Mayhaw Man

Actually there is, but due to Dean's odd dedication to his family I will be making it by my lonesome. Here is the plan: Drive down 61 and look at cotton (it's just into the early part of picking time on what has been generally a banner year) and eat Tamales. I also intend on taking a brief stop and buying a few valuable souvenirs across the street from Graceland (you cannot have too many pairs of Elvis nail clippers or too many EP shot glasses) and near there is Interstate BBQ, where I will buy a small slab of each (wet and dry) to bring back home to my lovely wife. I intend on making stops at Doe's and Abe's and buying Tamales for both immediate consumption and for take home purposes (they freeze great) and while I am at Doe's, I will likely be enjoying one of the finest steaks in North America. South of Vicksburg I will cut over to the Natchez Trace and enjoy a leisurely drive for a while (I love the Trace, but my kids and my wife have seen it enough and really hate driving 50 miles at 35mph). That should pretty much kill my day on Sunday.

In the words of my late friend LC-"Sleepings for babies."

Thwy may not be made out of slugs, (apparently the name comes from the old Southern term for a solid nickel), but they do have a festival, and one of the highlights is the election of the "Slug Queen" Actually, a listing of various queens would be kind of fun. There is the "Shrimp and Petroleum Queen" (a title once held by New Orleans b-list celeb Rhonda Shear, of Up All Night! Fame), the "Frog Queen", The Crawfish Queen", The "Blackeyed Pea and Lawn Mower Racing Queen", and who knows what all. I bet this stuff looks great on your resume later in life-"I'm Tammy, and I'm a people person. Look at this! I was the Frog Queen!"

Hal and Mal's is somewhere that I am pretty familiar with. I installed the brewery for Malcolm (one of the South's most gentlemanly gentlemen) and his brother Hal (a fine chef and a champion gumbo cooker). Middendorf's is of course, a great selection. But I think we will be passing through lovely Manchac a bit early in the day for thin fry and stuffed crabs. The Dinner Bell is a fine suggestion. That might be a winner. If we leave NO about 8:30 or so, that would put us there just as they load up the roundtables. I love roundtable restaurants. When I was growing up, driving from Monroe to Dauphin Island every summer, a stop in Mindenhall (now sadly closed) was a regular stop on that trip. THere are very few things more satisfying than eating while more food whizzes by of the lazy susan, reminding you of what you have missed and what you have to look forward to when you clear a little more room on your plate. Looking forward to trying out those fried pies. I remember you writing about them (I think) in the gas station article in Oxford American (The fabulous, sometimes publishing, sometimes not, Magazine of the American South-Come on Marc-Let's get another one out!). Looking forward to the trip and the conference (not to mention Ed Mitchell's whole hog, brisket braised in Coke, Fried Chicken Throwdown, and some supreme deviled eggs!) I am sure that Dean will not expire from hunger or thirst.

At this rate we're gonna starve to death. Come on ya'll. Get with the suggestions! And the Camellia Grill is a good suggestion. I never actually think about it for breakfast, as I only seem to end up there late at night.

The internet amazes me everyday with new and fascinating resources for important information and discussion . And as a stand alone topic, it is hard to think of one more worthy of a little bandwidth than Deviled Eggs. Maybe next year it could be celery and pimento cheese, or perhaps that mainstay of the Southern Holiday table, the relish tray. So many possiblilities, so much cyberspace. I'm sure that we will get to them eventually.

It's all about market share. When I was involved with those guys the general rule of thumb was it had to move a million bbbls. (31,000,000 gallons) per year or it was not worth the research/marketing rollout. They must perceive some demand there, although the AB highway is littered with dead products that were tried and dropped-so they are hardly always right. The one that I was working on (Azteca), lived a quiet, peaceful life and was allowed to die an honorable but quick death. Nice, expensive try, but no dice.

For the little cans of stuff that Fifi mentioned above, my go to brand is El Pato. All of thier stuff is top notch. Their canned tomatoes and chiles are really good, as is the jalapeno salsa (really hot). And I love Rotel's. How else would one concoct a King Ranch Casserole (now there is a classic use of various canned products if there ever was one)? I can't wait til it cools off and I can make one.

