Potlikker

four basics for your first Juneteenth celebration

Two days until Juneteenth rolls around: June 19. If you're new to celebrating it, then there's cause for jubilation as it commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. So, it used to be more "functional" in that black leaders and good Samaritans instructed newly freed slaves about their rights and entitlements as citizens. Believe it or not, it's roots are in Texas and as they scattered to other states it evolved into different observances in different communities with food, singing, games, parades, and all kinds of events. 

image by Callie Richmond
from http://www.texastribune.org/texas-state-agencies/state-preservation-board/juneteenth-monument-capitol/

So if your community doesn't have it's own festival, you can DYI and read the Emancipation Proclamation aloud, sing "We Shall Overcome" & "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," recite Maya Angelous's poems, celebrate with family reunions, trace your ancestry, get wild with rodeos, and other events as well.

Food and eating are my focal points of any celebration and as you might have guessed, Juneteenth has several particular to its observance. 

Barbecue features prominently and is recognized by culinary scholars as originating from slave cuisine. The Juneteenth celebrations in Manhattan, Kansas function as a culinary tourist event given the popularity and reputation of pitmasters producing fare for the jubilation. And street vendors aka food trucks are popular at Juneteenth celebrations in Illinois according to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food & Drink in America (1st ed). Nearly a decade ago a celebration in Hartford, CT offered a Marcus Garvey salad, named so because it mixed red, green, and black beans mirroring the colors of the nationalist flag. 

Red is symbolic, but I can't find how or why; I've searched the library databases. Anyone know? Care to guess? A pop o'er to Wikipedia reveals the color's symbolism as: danger, sacrifice, passion, fire, beauty, blood, anger...and happiness in some cultures. The entry didn't list strength. So red foods and drinks are de rigueur. Strawberry soda pop, red velvet cake, red beans and rice, strawberry pie, etc. 

So, I'm breaking it down: Your Juneteenth menu, four basics, and then add a few extras--collard greens, skillet cornbread, cole slaw, maybe some mac n cheese?-- thus making it nutritionally sound and you'll be all set. 

• Barbeque
• Red Beans
• Red Velvet Cake
• Strawberry Soda pop 

You're all set for Juneteenth.

For more information, and, especially to find a Juneteenth celebration happening near you, visit Juneteenth Worldwide Celebration. Or check your local newspaper or tabloid. I found a few yummy looking recipes at Cinnamon Hearts, so you could visit there for smothered chicken, red beans, and a sweet potato custard recipe, among others. Actually you may have better luck searching twitter. Maybe next year there will be a Juneteenth celebration in my community. I'd like to help make that happen. And someday perhaps there will be a national Juneteenth holiday. 

gone with a handsomer man (or assault by peaches)

It's rare that I review fiction on this blog, but not unprecedented. The deeper I read into Michael Lee West's latest book Gone with a Handsomer Man, I realized most of it centered around food and that not reviewing it here would be a shame.

Teeny moved to Charleston to live in sin with a real estate developer who swooped her off her Aunt's peach farm where Teeny lived after her Mother abandoned her at age eight. He's a third with a long name, but goes by Bing, like the cherries. Teeny, short for Christina, is a self-taught cook and almost every page overflows with a food-reference. Yummy!

Readers easily fall in love with Teeny's downhome ways, southern colloquialisms, and easy grammar, which Bing corrects. Obviously, he's a character whose flaws are many and readers wonder what attracted Teeny to him. He signs her up for a cake baking and decorating class so that she can make their wedding cake, just ten weeks away. He asks for a cake decorated like an eighteen-hole golf course.

When the class is cancelled she returns to the McMansion they share and finds Bing playing badminton in the buff with two other nekkid women. She climbs a peach tree and pelts the three with peaches until they call the police, who remove her and take her to jail. Teeny is charged with assault and spends time in jail--the food there isn't so bad, Teeny thinks-- until Bing's step-mother Dora, bails her out and drops Teeny off at Bing's home in the historic district, the Spencer-Jackson House. She's on probation, and cannot leave South Carolina to return to her Aunt's farm which is in Georgia. And she can't live with Bin, who has a restraining order against her.

Her family's cookbook, the Templeton Family Receipts & Whatnot appears as a comforting, reoccurring character. It was a working book that her mother and aunts wrote in whenever they were peeved. Instead of killing or speaking their mind to someone, they took their anger out by concocting lethal recipes. This let their anger cool. Teeny concocts similar recipes and they're interspersed throughout the book.

