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R.E. Turner

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  1. R.E. Turner

    GREENS!

    I must've been about 20 when I moved "Up North" (Atlanta) and needed a good taste of home: my grandmother's mustard greens. I placed a long-distance call to ask for her recipe, and was given the following instructions, pretty much verbatim: "Put your smoked pork (ham hocks, hambone, smoked knuckles, whatever,) into a large pot. Cover the pork with an inch or two of water, and boil it like hell while you clean your greens. Add the cleaned greens and cover with lid until the greens are done to your preference. Serve." To this day, this is my preferred recipe -- slightly crunchy greens, served with hot cornbread, and pepper/vinegar sauce for those who need it. Mustard or cabbage are my personal favorites, but the preparation is equally good for collards, turnip greens, kale, etc. Almost as good: A cream soup, started with a smoked pork stock. Add greens (collards would be my preference in this case, finely chopped;) a bit of cream; and thicken with finely ground cornmeal. A lovely cold-weather soup, in my book!
  2. Well, therese "stole" my first suggestion -- Moon River brewpub on Bay Street, just west of City Hall. It really does strike me as your best bet as a compromise, what with its casual atmosphere, lotsa beer, and reasonably authentic Savannah fare. Unless the kitchen has changed drastically since I worked next door and traded food 'twixt restaurants, MR has good crabcakes and sandwiches, and most of their appetizer menu is beyond acceptable. (The Ossabaw dip is quite good, and the fried green tomatoes are almost as good as my Mama's.) And, unless John has undergone a complete transformation lately, the brewmeister's offerings are generally quite good. (If I'm being completely forthcoming, though, I should probably reveal that I was an early "guinea pig" for MR's brews... and that I never drank or enjoyed beer until my guinea pig stage. I thought that all beer tasted like Budweiser up to that point! Young and stupid, I know!) Beyond Moon River, the only sports bars I recall in the downtown district are Loco's deli (some number West Broughton -- about 10-ish blocks from the Marriott,) and Sorry Charlie's, near City Market (similar distance from the Marriott.) Loco's is okay, but no great shakes; and I'm not sure I could recommend Charlie's -- I'll just say that I wouldn't walk a mile for their food or drinks. If you're really lucky, though, you can ditch your colleagues at the TGIFriday's inside the Marriott, and strike out on your own!
  3. It all started when I decided to be a "practical" bride: I knew perfectly well that no one in the history of my family had ever used their fine china except when the preacher was invited for dinner, so my heathen heinie didn't need any stinkin' china. Practical, solid-colored stoneware would certainly be good enough for the likes of me. Then I realized that I'd like to liven up the table a bit for my first dinner party. Those dishes we ate from every single day just didn't seem festive enough for guests, so I really needed another set of tableware... You know, nothing expensive, just more colorful. A few more dinner parties under my belt, and then the need struck again. I just didn't have enough place settings of the "festive" stuff, and the pattern was discontinued, so a larger set was in order... Things really took off when I started discovering bargains at thrift stores. I'd find service for seven or eleven of some wonderful shape/pattern/color, and the price couldn't be beat! I planned festive suppers, and invited however many guests the new dishes would support. An RSVP of "decline with regret" meant that I could use a different set of china or stoneware with an odd number of settings. I began dropping not-so-subtle hints to my grandmothers and aunties that I really, really loved their vintage table linens... and would provide a good home to any and all prized tablecloths that could be spared. I browsed catalogs and websites just to drool over beautiful dishes that I couldn't afford. I told myself that I could stop anytime I wanted to. I just didn't want to stop. I knew that I was in trouble when I needed more storage for my multitude of dishes: I found an ad for a 28-foot travel trailer really cheap (just add axles!) Hmmm... My uncle had axles I could borrow, and a travel trailer/storage house meant that I could just hitch up and tow my goodies if I had to move. Whee! Now I have 168 linear feet of shelves' worth of tablewares, gadgets, linens, and assorted kitchen stuff, all totally portable. I'm Rae, and I'm a tableware addict. (And let's don't even talk about my concurrent addictions to vintage barware and coffee/tea service items!)