OK. Here's the deal. We are driving from New Orleans to Oxford on Thursday. I can take any route that will work, but we've go to be there by 3:30 or so. We can cram in as much as possible, but we have to subtract 6 hours, more or less, for driving. So, that probably leaves us with lunch and a few well deserved snacks on the way. I am not giving a route (it could change if you come up with a reason to make a left or a right ), but it will probably generally involve I55. I am very familiar with this part of the world (hell, it's where I'm from) so what I am looking for is what would be the best thing to tempt my pal Dean with. Slugburgers? BBQ? The Whyte House? The Dinner Bell? Let's hear it. I need a morning snack around Hazlehurst, lunch north or south of Jackson, and a post lunch-pre Mitchell Whole Hog BBQ snack. We've got the forum now. Let's see if it works. Help us out, if you're handy to a spot, come eat lunch with us. Just let us know what you think. We eat alot. Don't worry about that. And while we're at it, not that I need any help with this, but breakfast in New Orleans, I would just take him to THe Bluebird, but that is not exactly New Orleans. Do we have to go to Cafe du Monde? Suggestions might be interesting. This is a test of the SFA Network. Had this been a real emergency you would have been told where to tune in your area to get a decent meal.

If someone HAD been able to do this last night I would have known that the evening was a failure. Glad everyone had fun and I look forward to hearing about it.

Well? Anybody out there sober enough to report?

This article in today's New Orleans Times-Picayune breaks down some interesting facts and figures in the world of coffee importation. New Orleans has long been the leading coffee port in the world and one of the world's great centers of coffee roasting. While the roasting business is still doing well, New York has supplanted NO as the leader in coffee importation. This is due primarily to shipping rates and duties levied by the ports. New Orleans still roasts more coffee than anyone else, thanks to a couple of huge facilities, Reilly Foods and Folgers being the largest, with a number of smaller roasters making up the rest. We also are the home (all of 5 miles from my house) of the largest coffee handling facility in the world, The Folger's Warehousing Facility-located in St Tammany Parish just off of I-10 near Folsom, LA. This is a good article involving a pretty good description of how the world coffee trade works and I thought that a few of you might find it interesting. It's a shame that the Picayune, along with a number of other papers around the country use this website though, as photos and graphs are difficult to find (if they are available at all) and the articles are usually synopsized (as this one is).

I am interested in how these are made. I have never really thought about making mints, but it might be fun. How do you form them? What are the basics of the process?

Every morning (or pretty much every morning) for 15 years I started my day by beginning a batch of beer. For you that don't get the process, here is how it works_ You get a bunch of hot water. You take a bunch of malted barley (the seed of the barley plant that has been briefly soaked in water and left in a warm environment to sprout, and then quickly dried to varying degrees of roast) and run it through a giant mill. Then you carefully mix the two at a fairly exacting temp (somewhere around 156F, but it depends on what you are trying to acheive). While this is occuring the brewer is almost always standing on top of a platform watching the grain and water mix and making sure that EVERY grain gets wet. That's where the smell part comes in. The smell of that freshly malted barley rising up with the steam out of the bottom of the mash tun is, to me, the best smell in the world. It's like beer smell on steroids. I love it. Nowadays I am back home working at a different type of job that allows me to have a life (although I seem to be proscribed from having large amounts of money as I did as a Beer God) and part of that life is that, on nice mornings, I ride my bike to work down the Tammany Trace, a rails to trails project that conveniently runs directly by my house and the other end comes out about three blocks from my job. Well, the trace rund right behind the first brewery that I ever worked on and lots of mornings, long before I get behind the place, I can smell some brewer starting his day and it still makes me happy. I love that smell. But make no mistake. Almost every other smell involved with commercial brewing is not so pleasant, no matter the size of the brewery. Oy! That grain that I was referring to earlier? Well, after 24 hours sitting around inside of some trailer, gives off the most God Awful odor that you have ever smelled. And spilled beer and spent yeast all over the place. Ugggh. I also love to stick my nose in a bag of coffee just after it has been opened. In New Orleans, commuters who regularly cross the I-10 from the east in the morning on the way to work are often treated to the smell of roasting coffee as the slowly crawl across the high rise bridge in NO East.Once of the largest coffee roasters in the world is almost directly under the bridge, which crosses the Industrial Canal (think local canal with exits to the Gulf and the River). And then there is the way that watermelon smells. And don't forget that great seet smell of vanilla being added to a good cake batter, it doesn't last long, but it's great while it does.

I'm with Jason. The rice and meat thing is hard to beat. Sometimes, when I'm in a hurry and peppers are cheap and plentiful at Sam's (think Costco), I will go and pick up a couple of pounds of boudin and squish it out into a bowl, add some small shrimp or chop of some big ones, mix the whole thing up, stuff into barely par boiled peppers, and bake until bubbling, throwing on a little mozz at the end to finish. This would be the South La version of Rachel Ray.