In musing how cooking is essential to her identity she reveals:

I love the way the dough sticks to my fingers. I love watching the butter run down the sides of the warm bread. I like taking something whole, like an onion, mincing it into tiny pieces and slipping it into a garlicky risotto. I don't even mind the tears.

Part comedy and part tragedy, this novel engages the reader with Teeny's pluck and charm. Seeing her persevere and win against the odds as they mount against her keeps the story's pace moving along. She races against the clock as a ghost baker for the Picky Palate stretch her skills as she's asked to bake two dozen red velvet cakes with twenty-four hours notice. And then another dozen more red velvet cakes. And then six Italian cream cakes.

West's storytelling and and plot turns add spice to Teeny's circumstances and fill in gaps in her back-story that make readers root for her to find true love, find a job cooking, and clear her name. Most major characters are complex and quirky, though a few minor ones could be better fleshed out. This was a quick read, should please West fans immensely. This is an excellent pick for summer reading by poolside or beachside or if you're spending time in an airport or traveling via rail. Another plot twist in the last paragraph makes me think that West may continue Teeny's story in a follow up to Gone with a Handsomer Man.

 

jane snow cooks (and you can too!)

It's barely snowing this morning. The first we've had this season. Temperatures were way warm through October and November. I'm amazed when parents let their children wear shorts to the grocery store--or anywhere--on Thanksgiving Day. It's not like we live in California, Hawaii, or Florida, this is the Mountain South, people!

How appropriate then that I'm looking at Jane Snow Cooks: Spirited Recipes & Stories. The bulk of the recipes appeared in her column in the Akron Beacon Journal between 1982 and 2006. So what is a cookbook about recipes from Akron doing on a southern food blog? 

Simple. My husband is a first-generation southerner. His parents are from Canton, Ohio, but he was born here. We visit the Buckeye state once, sometimes twice a year, if we're lucky. I'm fond of his Cantonese family. Some of their ideas about food are strange, but they mean well. Basically, they like what they know. And that's about it.

What I like about Snow's approach to her column is that she made the recipes accessible to everyone. These aren't fancy schmancy dishes that take hours of prep or call for exotic ingredients that two-thirds of the US hasn't heard of. I wish there were more stories like the one that she shared in her introduction. She wrote:

Workers at a Northeast Ohio auto factory once staged a month-long protest when the couldn't get the Akron Beacon Journal's food section delivered at work. "A lot of us are bachelors, a protester told me by phone. We need your recipes! Other recipes are too complicated."

She kept that audience in mind with every recipe she developed and included in her column. Most are normal sorts of items you'd expect from a community cookbooks. But Red Velvet Cake in Akron? I swear. It's in the first chapter, "Local Favorites." Snow wrote that the cake origins is rumored to be in the South. Yet, many restaurants in Northeast Ohio feature the dessert on their menus. 

Who knew? Not I. I've never had RVC in Ohio. Heck, I introduced Ian's family to cannoli. They had no idea. And Canton is filled with descendants of Italian immigrants. Granted, his family--both sides in fact--are almost the same mix as mine, Irish and German. Maybe that explains it.

Every year there's a new deep-fried thing. Deep fried Twinkies, deep fried Oreos, deep fried Snickers. You get the idea. We encounter them at the Appalachian Fair. I admit that deep fried holds great appeal to me, generally. As a sauerkraut lover, you bet I'd try the sauerkraut balls featured on page 39. It's a mixture of sauerkraut and ground ham and flour that's thrown into a vat of oil and fried. Rather reminiscent of sausage balls except for the cheese and method of cooking.

I had to learn of this delicacy from a book. This is what I mean when I say that his family is strange about food. They have their favorite restaurants, and that's it. They're otherwise unadventurous, and usually gravitate toward the Amish fare popular with tourists, or old favorite diner-type joints that they recall from their childhood. That isn't bad, I love a good diner. But we always dine at the same place each trip north.

Sauerkraut balls are very popular. Snow wrote that they're on the menu of every joint in Akron, from the "ritziest to the humblest." In fact, the dish was voted the city's official food by Journal readers in 1996. 

