by lcreekmo on December 19, 2009
I am an honest-to-goodness freak about food safety. I am incredibly particular about how I handle and cook meat and egg dishes in particular. I’ve even been known to throw out my favorite leftovers if I realize I’ve let them sit on the counter just 30 minutes too long before refrigerating them.
And so for years, I have not made my favorite childhood dessert — lemon icebox pie. Because the recipes I’ve found for it all called for raw eggs. Try though I might to convince myself, I knew that the 15 minutes in the oven to brown the meringue weren’t enough to cook the eggs in the pie underneath, as well. [Though they are enough to make the egg whites in the meringue safe.]
That’s why I was so delighted to stumble across this article from the Louisiana Extension service — it tells you how to adapt traditional recipes with raw eggs for today’s salmonella-laden world.
It may be December, but I’m thinking I’ll give lemon icebox pie a try next week. It’s been way too long!
by lcreekmo on April 11, 2009
Despite the fact that 3/4 of this house are omnivores, we don’t eat a lot of meat. When we do, it tends to be chicken or turkey. But I have this thing for processed meat. I suspect it’s salt-related. As much as I love sweets, if I had to choose, I’d take Fritos any day. And so occasionally I get a craving for a dish with sausage or bacon or some other kind of meat product. You know, something that used to be real meat until they added a lot of salt and chemicals to it. Mmm.
Recently, I was at the store and noticed the bologna. While I like the high-end, butcher-shop variety, I’m just as happy with Oscar Mayer. I picked up a package of light bologna, trying to be healthy. I won’t make that mistake again.
- Bologna isn’t healthy anyway.
- The main difference between this and regular bologna seemed to be that they’d made the slices thinner. That’s a ripoff.
This did start a conversation between Ashby and me about olive loaf, however. Remember olive loaf? It’s basically bologna with pimento-stuffed green olive slices studded throughout. I happen to live in an urban neighborhood, where grocery stores are sometimes small, but one area where you can count on a full selection is the processed meat aisle. [Hey! I'll have a side of nitrites with my dioxin-laced soil and my exhaust-perfumed air!]
So in two grocery visits recently, I’ve looked for olive loaf, just for old times’ sake. And I can’t find it.
by lcreekmo on February 11, 2009
I learned today that my friend Reggie Crowder passed away on Sunday. Reggie owned Dee’s Q, the neighborhood roadside barbecue stand that I’ve loved for 4 years. If I remember correctly, Reggie told me once he opened Dee’s in August of 2004. I saw it for a few months on my way home every day, before I finally tried it. And it was love at first bite. I quickly learned why: Reggie grew up in the next town over in West Tennessee, and he cooked his barbecue just like I remembered it from home.
Nashville’s a bit of a hybrid barbecue town. You can find a little bit of everything here. I have the pleasure to have known many kinds of barbecue, thanks to friends and relatives who live all over the barbecue states. So I’ve had your brisket, your vinegar-base, your heavy, sticky sauce. And while I don’t even often turn down mustard barbecue [but really, South Carolina, is that right? I think not.], my love remains the West Tennessee barbecue of my childhood. A bit of sauce, but not too saucy. Tomatoes and vinegar in the sauce, but not too much of either. You should be tasting the meat here, not the sauce.
So once I happened up to Reggie’s stand, I came back again and again. I even ate barbecue a few times during my two vegetarian stints [first things first, people], and I’d stop by just for some of his fried okra, too. My whole family loved Reggie and his barbecue, even the ones who live out of state. I guess the home-folks connection helped, but the barbecue was critical, too.
My dad and I saw Reggie in the late fall, and he told us he’d had quadruple bypass surgery last summer. When he died, Reggie was 45. Just bad luck in the gene pool is all you can say there, I guess. He was doing well when I saw him this fall, but I understand from a friend he’d been back in the hospital recently.
I just hate this. Reggie was one of the nicest guys you could hope to meet. And he was living his dream with Dee’s Q. I don’t have anything profound to add here. I’m not one to go around saying how this is God’s will or whatever. I think the universe is random and capricious, but most days I’m glad to be part of it. Today’s not one of those days. I am grateful to have known Reggie Crowder. Peace and good barbecue to you, my friend.
Previous posts on Dee’s Q:
More people who love Dee’s Q
by lcreekmo on August 27, 2008
Well, I fell off the vegetarian wagon. Actually, I just climbed down. The first weekend of August, we went to camp with a bunch of good friends. Two of our friends got married at Camp Nakanawa more than 10 years ago, and several times since, they’ve rented out the camp for a weekend and invited everyone they know to join them. It was just as much fun as you might imagine — well, for me, anyway. I’m a camp person. A camp cultist, as Slate terms it. Though no one has named a school after me. Yet.
So anyway, while we were at Nakanawa, the camp staff was cooking our meals. Traditional, tasty camp fare. At the very first meal, I thought, what the hell. I’ll have some meat. So I did. And I’ve kept doing it.
I haven’t eaten a lot of meat in the past month, but definitely a bit. Recently, I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite meals my mom made when we were growing up. Of course, they all had meat in them, so i haven’t had most of these dishes in a while. Here’s what I made tonight. It doesn’t really have a name.
1 lb. ground beef [or turkey, or a mix]
1 egg
1/2 c. seasoned breadcrumbs
2 cloves minced garlic
1 T. Worchestershire sauce
1/2 medium onion, diced
Salt and pepper to taste
Mix all well with your hands. Shape into 5 or 6 patties. Cook til done in a large skillet.