  4. A handful of staples, by my definition: White Lily flour for biscuits: There may be equal or better flours for biscuits, but I can't make a decent biscuit without White Lily, buttermilk, and Crisco. Dixie Lily's yellow Quick Grits: Not the ultimate in grits, but pretty danged good when I can't/am to lazy to head out to the mill for stone-ground grits. They don't have that funny "quick grits" flavor. I tend to add water and cooking time to the package directions, but these still allow me to have a nice pot of grits ready in 15 or 20 minutes. Hellman's, Sauer's, or Duke's mayo: Yeah, I know how to make my own mayonnaise, but I'm hard-pressed to make better than that readily available at the local IGA. Tobasco, Louisiana Hot Sauce, Texas Pete. Each for its own purpose. Ro-Tel tomatoes, for quick versions of red sauces, dips, etc. White Lily cornmeal mix: Again, when I can't make it to the nearest mill for freshly stone-ground cornmeal, I've never met a better pan of cornbread from a grocery store brand. Luzianne tea, for iced tea. Tony Chachere's (sp?) special seasoning, for virtually everything. (Somewhere, I have a recipe with the precise amounts. The TC seasoning, though, consists of salt, black pepper, cayenne, and MSG, IIRC. It's great on most anything.) I guess that Dixie Crystal sugar products also qualify as one of my Southern staples, since one of my uncles used to drive one of their trucks out of their Port Wentworth, GA facility. I'm not really assiduous, though, about buying that particular brand since the company was bought out a few years ago. Like Cucina, though, I'm particularly fond of the Cpt. John Derst bread - only for tomato sandwiches. The brand is based in Savannah, and the butter bread is softer than three downy ducks padded with bunnies. It's fabulous for "kitchen sink" tomato sandwiches. (Several years ago, I was dating a submariner who was transferred from Kings Bay, Georgia to Bangor, Washington. "Care packages" from home always had to include at least two loaves of Cpt. JD bread.) Zapp's potato chips - not an ingredient, just a staple! And I was introduced to Blue Bell ice cream umpteen years ago, when I was married to the ex. I never regretted the loss of the hubby, but it was nice to finally reconnect with Blue Bell when it became available in my SE Georgia market!
  5. Melissa, I hope that your correspondent and her family had a memorable Christmas Eve in my favorite city! "Unfortunately," I had no opportunity to review any restaurants during my long holiday visit to Savannah. (Poor, poor me: Friends and family went to a great deal of trouble to feed me like royalty. Shrimp straight off the boat, country hams from the best suppliers, angel biscuits that required lead weights to prevent them from floating away, and Chatham Artillery punch and/or sweet iced tea to wash it all down. My "fat jeans" are getting a workout!) I hope to hear at least one recent, good restaurant review from Savannah, though, since I'll be back that way within the next month or so, and may not have such a gracious reception!
  6. I'm not hugely "into" dunking foods into my drinks, but some pairings are too good to worry about crumbs in the bottom of the glass or cup. Nothing beats a good yeast-raised doughnut (usually Krispy Kreme) dunked into a glass of milk or cup of black coffee... except maybe a PBJ dunked in milk! (Although, since I'm the one who has to wash the dishes, I generally use the take a bite/take a drink method.) I also like Oreos dunked in milk, but I don't care for the mess. My solution? Pour mini Oreos into a bowl, add milk, eat like cold breakfast cereal. I also have a fondness for bread dunked in milk, but again, I usually use the cereal method. And biscotti is wonderfully adaptable... good dunked into tea, coffee, milk, or wine. Incidentally, I think the bread and milk fondness is part nostalgia, part enjoyment of the dish. As a child, I thought that it was a rare treat when my mother "let" us have this for dinner -- everyone liked it, there were no dinner table arguments over "you're going to at least try it," and it was really quick and easy. As I grew older, I realized that the bread and milk dinners happened during the times that my father's terminal illness had left the family in dire financial straits. Bread and milk was likely all we had in the pantry, so I'm sure my mother felt awful about serving it. I still like it, but I don't eat it when my mom's around.