The variety of recipes in Jane Snow Cooks is amazing. There are Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Persian, Vietnamese, Moroccan, Indonesian, French, Cuban, Indian, Cajun, and Italian dishes. This is probably the best all purpose cookbook I've encountered. No doubt about it, the book would make a perfect gift for just about anyone, but I'm thinking of all the bachelors and bachelorettes I know who would eat well from this book all year long.

a smidge of Austin

On the airplane from Asheville to Atlanta--the first leg of my trip to Texas two weeks ago-- the flight attendant asked if I'd like some crickets. It was well after the last round of cleaning up and she said "Is there anything else I can get you? Some crickets, maybe?" I was ready with my automatic "No, thank you" and answered before the cricket part registered. But then I revised and added, "Well, if they're on the menu..."

That Laura. She was seated near the flight attendant and they chatted a bit. Somehow eating unusual food items came up, maybe a vending machine in a large international airport, and Laura told her that "my friend up there"--because somehow we were separated despite having booked and selected our seats simultaneously via phone and Internet--eats crickets.

When our flight attendant passed by again, I stopped and asked her what the most unusual food she'd eaten was. Eventually she answered alligator. She wasn't so adventurous when it came to eating different food. Once she was in rural Japan and could not eat what was for dinner because it was still alive.

After a two or three hour delay we finally left Atlanta and arrived in Austin. The first order of business was finding food. I'd asked Pamela what to do in Austin, and she recommended the yarn store, which has the cupcake truck next door. That was about all I knew for food.

The Delta InFlight magazine featured a photo of the Magnolia Cafe's "Sorry, we're open," sign. After seeing that, Laura remembered seeing something about it on a show on the food network. She watches way more TV than I.

It was graduation day in Austin so we spotted a few ladies in linen sheaths and heels leaving this decidedly alternative cafe; we ate at the Congress Ave. location. Most of the waitstaff were tattooed. A fellow eater bobbed his purple mohawk. Magnolia Cafe serves breakfast 24 hours, and is open 24 hours, too. While waiting for a table I spotted their tea & dessert board: Peanut Butter Pie. I was off the diet while in Texas, just so you know.

We were seated within 20 minutes and got down to ordering. Laura's shrimp quesadillas are above. The photo I took of my fish tacos is not so good. We shared bites of each other's food. I loved her guacamole and she tucked into my salsa. The peanut butter pie there was unreal. Its consistency was unlike anything I'd ever had. The flavor was robust. But the filling was more peanut buttery than cream cheese, if that makes sense. 

 

Seriously, a portable Airstream cupcake truck? It's the best. And a darling idea, really. I told Laura that we should buy an Airstream and take up cupcake making in East Tennessee; we could travel all over the southeast appearing at festivals and the like.

Yummy cupcakes, Hey Cupcake!  had red velvet, and after paying the guy--no sales tax on food in Austin or Texas or what?-- he asked if I was gonna take his picture. So I did. It's the cupcake guy. He was foxy, too. Could give Johnny Knoxville a run for his money. Their T-shirts were fabulous, too. The back read "Who you callin cupcake?"

adventures in cupcakery

While in Nashville a few days ago Laura and I spied Gigi's Cupcakes. We remembered it's location on our way to a yarn store and Ham & Goodys. The Ham & Goodys was no more. Laura said they had awesome lemon cookies, and I'm always up for a cookie caper. Didn't find Ham & Goody's, but got their phone number from the yellow pages at the yarn store and called and learned that the Nashville location closed down. They only do catering now. Drat.

Note Miss Princess cupcake at far right bottom of case

Back to Gigi's. We stopped, hopped out, walked inside, and my eyes lit up. Great, gorgeous cupcakes in their cases. My yen for red velvet cupcakes was not satisfied. It was Friday. They serve Scarlet's Velvet several days a week, including Thursday and Saturday, but not Friday.

We bought four cupcakes each, took them out to the car, and sat and ate them there. I chose the Breast Cancer Awareness Wedding cupcake, Carrot Cake cupcake, Peanut Butter Cup cupcake, and Midnight Magic Chocolate Chip cupcake. Wedding Cupcake was scrumptious, but way too much icing. Carrot Cake was good. I've had worse and better, but theirs is a solid carrot cake recipe that will surely please any carrotcake lover. Peanut Butter Cup was disappointing. Only the icing was peanut flavored; the cake was chocolate. And Midnight Magic was good, if you like chocolate; it's Devil's Food, which I don't eat often enough. Gigi's is the place to go if you love icing, and theirs is perfection. As we sat we watched customers come and go and we commented on the cadre of police officers that entered Gigi's.

Breast Cancer Awareness Wedding Cake from Gigi's

After scarfing down my cupcake, Laura still had half of hers remaining, but I AM eating for two, I returned inside to grab a few napkins for your sticky fingers. One of the police officers guarded the napkin dispenser so I struck up a conversation with him. I asked what his favorite flavor was.

He said, "Miss Princess." With a straight face. Then he went on to tell me how strawberries were his weakness. He, and his fellow officers, always come in on Friday, and he's true to Miss Princess, which is white cake with fresh strawberries and butter cream frosting topped with pink sugar crystals.

And that is the most awesome thing I heard while in Nashville. Well, spoken, that is. The previous night's attendance at the IBMA awards was really something to hear, too.

Laura and I raced against time to return home in time for the baby shower she co-hosted for me later Friday night. I asked, long ago, that she make red velvet cupcakes for my shower, and decorate them like sheep. I spotted sheepy cupcakes at Cupcakes Take the Cake. Decorating them is fairly simple. We called them bloody sheep cupcakes and tried to figure out how to insert a gooey red cream into the center to make it a truly bloody experience.

The clerk at Gigi's mentioned two cupcake shops in Knoxville after we told her how cupcakeless we were in the Tri-Cities. With that in mind, we sought out red velvet cupcakes for the shower, as Laura likely wouldn't have time to mix, bake, ice, and decorate cupcakes for our event later that evening.

Oh, the power of technology. We didn't have a laptop, but I texted three friends who live in Knoxville, one of whom, I was sure would know where the cupcake shops were in town. All three responded with information, and one called and read off addresses and phone numbers to me, and that's how we learned there is a Ham & Goodys in Knoxville. I called them about lemon cookies, and they had some, and closed at 5pm, but we had to skip the lemon cookies and focus on red velvet cupcakes.

Called Magpies to ask if they have RVC cupcakes, and they did. I reserved a dozen and asked for directions to their shop. Kellie's text response indicated they were located in Old City, and I knew getting there was a snap from I-40, but there's a mess of construction and most all traffic is re-routed via I-275.

Arrived at Magpies and learned it was a bakery, not just a cupcake shop. Their interior was delightful, and there were mini cupcake samples that we indulged in, as well. The dozen cupcakes I reserved were actually mini cupcakes. Laura bought them, then saw regular sized red velvet cupcakes and bought a dozen of those as well. I inherited the minis.

The minis are perfect, really. Two bites. That's all. And the amount of icing on Magpie's cupcakes is just right, also. Nowhere near as overwhelming as Gigi's.

Then we hopped back into the car, re-joined the interstate and arrived home shortly past 5 pm. My shower began at 7pm, which gave Laura just enough time to turn a RVC cupcake into a bloody sheep cupcake.

The other two cupcake shops in Knoxville that we didn't explore are: Cities Cupcakes and The Cupcakery.

chewy ginger cookies

Much like her cousin (first once removed) Paula Deen, Johnnie Gabriel got her start selling her goods from home. But hers were desserts, and if you recall from the Deen biography, Paula was the sandwich lady.

I'm hooked on southern cooking. It can't be beat. Don't you love what you grew up eating best of all? Sure, I like a variety of cuisine, but southern style is my standard approach to anything. Fry it. Or cook it with butter. And throw some sugar in there, too.

When I saw this new southern cookbook was nearing publication, I knew I had to have it. However, aren't all those recipes covered in other southern cookbooks? Probably. Gabriel's book features standards like cheese straws, toasted pecans, she-crab soup, barbecued pork ribs, grits, greens, and fried okra. And then the desserts? The proverbial red velvet cake is there, but the photo shows her cake to be a bright cherry red, rather than the deep red, almost a velvety burgundy that I associate with authentic red velvet cake. I'll compare her recipe to others I have and see how it differs.

She features many salads, and that's something Ian was bummed about: "Why so many salads," he said after browsing through the book. I've gotten him in that habit, too. I leave new cookbooks out on our gathering table and he pages through them while waiting on something to cook. He does most of the cooking these days with me being so round and big and tired.

