KatieLoeb

There's presently a giant can of fruit cocktail in my freezer. I've had this idea for some time that I can make "Trailer Park Ambrosia Sorbet", by whirling the frozen fruit cocktail in the food processor and stirring in more fruit cocktail, mini marshmallows, flaked coconut, a big dollop of Cool Whip and a tiny bit of vodka so it will retain a good texture. I need to make more room in the freezer to refreeze it since I don't have an ice cream maker, so I'll report back when I finally do this.

Oh my yes!!! Stop at the roadside stands and be awed by the gorgeous produce. Many years ago I went to the Long's Park Art and Craft Show in Lancaster with my mom and we meandered back along some of the back roads just to see the farms and see a little country. We stopped and bought some canteloupes at a roadside stand. They remain, to this day, the most gloriously sweet and fragrant melons I have ever tasted in my life. The car smelled of those melons for three days after the trip. My mom wanted to turn around and go back the next day and buy more, but we realized it was just kismet, and we'd never find that stand again. But the memory of those melons will live on as a shared foodie moment with my mom.

Bourbon, peach schnapps and Ginger ale. Yup - that'll work. And it's easy. Might be best to use some really "hot" bourbon like so the peach schnapps doesn't make a too sweet end result. Or perhaps add a splash of peach nectar to the mix. Or both.

That's valid.

Is Wonderland still on the OC boardwalk (with its frozen chocolate-covered bananas)? That's where I had my first kiss. ← Hmmm. Not sure. We weren't really scoping for frozen bananas so I didn't notice. There's still far more funnel cakes, salt water taffy, fudge and hot dogs than you could possibly try in an entire summer though. My favorite stand that I saw (but unfortunately didn't have time to try) was a place called Brain Freeze. They specialized in frozen drinks of all sorts. Sweet memory. I got my first kiss in my snowy driveway. Oh - and welcome to eGullet, Diner Girl. I'll second Curlz on having more sassy females around.

Sounds like Var-Mint Juleps to me. ← Folks - I think we have a winner for the name of the Official Pig Pickin' cocktail! Now we just have to decide what is in it besides bourbon and mint. I'll definitely work on that mint-ginger syrup over the weekend. Just so happens there's a bit of bourbon in the bar too. (Don't look so surprised y'all ) I could test drive a Var-Mint Gingery Julep when all is done and see if it's worthy. I'll report back. :salutes:

Angelo's Fairmount Tavern is an oldie but goodie. A friend of mine had always raved about this place and I went once a few years ago. Fabulous pasta, some of the best mussels I've ever tried and huge portions. Service is always efficient and charming. This place is real old school Italian, but an excellent value and somewhat under the radar unless you're a local.

Egads! How 'bout calling that the Reflux Inducer? Make sure there are shots of Maalox available too!

I've been known to darken Woody's doorstep from time to time. Great drinks, great dancing. A very dear friend of mine owns The Bike Stop and I certainly stop in there from time to time. Heck - I even worked there when they had the Quince Street Cafe next door, back in the day. And yes. I was the token straight chick on the staff. But the leather queens loved me. I remember having a customer insist that my breasts couldn't be real when I was waitressing in a low cut French Maid's costume one Halloween. I told him it was good genes, not a good doctor.

Going to be? The profusion of drinks named 'fill-in-the-blank-ito' speaks for itself. ← Hence my coining of the term "Faux-jito" above.

Thanks for the link, Sam. Those are some interesting variations. I appreciate the creativity that went into some of those concoctions. My concern, from a bar manager's perspective, would be that many of those drinks are too labor intensive and time consuming. And there's only so much stuff you can fit behind a bar. When you start needing 15 different ingredients outside of the standard items stocked behind a bar you get all sorts of issues like lack of space, waste from spillage and spoilage, etc. It becomes less cost effective. I doubt it. Although much like anything in a birdbath glass becomes the something-or-other-INI these days, I suspect anything with some mint and lime could be called a mojito variant. But if it isn't a rum based drink, it just isn't a mojito or even a faux-jito. And rum just isn't as popular a spirit as vodka or gin, so I don't think it has the same potential to become as ubiquitous.

