“The cakes and pies and casseroles beckoned like gastronomic sirens, and there was no one to lash me to the mast.” ― Chris Fabry, The Promise of Jesse Woods
Drug of Choice-an excerpt from the book Food for Thought by Don Miller
While food is my drug of choice, “Food for Thought” is not a cookbook. There are some recipes, recipes from angels now gone, who with their hands, cast iron pans, dollops of bacon grease or lard, and a lot of love, created so much from so little. There are other recipes from those that still exist and come to you over the cable ways on such channels as the Food Channel or from the internet.
Primarily it is a book of memories and history, a Southern history if you will, chock full of pig parts, home grown ingredients, and possibly roadkill. No not roadkill but there might be a possum or a raccoon story to tell. It is stories of an elusive quest for the perfect biscuit, peanuts poured into an eight-ounce Coca Colas, dope wagons in the cotton mill, and why when we order a Coke we are asked, “What kind of Coke?”
There is diversity, lessons taken from Scot Irish Appalachia fused with Native American and African American food and combined into dishes that have culturally diffused throughout the United States.
There are also too many essays involving pig parts, pulled pork, liver mush, sausage, slow cooked ribs, I need to quit before I go crank up the smoker.
None of the recipes shared are mine. Some are old family recipes, others from Methodist and Baptist cookbooks handed down by previous generations in my family. Lastly, some came from the Food Channel and such and are noted and linked as such.
Really lastly, any beautiful photographs of certain dishes are not mine. My dishes rarely come out looking photograph worthy. To quote an old college chemistry professor I had, “Find your wife’s disasters and you will eat like a king.” Thank you Dr. Setzler. The proof is in the eating not in the looking.
“Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.” ― Ruth Reichl
As I placed the fork full of what I thought was goodness in my mouth, my thought became “this ain’t chow chow” …or chowchow, chow-chow or any other spelling. Nope, nope, nope.
I was given some Amish chow chow. It was touted as “Best Gourmet Chow Chow is the South’s Most Famous Relish that goes great with your favorite comfort foods!” Nope.
Not that it was bad, it wasn’t. It just wasn’t Aunt Alta’s chow chow. I would like to point out that Amish Pennsylvania is not the South, and that should have been a dead give-a-way like salsa made by a company in New York City.
Looks good but “This ain’t chow chow!”
My bride and I had also been gifted a plate full of salmon patties and I thought anything advertised as the “Best Gourmet Chow Chow” would make a great accoutrement. I even used the French pronunciation, A.ku.tʁǝ.mɑ̃ , in my head. French is so sexy…even when discussing a condiment.
The chow chow wasn’t bad, and it did spur some research, but it wasn’t what I remembered from the best chow chow made by my Aunt Alta Rodgers. First the research.
In my part of the world, chow chow was a way to turn excess green tomatoes into something eatable other than “fried green tomatoes” or “green tomato chocolate cake.” Yes, that is a thing. It is quite good.
Just before the first killing frost, green tomatoes were collected, ground, or chopped, combined with ground or chopped cabbage, onion, peppers, and pickling spices. The relish produced would garnish about anything and is a big deal in the South…or it used to be important in the South, and I have no understanding of how it found its way to Pennsylvania.
Chow chow posssibly came to the southern United States by way of French Acadians fleeing Nova Scotia after The French and Indian War in 1763. Forced to leave their homes by the victorious British, they settled primarily in Louisiana bringing with them the word “chou” which means cabbage.
French words of endearment include “mon petit chou” which translates to “my little cabbage.” See, everything sounds better in French even a vegetable.
The dish’s origins are widely debated, however. According to the magazine Southern Living, Southern food historian John Egerton believed its origins weren’t Acadian, but could be traced to piquant sauces brought over by Chinese railroad workers in the 19th century. I don’t like this story. Piquant doesn’t sound as sexy as the French “chou.”
It is reasonable to make the short leap that the word “chou” became “chow”. