ms. victoria

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Zola off West End. We've been there several times and it has always been wonderful. The wine list isn't huge but they have some nice bottles. Deb Paquette is the chef/owner and one of my local food heroes. She does food with Southern ingredients with a Spanish twist. She also has a salad with beets cooked like fried green tomatoes that is amazing. They also have a martini menu. In addition to the seriously good food, the service has always been remarkable. We went for our anniversary and I told them that was the occasion when I made our reservation. When we got there we had the best little corner table and it was decorated with some gilt streamers and hearts (not cheesy at all just subtle and only on the table so no one else would have even noticed). We also went with a friend who is an educated wine drinker and had chosen a lovely Spanish red for our meal. There was about a glass left in the bottle when the server with the bread basket caught it and tipped it over. None of it spilled but they brought us another bottle of the same on the house. I would highly recommend it.

Overall I have been terribly disappointed with this season. I found myself fast forwarding through all of the bickering and embarrassing behavior and just watching the dishes come out and the end of the judges' table. I felt like though Marcel was prickly and difficult to get along with but he was above the fray and didn't resort to playing the very childish game. Padma said it best when she said in her blog that the other contestants had made Marcel their "Piggy" in their own version of Lord of the Flies. I thought Sam should have been in the final, despite his involvement in the Marcel bashing. He did seem to be able to take some risks and come up with some creative dishes (watermelon nastiness aside). Ilan and Elia both behaved in very unprofessional ways and I felt like they both had a lot of growing up to do. I keep saying I won't watch next season (I said that about Hell's Kitchen too and I watched the amazingly crappy second season anyway). Maybe Bravo will have a better pool of contestants. We can only hope. Oh, and I don't get the Padma bashing either. I think she is gorgeous and she definitely has some food chops of her own. I love that she stood up to Tom's ignorant remark about Sam not cooking anything in the first part of the finale. She definitely did not come across as wooden and soulless as did Katie Joel.

By far the oddest one I have is "The Little Cyanide Cookbook: Delicious Recipes Rich in Vitamin B17" by June de Spain. It has a lovely faux cross-stitch cover that makes it all that much the weirder. Haven't cooked a thing from it. The blurb on the inside of the front cover makes me chuckle: "If every family could enjoy meals from this book, we'd soon have no more cancer patients." I'm guessing that would be absolutely true if whole families got knocked off from cyanide poisoning. BTW, the American Cancer Society lists the whole "B17" thing as a questionable cancer treatment.

We had salmon patties for dinner last night. I grew up in Tennessee with a father from Detroit and a mother from Tennessee. My mom made salmon patties as long as I can remember and I remember my dad talking about making them with leftover baked salmon from wealthier days before we moved to Tennessee (when I was 2). My mom's recipe involves a stack of crushed premium crackers and an egg mixed into a can of unpicked salmon. I also remember hoping to get a patty with a bone in. I think the prevalence may have to do with the advent of Home Economics. This is purely speculation on my part but it doesn't take too big a leap in logic.

KOK, I am almost positive that in a late night web surf I read that Marathon bars are indeed gone from the earth. My brother and I used to get one to split when we were kids at the gas station down the road (we lived OUT in the country). We would put it on the dashboard on the way home to get all soft and melty then procede to pull it apart into a chocolate-y caramel mess when we got home. I was trying to find them to give my brother for Christmas. No dice.

Wow. The Crooked Brook jackets are gorgeous. I agree that I would hate to wear it day to day and muck it up. I especially like that many of them aren't double breasted.

That's the weird thing. B&N always had it and I could get it at the independent bookstore here too. Now no one has it.

I'll second BBC Good Food and when I could get it Waitrose Food Illustrated (also UK) is a gorgeous magazine. Everyone in Nashville has stopped carrying it. I also enjoy Donna Hay. It's published in Australia but hits the newsstand seasonally here about 4 months off its newsstand release there. She is the Martha of Australia in many ways but much more realisitic about what mere mortals can do at home without a full crew. Also, everything I have made out of her cookbooks or the mag has been spot on. Two new ones I just discovered are another BBC project called Olive and another Australian mag called Delicious.

From Mostly Martha, all of the scenes with the Italian chef in the kitchen. And from Tortilla Soup, the remake of Eat, Drink, Man, Woman featuring Latino actors, sexy in a completely different way in that men taking good care of children is always sexy to me, when the father makes the neighbor's daughter these wonderful meals to take to school in this beautiful tiffin carrier and trades that for her peanutbutter and jelly. And finally, from Woman on Top, all of the scenes where Penelope Cruz is cooking in her tiny kitchen. I tried to remember where I had seen a list of food movies online. I don't think this is it, but it works. Edit: I found the one I remembered here.

ludja, I agree that that's a good question. I have a current Tennessee ABC card, a piece of paper that says I went through alcohol awareness training regarding state laws. As I understand it, 4 oz. drinks contribute to "overserving" customers. If an overserved, read drunk, patron leaves the establish and injures someone or damages property the owner, manager, and the server who delivered the drink to the patron can all be held responsible in the State of Tennessee. Such is life with dram shop laws. I personally would feel uncomfortable serving "jumbo" drinks.