There's a LOT that was forgotten that night! I also made a tea-infused rum shooter, IIRC. But we all remember the limoncello, the dark & stormies, and you, dear Katie!! ← OK - I feel better now. I'll see if I have time to experiment with this ginger-mint syrup idea. I think I have a bit of both in the house and a bit of time. I'll let you know what comes of that.

<sniff> How quickly they forget... How 'bout them Slippery Slopes I mixed up last time? Bourbon, ginger beer (more like ginger juice) and bitter lemon soda. It might be made easier by doing a ginger simple syrup. Actually a ginger-mint simple syrup could form the basis for some de-constructed and funked up juleps. Ginger-Mint syrup, bourbon and bitter lemon if you like tart, or Sprite if you like sweet. There's a ton of possibilities. And I need to start some limoncello going too, don't I?

Andrew: Sunday is the DDC Buffalo Farm extravaganza in Telford. Howzabout Tuesday or Wednesday next??? You name the time...

But Andrew, it's Delorenzo's of Hudson St. It's the manna of the gods. ← What he said. C'mon! One last surgical strike before you go to Rome? Pretty please? I know we could go without you, but this seems such an appropriate sendoff.

I just spent a couple of days down in the OC hanging with friends and my niece and nephew who are 6 and 8 years old respectively, and incredible little eaters. The kids love to go out to dinner as much as the adults do, so planning the evening's dining activities is always a lively discussion. We went back to an old favorite on Sunday evening, the Bubba Mac Shack in Somers Point, just over the bay from Ocean City. What a totally fun place. Great food, live blues and great drinks all served up with a smile. Lots of seafood and BBQ on the menu and we did some damage to some clams and oysters on the half shell to start, and then tried the Gator Bites, small battered and fried cubes of alligator served with a cocktail sauce. All very tasty. I saw Country Fried Steak on the menu and just had to try it, since it had been years since I'd tasted this wonderful southern delicacy. The gargantuan platter that was placed before me took my breath away: Oh. My. God. I've never seen an entire 12 oz. ribeye steak that's been battered and fried before. YIKES. Once I got over my shock the CFS was actually quite tasty. There was a considerable amount of gristly edges to the steak, but it was so huge it didn't really matter. Eventually I cried uncle and sort of scraped off the becoming soggy coating and just ate the steak with my garlic mashed potatoes. I was stuffed after that. My nephew Ruben decided he was hungry so he ordered Bubba's Road Kill Combo of ribs, pulled pork and meatloaf. This was what showed up: Another monstrous and scary platter. But again, very tasty stuff. The meatloaf was sliced a bit thin but was very well seasoned. Ribs were good and the pulled pork might have been the best of the lot. The Bubba Mac Blues Band was live that night and we had a blast watching several older couples tear up the dance floor and swing dance the night away. Great place that's great to bring the kids. There is an extensive kids menu, but of course these sweet babies will only order steak and BBQ off the grown up menu. Lunch on the OC boardwalk yielded a pleasant surprise in Hula Grill. A recent mention by Craig Laban in the Philadelphia Inquirer had brought this gem to my attention. Really great fresh seafood, chicken and burgers, all done up in "island style". I had a Crab Burger lunch special which basically turned out to be a crab cake with very little filler served with good tartar sauce. I asked to sub the house Pineapple salsa for my fries and got a big boat of very refreshing pineapple chunks with some peppers and cilantro thrown in for flavor. Other items ordered amongst us and sampled included a very tender marinated ahi tuna, and a huge portion of salmon teriyaki. I had my fix of Kohr Brothers Custard too. You just can't walk past this place and not stop and have one. This stuff makes you feel like a kid again. I had Strawberry/Banana twist and it was just awesome. Other combos included the standard Chocolate/Vanilla twist, Orange/Vanilla twist, Chocolate/Peanut Butter twist and Mint Chocolate Chip/Vanilla twist. YUMMY! This really is the best old fashioned custard I think I've had. I love the OC boardwalk. It's so cheesy and old fashioned. But there's something so comforting and nostalgic about it. <sigh> Wish I could be kid again and spend all day at the beach and playing in the arcade and riding the amusement rides.