1 can cream of celery soup
1 can milk [If soup is condensed. If not, try 1/2 can milk to start.]
Whisk together. Pour over patties and simmer for 10 minutes, until sauce thickens slightly. Serve with rice.
by lcreekmo on May 29, 2008
I have a little bit of synesthesia, related to some random things in my life. I may have mentioned it here before, but 5+8=13 is a blue tennis shoe. Well, 13 of them. [Interestingly, 8+5=13 does nothing for me.] I’m guessing once long ago, I had that illustration in a math workbook. I don’t know of other equations that do the same thing for me, but I’m sure they’re out there.
Every once in a while, I run into something else like that. Today, I fried some squash, our first of the season. We bought it yesterday afternoon at the Brooks farm stand in Baker, FL. Tasted like it was picked yesterday morning. Delicious.
But while I was eating it — the first bite — I had this very distinct sensation of being in my maternal grandmother’s kitchen. I could see it, smell it, hear her voice, everything.
Two weird things:
* My mom certainly made me more fried squash than my grandmother did, though both of them counted it as a summertime favorite.
* This incident also turned my thoughts to my paternal grandmother, and I had this involuntary sensation of her food marker, without really thinking about it — congealed strawberry salad. I can’t find the recipe; maybe my mom will chime in in the comments. It has frozen strawberries, cream cheese, Jello? Cool Whip? whipping cream? I have no idea. But then you pour it into little individual aluminum molds. Awesome.
by lcreekmo on March 23, 2008
I made a chess pie this morning and I really enjoyed my piece after dinner. Strangely, neither of the kids wanted any. I promise they eat barbecue and grits both — well, at least until the 8yo became a vegetarian last year — but for some reason, I have apparently failed at getting them to appreciate this particular Southern delicacy. I’ll keep working on it.
I got this recipe from my mom. It’s always great.
Chess Pie
2 c. sugar
2 heaping T. flour
1 heaping T. cornmeal
1 stick butter, melted
3 eggs, beaten
1/2 c. buttermilk
2 t. vanilla
1/4 t. lemon extract
Pinch of salt
Combine sugar, flour and meal. Add melted butter. Add eggs, buttermilk, vanilla, salt and lemon extract. Beat until well mixed. Bake in a pie shell at 400 degrees, for 10 minutes. Then lower heat to 350 degrees and bake for 30 minutes. Pie should be golden brown on top, and should jiggle just a little when you shake it — not like water or soup, but not as firm as Jello, either.
by lcreekmo on April 3, 2007
One of my all-time favorite Southern dishes is chicken and dumplings. I have an ongoing issue with them, however. Whenever I make my mother’s recipe, it doesn’t turn out like I remember. In particular, the gravy is too thin to even be called gravy. And occasionally the dumplings are tough.
This may turn into another cornbread-sized quest [Note: I thought there was more than that one post. Suffice to say, after that post, I embarked on a months-long quest to get the cornbread right. I'm not done, but it's better.], to get the chicken & dumplings right.
In other news, I realized this morning that Sunday is Easter [yes, I really did already know that] and that I’d better get busy planning Easter dinner. More soon!
by lcreekmo on March 13, 2007
I couldn’t begin to encapsulate everything we did in the past four days, so please:
See my Flickr photos from Austin, TX, SXSW and every restaurant we ate in
Then be sure to view Summer’s, Cole’s and Rex’s photos.
Summer has also blogged some of the restaurants where we ate, and Rex has blogged several sessions I didn’t attend, and some I did.
Finally, NYC sister’s fiance’s coworker saw all these restaurant reports here on Fixin’ Supper, and he passed along these recommendations for the next time I’m in town:
Z Tejas is highly recommended, especially the apple cobbler, and you’ll probably need reservations. East Side Cafe apparently has a greenhouse attached to the restaurant, so at least some of the food is grown right there. And he concurs with your conclusions about The Salt Lick and Guero’s.
by lcreekmo on March 13, 2007
We went to the Salt Lick Sunday night. If you aren’t a vegetarian, you must make this fabulous restaurant in Driftwood, Texas, a definite stop on your tour of Austin.
The brisket is great, the dill pickles crunchy and pucker-inducing and the ribs are very flavorful.
My complaint remains from my first visit to the Salt Lick: With all the other great home cooking here, why are they serving us store-bought bread? There’s some on my plate here but I ate little of it. It offends the palate compared with the other authentic Texas barbecue fare.
More photos in my Flickr account.
by lcreekmo on November 6, 2006
The political season naturally turns my thoughts to food. Now those of you in other parts of the country probably think there’s nothing worth discussing when it comes to politics and food: this sport is notorious for the rubber-chicken dinner, right? And I’ve been to those–but not around here.
In Tennessee, politics is instead bad for the heart and easy on the taste buds. Barbecue is of course the menu of choice at political events for both parties from one end of the state to the other. You’ll also find lots of bean suppers and fried chicken dinners. All of which is preferable, in my mind, to the baked chicken dinner. The worst deal, I’m sure, is to be a candidate for a major office — or to be a politician of any stripe, really — I have friends who are political types in both parties, and I can’t imagine what their diet is like during the political season. Ugh.
Perhaps the most famous political meal in Tennessee is [Speaker of the House in the Tennessee General Assembly] Jimmy Naifeh’s Coon Supper. I’ve never been but I understand that it’s not just named a coon supper if you know what I mean.
