Mayhaw Man

Monica, Thanks for taking the time that you have in giving such thorough and informative answers. They have been a pleasure to read. Next time I am in Houston (usually go a time or two every summer for baseball and a quick trip on over to Schlitterbahn with my boys) I will absolutely put T'afia at the top of the list. Thanks again.

No matter which sex you may be, at one time or another, have you ever cooked a meal with the inner sense that it would be one of your arsenal of seduction techniques for a possible lover? What did you prepare? How was it received by the intended individual? Did it go off smoothly or were there problems which arose? (this can be read on all possible levels! ) Do you believe that this meal and the intent which it carried brought the intended even closer to you? Confessions or even personal anecdotes gratefully accepted! ← I am a man. This is the underlying reason that we wake up in the morning. I prepare every meal that I cook with this in mind. Hell, I even mow the grass with this in mind. Sadly, I am often dissapointed.

Pimm's is a good way to go for a refreshing beach cocktail Also, as far as the blender goes-I don't think that I have ever had a beach rental that didn't have one. They seem to come along with the deal, just like the bad beach art on the walls.

Get a bottle of mezcal, some limes, and some beer. You won't be making many cocktails, but no one will complain much after the first couple of rounds. Nothing like shots and beers with your family to encourage conviviality. Of course, this combo could also encourage many involved to air longstanding resentments (cactus products seem to bring on prickly behavior, for some reason) so you might not want to listen to me. In fact, listening to me is usually a pretty bad idea. Carry on.

Guys, This is a great topic. Would one of you like to split it off, say into General, and start a new topic there? It's really no longer about either the show or Thibodeaux (that's "tib-uh-dough" by the way), but it is a good topic and you might get a little better discussion going in general. Thanks

Actually, were one to make the decision to not eat meat, this would be a good place to do it. We have fresh vegetables year round, generally, although the selection is obviously largest in the Spring and Fall (you can grow two full on gardens here-I do it every year). THere is a wide variety of locally grown produce. That being said, how the hell could you make that choice with all of the other stuff that we have to eat here?

Monica, thanks for doing this. Your answers have been very thorough and informative. So with that, I'll ask a really general question and see what you can come up with. I notice that you have a number of Texas wines on your winelist. Are these wines there because they are your favorites? Or do you rotate them in and out with other wines from Texas or elsewhere? I recently worked on a project involving Texas wineries and was suprised at the number of them and their diversity (my background is in beer, not wine, and this was a learning experience for me)and also with the suprising volume that some of them are doing (or intend on doing taking future planned production and sales into account). Do the wines sell well, as compared to other ones on the list? Can you reccomend any standouts or favorites? Thanks

I can tell you that it was a sad time at the first party I went to without a half gallon of K&B Vodka on the drinks table. And the scotch wasn't bad either if you drank it straight from the freezer, like vodka.

I haven't bought any plastic cups in years. I have, literally, cases of the things in my attic, along with a gillion pounds of beads (that I am about to have to move as we gut the upstairs this summer). I have often wondered if Orleans Parish is not slowly sinking under the weight of all of those Carnival beads stored in people's attics.

You would have to be very rich and not very smart to really go into weird beer as a full time occupation-and that really does not include just the South. I have built, operated, and/or supervised brewing operations (both brewpubs and full on breweries) in 4 countries, 3 continents, and 4 states. We made different things for different locales and beer styles, and regularly made something unfamiliar in order to keep from getting bored and to educate the local drinkers-but we never considered getting too far away from what the drinkers were familiar with (don't even THINK about making dark beer in Hong Kong or hoppy beer in Mississippi, etc.). You will always sell some to adventuresome drinkers, but it won't be enough to pay the note. Give them what they want and make a little something to satisfy yourself, was kind of the way that we always went into it, and it worked for us for a long time. There are exceptions. At Abita, we developed Turbodog as a joke. It's a dark, strong, reasonably hoppy beer-exactly the kind of thing that we thought would be a bust. But it had a great name (long story-an off color joke, actually) and we put it out as a draft only specialty in New Orleans (Abita used to have rotating specialty taps all over New Orleans that kind of let us put out fun stuff when we felt like we had something worth taking across the lake. Eventually it turned into a rotating seasonal list (Bock for Mardi Gras, Wheat for Summer, Octoberfest for Fall, and a dark beer for Christmas (which, back in the old days, was the best beer of the year-we changed it every year-one year I made this big alcoholic chocolate bomb. We ended up having a couple of 1/4 kegs in a cooler in a bar in New Orleans that were there for a year. We kept meaning to throw them out, but we never did. The next year we tapped one just to see what was left-and it was, in fact, the best beer that I ever made. Boy was that stuff good. Sublime.). No matter what we made, however, Amber always outsold everything else. Amber is a good, pedestrian. lager-broadly in the Vienna style and made with a Weheinstaphen yeast that gives it that nice Vienna character-although the beer is finished at 1010 and that leaves it just a touch on the sweet side. It's pretty much like your basic yellow beer, except that it's brown. It makes people feel like they are really stepping out when basically they are drinking that same thing that they always do, just in a different color. Anyway, you can make fun beer, but it's hard to make a living at it. Beer is the comfort food of alcohol. People generally want what's familiar. That is not to say that they won't venture out-kind of like people eat sushi sometimes, but they still come back to a good burger- but that they prefer the familiar on a regular basis.

