog down and hooking up the gas.

The Guinness draft available in North America comes from Dublin. The other packages, widget cans, bottles, etc. all come from different places (including Ireland, but not always). I don't believe that any of it is domestically brewed under license in the US, though Guinness does brew under license all over the world. The bottled Guinness that used to be available here as the only package, occasionally came from the Carribean (seems like it was Trinidad or Jamaica, but I can't really remember) and it was not very good, to say the least. Guinness does own a brewery in the US, but I don't believe that they produce any Guinness domestically at their Lehigh Valley brewery. The issue with Guinness draft in the US comes down to two things really-the way that the beer is handled during shipping and the way that it is handled at the retail level. Rarely do you find a good situation all the way through the pipeline. In fact, though I live in a town where Guinness is widely available and there are not a few "Irish bars", the only one that does what I consider to be a beautiful job with it is a small bar on Decatur Street (ironically across the street from the old and now defunct Jax Brewery), The Kerry. It is manned by Irish expats, it's stools are generally populated by Irish expats, and there is a firehouse next door. These things, combined, seem to keep the black stuff coming with the style and respect that it deserves. They can't help it that many times the beer coming out of the keg isn't perfect, because they are only responsible for it from the time that it comes through the door. Nitrogen, high pressure pouring is not easy and these days few people take the time to learn the ins and outs of the system, and the distributors rarely take the time to show publicans how to deal with it. I can tell you though, with some authority (I lived in Enfield, Ireland (building a brewery) in the late 90's) that the quality of the Guinness from pub to pub varies greatly with both the skill of the barman and the quality of the equipment that it is being poured from. At the time I was there, lagers were becoming more and more popular and this is an issue for Irish beer wholesalers and pub owners because lagers are typically free poured through a tap, not pressured out by a beer engine or nitrogen (alagal). So what ended up happening is that the wholesalers (in many cases, due to the distribution system there, Guinness itself) began selling the pubs cold plates that chilled the lager beers on the way to the tap, where it was poured through what was essentially a Guinness style tap with nitrogen pushing it. It was pretty bizarre-think about a creamy Budweiser with a Guiness type head on it. Very strange. The result of this situation was that, for various reasons, the Guinness in these very same pubs began to be poured through the cold plates for the Budweiser. This resulted in Guinness that was WWWAAAAYYYY too cold to be enjoyed and basically a small riot of old men in every pub in Ireland who wanted their Liffey water served the way that a proper pint, in their opinion, should be served. I listened to endless discussions about who had the best pint in a given geographic area and how "Guinness wasn't what it used to be" etc. It was pretty good craic, as the Irish say. All this being said, while I was there I would drink a Beamish before anything else. I love that stuff. Much richer than Guinness, a much more enjoyable pint, imho. So the point here is that no one, anywhere, is really ever truly happy with their pint unless they happend to be within spitting distance of the Liffey.

And come to think of it, I never put eggs in it. I suppose that's because no eggs is what I grew up eating. Maybe it's a Delta thing? I don't know. More research is needed. This might make for an excellent topic.

Like my esteemed, trash talking colleague, I have never used a recipe to make it either. Tonight, when I get home to my hovel, I will go through my extensive library of Southerncentric cookbooks and find one that best represents what I do. I will then send it on to KKB and see what he thinks. Once it has been approved by both of us, I will forward it on to you, The Queen of the Northcountry.

It belongs to Marie Louise Snellings. One hell of a woman (and the departed mother in law of US Senator Mary Landrieu). She was one of the nicest women I ever met, and unbelievable host, fabulous cook horsewoman, one of the earliest women graduates of Tulane Law School, extremely talented home chef, lefty Democrat, and basically a legend in these parts. She also gave me the key to the levee behind her house when I was just a little boy and I will be forever greatful for the pass to that wild riverbank. Anyway, that turkey recipe is as good as it gets. And recommend or not, it's hard to find a better collection of recipes than The Cotton Country Collection. There are a few more from that part of the country, most notably Southern Sideboards from the Jackson Jr League, that are pretty good-but TCC has it all in one spot and as my mother (and therefore the 12 year old me) was on the tasting committee, I am a bit predjudiced. And you, Krispy Kreme Boy, are gonna get your ass kicked. That's the last straw.

If there is an authentic Southern potato salad you want me to use, can you provide it, or point me in the right direction? Otherwise, I'd make my own, which is not particularly southern! Of course, I can always find one in the Cotton Country Collection! ← That's where I am going to go for one, so you might as well. I promise it won't be bad.

If there is an authentic Southern potato salad you want me to use, can you provide it, or point me in the right direction? Otherwise, I'd make my own, which is not particularly southern! Of course, I can always find one in the Cotton Country Collection! ← Brooks, Dave or Debbie, please get Marlene a quintessential recipe for Southern-style potato salad. Thank you. Thank you very much. ← First you get some taters..........

Can I make some okra and tomatoes? The fried is fine, and I am happy to do it, but I think that Okra deserves a couple of different presentations, as many of our guests will not have ever had God's pod anyway but fried. Also, there seems to be a low slime quotient. Slime is essential to good digestion and regularity.

There's news.

Hopefully both will be available. Not everyone from the South falls for this sweet tea stereotype. I like it plain.

Garth Hudson? I love The Band. Good Choice. You Canadians really should stick together.

More likely all of the egg will be on your face, Chicken Boy.

Charlie's Steakhouse in New Orleans serves the wedge topped with the best blue chees dressing on earth. This salad would be enjoyable on it's on, but the fact that it is served up by the same charming and efficient woman who has been delivering it to me since I was a young lad, Dottye Bennett. She is, and I do not say this lightly or without forethought, one of my greatest all time heros in the New Orleans culinary world. The salad is good. The meat is good. Dottye makes it all worthwhile.

Just for the record: It's good to see you handing our advice again. I really missed having you around.