Mayhaw Man

Bacon Grease should never be left in the past. I leave mine in the pantry above my stove.

Last night, after a conversation with Jason P that started out as business and eventually collapsed into a discussion of our common love of grocery store ice cream sandwiches and the grapey deliciousness of some of our favorite sodas (once again, we like alot of grocery store brands-something about those delicious artificial flavors not being screwed up by any "natural flavorings" ) I realized that we were out of coffee. Well, I don't live in New York where I could just run down the stairs from my stylish Manhattan apartment to an all night coffee retailer or some well stocked corner store-I live in rural South Louisiana where anything after 11 is going to involve a 25 minute drive to Wally World. So, I hopped in the car and off I went. After selecting a bag of CC's Columbian Dark Roast, a quart of milk. and some leche con azucra in the Mexican aisle I headed for the checkout stand. Now, as many of you know, late night shopping at Wal Mart can cause one to develop a powerful thirst- What with the dodging of the many stockers loading the shelves with supplies of bargain priced goods for the convenience of the next day's mass of bargain minded shoppers-so I was looking in the end cap fridge by the checkout for a refreshing beverage and lo and behold THERE IT WAS! The exact drink that had been the subject of such heated debate (all 6 posts worth) all day on eGullet(soon to be .org ) Mountain Dew Pitch Black Soda. I grabbed one and anxiously awaited the checkout process so that I could rip open the cap and try out the new drink to satisfy both my own curiosity and also in order to be able to tell my friends all over the world about this fine new beverage. Well, I held my curiosity until I returned to the safety of my vehicle and cracked open the top. I held it to my nose and noted that there was something familiar, very familiar about the aroma eminating from that bottle. In the back of my mind I thought that I could identify the odor, and then I tasted the dark beverage. Then I knew! The Fine Folks at Montain Dew have recreated-exactly- something that those of you who are now about 40 or a bit older probably remember very very well. Remember that all purpose cough syrup that pediatricians used to push for all manner of maladies-the purple stuff? It was loaded with codeine and alcohol and if it didn't cure you it would at least shut you up, thereby making both you AND your parents feel better. It is EXACTLY like carbonated cough syrup. If it had alcohol and codeine in it it WOULD BE cough syrup, or a Flaming Mo (or as we call it here in So. La.- A Flaming Meaux This, my friends, is a good thing if you are looking for a delicious cough syrup, but a very bad thing if you are searching for a great soft drink. I suspect that this limited run will be very, very limited. It may appeal to some, but it didn't work very well for me. I would be very interested to see what others think about it. Incidentally, I suspect that it was on the shelves at Wal Mart here because we are almost always a test market for new soft drinks. The Central Gulf Coast rates way in the top range of per capita soft drink consumption and we get alot of test beverages. Last year we were the test for the highly delicious Barq's Root Beer Floats-a root beer with a hint of vanilla. Glass bottles only. It was really good. I wish they would put that stuff out nation wide.

Think of it as "viscous caviar"

Thanks for bringing up this thread and The Okra Growers of North America thank you for thinking of Okra. Misunderstood Okra would be on more tables if the faint hearted chefs of the world would just give the versatile pod a chance. I like frozen okra. While it is not as good as fresh small pods, it is just fine for soups and gumbos. And as far as the slime question, you are right about using another term. The OGNA should make that one of their top priorities as they make their plans for world domination.

It freezes nicely, as does in my opinion most forms of liver/pate, but.....be forewarned- When a man (or a woman) treads the headcheese highway he or she is stirring up some stuff that can really, really stink up the place. The end results are completely worth the trouble, but this may not be something you want to do with houseguests around (unless they are extremely well humored). It is also alot more time consuming than it would seem so once again, unless your guests are going to help, you might want to put it off to another time.

