Mayhaw Man

Fat Guys eating Hot Dogs ™ is a very popular theme these days. I happen to know, based on inside info, that there is an entire series being developed based on Fat Guys™ eating stuff. There will be an entire line of tie-ins marketed along with the show, Fat Guy™ Hot Dogs, Fat Guy™ Condiments (that's condiments, kids, get your minds out of the gutter). There will be scene after scene of Fat Guys™ eating stuff. The entire thing will no doubt be filmed in Widescreen Format, as a regular camera would have difficulty catching all of the action. Check local listings as times may vary.

We have a machine much like this one(although built here by local "craftsmen", but pretty much the same thing). It is your best friend when picking lots of birds, particularly ducks and geese. Once done singing the "Pheasant Pluckers Song", follow instructions as per Jackal.

Winnfield Home of Huey P. and Earl Long. OK Allen. Three governors of Louisiana. It is also the home of the The Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame, whose slogan is "You indict 'em, We induct 'em". A pretty interesting small town stop if you are ever driving between Alexandria and Shreveport and are looking for a stop to kill a little time. Winnfield is also the home of the Uncle Earl's Hog Dog Trials, an event that for most is better read about than attended (although the tshirts that are sold at this event are worth the price of admission-catahoula curr wear is hard to come by at any price ). The reference to "red karo" is interesting. I assume that they are talking about "dark syrup", but perhaps there was another grade in the 20's. I have a copy of the 1st Baptist Church Cookbook from Bastrop, Louisiana (another mill town to the north and east of Winnfield) that has a similar recipe. It also has a poundcake recipe that is, literally, divided into pounds of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. I have been making it for years and also using it as a base for my Peach Pound Cake Recipe which is in Recipe Gullet. Vote For Earl. I ain't Crazy Actual slogan for Earl Long's 1960 Campaign for Governor... Louisiana, it's a bizarre place. Potential slogan for the Louisiana Office of Tourism

Well, now that I know what the price range is... All of the suggestions you made would be fine. Clancy's is a particularly good thought as you can probably arrange for a big table upstairs in the small room and get it more or less to yourself. Another thought would be the wine room at Emeril's. Great atmosphere and the service in there is always great (not that it's anything else in the rest of the place, but having our own room really "turns it up a notch". Are you doing this every night, or is the a "just one big meal" thing?

Too funny! I was just about to post that this is definitely a girly girl, ladies only thread but had suspected their were a few men out there that had sureptitiously raided the leftover tea sandwiches in their youth and pined for the experience again! What I want to know is whether there are any men out there that have actually made tea sandwiches? ← No. No man has ever made one.

I love tea sandwiches. I concur with all of the above but especially with watercress and butter. I love those things. They were the best part of Thursday Bridge when my mother hosted the "bridge queens" when I was growing up. The leftovers never lasted very long.

A little relish might go a long way to perk up that gefilte fish.

A pint of oysters is cheaping out. Fact. Now, it may be different for those of you that are forced to buy those little, tiny sad, non gulf oysters. The problem with only using a pint here is that Gulf Oysters lean towards large and that means that the distribution won't be right. Some people will get more than their fair share, and a chortage may also cause diners to dig through the casserole dish looking for oysters, ruining your presentation and causing family discord. Mo is mo bettah!

Here is a nice piece out of the Tursday Times Picayune about Turkey Frying Have a great Thanksgiving and try not to burn the house down.

That tasso is awesome. Might a reccomend that you try a little carbonara and skip the bacon and go for tasso. You really don't need any other spices (much) if you use the tasso. SLice it really thinly and just heat it enough to warm all the way through. The andouille is really good and your description is perfect. The deal with the skin is that because the stuff is mainly pork chunks, as opposed to some kind of ground pork, that it shrinks a bit as it is smoked and the skin gets kind of loose on the sausage, it is pretty easy to remove, although I don't always do it-out of sheer laziness. And if you think that woman was charming on the phone, you should go there for a little lunch sometime when you are down here. Those women could charm snakes.

I know I'm not in Texas. I know. Believe me, I know. Nevertheless, I am on the Gulf Coast (14 miles from the Gulf) and we pretty much never have a hard freeze, maybe every 4 or 5 years. So sometimes, things that should be dead, hang around and produce far longer than one would think that they should. Case in point: I have a vegetable garden that is out of sight, out of mind, kind of in the shade and it is really only good for a spring garden. When I cleaned it out in August, I had some bell pepper plants that we still developing fruit, so I left them-and promptly forgot about them. Well, yesterday afternoon I was taking some stuff out to the burn pile (next to the garden) and lo and behold, there were about twenty peppers hanging, most of them turning or already red, and the plants are covered in flowers. It looks like they kicked in for a second life out of stubborness. I have been growing peppers for years, but have never seen bell pepper plants begin to produce a second time better than they did the first go round. If we don't have a freeze (currently seems unlikely, it is 80F here today), I am going to get 50 or 60 peppers off of some plants that I completely forgot about. As far as rosemary goes, I have a bush by my front gate that is, really, 4 feet tall and probably 6 feet in circumference. The thing is huge. Everybody in town knows where it is and it is not uncommon to look out the front door and see someone who I don't even know out there with a pair of clippers. I'm always glad to let them have it as I figure if they are willing to steal rosemary that they are probably just desperate culinary fiends looking for a fix, and who am I to judge others? In New Orleans, where it really pretty much never freezes, rosemary that is slightly protected (under eaves or inside a walled garden for example, will grow to some pretty huge proportions). When taking a stroll through the back half of the French Quarter or through the garden areas of Uptown, if you keep an eye out and your nose open, you can spot some freakishly large rosemary planted a very long time ago. I love that smell. Along with sweet olive, it's probably my favorite garden smell in this part of the South.

