Mayhaw Man

I have them about once a week. They are easy to cook and everybody at my house loves them. And as with almost all foods of this sort, they are great when cut into squares and browned in a little butter for breakfast the next morning. Nice and crunchy on the outside and soft and cheesy on the inside. I will put a recipe in recipe gullet when I get home.

O.K. Here is one of my secret stories about crazy people who will try anything. I have some friends that got into the emu/ostrich bubble in the late 80's and early 90's (humorously, they actually ended up making money at it-not many people did). They have a very nice farm and kept all kinds of weird stuff around (zebras, buffalos, a couple of llamas, and one pot bellied pig was allowed to run free. THe pig kept getting into the pens with the emus and was really causing trouble and it was decided that it had to go. Well, to make a long story shorter, these people had a giant couchon de lait every year and several pigs were roasted every year in a "cajun microwave" contraption (this particular one was teepee shaped and enclosed on three sides with a motorized spit, it worked great and we used it for years) with a motorized spit built into it. The pork was always wonderful and they were great parties (both of these guys work for Sazerac and several of the other participants (including me) worked for ABita Beer, so their was no shortage of cool libations) and attended by a couple of hundred people. The pot bellied pig dissappeared a few days before the party and reappeared as a ready to roast pig. Many of the participants didn't think that this was particularly funny, and I have to admit that I had mixed feelings about it myself. It was put into the machine and several hours later out came a small roasted pig. It was very cute. Guess what it tasted like? Pig. It was actually pretty good, at least as good as a full size one, though not as tender as a shoat. There was none left, as most of the participants got over their squeamishness as soon as it hit the serving table. I have had both shoats (suckling pigs) and full size big mamoula types. The smaller ones are much easier to cook (as they tend to cook more evenly and in a shorter period of time and that means less fire maintanence) and are much more tender. They also do not have so much fat and while the fat can be a good thing when roasting, too much is a mess and hard to deal with when serving. Somewhere between lean and fatty is the play, and smaller ones seem to have about the right amount. A pig by any other name.......

Making this easy to find for visitors.

I had one semester in college where I was pretty much destitute and I LIVED on homemade pancakes with an egg on top and bacon, dairy products from the coop at the University Farm (great ice cream) and red beans with water ever the cheapest sausage or pork I could find and rice. Needless to say the Atkins plan was not something I was considering or needed at that point. And Beer. I always had enough money for beer.

If you are mixing something up in a blender or really beating something up with a whip I might reccomend Ornette Coleman or Sun Ra (my all time jazz hero-yes, I know who the captain of the spaceship is!). If the concoction you are making is going to be smooth with seriously beautiful peaks (like a good meringue) I am thinking Sonny Rollins or Coleman Hawkins might fit the bill. If you are making a really cool dish like ice cream, you are gonna have to go with Lester Young or Charlie Parker.

TIME! I love those guys. How about the Meters? It gets no funkier than The Funky Meters.

I forgot about these guys. Great stuff in a bunch of cool bottles. The pear brandy is almost as good as the Yugoslavian stuff (whose name escapes me and google for the moment)

(I am terrible about that. (parenthetically speaking, of course. (I will begin sending you all of my posts for editing, this should correct the problem for both of us You need to leave room for some expansion as the CO2 goes from a liquid to a gas as the beer warms (particularly when the bottles are destined for a pasteurizer after bottling. (And I am not going to read yours until you learn to hit the shift key and capitalize.

I always thought that the Tenoch bottle was pretty cool. I worked for the guy who makes this stuff while I was in Mexico and he had some commemorative mugs made at the same place where the bottle is made when we opened the brewery in Tecate. They were really well done in the same style. It's exceptionally good tequila, by the way.

Aww Shucks. I'm just a g.o.b. trying to get by in a complex world. But thanks for the kind words.

Actually, the less head space the better. The bottling (or canning for that matter) process is done in a way that allows (even for a millisecond on high speed lines) air to enter a system that has been closed since fermentation. To combat this the bottles or cans are encouraged (either with a tiny, thin stream of hot water or a blast of CO2 or nitrogen to foam after the filler releases the bottle and it heads for the capper (or the seamer in the canning case). In this way the amount of total atmosphere in the bottle is reduced to a minimum. Many companies now use (especially smaller breweries that have slower lines ) O2 absorber crowns that are designed to "eat" the small amount of residual air in the neck of the bottle. Good, basic description of what I just muddled through above

If you like Peter Tosh you should give South African Lucky Dube a try. I saw him this weekend at the Jazz Fest (first time he has been around New Orleans for a while) and the show was stratospheric. That new Toots record is fun and very listenable. Lots of interesting guests (including Willie Nelson on a really great song that is getting lots of airplay on KGSR/Austin).

These guys didn't have the head. In Louisiana, you will see it both ways. davebr just cooked one a week or so ago and maybe he will have some more advice. My advice goes like this-cheek meat is a good thing. Also, the presentation is much more dramatic with the head.

Ruth, I really enjoyed your piece in the Gullet. My wife's family are all Iowans (some of them moved to the Delta in the 30's for cheaper and more land) and they have continued to travel back and forth regularly to Ames. When my wife's grandmother died I ended up with all of her cookbooks (which I treasure as the are FULL of very interesting and often funny notations-she notated every recipe that she ever used often including the event, mostly church related it seems, that she cooked them for) and one of the most interesting one's was a book called "Iowa Cooks". It is a collection put together by a social group of some sort and when looked at in context it is fascinating. I do not believe that the word garlic appears in it. There are, however, about 15 meatloaf resipes and a whole section for corn. Lots of jello for desserts and appetizers and some really funny recipes involving weenies as apps. When I go home today I will go through it and pull some of the finer examples of the cuisine of the midwest. It really is an interesting slice of midwestern life. Brooks

The real reason that stubbies became the "bottle of Canada" is that they were interchangable between breweries. All of the breweries had lines that ran them-and if your drivers happened to come back to the brewery with somebody elses bottles, so much the better as that just cut down on glass cost for the breweries. Stubbies were durable and easy to clean because of their shape. They were made of very heavy glass and the number of turns on them were incredible (although not nearly as many turns as those "caguamas or ballenas" (1 liter bottles) in Mexico-those things are more like bricks than bottles). Many of these breweries were probably glad to see them go in terms of ease of use and economically (the cost of washing and cleaning often outweighs the cost of new, cheap glass and bottle washing operations are a mess to run and take up huge amounts of otherwise useful space in breweries) and at the time that they were doing it Canadian Breweries were watching the Miller/Bud wars and seeing what kind of sales could be generated with inovation and rediculous amounts of advertising and sponsorship.

Tonight Baked Ham Cheese Grits Green Bean French Bread Ceasar Salad ( homemade, the real deal) Strawberry Ice Cream (homemade) for dessert

Well the quantity part may be true, but as far as spoilage goes I would think that someone selling seafood over the counter in NYC would have less of a chance of getting the real fresh stuff than you would ordering direct from the wholesaler with no middleman delay involved. And judging by what people say that you guys pay for Gulf Seafood, the prices don't seem to extreme (although you are probably right about smaller volumes). On the other hand, maybe you could order with a friend or two and defray expenses that way.

WWOZ-New Orleans Radio for the People and By the People KGSR-Austin-Roots Radio Extraordinaire Alternatively I also listen to Willie's Place on XM and Musicmatch (set to Random with either Lucinda Williams or James McMurtry set to center the search-this is a very cool service-well worth the fee). When baking I listen to mostly jazz, for some reason I can't really explain. Mile's Davis "Sketches of Spain" is perfect for complicated pastry projects.

Why buy them in NYC when you can get them straight from the source? These guys have gotten pretty good reports from friends who have moved and have a jones for the real thing. The shipping seems very reasonable (especially if you are ordering alot, as they do it by the box load and not by the exact poundage). See what you think of this seafood shipper. There are several others on line, but I don't know much about them. Brooks Edited to say sorry about the link on the first try and that I called somebody in the business in New Orleans and he reccomended these guys.

Well, maybe I should cook for the Manitobans. Perhaps I could set up in the Farmers Market and serve Walleye Courtboullion over spicy rice to passersby and entertain them with tales of the Southland. I could use my best Justin Wilson accent, yell bam! alot, and tell Boudreaux and Comeaux jokes. It might be fun (for me anyway).

Great report. You should have toughed it out over at Congo Square. Lucky Dube tore the house down with his South African/reggae riddums. Great Set. Nice crowd too, as most of the attendees were down on Stage 3 listening to Carlos Santana. I love it when that happens. I hope that you saw a little (or all of) Sonny Landreth. He had The Goners (with Kenny Blevins (Little Village/John Hiatt) and Dave Ransom (John Hiatt) backing him up and he blistered the crowd with his awesome slide guitar. Amazing set, amazing talent. If there is a better slide guitar player in the world, I don't know who it is! Good thing you got the Couchon de lait early. They ran out about 5 o'clock (as did the softshell po boy guys on Thursday). I think too many people are reading egullet. And you're right about the frozen cafe au lait. That stuff is really good, as is the Mango Freeze. I have spoken to Susan Spicer about eGullet a couple of times. She is certainly familiar with the sight and I am pretty sure that she lurks here occasionally (many of the New Orleans chefs seem to). Maybe she will get on board in the future. We need a few pros from New Orleans on the board. Glad you had a great trip. Sorry about the weather. They haven't had to cancel a day in 15 years, so usually the weather is a bit better. Bad Luck I guess. It's wonderful outside right now. Unseasonably cool and a blue bird sky.

I am going to be in Winnipeg for a couple of nights and the better part of two days in early July (awaiting a fly in fishing deal my boys and my brothers have concocted) and will be looking for a decent meal or two. Any thoughts or related smart ass comments (either will be o.k.-there's plenty of time to sort the two out )?

edited because I am an idiot

Occasionally we will marinate for an hour or so in strawberry vinegar, chopped ginger, garlic, with come cayenne added for a little bam. Skewer them (or put them in your fancy schmancy basket ) and throw on the grill. Yes ma'am, that's good eating.

I wonder who is, well, "winsome enough" to play Ms. Hesser? Casting should be interesting.