  7. I learned my lesson re: hospital food during my first ever hospital meal. Background: I went into labor with my oldest child in the wee hours of the morning, and arrived at the hospital around four a.m. (Note to those expecting for the first time: If you're not sure whether you're "really" in labor, here's a handy checklist. If you left a sinkful of dishes last night because you were too tired to wash up, you might be in labor. If hubby was too tired to gas up the car after work that same evening, the likelihood is even stronger. If it's starting to snow? Start timing those contractions! And if your midwife is out of town for one single night, put the suitcase in the fuel-free car and pray for an open gas station!) At any rate, baby arrived healthy and beautiful around 10:30 am, but I spent a couple more hours getting Vitamin K shots and contemplating blood transfusions, thanks to a low clotting factor. Finally, by the time I had quit hemmorhaging, it was well past lunch time, and I hadn't eaten since around 7 the previous night. The nice nurse asked whether she could get anything for me, and I asked whether a meal might be possible. It took a half-hour or so, but finally someone found a lovely plate of cold, congealed lasagne, left over from lunch a couple of hours earlier. Bless my mother, she took one look at the plate and knew perfectly well that I couldn't/wouldn't eat something that looked so much like the bodily fluids I'd been losing for the previous two hours. Even after spending most of the wee hours following snowplows into Atlanta to be there for the birth of her first grandchild, she volunteered to go find me something edible! I've had three babies since that first experience with hospital food, and learned to order cereal/toast/fresh fruit for breakfast, hoard fruit for snacks and lunch, and make sure that all visitors know that edible gifts are much more welcome than balloons and flowers for a new mommy!
  8. I don't quite know how to define "use" in this case: If "use" means "actually following the recipe, pretty much as written," I probably only use two or three of my 150 or so cookbooks. (Charleston Receipts, a DeKalb Co., Ga. Junior League cookbook with the world's "awesomest" pecan pie and pecan tassies recipes, and a bread cookbook whose name escapes me right now.) Several others among the collection actually get perused a lot more for reference: The Joy of Cooking - for information on ingredients and techniques, Escoffier - for information on techniques, A Gracious Plenty - for ideas/inspiration, and a microwave cookbook (maybe titled "Micro Ways"?,) - for the why and how of using the microwave for a few "real" cooking techniques, vs. reheating. Frankly, though, most of my books are for pure enjoyment. They're either good reads, or so bad that they're funny, or historically interesting, or fun little oddities (Len Deighton's "Action Cook Book," anyone? Actually, surprisingly useful, but I picked it up in a thrift store because I was amused by the notion of recipes by the author of spy thrillers, combined with the photos on the cover.) For me, no trip to a thrift store, garage sale, or discount store is complete without scanning the shelves for vintage cookbooks. In fact, my most prized book was acquired from the local Goodwill: I bought a forties-vintage cookbook for a couple of bucks, brought it home, and began flipping through to enjoy the book itself, the hand-written notes, and the clippings taped inside. There was a meringue pie recipe written on the back of an old envelope... a recipe I knew well, because an old neighbor from my childhood had served it to me. Sure enough, the front of the envelope was addressed to Mrs. J. W.! (I assume that the book was donated after Mrs. W.'s death a few years ago, and nearly cried when I realized that her family hadn't prized such a treasure.) Now, I just have to decide whether to hit the Goodwill after work to scan for "new" cookbooks, or to go home and read the three new ones I got for Christmas!
  9. I'm heading for Savannah tonight for the holiday festivities, and this review makes me think I'll be dining on River Street at least once over the next week or so: River House Seafood and Bakery . I haven't actually dined here, either, but it sounds wonderful, and should be open on Christmas Eve -- River Street is very tourist-friendly, and most shops/restaurants/bars will certainly be open. (The review includes a link to the restaurant's website, though, with a toll-free number and an e-mail link, if she wishes to contact them directly to learn their schedule.) At any rate, it sounds delicious, and is a convenient and scenic walk down the riverfront from the Marriott.