Besides typical salads you expect from  a southern cookbook (macaroni, tuna, chicken), she offers something called Sumi salad, which is an asian-slaw inspired concotion. Her leafy lettucy salads almost all include fresh fruit, which is nice.

Two pound cakes caught my eye immediately: Coconut Pound Cake and Peanut Butter Pound Cake. It's safe, maybe considered boring by some, but always a classic standard, and pound cake is probably my favorite cake....or is it red velvet? Naturally I couldn't wait to see the dessert section.  Again, lots of great standards. Ian noticed the lack of a peanut butter pie recipe. And that is a travesty. But what to do?

Anyway, I needed to bake cookies for an event on Saturday and thought about making my standard gingersnap cookie recipe that I've used for 15 years or more. Gabriel has a soft ginger cookie recipe that I decided to try instead.

Boy, was I glad I did that. I cannot stop eating them. Sopping them in milk, or falling-apart-hot off the cookie sheet straight from the oven. They're delicious. And soft. My gingersnaps... well, they're snappy and crisp. But these ginger cookies stay chewy and moist.

Perhaps the difference is butter. My gingersnap recipe calls for shortening. And Gabriel's calls for either. Butter is always better, right? That's what I did. The cooking time may have something to do with it also, just 10 minutes in the oven. Whereas, if memory serves, my gingersnaps remain in there about 15 minutes or so.

As pleased as I am with the success of my soft ginger cookies, you can bet that I'll try more of her recipes.

no eating like a rock star

Come conference time I don't always eat as well as I should. And my days in D.C. proved to me that I should make a concerted effort to fuel my body well for all the walking and sweating I did by eating more than one meal a day. I think I lost 2-3 pounds in those five days. From not eating and also from sweating like a mother.

Oh now, I nibbled my cracklin oat bran each day for breakfast; that I rarely travel without. But my few days in D.C. were almost void of good, satisfying eating. I get so consumed with going and doing and seeing that I put off feeding myself until it is too late. I walk past restaurants, but feel pressed for time and don't stop to eat. And no way am I picking up something quick from McDonald's while I'm in D.C., or anywhere for that matter.

Fry bread

Tried Fry Bread at the National Museum of the American Indian. Could get it with honey and cinnamon, but I tried it plain, and it was so good. There was a sweetness to the bread without the extras. Should have bought the fry bread mix they sold in the museum store, but I don't own a deep fryer, and I'm sure that is key to excellent fry bread. And the buffalo cheeseburger I had was nothing new. But still fit the bill when I needed something in my stomach.

Annie Lue's Cake, 2002  Cedric Smith

Saw a darling RVC painting at the convention center. It's by Cedric Smith. I like his style. And RVC, what else could be such a perfect subject for a painting?

Ethiopian platter

Amy and I tried Ethiopian food. It was my idea. We were both uncomfortable at the table. It was very low and our chairs quite high. I leaned over on my elbows a good part of the time. But mostly, it was hard on my back. Sitting in the floor, Moroccan-style, was preferable to that.

We had our favorites on the platter we shared, but we never quite knew what they were.  The beige thing beneath the food is injera, a bread. Our waitress brought us several rolled up on a plate. I assumed that we should break off pieces and use those to pick up bite-sized bits to eat. Later this was confirmed as I watched an adjacent couple do much the same.

The injera was the slightest bit funky. It was sort of wiggly and plastic-like, but mostly flavorless and harmless.  We had chicken, lamb, and beef, as I recall.  The white stuff at 7 or 8 o'clock was like a potato salad. And the meaty clump in the very center featured a hard boiled egg, which Amy and I both passed on.  We didn't finish the meal completely, which is rare for us. I noticed that the aforementioned couple finsihed their entire meal and then ate the injera it laid on, too.

RFK Ballpark food

Didn't try the frankfurters or burgers at the ballpark. I should have. It was another almost food-free day. Had a beer at Childe Harold after the game, and then much, much later Fiona and I got a fantastic slice of pizza in Adams-Morgan. $4 for a quarter of a huge pizza. Amazing, really.

early girl

Saturday Amy and I drove to Asheville, NC to visit the Fresh Market. It's a regular jaunt for us. We crave their gourmet stock. We by-passed that exit, as Fresh Market is on our side of Asheville, for a trip into the heart of Asheville to try Early Girl Eatery. I recommended it to Rachael a few weeks ago without having eaten there. Also told her not to miss Salsa's or Tupelo Honey, but I'm not sure where she ate, exactly.