You had me confused there for a moment, as Big River purchased the Gordon Biersch chain in 1999. I thought you were about to say that Big River in Chattanooga was not up to the standards of the rest of the chain. Although the Chattanooga-based company now markets itself primarily under the Gordon Biersch brand, it also operates two Big River (Chattanooga and Nashville) and two Rock Bottom brewpubs (Charlotte and Atlanta) as well as three other brewpubs in Florida that each go by different names. To further confuse matters, all of the other Rock Bottom brewpubs are owned and operated by another company. ← That's true, but what seperates the two is the beer and the way that it is made. Big River, beginning in Chattanooga and then moving on to Nashville, served unfiltered, primarily British, style ales. This is kind of a switch from normal brewpub methodology. One of the unique things about the Big River brands are that they are not filtered at all. Gentry had this guy from England come over and teach him and his brewers about fining methodology. Fining, when done properly, is a very complicated process involving eisinglass, carageenan, and some pretty complicated temperature changes. The result is a beer that is virtually clear, but still retains some of the nice, yeasty characterisitics that accompany unfiltered beers. I love the stuff. They are nice guys. At one point I helped them run the Southern Brewers Festival in Chattanooga. It is one of the better events of it's kind in the South. I would reccomend it to anyone who wants to have a few unusual beers in a really nice setting.

Tulanian! Welcome to eGullet. I had Rice for dinner tonight. It seemed awfully appropriate. I notice that you are stuck in Austin. Hopefully soon we will be enjoying some Longhorn soon.

As far as chain brewpubs go, with the exception of Big River Breweries of Chattanooga, Gordon Biersch is by far the best chain going. They have generally good to great beers and pretty good food to go with it and the places are usually well done architecturally. Their marzen is kind of the flagship beer and it is a damn fine brew, IMO. And since I mentioned them, let me put in a plug for Big River. Rob Gentry, the guy who thought it up (along with a couple of deep pocketed partners) is a really, really knowledgable brewer and someone who cares alot about what he makes, how he makes it, and the people that drink it. There are Big Rivers in Chattanooga, Nashville, Disney (!) and a few other places around. I reccoment them highly.

Jason Perlow and eGullet get a mention in The Gothamist concerning his photographs of the event.

The concept of go cups can be difficult for foriegners. True story: In the 80's I was a manager of a very large restaurant in Baton Rouge, LA. We hired seasonally, and really laid on the staff right before football season. I hired several experienced bartenders, called references, the whole deal-so I knew that they could hit the ground running pushing drinks over the crowded bar during our sometimes 2 hour waits (and this was in a 400 seat place, so you can picture the crowd). Anyway, we are in the middle of an after the game rush and I see everyone is gainfully employed doing bartending stuff and that the oyster shuckers are doing their deal-but as I look down the bar I see my one of the new bar guys looking at a cocktail guide. I couldn't imagine what he could possibly be stumped on. The guy was a graduate student who had been working in bars in Chicago for quite a while. So I walked over and asked him, "what the hell are you doing? We're 3 and 4 deep at the bar. You need to be making drinks and pouring beers, not boning up on cocktail lore!" The guy looked at me and said, "I'm sorry, I know tons of drinks, I made a 100 on my bar test for the job, but this guy asked for a "go cup" and I don't know how to make one." Like I said, it's not something that many outsiders grasp.

You people. What kind of place do you think this is? Open containers? Go cups? How do you take your drinks to go? Here is the current deal, although it can vary by parish. Open containers in vehicles are legal as long as the driver doesn't have one. Yes, we do have drive through stands. The drinking age is 21, unless you are in a restaurant with your legal guardian-then it's 18. Go cups are very common here. Some bars, especially in tourist areas, serve EVERYTHING in go cups. There is currently a bill in our legislature trying to limit the ability of rural grocery store owners to sell daquiries. I believe that it got tabled yesterday, though. This means that the ones who already do this will be able to continue for a while. Current Daquiri Legislation that was defeated on Wednesday. That should clear things up.