Is Pegu Club open? Do we have a projected opening date? I'm overdue for a trip to the Big Apple... As much as it offends me personally to call anything in a birdbath glass a "martini", the sad truth is that calling a drink a _____-ini sells the drink. The cocktail culture is alive and well, but the vast majority of drinkers aren't sophisticated enough to understand what a real old school cocktail is all about. The hipsters and the teacup-dog-breed-in-a-handbag-that-costs-more-than-my-car-toting celebutantes who are the role models for the young drinkers of today are all about the funky drink du jour. They want to see and be seen gesticulating with a cocktail glass in their hand that is filled with a liquid of an unusual color that has the latest Windex or Pepto-Bismol colored dilution of vodka in it. Is it any wonder that when Sex and the City is setting the trends in fashion and lifestyle that Cosmopolitans suddenly skyrocketed in popularity? Unfortunately, getting the jaded hipsters to open their wallets in front of my employer's cash register these days involves a bit of smoke and mirrors when naming specialty cocktails. I know it isn't a martini, but I'm forced to call it one to get their attention. And much as I am now at peace with White Zinfandel as a "training wheels wine" for wine drinkers, I hope that a genuine interest in true cocktails will be sparked for that chick and dude on a date that are toasting with silly up drinks. Hopefully the creativity that I'm allowed as a Beverage Manager makes their toast (and their date) more interesting and leads them down that slippery slope toward true appreciation for a real cocktail some time in the not too distant future.

OK - those sound very tasty, particularly the peachy one! Can I just say EWWWWWWWWW to either of these? Blech! I don't think I could spit on the ground enough times to get that vile taste out of my mouth. YUCK!

i wonder if the acidity of the mojo marinate/baste has anything to do with the tenderness of the skin? quick question: in your pics that meat looked pretty much raw. is there something i'm missing, or is it just an artifact of a cameraphones crappy lens? ← It's the cameraphone lens. That's why I prefaced the pictures by saying the pictures weren't so good. However you can get an idea of the brown and crispy skin in the lower right corner of the second pic. This stuff is 'da bomb.

Damn you Katie and David. Now I'm hungry for pernil too. I'll bet there's a mess of pernil in and around the Chambersburg section of Trenton these days, too. ← My imsomnia suffering self just crawled back up from the kitchen and a small but effective pernil raid. It's really good, even reheated. David, I don't think any of us could last beyond the first stop of a Latino Crawl, if only because the requisite "Holy Trinity of Latino carbs" of beans, rice and plantains would appear on every plate and we'd be stuffed rather quickly! Rich - I don't know much about pernil in Chambersberg, especially now that Mambo's is closed, but I trust you'll be happy to do the reconnaissance mission and report back? Once you've found the new home of pernil goodness in Trenton we can have a DDC dinner there. What the heck - it's been awhile since we've closed a restaurant.

One could always purchase a dehydrator (Ronco, Emson and Magic Chef are all popular brands) and dehydrate their own sweet or tart fresh cherries, and then rehydrate them in the liquor or juice of their own choosing. Actually the possibilities for all manner of home made cocktail garnishes is mind boggling. Raspberries rehydrated in Chambord, cranberries rehydrated in Kurant vodka, small wedges of clementine rehydrated and used for drinks, etc.

I'm not sure I can answer specifically, but I can answer experientially. The pernil I've had (when it's well made, at least) is incredibly moist and is surprisingly not too greasy. The skin on pernil is always brown crackling crisp and entirely edible. My experiences with porchetta (even really good porchetta) has left me with the impression that it's always quite greasy, and the skin is often the meant-for-human consumption equivalent of a rawhide doggie treat. I suspect it may be that the marinade and seasonings of the pernil are better suited to the smaller cut of meat, and that the porchetta doesn't benefit from remaining whole during the roasting. I've had whole roast Puerco Asado with Cuban relatives in Miami that blew the doors off any porchetta I've ever tried, and again it was for the aforementioned reasons. Crisp completely edible skin and moist not too greasy meat. The preparations for that included cutting hundreds of little slits in the whole pigs and stuffing the slits with slivered cloves of garlic, and marinating/basting with a sour orange mojo sauce. The basting gives the meat the incredible moistness. I suspect the many cuts in the outside of the pig allow a lot of excess fat to drip off, much like pricking a duck before roasting allows a lot of fat to exit the bird. Don't get me wrong - I'll belly up to a table with a porchetta on it and do some serious damage. I just think that pernil and the Cubano style roast pork is the ne plus ultra of porky goodness - most especially because of the skin.

