JennotJenn

BBQ Slaw. You kinda have to be raised in or around Lexington, NC to get it. There's nothing nasty in it, just shredded cabbage, cider vinegar, sugar, ketchup, cayenne and black pepper. But most non-natives won't even try it based on looks alone. It's sort of pink. And delicious. I hate mayonaise based slaw. Here's a link to Guilford Mill : http://www.oldmillofguilford.com/products.htm It dosen't look like they take orders on their site, but you could call them. Be a whole hell of a lot cheaper than ordering from Zingerman's. Sure, they're not organic or nothin', but they are good grits (I HATE Quaker grits). I still don't think you'll like them, though.

I've heard from several people that the food at her restaurant was disappointing. My dad was in Savannah and was thinking about eating there, but he looked in the window of the restaurant first and decided that nothing looked good, so he skipped it. I'm ok with her style of cooking. I collect church cookbooks, after all, which seems to be where most of her recipes come from. But I wouldn't eat much of it, and I'm not sure I want to see a tv show devoted to it. I'm from Winston-Salem, and I love my Kripsies (but not the glazed ones so much...lemon filled to cut the sweetness a little is the best), but ewwwww, fruit cocktail. WTH? Gah. Fruit cocktail is NASTY, and no amount of Krispy Kreme donuts can remedy that. Anyway, I've heard they're good grilled and topped with ice cream.

Thanks, everyone. Looks like I won't starve to death after all. I'm going to print this out and bring it with me. I'll be in the convention center (IFT conference) for a good part of the day, but plan on taking long, leisurely lunches, so I can hit up any of places. Thanks!

Our bigger homebrew store carries soda making supplies. I would call and ask. I will say that, with beer, our biggest concern is always with sanitation, which, even as a 27 year old with a reasonable attention span, gets old fast (husband is a super-sticktler) because there are so many steps at which the beer can become contaminated. A kit may cut the steps down to a point where it's a less annoying concern.

Ok,officially my husband and I watch way too many cartoons. That's one epi we frequently quote anytime egg salad is brought up (what kind of eggs?). Speaking of eggs, and bringing back around to the Simpson's, gotta love the dead roach floating in the pickled egg vat when the health inspector comes around.

What about the Fleet-a-Pita episode? Whenever husband and I go to any Middle Eastern eatery, we always joke (in a surly voice, natch) about ordering "reshnikabab." We also tend to use the Terri/Sherri line about being hungry enough to eat at Arby's quite a bit. Oh, and I know I'll get this wrong, but it goes something like: So I says, red m-and-m, green m-and-m, eh, they all come out the same color in the end---one of my fave lines ever. Hoping I'm not infringing on any copyrights, here.

Maybe I didn't look quite hard enough, but I couldn't find anything specifically on cheap eating in NO. Most of the recs seem to focus on fine dining, but I'm on a really limited budget. I think I have enough money to do one fine dining event (Upperline is closed, so maybe Bayona), but otherwise I need cheap. Really cheap. For breakfast, lunch and dinner I'm talking under $10, but hopefully under $5 (for each meal). Is this even possible? I'll eat anything, not at all picky, btw. I'll be staying in a hotel, but am taking my collapsable cooler so I can keep leftovers...if I can get a huge cheap meal for lunch and eat the remainder for dinner, that would be awesome,too. I'm looking at Wille Mae's for Monday's lunch, and I need to really stretch my dollar. I'm sure RayRay has done a $40 a day in NO, but somehow I trust you guys more... And if you can point me to another thread, please feel free.

Man, I'm coming into town the 16th and I'm going straight to Willie Mae's. Are there directions to the restaurant in the book? And would you happen to know if there's public transport to and from? I ordered that book last night, should be here soon. Anyway, those pics had me drooling, esp. the fried chicken. Is that on the menu every day? God, I hope so.

I didn't know which sub-forum to place this in, but cooking seemed close enough...maybe I should post over in the spirits forum, too? While reading the Zuni Cafe cookbook last night, I realized that I had a bunch of perfectly ripe sweet cherries hanging around the house, along with a pint of decent, but cheap brandy. So one thing led to another and I made a batch of brandied cherries from the book. Once I finished that, I found a bottle of bourbon (which I keep on hand only for when my brother-in-law comes over for Christmas---not against bourbon, I just can't drink right now) and made bourbon cherries. Cherries were on sale this week and I've already eaten enough to literally make me sick, so I was happy to find something to use up the rest of them. Anyway, I know they need to ""ripen" for a couple of weeks, but how long will they last unopened? The cookbook didn't specify, unfortunatly. I know they won't spoil with that much alcohol and using sterile procedures, but will there be a point when the texture or flavor goes off? I'm hoping they'll keep until Christmas (fruitcake and maybe the bourbon ones to above mentioned brother in law). And once opened, does anyone have any idea how long they'll keep in the fridge? Thanks, and if anyone can suggest a better subforum for this question, please let me know.