What is this in real temperature? I know nothing of these numbers which you refer to. There should be an international standard that we can all use. I am making some fabulous burgers, from beef, the way that God intended, for a suprise (don't tell her) party for the lovely Mrs. Mayhaw, which will be occuring Saturday night in my big wreck of a house. 60 people, with kids (you bring em, you watch em). It should be fun. I am thinking that since I have already lost my mind, I might grind several kinds of beef and see what the variations are like. No buns though. I have no oven to put a bun into to. Also, for your voyeuristic pleasure, I am going to make a meatloaf on the Weber. It's a pretty interesting process.

I've got a Cuisinart DLC 8E. The thing is just slightly older than my marriage, as I got it new for a wedding present in 1983. I have two sets of bowls for it, neither of which is original, and replaced the cutting blade at least twice. I still have all of the other original blade attachments. The motor in this thing still runs like it was new. I like it because it has a minimum of safety features-I find that many of the new ones are overkill to the point of making the units a pain to use. This has been a great machine. I know that it will eventually conk out, as I have used it, on average, 3 times a week for over 20 years. I think I will be forced to buy another Cuisinart just because this thing has been so great. Except for a 50 year old roaster oven (on the cool stand with the clock on it) and an O'Keefe and Merrit Stove, the Cuis is the oldest appliance that I own.

Men don't eat this kind of thing. Burgers are made from beef (it's what's for dinner!). That's the way that it works. You will have to start a new thread. You could title it, " These burgers aren't really very good, but I have convinced myself that they are" ← When your wife don't eat no mammal meat, you take what you can get. So, I make do with these. When I want a good burger, and I mean a REAL burger, I grind my own meat, homie. ← Real men don't blame wives. Unless it's somebody elses wife. That's different.

Men don't eat this kind of thing. Burgers are made from beef (it's what's for dinner!). That's the way that it works. You will have to start a new thread. You could title it, " These burgers aren't really very good, but I have convinced myself that they are"

I would think that a person could do both, and compare! Now that I think about it, I might not have to heat up the kitchen with the oven, but experiment with gilling a meatloaf. ← Here in "Iamamoronandrippedoutmykitchenland" I HAVE done a meatloaf on a grill, on the Weber no less, with smoke. I highly reccomend it as a worthy project. It was pretty great, actually. I will have to do it again for this brilliantly conceived cookoff.

Well, ultimately, the perfect repair would have involved the use of the coat hanger and the duct tape at the same time. I had a costume one year, for Mardi Gras, constructed completely of duct tape and various kinds of "warning!" tape that I bought from an industrial catalog. I still have alot of it-never can tell when that "biohazard" or "crimescene" tape might come in handy.

Look in your closet. Those wire things? The things with your clothes on them? Those are clothes hangers. They are good for much, much more than holding your favorite cowboy garb. You can clean out a vacuum hose with them, open car doors, retrieve car keys from open grates, clean shotguns, etc. They are all purpose tools and I am sure that adding cusinart repair to the above list would not be much of a stretch. Good luck, cowboy.

The Sweet Potato Queens Kevin ← No, no, no. We're talking about REAL queens here- not the self appointed kind (apologies to Jill, her pals, and all the Wanna-Bees- you are all lovely women and I bow before you and just because you had to buy your own crowns makes you no less of a Queen than the royalty listed below) I mean like the: Shrimp and Petroleum Queen The Frog Queen The Peach Queen The Okra Queen The Blackeyed Pea and Lawnmower Racing Queen The Crawfish Queen See what I mean? Queens!

It is pretty easy to make an argument that the concentration of Vietnamese restaurants here is as high, or higher, than almost anywhere else in the US. There are tons of them and you can usually even find one in many of the small towns South of 1-10 all along the Gulf Coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama After the fall of Viet Nam, many Vietnamese ended up on the Gulf Coast, and particularly the New Orleans area, as the weather is similar, we are predominately Catholic (Catholic Charities sponsored many of the first people to come over, so many more followed as they already had family members here), and the opportunities to do similar jobs were available In the late 70's early 80's I worked summers offshore and probably half of the helicopter pilots and air service personnel were Vietnamese-they also became an important part (though not always welcomed by long time native fishermen) of our fishing fleets, and the fish processing industry. Another place that I really like is on Veterans Blvd, near Williams, in Kenner (by the airport) - Pho Bang-great, great pho broth and all of the chewy bits that make it even better. The family has two other locations, as well. One out in the East and another on the Westbank in Harvey. I think that I like the one on Vets as it is all of 1/4 mile from my office.