I am a veteran cart snooper. I look to see what people are buying and what they might be cooking and yes I am occasionally appalled or saddened. The single guys buying stacks of frozen dinners and a case a beer, or the elderly gentleman with a Marie Callander's and a fifth. ANd yes, the woman with three hyper children hanging off her and the cart full of sugary cereal and sodas makes me scratch my head. We do our twice monthly shopping at Kroger, but for milk and various other things in between trips we go to the Harris Teeter that is just down the street. Twice now I have gone in and bought two six packs of import beer and a half pound of organic European style butter. The same checker has rung up my order both times. The first time he looked at me kind of funny. The second time he looked a little frightened. GOd knows what he thought I was doing with that butter.

I haven't tried the burpless. I always thought they were a variation on the English variety? I make lots of tea sandwiches, but I also just like cucumbers peeled and cut into sticks. Though they rarely make it to the table.

I'm chiming in on this rather late, but I think the biggest difference between golden syrup and corn syrup is the taste. Corn syrup has a cloying sweetness to me. It's the difference between that lovely bite that Coca-Cola had when I was a kid and the bland syrupy-ness of it now. From what I understand, corn syrup works in the carmel and in making some candies as an extra ingredient to the granulated sugar not to add sweetness but to hamper crystallization. I think this is because it is a different shape of sugar molecule where as Lyle's is made with cane sugar and would be the same shape molecule.

Mr. Jones, I would eat in your restaurant at least once a week. How do you feel about the South, Tennessee in particular?

This is consistent with my experience in Trinidad. My husband is a Trini of African and European decent. My adventures in eating there consisted of lots and lots of doubles and two different types of roti (a thicker, split one served with tomato choka and a huge thin and shredded one served with channa and potatoes, pumpkin and curried green mangoes). We also ate at Apsara which is (to my knowledge) the only (East) Indian restaurant in Port of Spain. The two meals I had were similar to Indian restaurant food served in the States, though better than many places I have eaten here. The food that Keifel and I make at home, based on what he knows how to cook and the Naps Girls cookbook (The Joy of Cooking in Trinidad), largely revolves around dhal and creole meat preparations. And yes we eat a lot of rice.

I'll second this question. Can you second a question? I've also eaten Caribbean-Indian food in Trinidad, or East Indian (as opposed to West Indian) as they call it. I liked it even better than the Indian food I've eaten in London. I think this all ties in with Mongo's theories on why Indian food is so widely appreciated but I can't wrap any words around how I want to make that connection. And, Mongo, this may be one of my very favorite blogs.

adoxograph, is your sister a eGulleter? Keifel (the hubby who I tempted into eGullet) and I live in Nashville. I missed the bit about Tennessee's succession. Oops.

adoxograph, what a wonderful, lovely blog. I have had to pry myself away from eGullet for a few days for work type things and I got to come back to this. And now I am going to have to make cinnamon rolls this weekend.

Nessa, this is a wonderful blog. I'm sorry I didn't get by sooner. I hope you weather the storms well tonight.

I got a little teary myself. Thanks for sharing this, Brooks.

Seth, this is a great blog. I, too, have been looking longingly at the pictures of your glorious breads. Damn the 8-5 job that keep bread making just out of reach except for weekends.

Stigand, I don't think the occasional cherry stone would hurt you, but I wouldn't recommend large quantities. Cherry stones, like peach and apricot stones, contain amygdalin, a cyanide and sugar compound that degrades into hydrogen cyanide when metabolized. You would have to eat quite a bit to be dangerous, but sweet almonds and dried cherries might be a safer bet.

We do West Indian potatoes and channa, cubed potatoes cooked with turmeric and jeera with chickpeas added in at the end and heated through. I have been known to eat this for lunch everyday in a week. (We had smashed potatoes with sour cream last night...but I will definitely have to make potatoes and channa soon.)

Steve, I had a similar thought about the Atkins diet and how its impact on milk prices. It's frustrating. We don't eat that much meat, no beef at all, but we can barely afford the current prices. We didn't buy pork the last two grocery runs; what was available was priced through the roof and looked bad. Milk is the real hardship though. I have an 8 year old, who drinks it at nearly every meal. Because we buy organic, milk is rapidly approching the $5 mark.

Hathor, this was such a lovely blog. I'm sorry I wasn't around this weekend to comment and enjoy it in real time. Thank you for a great read, I'll be watching for the turkey post.