We decided to go there in the car, on the way. I couldn't recall where it was, possibly on Wall Street. Called Ian and he looked it up online. Eight Wall Street. But, he told us they only serve brunch on the weekend. That had to do.

Amy chose the Cobb Salad. It's one of my favorite menu items, too. It looked great.

I went with the Avocado and Sprout sandwich. Making a decision was tough. It was between that and the Vegan Tofu Scramble. But, the black eyed pea hummus on the sandwich made the decision clear. Don't like black eyed peas so much, but I'm always willing to try an old standard cooked in a new fashion.  Amy and I both love food. Love to eat, love to try new things. She's the perfect dining partner.

We ordered another entree to split, believe it or not: Spinach Potato Cakes with red tomato gravy. It was the red tomato gravy that we had to try. And it was divine. The best non-meat gravy either of us had. Everything was good. I ate half my sandwich and half the potato salad that accompanied it. Sadly the potato salad was not that great. It lacked zing. It lacked flavor. It was bland. That is the kiss of death for potato salad. The eggs that came with I ordered over-easy, but not until Amy ate hers did I remember that she doesn't like hers that way at all. When we were in Seattle she asked for her eggs cooked hard for her eggs benedict. But she was a good sport. We split the biscuit, too, and it was very good slathered with orange marmalade in our pot.

She let me choose dessert. Of course, our waitress was itching to get rid of us and handed over the bill before ever asking if we needed anything else.  I told her that we were getting dessert. There were four to choose from: red velvet cake, brown sugar pound cake, three chocolate something or other cake, and chocolate coconut cake. For me, the decision was almost automatic: red velvet cake. But, I can have RVC almost any day of the week. That Chocolate Carrot Cake was something all together different and exotic. Amy was surprised when I chose chocolate, since I am not a chocolate fan.

It was perfection. The best dessert I've eaten in ages. At least since I was in Seattle in January. It was super moist and warm. They keep their cakes under glass at Early Girl. Refrigeration, though a food saver/preserver, does horrible things to cakes and veggies and all sorts of other edibles. The cake was moist and dense and perfectly balanced: not too sweet, not too tart. The icing was cream cheese. My favorite. But, I swear there were coconut flakes mixed in, and a very curious lemon flavoring.  Then the side of whipped cream was... well, the whipping on the cake.

Much of the time I rue eating dessert. So many wasted calories for a crappy sweet thing that disappoints me terribly. But this time was different. That cake was worth every calorie.  Every. Calorie.

We were so full we needed rolling out of there, but our waitress, while efficient, was not so accommodating.  She gave me a queer look when I asked for a piece of wax paper to wrap my half-sandwich in to take home. She substituted paper napkins, instead. Yeah, I don't want to carry a bulky box around in my hand when it's much more efficient to wrap it and tuck it into my pocketbook.  EGE prides itself on local farmers, sustainable agriculture, diverse southern cooking, and healthy eating. Somehow Styrofoam seems wrong in a place espousing those values. And I don't know all the arguments for or against it, but I don't like it. I don't want to touch it. I don't want it in my house, in my landfill. But restaurants always want to pawn it off on their customers.

That perfect piece of cake got me started on a quest to find the perfect Chocolate Carrot Cake recipe. Haven't made it too far. Found a few online and most are made in Bundt pans, which is unlike the double layered type I ate. I'd rather browse indices of my favorite cookbooks. Am afraid I won't turn up a thing there, either, though. EGE offers several recipes on their website, but not THAT one.

eating the choo choo + g&t rambling

Somehow my visit to Chattanooga a few weeks back completely slipped my mind. There was good eating to be found in that city, for sure.

I was there for "business," my state library association met there. When I picked up my registration stuff, I got a great tote bag that has a mesh side pocket perfect for carrying bottled water or any other bottled drink. It was on the outside, so your papers wouldn't get damp.

Mine came with a Moon Pie; other people got Hershey's bars. Though I'm not a Moon Pie fan, I kept the treat inside the bag as an emergency snack. At conferences I don't usually eat while I'm at the conference center. Have you consumed conference center food of late? It's nothing to write home about. At conferences, I go and go and somehow forget about eating and end up at a critical point where I'm desperate for food. That's just inside the center. If I'm at a national conference and walking from hotel to hotel in a major city, I usually stop, sit, and treat myself to a fine meal. I deserve it after all the walking I do.

