Varmint

Certainly, foie gras is anything but southern cuisine. I'm sure lots of duck and goose livers have been eaten in the South, but nothing ever to the level of even a mediocre foie gras. But merely adding scuppernong jelly to the dish adds an incredible southern twist to a very foreign dish. That's the beauty of the South (call it -- eek -- the New South or "New Southern Cuisine"), that very traditionally southern elements are being used in very upscale dishes. I love meat and three places that in some way represents the quintessence of the South. That's not something I want to eat everyday, however. I like progression and evolution. Let's use our heritage and build from there. And yes, I do miss both Bill Neal and Miss Fitch. I'll tell a good story about her some other day.

Done

Here's the most current list of attendees: hjshorter ZebA Marlene vengroff Jaymes =Mark maggiethecat Holly Moore KatieLoeb Malawry edemuth (??) Dave the Cook kpurvis s'kat (??) dlc Mummer claire797 +2 (??) Tommy is "in". Nickn from Maine realized it's a thousand miles. I have not counted spouses, fiancees, children, significant others, or blow-up companions. I have also not counted any of the non-eGullet folks. As they said in the classic B-Horror Film, 2000 Maniacs (by Herschell Gordon Lewis), "We're gonna have ourselves a celebration!!!" By the way, 2000 Maniacs is about a group of Southern crazies offing a bunch of Yankees in quite memorable manners. It's about 3 steps below "Deliverance" in its portrayal of southerners. Edit to add claire797

Shrimp and Grits are almost a cliche these days. They've traditionally been considered a "low country" dish, but as far as I know, Crooks Corner was the restaurant that "re-discovered" them. I'll look and see if I can find a history for this dish when I get home.

Charlie- It's sure to be a good time, so I hope you can make it. Holly will take you to other places for some solid barbecue, too!

Rather than taking a ton of time on this, I'll add just one restaurant for now. To Pittsboro, NC for the Fearrington House's foie gras with scuppernong jelly and celery brioche or their sweetbreads with butterbean and dixie lee pea succotash. But don't forget Charleston (Oysters at Bowens Island, anyone?), Savannah, Atlanta. What's in Columbia? New Orleans is in a different category altogether.

And one that both of you can enjoy. Did you hear the library at Oklahoma burned down? The sad part was that only half of the books had been fully colored.

Many of us have grown up with cookbooks from a local church, the PTA, Women's Club, and other organizations. The recipes are usually submitted by women and, here in the South, reflect much of what we consider to be southern culinary heritage. Meals were meant to be simple, filling, and made of relatively inexpensive ingredients. Game, fish and other readily available meat sources were often used. You could find chapters dedicated to pickles and other canned goods. John T. Edge of the University of Mississippi's Southern Foodways Alliance published a compilation of recipes he gathered from southern community and church cookbooks. This book, "A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South" (Link to Amazon) was published a few years ago and did a great job of describing what we generally think of as "southern cooking." Mrs. Varmint's grandmother published many recipes in these types of books, and she was later featured in a hard-bound publication, "Coastal Carolina Cooking" (Link to Amazon) I was fortunate to receive this past Christmas a gift from my mother-in-law that could truly be described as a labor of love: a compendium of my wife's grandmother's recipes. It's amazing what she cooked. More amazing are the recipes that weren't included, as they were committed only to memory. How to make shad (and to de-bone it) and its roe. Fig preserves. Coconut cake. Wild turkey stew. I'm glad to have received the written memories, but it's a shame we didn't get the others out of her. What are your favorite church cookbook recipes? Do you use one cookbook in particular? I encourage you to post your favorite recipes in the eGullet recipe archive, too.

The guy with the fava beans and a nice Chianti might do it before dinner. Now that would be an interesting barbecue!

Been using those binoculars outside my house again, Bill? Looks like that restraining order isn't that effective.

In the South (at least in NC), the default is sweet tea. Actually, if you order "tea", you'll get sweetened iced tea. If you order "unsweet tea", you get unsweetened iced tea. You have to order "hot tea" to get a tea bag with hot water. The nicer places will have loose tea, but you still have to order "hot tea" to get it.

Fat Guy, whatever happened with your experimentation? On a different note, does anyone know how iced tea became such a standard in the South? I'll do the research if necessary, as I don't know of anything definitive.

I can't remember the name of it, but I did visit a restaurant a couple of years ago that had a different number of cents for every single dish. They recognized how ludicrous it was and just mocked the practice by taking it to a ridiculous extreme. I thought it was hilarious.

"Sweetie, I'm going to have a dinner party with a few friends. Oh, by the way, I'm also inviting about 20 or 30 people whom I've never met. Yes, dear, they're my 'cyber-friends', but I don't think any of them are child molesters or axe murderers. I'm not quite sure about that tommy guy, but he never shows up anywhere."