I always stuff it full of apples, onions, celery, and whole garlic heads. I love that stuff when it gets scooped out, kind of like confit, sort of, kind of like some kind of hot relish. Stuffing is not really something that you see much in the South, it's usually some kind of dressing. Remember, like my mama says, "don't cheap out on the oysters."

This is dressing. It is to be made in a pyrex dish, not stuffed inside of a Turkey. The recipe comes from my mother's cookbook, and this is as real and as good as it gets. Really. In a way, I hate it when I do this because my mother wrote this book for her children, and she assumed that we all know how to do some stuff, so she fails to describe, in much detail anyway, a number of steps-so after I post the whole thing, quoted from the book, I will try to translate Delta Drawl into Standard English. Ok. Let's break this down. That would be a twelve inch black iron pan, but of course, all you really need is a bunch of day old cornbread. The cornbread used is real cornbread with real yellow cornmeal. Not something out of a box. Take the time to make it. Why go to all of the trouble just to mess up the whole thing with bad cornbread? The Cream of Chicken Soup-just go buy the damn stuff and use it. You'll be glad you did. Believe me, this is not a Sandra Lee recipe. THere is some serious skill in getting the moisture content right and this takes some trial and error. Remember, wetter is better than not wet when putting it together, you can always bake a bit longer to dry out. Use more oysters than it says. Really, you can go crazy. They are cheap and plentiful here in South Louisiana during the winter, but still, if you live in some landlocked place, spend the money and buy the oysters. This stuff is awesome. Really. I love it. It pretty much is the holidays to me. And I concur with my mother, there is something very satisfying about the process.

Cook them in kosher chicken stock and heave in some schmaltz for extra goodness. I do this all the time, and I am in the most unkosher kitchen in the world. It's good, and that's good enough for me!

There is a great course that the eGullet Culinary Institute held last year. You should be able to find out, pretty much, more than you really need to know about stock.

It is important to listen to the proper tunes when kickin back with your buddies and a few forties. This band would be one of your top choices. And some reviews to help you make proper beverage choices.

Of course you do. It's, like, a law or something close to it. We actually had a fight when my great aunt died over who would get the thing (still in the box that it came in, she was like that-I also got a cool Betty Furness set of kitchen thermometers that were still in the box, now on a shelf in my kitchen). You can still buy a similar tool, but no cheese straw star.

I have been served grits fries. Little coin-shaped pieces of grits from cooked and cooled grits spread on a sheet pan about 1/4 inch thick, cut out and deep fried and served with a sauce reminiscent of seafood cocktail sauce. Not bad.. I can see promise here of an interesting theme. ← You have just described the breakfast of champions. Particularly good with some fried doves and bacon on a cold morning before a duck hunt. I might do that on Saturday morning, as a matter of fact. It's cruddy and rainy outside and promises to remain that way for a few days. Good thing for the hunters and bad for the ducks.

Here is the play for your neighbor. Tell him to go buy an oven. I use this by choice when doing small birds. Easy to use, easy to clean, and versatile as hell. They come in handy for all kinds of stuff. I even invested in the "buffet rack" thing and it works great as well. I have this one, and I also have one that is, no doubt, 40 years old and has seen more church lunches and holiday buffets than it would be possible to count. They work. THey are cheap. And they will keep your neighbor on his side of the fence. For that matter, you could just buy one and loan it to him. Holiday spirit, and all of that rot. Humbug. Brooks

I use am immersion blender. I never complain when enjoying the results.

Also, and I am speaking as a man sho just bought 2 big sacks of the things at the stand in town, the fruit that we are eating right now is not orange. These fruits are mainly greenish in color, just beginning to turn orange. And when they do turn, they are more yellowish orange than orange. I should post some pics, I guess. I will do that tonight.

My understanding is that satsumas are a gulf coast version of the Mandarin, very similar, but much easier to peel. Whatever they are, they are my favorite kind of citrus. I love those little devils. Satsumas are kind of like mandarins

We're deliverng meals to shut ins again. We have done this 3 of the last 4 years and even my kids want to go. Had to drag them the first time. I usually make a sweet or two (pralines, pecan pie, etc) to go along with it as the dessert on those things is usually some kind of dry yellow cake with white icing. Not that there is anything wrong with dry yellow cake and white icing......I'm just saying....

Right now they are so cheap that we have been juicing them. You can always juice them and freeze the juice, but it doesn't last long enough around here to worry about it. They have been particularly tasty this year. Cheap too. I would have thought that the battering that Placquemines Parish took duting the late summer storms would have messed up the crop, but apparently it did not have that much effect.

Hey, how about a Praline taste-off at the next Pig Pickin'? I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours. ← I'm in. I'll even make them there. Have you ever taken pralines in the soft ball stage and put them over good vanilla ice cream? Oh boy! Talk about your instant REALLY magic shell. It's a pretty awesome thing to do.