Dean and I will be holding classes on eGCI on how to be a man in the kitchen and around your own home. As experts in the manly arts, we feel that many people can benefit from our many years of experience and we are here to help those in need get their lives back on track. You might want to think about signing up, as you seem to have some trouble with priorities. Courses will include, but not be limited to 1)How to keep dead animals in the tub and have your wife like it 2)How to build a whole hog cooker in your backyard and have your wife love it 3)How to clean fish in the kitchen sink and keep your wife from killing you 4)Yes! You can use your dryer as a fish scaling device and not get a divorce. (This course will include a lab for 1/2 credit) 5)Manifold or Dishwasher Fish Steaming 101 6)How to turn your childrens swingset into a useful cooking device and have them love you afterwards. These are just a few of the upcoming courses at eGCI and we hope that you will plan on attending. Now back to the topic at hand: A little info on Headcheese and a couple of recipes and even a resource or two And a thread that Bleaudevergne started about a little project of her own that contains some headcheese chat (now there's a phrase that you don't hear everyday )More chat about pig bits

Wimp.

Dean forgot to mention something that Dr. Mrs. Varmint might not want him to forget-line your tub with something if you decide to put a dead pig and a bunch of salt in the tub. You will be much more popular among post-roast bathers. I second Dean's rec of finding some hardwood. You will find that it adds a hell of a lot of flavor to the pig and once you get the hang of dealing with it, is very easy to cook with. Soaking works fine, but moving it around where it will smolder rather than combust is just as easy. I usually start the wood with charcoal and go from there. And save a chunk of that skin for slicing into squares and frying as a side dish. Freshly fried cracklins are one of the joyous by products of the process.

Another great thing to do in that unit will be to cook a bunch of chickens. You can spice/stuff them all differently. We have done ducks that way and they turn out great (I have never had one, but by all accounts turkeys in those things turn out great as well-THe turkey guys said that they don't ever open the thing. They use a remote sensing thermometer in the breast and pull when it gets up to temp-they come out perfect everytime).

What a great job! That unit looks as good, or better, than a commercial unit and the pig looks wonderful (butcher left in the eyeballs, very nice ). Turning the thing is always a problem. I have one friend that has these stainless skewers (stainless 1/2" cold roll) that he uses and they work nicely, but don't solve the problem completely. I usually take the leftovers (there rarely are any) and make pulled pork like you did, or take a little Dreamland Sauce (red sauce, vinegary, a little spicy) and cook for long while and serve on buns and freeze the rest in small ziplocks suitable for microwaving for quick lunches. Great report!

No reports yet, Sam- I was in the city but did not attend any events-I did go to a bar or too however My friend Chris Rose wrote a very nice piece on New Orleans Cocktails as a lead in to the event. This story captures nicely a feeling that many of us have about bars and drinking in New Orleans

What a wonderful blog! The photos pop and the descriptions are even better. As I know zero about most of the foods that you are describing, this has been a great learning experience for me and I am sure for others as well. Great Job

In New Orleans red sauce is often called Spaghetti Gravy.

Coffee. Did I say coffee. I meant to say coffee/ Red Eye gravy without coffee can be mighty fine, but it's just ham gravy at that point.

Squash Casserole. We eat this, no kidding, twice a week in the summer and I never ever get tired of it. It doubles, triples, etc. great and can be made ahead of time and frozen for reheating (although it has to be thawed first). I am putting the recipe in recipe gullet. I will come back and post a link in a little while.

Stuff them Par boil the squash and split longways Scoop out the meat (I don't ever seed them, but I duppose if you are a seedaphobe you can) and set aside in a bowl Sautee onion, bell pepper (you pick the color), celery, garlic and spice up the stuff with what ever you like-I often use rosemary, thyme, cayenne, salt, and black pepper. Mix this up with the reserved squash meat, some bread crumbs (I use cooked rice more often than not) and add some seafood - shrimp or crawfish do particularly well in this (dark crabmeat is even better if you have a supply or are feeling flush). Stuff them back into the squash shells (which should be lightly oiled with evoo to keep from buring or sticking), top with spicy paprika, and bake for about 20 min at 350F. Enjoy.

Sunday lunch at my Grandmother's house. I would give up a year of whatever life I have left for just one more of those meals. The food, the people who are now long gone except in my memory, the house, the table (which is now in my kitchen), the china and silverware, the laughter, the relish trays, the sweet tea, and the peach cobbler for dessert. I have eaten many fine meals in many, many fine restaurants-but none can compare to those Sunday lunches in that modest dining room in rural Louisiana. Thanks for reminding me of them.