  10. Ah, Mr. and Mrs. C. are good Baptists, so if they make buck, they don't advertise! Seriously, I doubt that Mr. Alvin would truck with such a thing, and if he did, he certainly wouldn't consider offering it to a "young lady" like myself... After all, it's only been half-a-lifetime since I registered to vote! (I must admit, though, that at my age, I'm flattered to be considered an innocent young thing whose morals and reputation should be guarded! Even if the "guardian" is one of my grandfather's contemporaries.) However, I have tasted buck in the past. As near as I can tell, it must be an acquired taste, but it is better than any of the moonshine I've ever tasted. My own Methodist family never balked at making their own various homebrews, for "medicinal purposes," of course. Grandmother and her mother made wine from muscadines, blackberries, peaches, and other fruits; and granddaddy experimented a time or two with mead when the honeybees went into serious overdrive. And yes, annecros, we're pretty close to being "homegirls," and my grandparents even lived in Albany back when they were newlyweds. (Yeah, of course I know how to pronounce your hometown "properly.") You're probably the only person on the board whose heard of my hometown of Baxley! I was raised there and in Bulloch County, so my food traditions probably include more coastal influences than yours. As a kid, I spent a fair amount of time on the salt water, and rice was as much a diet staple as grits at the family table. It's pretty amazing how only a few miles can influence those traditions.
  11. The syrup boiling festivities were about 75 miles east of Tifton, annecros, and held by a dear couple that I've known all of my life. Every year, on the evening after Thanksgiving, Mr. Alvin and Miss Wilda Ann invite friends and family to the annual to-do, but this was the first year I've been since I was a child. And yeah, I had at least as much fun as the kids... I just didn't come home with candy in my hair! I had forgotten about the grist mil at the Agrirama, though. My local source for grits and meal is out-of-operation, so it may be time for a day trip. Ooh, I also forgot pond drainings. To this day, I'm not so sure why that was "fun" to me as a child -- wearing your grungiest clothes, and getting even grubbier mucking around to retrieve the last of the fish. I can only guess that it was a combination of permission to get insanely muddy, plus the fact that we lived waaaaay out in the country, so anything out-of-the-ordinary was fun! Well, maybe hog-butchering wasn't so fun - to me. I was horribly traumatized the first time I walked into my Granny's kitchen while she was making hogshead cheese. At age four or five, it's pretty weird to spot a grinning hog head bobbing away in your great-grandmother's biggest cookpot! And, as a young teenager, it's even rougher when a misunderstanding leads to learning that your "pet pig" has been butchered. (To be fair, I had "rescued" Fred the Pig from a neighbor, who was going to euthanize him because his back legs were slightly crippled, and he wouldn't have survived in the pen. My mom and I had a miscue from the very start, though, because she agreed to rescue livestock, while I thought I had a pet. Fred thrived on love, attention, homemade biscuits, and daily playtime. He played ball with a deflated basketball, dunking it gleefully in his water bucket, and seemed to think that he was one of the dogs. Fred thrived so much, in fact, that he weighed almost 900 pounds by the time he became pork chops and hams. The good news? Fred did have his favorite meal at the very end, and was lured into the livestock trailer with a trail of about 3 dozen of Mom's biscuits. The bad news? From the age of about 13 until I was well into my twenties, I refused to eat pork in any form.) Even so, there was one named animal that I was absolutely gleeful about eating. For a few years, I was terrorized by Rojo, the World's Meanest Rooster. I have never eaten a better pot of chicken and dumplings than the one that contained Rojo!