First night in Chattanooga my colleagues and I ate at our hotel, the Marriott. Earlier we walked down toward the Aquarium and talked about eating at Thai Smile. But neither colleague would commit because we had a late lunch at the Bass Pro Outlet place, what's it called, Islamorada Fish something? At the Sevierville exit.  I should have forced the issue. Ian said I should have told them that I was eating at the Thai place and let them go on back to the hotel, or whatever. But I try to get along. You know? When Jerry, another colleague, found us eating at the hotel he told me later that he was surprised to find me there. He knows I'm a foodie and don't normally dine at a hotel restaurant unless it's something outstanding. All that said, I had a great Angus burger.

Breakfast was at same Marriott in the convention center. I attended the Intellectual Freedom breakfast. There was no choice about the meal. It stank. Pancakes covered with cinnamon apples. That cinnamon apple flavor, probably my least favorite of any, would not come away from the pancakes. Two slices of bacon, that were okay, but cold. And greasy. Sometimes that happens with bacon. Then what else? Oh orange juice. My glass of orange juice was the best part of the meal. Yum.

Lunch that day was dicey. I waffled between getting lunch and not. There were several great choices. I'm a Mellow Mushroom fan, but didn't stop there. Also looked at a few places across the river,  Mudpie Cafe, North Shore Grille, or near the river in the case of the Back End Cafe.

In the interest of maintaining my momentum and seeing all I could see, I chose instead to get a scoop of ice cream. Clumpies is great. There were at least twenty different flavors. I sampled Pistachio and  Coconut Flake? Coconut Chip?  Had to go for the coconut, though the pistachio was a contender. There were enough flavors listed on their board to appeal to the most discerning customer. Seems like they had a Chai-flavored ice cream, too.

Is there justification for eating ice cream for lunch? Surely in this case, there was. I had a crappy breakfast, of which I finished less than half. I walked several miles from downtown to UTC and  then across the Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge. It was warm and sunny. I got slightly sweaty. I burned enough calories with my walking tour of the city and thus an ice cream lunch was a perfect treat. Clumpies is a definite stop on my next trip through the Choo Choo. Strolling back across the Walnut Pedestrian Bridge while licking a cone of Clumpies ice cream is an essential Chattanooga experience. The breeze buffeting the river  kept my hair out of my ice cream at all the critical moments.

Dinner was excellent. Jerry, my two roomies, and I ate at 212 Market.  Four or five years ago when TLA was last in Chattanooga,  three colleagues and I set out to find 212 Market because we'd been told it was the best downtown restaurant. We never found it, never knew it's exact name, I guess, just that it had a number in it's name, and ended up at Mellow Mushroom, which suited me fine. We arrived a few minutes early for our reservation and sniffed around the dessert tray adjacent to the hostesses desk. And while in Chattanooga on this trip three or four librarians, independent of one another, sang the praises of 212 Market.

The bar makes excellent gin and tonics; my standard drink of choice, and the first illegally had mixed drink I ordered (and they served underaged me) in public. I was in Baltimore on a school (college) trip and one of my acquaintances told me I should order a G & T because it tasted like a tree, and I was a bit of a tree hugger then, so it sounded like perfection to me. There are so many reasons to love Baltimore, but my first gin and tonic combined with being allowed to walk around a Harbor-side shopping area with your beer in a go-cup endeared me to the city where my mother was born. That and crabcakes to die for.

Probably one of the best ones I've had in a long time. I didn't feel slighted on the amount of gin in my glass. I prefer Beefeater, if you must know.  Several years ago in Philadelphia, Marie and I sat in our hotel bar, while other non-librarians watched the Super Bowl, and we taste tested between Beefeater and Tanqueray. I love the Tanqueray bottle and have been a bit of a gin snob, but we both preferred the taste of Beefeater. Maybe the bar didn't have Bombay Sapphire. And Hendricks, my new favorite gin? Doubt it was on the market at that point, or introduced to my region at that time (can't find the est. date on their website).

