viva

You got that right Viva! ← I cannot believe I did not guess this one. ← The "ass" clue did it for me

181: Shrek 2!

There is actually a phenomenon known as meatballs with grape jelly. Who the hell invented it I have no idea, but recipes such as <this> abound. The Company Cookbook website is really funny and so, so true.

I don't find any foods per se verboten for breakfast, but I do tend to lean toward the simple and easily prepared/carried given time constraints. Protein is a must or I'm starving in 2 hours. Sandwiches are perfect - portable, protein, easy to prepare (the three P's). Peanut butter rocks. So does turkey and chicken. I buy the Trader Joe's chicken sausages (chicken jalapeno or roasted garlic chicken are great on a piece of bread with cheese in the morning). Smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches on whole wheat pitas are probably the closest from a traditional breakfast perspective. There are typically no sweets in my breakfast - not so much because they're verboten, but because they're a waste of calories in the morning, and won't keep me going until noon. There are typically no hot liquids in my breakfast either. No soup, only a hot cereal with nuts and dried fruit on the occasional weekend. People often raise eyebrows at my Diet Coke at 6:30 AM - but that's my caffeine. You have yours with coffee, I have mine with Diet Coke, which I find more refreshing in the morning given the cold and bubbles. I can't handle coffee before noon - coffee to me is a sweet treat, usually with sugar and milk and something foofy like caramel syrup. I can mix in "classic" American breakfast ingredients in my typical breakfast - a little yogurt on the side if I'm really hungry, or an egg sandwich (or eggs mixed with turkey and veggies, carried on a piece of toast). I may prepare a "classic" American breakfast with breakfast sausage or biscuits or waffles or omelettes on a Sunday - but that to me is more like brunch and takes the place of both breakfast and lunch. Cold pizza is the exception to the simple/bland rule - it doesn't matter what kind of pizza it is (spicy Thai shrimp pizza, bbq chicken, pepperoni, veggie supreme, whatever) - it's got the three P's, so it works. I guess, reflecting back on what I've typed, that I do have a lot of breakfast rules.

Wow! That looks amazing. Don't feel bad... I own the pottery featured on the cover as well <cough> ... but I've never made the cassoulet. I dream about it, though.

Ooh! 176. Drinking a whole lot of orange juice almost all the time after a certain incident happened to this character Stir of Echoes with the infamous Kevin Bacon.

<perk> Old Dutch... brings back college memories. One of the best days each semester was when the goody package from my Minnesota roommate's mother arrived. She knew that we were unable to procure Old Dutch in Chicago, so she'd send one bag each for me and my roommate, and we'd plunk down on the couch to watch movies and chow down on Old Dutch. Yum!

I've just read through this whole thread, and given that I still have 3 lbs of Boston Butt in the freezer (with the other 3 lbs sitting in their pork confit tub'o'lard) - I may need to do a Carnitas vs. Pork Confit taste-off. This is what happens when a single person buys 8 lbs of Boston Butt and 8 lbs of Lard. Did I mention I also have a Muscovy sitting in the freezer waiting to be confited? <sigh> so many dishes, so little time.

Your sense of smell might be a good guide too: when I opened up my tubba lard from Nahunta, I smelled pork fat. If I open up hydrogenated junk, I smell chemicals. Back to the confit discussion: I'm wondering if I missed a critical step. Was I supposed to *shred* the pork after cooking, before putting it into the fridge covered with lard? Or was it okay to leave it in chunks? I had cut the Boston Butt into about 3 or 4-inch chunks, which then cooked down a bit smaller. There's plenty of pork sitting happily in their fat - I see rillettes in my future.

I very, very, very infrequently indulge in the McGriddle (the sausage variation, with cheese, no egg). I'm one of those people who dip their breakfast sausage in maple syrup, so the McGriddle hits my food quirk to a T.

I pretty much assume all lard purchased in a supermarket is hydrogenated. Is there a way to tell on the label itself if you're not sure? Mine is from Nahunta Pork Center (where Pork is King!) - no hydrogenation. Ingredients: lard.

<sadness> I am consoling myself with the flat of strawberries I picked up at the farmers' market yesterday.

Pork Confit in progress due to a surfeit of lard. (The farmers' market pork shop was out of their little containers of lard... so I got the big 8 lb'er.) Got a whole Boston Butt cut, chunked into roughly 4 inch cubes. It's in the fridge seasoned with fresh thyme, herbes de Provence, kosher salt & black pepper. Tomorrow: oven at 250 for 4-5 hours. Then, say, a week of aging in the fridge. I wonder - does the pork confit need to age a little longer than duck given the thickness of the meat?

