hannnah

Um, sorry, but the Colonel, while he was from Indiana, developed his famous chicken recipe at his service station in Corbin, Kentucky. Hence the name. The corporate HQ is still in Louisville. While Colonel Harland may have been a master of advertising, there's obviously a Colonel Somebody Else in Seattle who's feeding y'all a line. You can read the full story here.

Ditto. If it was a choice between the Diet Coke with Lime and regular DC, I'd definitely pick the lime version, but if there was regular Coke available it'd be the first choice.

Yeah - wonder if they could move the little green dude in the post icons () into the "clickable smilies" column?

Gotta be Ribena. And yes, it's vile. My sympathies on your back trouble - I've got a herniated disk that's in various stages of "ow." If you don't have one, those dorm-room pillow things with arms are good for propping up on - when it's not comfortable to lean straight back they work sideways too.

One of these days, we plan to do a twofer-trip. It will involve good seats for the Sears Point/Infineon race, and a lunch or dinner at a little place about 20mi. down the road from the track called the French Laundry. There might not be a lot of folks doing both, but I'd be willing to bet the cost of dinner we won't be the only ones. The demographic ain't what it used to be.

Ok, apparently they're not identical, but they're pretty close. And while it's been some time since I last had either, I specifically remember them tasting exactly the same. Potted meat (Armour): Mechanically Separated Chicken, Beef Tripe, Partially Defatted Cooked Beef Fatty Tissue, Beef Hearts, Water, Partially Defatted Cooked Pork Fatty Tissue, Salt, Less than 2 percent: Mustard, Natural Flavorings, Dried Garlic, Vinegar, Dextrose, Sodium Erythorbate, Sodium Nitrite. Vienna sausages (Armour): Mechanically Separated Chicken, Water, Beef, Pork, Salt, Corn Syrup, Less than 2%: Mustard, Spices, Natural Flavorings, Dried Garlic, Sodium Nitrite. I've always been puzzled by "partially defatted cooked (insert meat here) fatty tissue." Is this the stuff that's left *after* it's rendered for lard?

Ever hear the phrase "Don't ask the question if you don't want to know the answer"? Potted meat used to be my favorite label-reading experience. It's a total gross out. I don't know why they're honest about what goes into it, but they are. It's worse, even, than vienna sausages. Hang on. I thought potted meat was the same thing as vienna sausages in a different form - they certainly taste identical.

Yeah, the post-race dance of powerade/gatorade/coke/pepsi, added to the dance of which hat they're supposed to be wearing when they come out of the car, makes for amusing watching, and lots of PR folk bumping into each other at the end of the race. Then there are the races which are sponsored by food products, which brings yet another iteration of things-on-top-of-the-car. For instance, at the Pop Secret 400, they use popcorn as confetti. Combine that with the flying beer/champagne/soda/sports drink, and all that popcorn turns into pop-crete. The 2002 race winner commented recently that he still has the car he won in, and in over a year they've never been able to get all the popcorn off. And at this year's Tropicana 400, someone caught the winner upside the head with an orange.

I'm in Virginia, where at least one of the cookie bakeries is located. I've noticed that some troops have the Aloha Chips and some don't, which probably means that only one of the bakeries does them. Fortunately the troop that takes over the grocery store entrance has them. It's a little early here for the cookies - I generally see the forms floating around at work in mid-February, and the troops show up at the grocery stores a couple of weeks later. I seem to remember them not allowing sales like that when I was a Girl Scout, but it's certainly more convenient than having to go door-to-door or hit up relatives and parents' co-workers.

Oh dear. I hope this doesn't mean they've gotten rid of the Aloha Chips (white chocolate chip macadamia nut). They're even more evil and crack-filled than the Samoas.

Well, Corporate recognizes both of them: "Inevitably, the soda's popularity led to a demand for it to be enjoyed in new ways. In 1894, a Mississippi businessman named Joseph Biedenham became the first to put the drink in bottles. He sent 12 of them to Candler, who responded without enthusiasm. Despite being a brilliant and innovative businessman, he didn't realize then that the heart of Coca-Cola would be with portable, bottled beverages customers could take anywhere. He still didn't realize it five years later, when, in 1899, two Chattanooga lawyers, Benjamin F. Thomas and Joseph B. Whitehead, secured exclusive rights from him to bottle and sell the beverage - for the sum of one dollar." (from http://heritage.coca-cola.com/The_Story_of_Coca-Cola.pdf) So, Biedenham was the first to bottle it, but it sounds like he didn't build a dedicated bottling plant - and as every Chattanooga-area schoolchild knows from the Coca-Cola plant tour, Chattanooga's was the first bottling plant. Personally, I've always thought Moon Pies were nasty - Little Debbies are much better.

The story's online here. Good archives.

Neither. But it does mean you have strong teeth. I've noticed some of the holier-than-thou-ness on some of the threads, but it's just one of those things. Food's a subject that brings that "the way I do it is right and if you don't do it that way you're a godless heathen" out in people. Regionality is another - people are always going to be passionate about where they're from. And some people just come across as condescending no matter what they're talking about. Add to that the tendency that comes out in any electronic medium, be it discussion forum, mailing list or newsgroup, for minor criticisms to be perceived as bigger than they really are. No real solution to that either, until there's a better option for communicating the non-verbal part of the discussion than . Despite all that, people on eGullet seem to be good about calming themselves down, or at least good about responding to the occasional "OK, people, please be reasonable" - it's nowhere near as civilized on other electronic forums. I may not agree with various people on various things, but that's all part of the fun. As long as the tone stays civil it'll work out eventually.