That was about all my grandpa would eat during the last year or so of his life. By the end, he wouldn't even eat pintos, just cornbread and buttermilk. I personally can't abide it, but he obviously loved it. Anyway, when we had leftover cornbread in the summer, my mom would make stuffed bell peppers. You take about a pone of cornbread (whatever it takes to make the mixture more paste than liquid but not too dry), a pound of hot breakfast sausage, a quart of tomatoes (or maybe it's a pint? whatever doesn't make the mixture too liquid) and a can of corn, mix it up real good, put it in halved, par-cooked bell peppers and bake until crusty brown (with the occasional very delicious burnt spot). I always felt sorry for the kids whose moms made stuffed peppers with ground beef and rice. My cats love cornbread, btw. One of the few human foods they'll fight over.

Hee, that's what the "it's funny because I'm 12 was for" (because I have the mentality of oh, a 12 year old when it comes to humor...make that a 5 year old, 'cause I still think fart jokes are funny, too). There's a hilarious story about my sister-in-law getting drunk, dropping a cigarrette in her lap and screaming "my cooter's on fire!!" Cooter. Ahem. Anyway. And no, you can't beat a free tour with free beer. Really. It's been scientifically proven. I think my biggest problem is going to be choosing from your list, Mayhaw Man. Holy dammit Christmas man, you make them all sound great. They should hire you for PR. And I think I should try them all!

Great information, everyone. Yes, I'm aware of pop the cap. And damn, I'm bad at writing letters to my representatives. But I guess I should bite the bullet and do it, otherwise I can't complain. And I don't know what part of town Cooter Brown's is in, but I'll go out of my way to shop at a place with the word "cooter" in the name. Cooter.* As far as LA goes, I'm thinking about flying in on Saturday instead of Sunday morning. Right now it's about $50 cheaper to fly on Sat instead of Sunday, and even though I'll have to pay for a hotel room for one extra night (something super cheap near the airport), it'll come to about the same amount of money for an extra day. So I can relax and do the tour and take my sweet time. This is going to be a food nerd convention (International Food Technologist), so expect to see us everywhere food nerdery can be found (I think there's a rum distillery tour and a hot sauce factory tour planned, the brewery would be a sneaking off and doing my own thing thing). Anyway, also good info on the brewpubs. I'm sure it'll be so hard to drag a bunch of food science grad students into them... *Yes, I'm aware a cooter is a turtle (soft shelled, non?), but I still think it's funny because I'm like, 12.

Mayhaw, Realize this is an old thread, but I hate to start a new one for this... 'bout how far from the airport is the brewery? I'm coming in on a Sunday in July for a conference and was actually contemplating taking an early flight and renting a car so that I could make the tour at 1. Yeah, I'm probably crazy, thinking about leaving home at 7AM so I can go to a brewery that afternoon. Or not... anyways, I read on the site that it's about 30 minutes from NO, but don't know if that's from the airport side or the other side. Also, ahem, and perhaps this should go on the beer thread, but does LA have a limit on alcohol content in beer? Because NC limits it at 6% and I always try to pick up some stuff that we can't get here whenever I go to a place without crazy liquor laws. Jen

I'm going to NO for a conference in July. Yes, July. Who plans these things?! Dreading the weather, but I'm sure y'all have enough good food to make up for my physical discomfort. Anyway, just booked a room at Omni Royal Crescent for $80 a night, which is near the French Quarter and nearish the convention center. Went through their website and saved money even over what the discount travel websites were offering. Also, if you don't belong to AAA, consider joining. In that trip alone, I managed to save almost enough to cover the cost of a year's single membership. Anyway, the hotel seems nice enough and got good reviews on the travel sites. Don't know what that part of town is like, but I usually end up staying in boutique hotels near the grittier side of town wherever I go, so I'm not overly concerned. I'll keep checking the forum for food recs, though that time of year, maybe i should just be checking for brews and ice cream, since that's all I live off of in the summer.