Debauchery. That's something not good for a weight-based lifestyle change. Ah, who gives a rat's ass, anyway? This past weekend was my firm's annual retreat, and it's really just a glorified drinking event. We arrived at the beach on Friday and hit the bar at 6:30. Bombay Sapphire and tonics were tasting mighty good to me. However, I managed to exercise restraint at dinner. I ate no bread, no dessert (as it looked very mediocre), and very little potatoes. I managed to suck down a couple of glasses of red wine. After dinner was when it got really ugly, as we hit the karaoke bar. You know, there are few things scarier than a bunch of drunk lawyers taking over a karaoke bar. I started drinking really "girly" drinks: lemon drops, a taste of a friend's cosmo, before finally settling on Absolut Currant and tonic. Not my proudest moment. It was worse when I sang the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" (it has only 4 notes in the entire song, so it was right in my range). The bar closed before I got to sing Elvis' "Suspicious Minds." That was very fortunate. The best thing about the day was that I drank a glass of water for every glass of something alcoholic. That was a very smart move. The alarm startled me awake, and I actually felt better than I typically do on a retreat Saturday, when I feel as if I just crawled out of the primordial soup. I had a buffet breakfast of coffee, coffee, some eggs, potatoes, and bacon, and lots more coffee. Oh, and about 16 bottles of water. Turkey sandwich on the golf course for lunch. I walked rather than taking a cart. I don't know how I survived. Dinner was at a typical schleppy touristy beach seafood restaurant. Yuck. Fortunately, my whole roasted snapper was pretty good, served with lots of green beans. No bread. Several pieces of fried calamari. A pretty good pinot grigio went with that. No dessert (I really am filling up much more quickly). We then hit the bar again, but karaoke is Friday night only. I drank more beer that night. Sunday's breakfast was a repeat of Saturday's. No lunch. Dinner was special for the kids: Spaghetti and meatballs. I had a fairly restrained serving and only one piece of garlic bread. I later had a small scoop of chocolate raspberry ice cream. If it weren't for the alcohol, I would have been fine. I think, however, that I may have put on a pound. And damn, it was worth it!

Indeed, it is.

i don't need no stinkin' port-o-pottie. the front lawn has always worked for me. tennis courts, too. I have actually rented a port-a-potty for one pig pickin. Unfortunately, we don't have a front lawn, as it was paved over ages ago for the tennis court (we really do have one, strangely enough). We've got 3 bathrooms (inside, too!), plus the outhouse (it is NC, you know). Nickn, yes, Maine is a long ass haul. We drove up there for our summer vacation last year -- try doing that with 4 L'il Varmints. What fun. I still haven't found the appropriate moment to bring this pig pickin' thing up with Mrs. V. Seeing I just got back home from a weekend of debauchery, I'll wait a day or two. This is going to happen, folks, so start your planning now!

Last post for a couple of days on this incredibly dramatic thread. I had a salad with feta and pieces of fried chicken. Ranch dressing. Low fat? Not on your life, but tasty. I'll be in the world of non-computers until Sunday afternoon or evening.

Oh, but lamb and fresh mint. That's goooooood.

Down here, we call them "gimme caps." As in: "Gimme one 'em hats." And we don't wear baseball hats. We wear NASCAR hats. Preferably with a No. 3. And in the winter, we don't wear ski hats or knit hats. We wear "toboggans." Seriously. I still can't bring myself to call them that.

If it's High Point, that's an hour and a half. If it's Hickory, that's 3 hours.

LOL! well i'm sure we could round up a banjo player in NC for cryin' out loud. but seriously, wouldn't that be fun? Yes it would, tommy. So come on down!

What a response! The following eGulleteers have said they're in or think they're in: hjshorter ZebA Marlene vengroff Jaymes =Mark maggiethecat Holly Moore NickN KatieLoeb Malawry Dave the Cook Notice I did not include tommy. He has to send in a deposit before he can be counted. If you bring spouses, partners, kids (I have 'em, so I'm not about to exclude them), then we'll have enough of a start to do this. I'll invite the 2 or 3 friends I have. Zebster will invite his closest 50 friends, so we'll have a kick-ass party! I have a 5 bedroom house, a big basement, and lots of floor space. Of course, remember I have 4 L'il Varmints who like to wake up very, very early!

I have a lot of excess weight to lose, so just getting below the "obese" level should be fairly simple. What I don't know is the weight where I'll level out at by maintaining this routine. It might be 210 or 195 or less than that (god, I'd have to buy clothes if that happened). I'm fairly confident that my "maintenance weight" will still be 25 pounds more than what I should be, but I'm not about to do anything dramatic here. As far as the smoothies are concerned, I threw a couple of ripe bananas, some non-fat vanilla yogurt, and a hefty amount of cold raspberry compote into a blender with about a dozen ice cubes and buzzed it for a couple of minutes. It's certainly a high-carb breakfast, but it just seems to make me feel better than if I had a bagel and cream cheese.

I generally allow a pound of pig per person. I'll not be doing a spit version, as that's a contraption that I'm not going to take the time to focus on. No doubt that it would do a good job, but I've had good success with the pig cookers. Interesting side dishes. As far as collecting money is concerned, I don't think that will be applicable here. Heck, if someone is going to come from Philly or Missouri, I sure as heck am going to give them a meal! The way I've set them up before is that I start the big skin side (the back) up. After the cavity is good and smokey (several hours), I flip the pig (always a lot of fun, but I typically use a couple pieces of plywood to do it). During the first part half of the cooking, the juices run out. When that stops, I start basting the pig with my homemade dip, using a small mop. My closest friends (and those who have helped me) get the ribs, as they're done fairly early on. When the pig is done, we start pulling off huge chunks of pork, trying to mix in the brown meat with the white hams. I also try to mix in some of the outside cracklin's, as that adds good texture and flavor. I'll have a chef's knife and a cleaver going to chop some of it coarsely (I really don't like it overly chopped). I'll add a bit more dip/sauce to the chopped pig. We'll have several tables set up to serve buffet style. Maybe I could get a good bluegrass band? Or even a mediocre one? Who knows, as I don't live on the quietest street in the world (although many of you will love the fact that my street is Dixie Trail -- how southern can you get?!).