Appetizers? Yes, please. Jerry, Amy, and I ordered appetizers to share. Jerry got the fried green tomatoes (Bulgarian sheep's cheese, Dueling sauces, and pickled pink onions), I got the three cheese plate (dutch gouda, Tn chevre, Spanish machengo and candied garlic), and Amy got the Mediterranean trio featuring pita, tahini, hummus, artichoke hearts, and an olives. Everything was delicious. Divine. Yummmmmmmmy.

Jerry and I ordered the seafood bisque quite without knowing that 212 Market is famous for it. Our waitress said that the seafood bisque has won some kind of city-wide food contest several years running. It was exquisite. I've never had seafood bisque quite this good. I could eat a bowl everyday. After devouring my cup of bisque, I declared to our waitress that she must reveal the ingredients. I felt sure there was wine in there, but she said sherry and something else. It's terrible how I've forgotten that now. Because I planned to replicate it, not quite exactly, but this could be an ongoing experiment in my kitchen. Several kinds of seafood including salmon, crab, shrimp, etc. Then the typical veggies. Sigh. Thinking about it gets me worked up.

Then dinner. I wanted the New Zealand lambchops, the Bison strip steak, or the Black Skillet Duck breast, but ended up going for the Mushroom ravioli. I was slightly displeased with mine. Just slightly. It was much better than anything I can order at home. The duck was my furst choice, but Jerry ordered that. I'm silly, but I don't like to order the same thing as someone else at my table.  This was mostly in the spirit of sharing.  For Jerry and Amy let me taste their dishes and I did the same with mine. Amy had the Smoked Cheddar chicken: green pepper mole, golden grits, and greens. I stayed away from the Bison steak and Lamp chops because they were two of the three most expensive entrees on the menu. I didn't want to go hog wild, you see.

Nobody had room for dessert, really, after such bounty. We decided to split two desserts amongst ourselves. I would have chosen the bread pudding because I've become such a bread pudding fan of late. There was creme brule, highly overrated in my estimation. A key lime tart, that looked good, but I'm so over key lime. Surely there was an apple something. That's fairly standard on most dessert menus. And two chocolate things. Naturally they chose the two chocolate things, when I am not a fan of chocolate at all. One was a decadently rich flourless chocolate cake with chocolate icing between it's layers. It was so rich that when I put a bit in my mouth, I had an unusual reaction: My jaws tingled in shock. That doesn't happen everyday. They offered me more, but I declined. The other chocolate was a surprisingly fine German Chocolate cake. I love GCC, but most times it's way overdone and terribly sweet. Not this one. It was perfect. Neither cake nor icing was over the top sweet, so I had several bites of this sleeper of a dessert.

Jerry and I split a taxi back to the hotel, about 10 blocks. Not because we were so full that waddling home was an issue. But Jerry was battling walking pneumonia and I had blistered feet to contend with from all the walking of the past two days.

Breakfast on the day we left Chattnooga was at the Choo Choo. They have a delightful buffet. Lots of variety. Amy and I got the buffet. Their biscuits and gravy are the best I've had from a buffet. I'm not a fan of buffets. But this one, I'd return to again and again. There were several meats, potatoes, eggs, fruits, and pancake/french toast items to choose from.

The drive home was not the best. I was carsick. Somewhere, a few hours out of Chattanooga, we stopped on I-40 at one of those mega convenience-type stores. I got a hot dog, chips, and red velvet cake. I hoped that the cake was edible. You never know, really, until you unwrap the cling-film and dig in. Quite honestly this was the best, most moist, red velvet cake I've ever put in my mouth. The icing was just right, too.

conditions in car unconducive to blur-free photography

A perfect combination. I highly recommend that the next chance you get, stop in a convenience store and check the refrigerated area for products sporting the Ne-Mo's Bakery label. They're out of Escondido, Calif. Who knew they could make such delectable RVC in California? The carrot cake tempted me, too. And somehow I didn't see a banana cake square at my store, but they offered plenty of chocolate.

By national sales volume, the carrot cake square is their best seller, with banana second, and chocolate third. Cannot believe why RVC doesn't make the list. I'd say that folks outside the south don't stock the cake because they're not familiar with it. Poor RVC. When will that cake get a fair shake?

red velvet on the brain

I turned out a semi-successful red velvet cupcake this weekend. Knitted it all myself using a pattern from One Skein: 30 Quick Projects to Knit  and Crochet.  It's a Christmas tree ornament. Now for the real thing... I'm working up to it.