I've long wanted to start a restaurant called Topless Tapas, with well, toplessness and tapas. Great theme restaurant, huh? Anyone know of a tapas place 'round here that serves salt cod in any form? I'm really, really craving it and I don't want to wait until my trip to Berkeley in March to get some (don't wanna make them at home, either).

Outside of the house, it's face to face, and we fight over the gunfighter seat. FtF seems less PDAish, and since my husband and I don't even care to hold hands in public, the idea of sitting in a position that looks schmoopy to us is horrifying (hee, our pastor couldn't even to convince us to kiss on our wedding rehersal night(people were WATCHING)...he finally got fed up and told us to shake hands). Few things are squickier than seeing a couple sitting side by side in a booth. Get a room! But at home, we're side by side on the couch or at right angles. We're also schmoopy in the privacy of our own home. Just never, ever in public.

If you leave out the time I fell asleep while cooking a pot of beans (blackened mess, apartment full of smoke, smelled for 2 weeks) and the "pretzels" I made when I was 7, I have two worst dishes. The first, a lemon-lime tofu cheesecake I made in college. I'm sure you can imagine. *shudder* The second: a couple of years ago I made a "squid stew" from a cooking mag. Followed the recipe exactly. The wine I used was a drinkable, not too cheap red. The squid was frozen (supposedly high quality frozen), as called for in the recipe. It was so bad my husband had to throw it out because I got the dry heaves just looking at it. Chummy smelling squid floating in an ocean of purple-grey liquid. It made the house smell so bad we couldn't order in pizza...we had to leave the house for dinner (I think we went out for cheap Mexican). Blarg.

My sister and I would eat anything pickled (saurkraut especially), steamed broccoli (no cheese sauce), raw salted cabbage (we fought over the core), brussels sprouts, raw cauliflower, anything slightly bitter like that. I also had an affinity for hard boiled eggs. I went through a phase when all I would eat was hard boiled eggs and kraut. My sister went through a similar phase with coleslaw. And beer. When she was about 2, my parents had these really fun friends we used to go to the demolition derby with on Friday nights. After the DD, we'd go back to their apartment and watch Monty Python and then watch my mom and them process photos in their darkroom. At some point during the evening, Steve would want a beer, and my sister would toddle to the fridge..."wanna beer Unca Steeve?" Then you'd hear the top pop, and she'd be in the kitchen a little longer than she should have been...and the beer would be like, 1/3 empty when Steve got it. My mom was freaked, so she took Amanda to the doctor, who told my mom to give her a whole beer, that she would only drink a little, it would make her feel bad, and she wouldn't want anymore (ah, the late 70's/early 80's). My mom had to take it away a over halfway through for fear my 2 year old sister would get alcohol poisioning. Oddly enough, she does hate beer now, but not because of that. She just grew out of it, I guess. Anyway, those friends were awesome. I was sad when my parents stopped hanging out with them.

I was about to report the same. And I've never been too impressed with the meat quality at Fresh Market. But maybe I've just had some off experiences.

Figs? Feh. Unless they get more stock in, it's not going to make it. I ran in around lunchtime recently and they had a buffet-style thing going. Food looked dried out and nast. It's totally nothing special. And no wine or anything. I live like, 1/2 mile from Fowlers, so I'm biased. It's directly on my route home, and while the coffee and dry goods are overpriced, the wine/beer, cheese and meat (though not the seafood) are about going market rate. I love that place.

I feel the same sensation after eating certain American fast foods, btw. Again, I'm wondering if it's not the glutamic acid itself, but the fact that it's concentrated in a different form (as a salt). I will admit to having the warm/weird feeling in my face, mouth and toes after eating something with a very large amount of reconstituted dried mushrooms in it, btw, so maybe it's quantity. With MSG, I think a little goes a long way and some producers of food use a large amount of it to coverup an otherwise not-so-great-tasting product (any cheap food in large quantities--like the fast food I mentioned). I feel funky after eating something with way too much sugar or way too much NaCl, too. All I know is this is something I experienced after consuming MSG (dissolved in water) in a blind test. I did not know it was MSG until a few days later. I'm sure as hell not going to stop eating foods with MSG in them, though, and I do think far fewer people suffer from a sensitivty than think they do.