Has there never been a collection of reviews put together in book form? It seems to me that would be a natural for an interesting collection, in terms of tracing the history of New York's 20th Century Dining trends and history.

Kitchen is coming along. As usual things get bigger as you go along. Moving the laundry room has been both simple (mechanically) and complicated (esthetically) and has taken a week longer than it would have if I wasn't married to an artist. And we ain't done yet! Kitchen floor should go down on Monday or so (depends on my progress with subflooring on Sat and Sun). I am renting one of those cool flooring nailers like all the hip carpenters have on TV. I can't wait to use that thing! Wiring should continue to go forward every afternoon for about two or three hours (my helper/electrician has a real job as a contractor and only shows up when I am home and he can boss me around and until the beer runs out). There really isn't very much and as soon as we are done I can get the rock all hung and floated, Robin can paint the walls and that will be that. As soon as the floor is down I will go buy the appliances (ice box, dw, ice machine) They will be placed and tried out for practicality BEFORE I order the lower cabinets. This might sound strange, but we have decided that this is a brilliant idea and I am sticking with it. We can use the kitchen (as it will be a big open room and easy to move stuff around) and decide on the placement of stuff plus be able to get EXACTLY what we want for cabinet features after we think about it with most of the stuff in place. THe only permanent lower cabinet that will be going in will be the one that goes along one wall and has the sink in it (which incidentally is going to be a double farmhouse deep sink with a drain board on both sides). The top of that one is a two inch cypress cutting board that has been salvaged from a bar top in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. I don't really know how old it is, but it is damned old. It looks very good. The upper cabinets and some pantries are slowly being purchased at salvage places around us on the Gulf Coast. Most of the uppers will be pane front farmhouse style cabinets. Today's score was a nine foot tall drawer and shelving unit that used to be a built in somewhere else. It is very, very nice. She decided that it would be more fun/more practical/less expensive to do it this way and I always support those three things when they are working together . In real life, money and luck (both currently in less than plentiful supply) included, I should be through in 4 to 6 weeks-excepting lower cabinets which might be a bit longer depending on the cabinet guy. So that's where I stand. On a torn up floor with the walls ripped out and next to a semi humorless spouse who thinks that I don't move fast enough(she's right, but I like to think about this stuff and besides, a little chaos builds character). I will post some pictures of all of this junk sometime this week when I get the camera back from my wife.

Welcome annsyp. I hope that you enjoy it here. And New Orleans is one of those places that everybody who grew up there plans on moving back-even if they are seventy and should have given up the thought. It kind of grows on you (like mold, which also will grow on you in New Orleans if you stand still for five minutes or longer ). I recieved a 1/2 and 1/2 for my birthday and it took all of two days for the entire cake do dissappear. About a billion calories in one of those things, but man do I love them. Homemade vanilla ice cream on top of a slice of the chocolate is about as good as it gets.

Chapter 3 What to do when you have a bad oyster-Helpful hints for throwing up gracefully in public.

Here in the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico, the wintertime is probably the best, as the bacteria that causes the majority of oyster related illness is more or less dormant as it needs warm water to thrive. That's why the old rule of thumb is that you should only eat oysters in months that have the letter 'R' in them - September, October, November, December, January, February, March, and APril.

As I type this I am patting myself on the back for my "devil may care" lifestyle. I enjoyed a dozen on the half shell and backed it up with a delicious oyster poboy tonight at the World Famous Acme Oyster House. Hopefully I will wake up in the morning, but if I don't I will have eaten a last meal that left me feeling completely satisfied.

Maybe they only sell them warm at the Moonpie Store to keep you from eating them on your way home.

I started eating them when I was a regular at the Mobile Mardi Gras when I was a little boy, as they are a traditional throw there (along with serpentine-which has never caught on in New Orleans but is a very cool throw). In the last couple of years Moon Pies have become popular with some krewes in New Orleans (particularly Tucks) and I still like them quite a bit, but banana is my favorite.