I tried the strawberry & cream flavor - it's okay, but I have natural prejudice against Diet Pepsi in all of its forms, therefore the Jazz can't ever be a favorite. On the caramel side of the discussion, I think a better option is to buy plain Diet Coke or Diet Dr. Pepper, and add a little sugar-free caramel syrup to it. Then you can control the caramel flavor. For some unknown reason, I haven't bridged this process to the other diet flavors, so I still buy obsessive amounts of Diet Black Cherry Vanilla, Cherry Zero, Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, etc. instead of just buying different syrups and making my own. Maybe I need to get some sugar free cherry/strawberry/vanilla syrups and go to town.

Chau Doc, Vietnam: "Little or not water frog with rice" You may get a little water frog, you may not. You'll get rice, though.

I adore the new Cherry Zero.

Nice. Just found Mary B's in the freezer section here. Will be giving them a run tomorrow morning with some pork sausage I just picked up at the farmers market. Homemade is nice and all when my Texas grandma makes them... but in the meantime I'll take these.

#161 The English Patient??

I have done the Route 66 drive a couple of times as I move about the country for work. Check out Road Trip USA for a nice guide to restaurants and quirky things to see along the way (I love the Cadillac Ranch with the upended Cadillacs in the middle of the field). Personal favorites: The Carthage Deli in Carthage, MO - fantastic milkshakes The Midpoint Cafe in Adrian Texas - fantastic coconut cream pie with a beautifully flaky crust. Marks the halfway point between Chicago and LA. In the middle of nowhere.

I liked that Danny's had 4 different sauces - I cut up my chopped pork sandwich into 4 pieces so that I could devote proper attention to all 4. The Hot - my favorite. Hot without being ridiculously hot, but also flavorful. The Mustard - nice! I usually don't care for a mustard-based sauce but this one was good. I think it would be even better mixed half & half with The Hot. The Vinegar - my first exposure to a vinegar-based sauce. I liked it - but I still wanted to add The Hot in addition to The Vinegar. The Smoky-Sweet - least favorite. In general I am not a fan of a sweet BBQ sauce unless it is deliberately fruity and I am going for a specific dish. Next time I am sticking with chopped pork plate (no sandwich, just the meat), fried corn, and the blackberry cobbler. Edited to ask - so, where must one travel in the NC day-trip-distance area to find the best 'cue? I've read about Lexington, is that a tourist trap or are their claims to having the best in the state legitimate?

Is #97 "Elf"?? I remember a breakfast scene where Will Ferrell goes to town on some ludicrously sugared-up pancakes...

Actually ate here last night - Apparently they have just changed/updated their menu, according to our waitress. Had the delicious Cochinita Pibil as an appetizer: "Pork marinated with annato seeds and sour oranges, served shredded on a banana leaf with red marinated onions and habanero salsa". The habanero salsa was more like a foam than a traditional salsa. Served with very nice fresh corn tortillas. Dinner was (I forget the traditional name) a deconstructed chile en nogada made with venison. It wound up being two "cubes" of venison meatloaf with the sugar/raisin flavors of the nogada, and three "cubes" of a fluffy/creamy/goat cheesy mixture with the red & green peppers. It was... strange looking, but the flavors all worked nicely together. Unfortunately this was one of their new menu items, so an official description is not available online... so y'all will have to live with my very poor description. Dessert was a Buñuelos con Cremas de Cítricos y Miel de Piloncillo: "Small tower of crunchy Flour Sheets served with Two Citrus Pastry creams and fresh fruits showered with piloncillo syrup." My birthday dessert! More importantly, they had a delicious Margarita de Jamaica with hibiscus syrup, that was fruity without being overly sweet. "100% agave Tequila and fresh hibiscus flowers, roasted and simmered with sugar cane stalks blended with fresh lime juice, agave nectar and orange liqueur." Would definitely go to this place again.

I did call in advance ... thanks for the tips, guys! We wound up doing something else as Allen & Son weren't open that night. Wound up eating at a completely non-BBQ place - Jibarra for some pretty good mexican and margaritas. In the mean time, we checked out a BBQ place in RTP for lunch - Danny's BBQ on Miami and TW Alexander. Pretty tasty and close to the office. But I'm sure it doesn't even begin to compare to wood-smoked BBQ.

Excellent - you guys confirmed it for me - birthday dinner at Allen & Sons!

I'm a new (less than a week-old!) transplant to the Raleigh-Durham area, working in the RTP area. My birthday happens to be on Wednesday, and I've informed my project team colleagues that they will be taking me out to dinner that evening! I'm craving good North Carolina barbecue. I've read the recommendations here for Allen & Sons in Chapel Hill, and The Q Shack in Durham. Both sound really good. Any others I should be checking out? Also looking forward to perusing the other recommendations y'all have made here over the next 8 months.... what better way to get to know a new city than to sample the restaurant scene?