Israeli couscous. I can hardly even type the words without dry heaving. For the record, they come back up in the same shape they go down. Also this Cookies and Cream candy bar that Hershey's used to make. Violent stomach bug one Easter, and the last thing I ate before the bug hit was a cookies and cream bunny. Unrelated to food, but I can't hear the song Hot!Hot!Hot! without feeling sick!sick!sick! Not because the song is so horrible, though it is, but because I came down with another horrible stomach bug during my cousin Katie's dance recital, where they danced to that song. Been a good 10 years and I still turn green when I hear it. And I finally got over it, but I couldn't eat collards for awhile because I saw my cousin Dennis puke them up on my grandma's kitchen floor. But I got over that. Oh, and in response to someone upthread, I used to be the same way about homecooked food. But it was also restaurant food. Any food that I had not seen someone prepare. It was because I'm mentally ill, though, and when I was little it manifested itself in an absolute terror that someone was going to poison me (I lost 15 pounds during that period, which is a LOT for a 7 year old). My mom can't eat chicken anymore (case of salmonella that landed her in hospital, taken via ambulance).

Ok, I always thought the whole MSG allergy thing was crap. Until this semester... I sat on several threshold panels during the course of the semester. I was not told ahead of time what I would be tasting, but had to sign a release form saying that I have no known food allergies, which I do not. The first time I did the panel, I experienced the oddest sensation...like my ears, feet and hands were really warm, and just, well, weird. As the sample was mostly sweet and umami, I did assume by the end (where the concentration was high enough that I could list it definitively as umami) that I was tasting MSG or a related compound. Even before I could taste it, though, I could feel it. It was MSG, BTW. And don't get me started on what nucleotides make me feel like. That was so bad I was crying. I finally emailed the woman that was the head of the experiment to ask her what the hell she'd made me taste. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth...for 2 days. Anyway, the MSG doesn't make me feel awful or anything, and I won't blame it for all of societies ills but I can tell it's there (I'm guessing it's used in a lot of fast food...I have a similar response when eating it). I know glutamate is present in many foods, but I wonder if it's the fact that it's present in salt form that makes some people who are more sensitive to it react.

Interesting... I think we've been here long enough (Dutch family settled in New York in 1600's, moved to North Carolina shorty thereafter; German side came over late 1700's; Native American side, well, there's some recent debate as to when we came over, but suffice to say it's been awhile) to just say my grandma is from the mountains of North Carolina. And she serves pumpkin (from pumpkins she prepares herself, not from a can) and dried apple (the apple reconstitutes...sorta like apple butter in a pie). I like the apple, but I, ahem, prefer pumpkin from a can[/size=1]. The texture is more pleasing to me.

Ah, that's who Lil' Big Head is!! Sorry, that's the only way I've ever known her. And no, I wouldn't snark on her if I liked her show, which is feh. It just doesn't grab me, and the camera work makes me dizzy. Same with Jamie and Nigella...seriously, I suffer from terrible motion sickness (I can't play a lot of video games because of this, sadly ) and I honestly need a Dramamine to be able to handle any of the wonky camera work on those shows. It doesn't matter how good the content is if it makes me want to throw up when I watch it. And yes, I actually CAN handle Emeril in small doses when he's not pandering to a live audience. Well, I can have his Essence show on while I do housework and not have to stop dusting to change the channel, which may the closest I ever come to giving him and out and out endorsement. I like Sara M., Ming Tsai, Alton Brown, and Bourdain most of the current personalities in terms of content and character. I don't know about being a mama's boy, but Ming Tsai come across as being VERY dorky, and I saw him get really seasick on a show once, which sort of cemented my love. Ah, dorky motionsick mamasboys. Sandra Lee is the only Food Network personality to whom I seriously object. I can see her having, say, a 2-3 minute segment sponsored by Campbells (or Cool Whip!) in between shows (in fact, I can see that being a terrific vehicle for her), but a whole 30 minute show really stretches her limits. Her kitchen hygiene is a microbiologist's nightmare, too. She never seems to actually wash her hands. Not that I ALWAYS wash my hands when cooking for myself or for my husband, but when cooking for my imaginary friends, I always wash thoroughly with warm, soapy water. I'm just grateful I don't have a show. I have no industry experience, a white-girl afro, and my accent is bad enough that they would probably add in subtitles post-production so that people could understand me. But you know, if I was putting myself out there like that, I'd expect people to make fun of those things because well, people just do that. I'm just sayin'...