Since I've been trying to be diet conscious lately I've been enjoying my Secrets of Fat-Free Italian Cooking by Sandra Woodruff. I really like her books in general and the recipes are always quite flavorful. She has a whole series of the "Fat-Free" books as well as a lot of books dealing with eating well on the Glycmic scale, cooking for diabetics, etc. A search for her name in quotes on Amazon will yield a dozen or more book possibilities, many of which are available for ridiculously low prices. One of my favorite ethnic cookbooks is The Complete Book of Greek Cooking by St. Paul's Greek Orthodox Church. The Greek Church ladies finally compiled all their awesome knowledge into one book and the recipes are always a winner. I just LOVE Greek cuisine, so this book is pretty much the only one I need to find almost any dish I might want. I've also been enjoying Dale DeGroff's Craft of the Cocktail, which has been inspirational for some late night bar experiments!

I can't explain this. I just HAD to have some pernil today. The jones was donwright overwhelming. I knew I could drive up to Tierra Colombiana, but then I remembered this little house in North Philly I used to pass on my drive to the Draught Horse. It was around 2nd and Cecil B. Moore Ave. and they had the best pernil I'd had outside of Miami. So I decided to go take a drive by and see if they were still around. Much to my surprise and delight, that which used to be merely an off the back porch operation in a private home, is now a full scale little restaurant - Restaurante y Lechonera Principe. This roughly translates to "Restaurant and Porkery Principe", so I knew I was in the right place. I parked the car and started to cross the street. A nice gentleman ran over and opened the door for me and waved me in with a cheery, "Please come in! We're happy to see you!" There's a small heated deli case inside with gorgeous glossy roast chickens, the lacquered looking pernil, some heart-stoppingly good looking sausage and some side dishes like plantains, yuca and different fritters. Yeah baby! I knew what I wanted. There wasn't a whole lot of pernil left, but it was more than enough for just little 'ol me. It was taken to the back where the sounds of a large cleaver was heard chopping my pernil into bite sized pieces. I also requested a side of yuca with the mojo de ajo, basically like a very fibrous boiled potato drenched with a softened onion, garlic and olive oil sauce. Everything was weighed for me and close to a pound of pernil and a healthy side of yuca came to all of $7 and change. Here's what the Pernil looked like: And here's a shot with the yuca as well: Photos are from my cell phone camera, so they aren't perfect, but you get the idea. They were kind enough to give me a menu which includes the daily specials. Some of the highlights include Chicken legs and fried Plantains ($4.75 on Mondays)Arroz con Pollo or Costillas Guisadas (Chicken and Rice @$5.50 or Spare Rib Stew $5.50/lb. on Wednesdays) Lechon Asado (Roast Pork $6.00/lb. on Thursdays which is what I paid for mine) and Sancocho Soup (best Latino stew known to man) $3.00 small/$6.00 large on Fridays. They also apparently make Cubano sandwiches on the grill. The staff couldn't have been nicer. This place makes really good Puerto Rican style food and the prices are silly cheap. I had a bite of the crispy skin the instant I got into my car. It was crackly crisp and perfect. Just what I'd wanted. I had a small plate of pernil and yuca when I got home and had proper utensils and napkins around and it was absolutely perfect. I'll be picking on my container for the next day or so and then I'll have to go back and try something else. Restaurante y Lechonera Principe 235 W. Cecil B. Moore Avenue (between American and 3rd Streets) 215-235-9048

Ooooooh! I have Pear Cider (Woodchuck bottled) in the fridge right now! No Cassis in the bar but perhaps I'll have to remedy that. That sounds just delicious!!!