Fio's has been gone for a while now - last time I was up that way it had been replaced by a South American restaurant of some sort. I used to live in that building, and it was awfully nice to be able to pop down to Fio's on a cold evening. I was addicted to their garlic bread.

As close as it is to us, we'll definitely be there opening day.

Well, the first time round it has a fresh-churned ice cream texture, then after it's in the freezer for a while it freezes solid and you sort of have to chip it out of the bowl in chunks. It's still very good at that stage though.

Haven't tried the commercial stuff, but there's certainly some excellent production going on in the *ahem* traditional sense. We have some stuff through a friend of a friend of a friend that's copper-pot produced and cask-aged, and I'd put it up against any of the commercial small-batch bourbons that are on the market now. None of that raw-corn taste. It's always amusing to take a look at the number of Mason jars that have been confiscated at Knoxville airport security - clearly there are plenty of folks with sources.

Ok, we *finally* made it to Zaytinya last night - it's nicely convenient to the new E Street Theater as well as all the MCI stuff. And we'll definitely be going back - everything we had was good, and we still have about 2/3 of the menu to get through! Highlights: The hunkar begendi is as good as everyone said it was - and I don't even like eggplant. I didn't really pick up on the cheese, but I certainly could taste the nutmeg. And the pita bread was good for making sure we got every last bit of it. One of the specials was crab spanakopita. It's pretty unusual to come across spanakopita where there's still some texture to the spinach - more like a nice soft saute than the usual boiled-until-dead version. And the crab was a worthy addition. We did one random selection from the menu ("close your eyes and point") and ended up with braised rabbit and lentils. I'd definitely get it again, as much for the lentils as the rabbit. The meat was falling off the bone, and the lentils were wonderfully savory. For dessert, we got the ravani and the olive oil ice cream. A couple of questions - are there any pomegranate seeds in the ravani? I didn't think there were, but Dave swore he got a couple. The fleur de sel in the cake was a particularly nice touch, though. Also, is there any extra citrus in the olive oil ice cream? There was a nice lemony undertone which could have been extra citrus or could just have been the olive oil itself. I'm already wondering how difficult it would be to pop down there for lunch on a regular basis - do they do takeout?

Well, there are enough people who were tired of waiting for it to snow enough for snow cream in East Tennessee that Mayfield brought out commercially produced snow cream this past fall. It's pretty good - a little sweeter than I'd make it myself, but entirely acceptable. I'd love to know how they get the texture right - it wasn't quite like fresh, but I suspect if you left it out to thaw for a few minutes it'd be pretty close. I may have to stop by the factory next time we're home and ask. I also wish they sold it up here. We live next to the airport, and there's no such thing as clean snow.

The fried okra will get a little squishy if the oil's not hot enough when you start frying, but that's oil-squish, not slime-squish. Once it's done the slime goes away. Super-high heat isn't necessary - I usually shoot for 350-375 on the oil. It'll also keep warm nicely on a cookie sheet in the oven once it's fried.

Sliced into rounds, breaded in a light milk/flour/egg batter and fried - no cornmeal in the breading, that just makes it gritty. The flour batter makes them turn out like tempura - much nicer, and less likely to turn into little hard inedible knots.

Er, no, he'd be dressed as a bull, unless he'd had a horrible accident at some point. Steers have been castrated.

Ammonites would have trouble collecting eggs, vegetarian or otherwise. Amish would probably have better luck.

I don't know what this is. Sounds ghastly. Please elabourate? Here it is... According to them, the orange color is supposed to be "attractive." Who knew?

It's not just my mom, it's my whole family. My grandmother's culinary highlight is the thinnest pork chops available, slathered in that fluorescent orange seasoned salt and broiled until petrified. The seasoned salt gives them this lovely 50s-horror-movie glow, and you could break a tooth on them. She also did the La Choy Chow Mein thing - although, ironically, I still have a soft spot for the fried-rice-in-a-can and the crunchy chow mein noodles, just not the rest of it. My mom is constitutionally incapable of adding any seasoning other than salt to any dish for any reason. Her claim is that spices and pepper are "painful," and tomatoes and onions make her sick, and so on and so forth. So, she comes up with "casseroles" like browned, undrained ground beef combined with boiled-until-dead Minute Rice and some kind of vegetable, usually broccoli. The second it gets the least bit cold, it congeals into a grease-laden, tasteless mass - doesn't matter what you put in it or on it, it tastes like congealed grease. Then there was my great-aunt - to be fair, her older sister was the one who helped out in the kitchen while she watched after the younger children, so she never learned to cook. The problem was, she would go shopping and buy far too much, then freeze it to keep it all fresh and thaw it out next time someone came over. This included milk, fruit, margarine, and vegetables. Few things taste worse than thawed skim milk or thawed margarine. When I was about four, she had everyone over for a family dinner. I don't remember what else was served, but she had baked potatoes. Unfortunately, they'd been frozen, then thawed, then baked. When you cut into them, they were black all the way through. I think we went out for dinner after that. I learned to cook as soon as I was old enough to see over my great-aunt's stove, purely in self-defense. After that, Mom let me do a fair amount of cooking. My grandmother - well, she still hasn't ever let me near the stove, but she did share the *good* family recipes.