There are a few that are on this list that I can think of. I had the pleasure of regularly dining at Highlands for a few years when I was operating a brewery in Birmingham and often had to be there on business and it was a top notch experience, easily on par with many places in New Orleans. And then there is one amazing example that I can think of that fits the category of your last question Joe Major of Joe's Dreyfus Store in Livonia, LA This place is, has been, and remains, my single favorite place to eat in the State of Louisiana. And that is saying something. I am including fine dining in New Orleans all the way to gas station boudin stops in Acadiana (our gas stations are better than many of your restaurants ). Is it beautifully plated? No. Is it served in august surroundings? No. Is the wine list world class. No. It's about the food, man, the food! It's all great. Prepared with GREAT ingredients, served in decent, sensible portions at a price that will suprise you by being much, much, less than you might expect elsewhere for food less well prepared. The waitstaff is wonderful and the place itself (an old country mercantile literally surrounded by cane fields. On any given day you may be surrounded by lunch ladies who drove the 40 miles from BR, lawyers from Opelousas, a couple of cane farmers, a state trooper of two, a few (very few) tourists who knew about the place and stopped by, and a couple of fawning morons like me who just sit and drool as they await the coming pleasure. More reading about Joes's and a warning-this place is in Livonia, LA. A VERY small town between BR and Opelousas on Hwy 90. If you are traveling I-10 you will need to get off at Breaux Bridge and take the Maringouin Hwy across the Atchafalaya (or skirting it) and head for Livonia. While you are on your way you pass very close to Poche's Marketwhere you can augment your drive with a selection of fine products to fill up your ice chest on the way home. It keeps kind of interesting hours, they close in the afternoon (very common here) and open up for the dinner hours. They change their hours to close earlier in the winter (stop seating at 8 p.m. - I learned this the hard way with the Perleaux's, although it worked out great anyway). Go there. Sit, take your time, order lots of diferent stuff, eat. Wish you lived within driving distance. Go look at real estate. Move. You'll be glad you did. Hell. You could spend the night. The New York Times found it, you can too

Welcome to eGullet Hershipillow! I grew up in the Delta Region of Louisiana and have eaten a boatload of banana pudding, but until I moved to South Louisiana, I never had never seen a topping of any sort on banana pudding (other than extra vanilla wafers and more bananas). Now I don't want it any other way. But it's meringue for me, not cool whip. Never really understood cool whip. How hard is it to whisk heavy cream and a little granulated sugar for a whipped topping or to whisk egg whites for meringue? Especially if you have a mixer with a whip. I have really come to enjoy making and eating Frank Brigsten's Banana Bread Pudding. This stuff is a knockout and really easy to make (as are most bread puddings). You should give it a try soon. It's great and everybody seems to love it.

Mexico Since we can make up our own deal and I can afford to move about and money is no object. I could get a small plane and make my way around the country. What a range of food and flavors, not to mention a geographical range that is hard to match anywere else in the world. But I would bring my own coffee. Gak. Instant after a great meal might be what the locals do, but I've never gotten used to it. As the lovely and talented Theabroma once said in her brilliantly written Mexican Travelogue , "when the dust of Mexico settles on your heart, you will never feel at home anywhere else in the world..........." Damn true that.

I could be wrong. And I tried to get to the signing on this side of the lake to find out, but had to work , so I will just report what the TV said the other night (yes, this kind of thing is news in a town like this-we like food like some of you like your sports teams) -They will reopen in late October. But I don't know how true this is. I will making the rounds Wednesday night and will find out for sure.

I will update this afternoon from home. But the short answer is yes I will be finished by Halloween. I'm just not sure what year it will be.

puh-CON is and was the only pronunciation I ever heard growing up. I have 6 very old and still producing pretty well puh-con trees in my yard. They are close to native, but a bit different. They are small and tasty, but a little more elongated that natives, which are still suprisingly common in woods and on old homesites in parts of the South.

2003 Pecan Production by State New Mexico is number one. Who woulda thunk it?

Here is a recipe similar to the one that I use that calls for fabulous Steen's Cane Syrup.. I use a few more pecans and a bit more butter, but it is pretty similar. I believe that slkinsey made a pie similar to this one for the New Jersey picnic a few weeks ago. In fact, we went to a bit of trouble to find it for him in Manhattan, as their poorly stocked grocery stores (how do you people live there-what do you eat in that strange land?-you should get a forum and discuss it) did not seem to have any (turns out that Zabar's imports in for themselves, if you happen to be looking for any). The things taste great. Sweet, but a little smoky, just like cane syrup and pecans should taste. The flavor might be a bit strong for the uninitiated though, so you can always replace some of it one to one with Karo.

Skirt or flank. I love them both.

It is, of course, in The Cookbook. I will be happy to put it in when I get home from work today. I highly reccomend pickled green tomatoes along with a cured, Kentucky type ham. A truly sublime cold meal.