  12. annecros, I don't recall the immature chicken eggs, but your post reminded me of a real treat from fish fries: Fried fish roe, I think from bream. My father was a (lousy, but enthusiastic) fisherman, and during spawning season, a good portion of his catch included those heavenly goodies. Mom fried them exactly the same way as the mature fish - mealed and deep-fried. Light, heavenly goodness! And always accompanied by hush puppies, grits, and cole slaw. Speaking of southern food traditions, I took my kids to their first (cane) syrup boil and candy pull the other evening. Not only did the munchkins have a blast, but I was able to finish up my holiday shopping. Now that my brother lives in the upper South, he's not able to find his beloved cane syrup at the market, so his Christmas offering from me always includes his annual supply. Oh, and my family also adds eggs to the giblet gravy. Personally, I don't care for boiled eggs, but they're chopped coarsely enough for me to dip around them!
  13. As a fellow (rabid) Dawg, and the stepdaughter of an honest-to-goodness West ByGod Virginia native and Mountaineers fan, I figured I should weigh in on this! The only food I can imagine that ties in to "Mountaineers" is mountain oysters... which probably isn't anyone's idea of a good time! However, I've seen recipes for "coal candy" - a black, anise flavored hard candy that looks like lumps of coal. That might be appropriate for your spread. As for incorporating WV's school colors, I wonder whether a variation on a Hurricane (drink) might be apt? Blue curacao, layered with a yellow liqueur or mixer, perhaps? (The challenge, of course, would be to find a suitable, not-too-sweet combination, since the curacao starts off so cloyingly. Maybe I need to experiment a bit, since I'm planning a viewing party myself... Tickets, travel, and childcare/eldercare are completely out of reach, unfortunately! However, I'll certainly enjoy the next month of talking smack with my dad, and then watching my Dawgs shellack the Hillbillies... er, Mountaineers! ) It would, perhaps, suit your color scheme and the New Orleans origins of the game. Style it as a Hurricane Georgia, perhaps? Or Hurricane Shockley? Off to experiment... Rae
  14. Thanks for the welcome, Melissa! I've lurked and read for quite some time, and figured it was finally time to join. I have been fortunate to live in Savannah for most of my adult life, but family obligations necessitated a move back "home" to rural Georgia a couple of years ago. Happily, I still have many friends and close family members in Savannah, though, so I rely on them to provide up-to-date restaurant reviews and guest rooms when I get a chance to visit. I hope that your correspondent enjoys her visit to my favorite city! Rae
  15. Gifted Gourmet, I'm familiar with most of the restaurants reviewed on the Fodor's site, and can add a few comments: Probably the most "kid-friendly" of the restaurants listed is Johnny Harris', and it's definitely a setting for a memorable meal: Octagonal dining room, live music and/or dancing on Saturday nights, and I've never had poor food or service there. From the Marriott, it's only about 2 miles via expressway, with plenty of parking. They're known primarily for their BBQ and steaks, but the seafood is typically fresh and well-prepared. Elizabeth on 37th is (again, in my experience) always good, but I'm not sure whether I'd take my own 8-year-old there for dinner, lest he disturb others who are enjoying an "occasion" meal. Parking can be a problem, and it's not located in a neighborhood where I'd want to trek with small children. Personally, I love both Georges' and the North Beach Grill (both owned by the Georges -- two guys named George, so the apostrophe isn't misplaced!) However, they're a pretty far piece from the Riverfront, out on Tybee Island... NBG is a total dive with great food, but not necessarily the spot for a celebratory meal with the family. Georges' is more formal, but tends to get pretty crowded: Two boys who have spent the day in the car might not enjoy being cooped up! Most of the other restaurants listed by Fodor's aren't really known for their seafood. Bistro Savannah seems to be well-reviewed, but I've only eated brunches there (and heartily recommend!) Another spot, not listed by Fodor's, that might meet all of the travellers' requirements: The Aquastar at the Savannah Westin. From the Marriott, one can take a short walk down the waterfront and then take a water taxi ride across the river to the Westin. The views from the restaurant are amazing, and the restaurant has received glowing reviews from everyone I've spoken to. For more restaurants and reviews, here's a link to the Savannah Morning News restaurant guide, with linked reviews. Mind you, some of the reviews are out-of-date (restaurants closed since review.) Cucina offers the best advice, though: contact the concierge for the most up-to-date information on what's open/closed/requires reservations/etc.
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