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Thursday, April 28, 2005
what I ate last: breakfast Why when I go to an airport, do I always eat something really wrong and random? I perpetually seem unable to make a rational decision in those circumstances. When leaving Alabama I'm always craving something I haven't eaten for a long time, and for some reason, the last couple of trips this has meant eating Chinese food in the airport, which is a really bad idea. Both times it has been disgusting. Why do I continue to do this to myself? and on the way back this time, I chose the worst possible sandwich from a range that contained some perfectly reasonable options. Why, oh why, did I go for the 'Cuban pork loin'? in this case, pork loin was simulated by ham+ chicken (I think) and some seasoning, which apparently was meant to evade my notice and trick my tastebuds into believing that it really was the loin of a pig. Other eating adventures...getting to eat at the River Cafe twice in London, which had me cursing my damn jetlag/lack of sleep as it meant that my stomach felt somewhat over-faced; queasy and not capable of absorbing the amount of food I wanted to give it. Sad but true. I mean, the first time in three months that I eat at a world-class restaurant and what do I order? A salad. And only a salad. It was a beautiful salad, maybe one of the best ever, but still...I did better when we came back after work for a bellini and some antipasti, getting to nibble away at squid, beef carpaccio, asparagus and gulls eggs, and other delicacies. And I got to eat some beautiful cheese and ham of the sort that cannot be found for 300 miles round here. Yum. I was amazed to see that the River Cafe was not full at lunchtime on a Monday. What are all you London-dwellers doing? They have a lunch deal that is 2 courses for 16 quid - an absolute bargain! Get down there. 2 comments permalink  
Sunday, April 10, 2005 what I ate last: pepper jelly and cream cheese The only place around here that really attempts to champion local food is the Thomaston Rural Heritage Centre, where the Rural Studio has, over the last three years, been building a fantastic new base for them. Their most famous products are their amazing, world-beating barbeque and their pepper jelly, which is made from green peppers grown in their own garden. The Rural Studio project for them includes a state-of-the-art new kitchen to make all these things in, as well as a cafe space where they hope to both feed the community and provide classes in cooking healthy, locally available produce. Last night was the 'grand opening' of the new building (despite the fact that, in true RS style, it's not quite finished yet) and we were treated to a feast of not-very-Alabama food cooked under the supervision of the wonderful Mrs Kardous, mother of a student on the team and so devoted to the project that she has driven down from North Carolina every weekend for the last few months to help out with it, and to whom the gallery space in the new centre has been dedicated. Being of Syrian extraction, she concocted beautiful hummus and other dips, meatballs, and about a dozen varieties of fantastic sweets, a mix between the Southern and the Syrian (A sort of baclava with pecan nuts? Mmm! And we had the barbeque, of course. We were all given jars of pepper jelly and watermelon rind pickles to take home, alongside the supreme marketing ploy, coozies emblazoned with 'Eat Pepper Jelly'. [A coozie (spelling??) aka huggie, is, for Europeans, something made out of foam that you put around your beer can/bottle to keep it cool.] So today I sampled the pepper jelly in the traditional way, with cream cheese (well, mine was a soft goats cheese, not the Philadelphia that everyone here would swear by) on top of a toasted bagel and I can tell y'all, it's pretty damn good. Actually strangely addictive. You can buy it on the internet via their website. The next ambition of the indefatigable Gayle Etheridge, who runs the centre, is to start up a co-op grocery store next to the farmer's market shelter that the RS built a few years back. For the sake of all our diets, let's hope it happens... 1 comments permalink
Tuesday, April 05, 2005 what I ate last: I've been eating rather well over the last week as a result of the influx of European visitors with refined tastes to redneck West Alabama. A trip to Atlanta airport with Quentin inevitably turned into an excuse to eat at a real, good restaurant with real wine, and then a trip to DeKalb Farmers Market in order to stock up on food for the parents, who I knew would not be content with eating at the Mexican and Buck's but would require cooking for in some way. Then they arrived laden with food from California - real cheese with oatcakes to eat it with, herbs, sourdough bread, organic salads, and best of all, a gift of half a dozen bottles of Ridge Wine from their previous hosts in the US of A. (These are the times I thank my lucky stars that my father is in the wine business.) So we had real meals with more than one course, including that precious commodity of lamb (impossible to buy in this state), and real wine and real cheese and real chocolate with our coffee afterwards. Actually, we ate pretty simply, but for me it was an unusual civility to have meals with equally food-prioritising souls. Then over to Butch's where him, his father and other friends had been cooking up an absolute feast of real Southern cooking. His father had done fantastic barbeque ribs and chicken and collards, Kim had made cornbread with crackling, Jessie had made great real baked beans, oatmeal bread, her grandmother's potato salad and peach cobbler, and Butch...well, he'd somehow gotten out of doing any cooking....But a feast it was, and only slightly sad because my foodloving father had taken ill (I blame my own cooking) and was holed up in bed unable to stuff himself like I did. Then, back to the backwoods and it was straight to my bandmate Ted's twins' christening party, which was a remarkably upper-crust affair, complete with rather good catered buffet food and Bloody Marys. So I made sure to fill myself up well (staying long enough to get both lunch and dinner of leftovers) and then was donated a bag of leftovers to take home. Damn, Mondays are hard when lunch consists of smoked salmon with toasted bagels, baked ham and tomato salad with a Bloody Mary to wash it down. 0 comments permalink
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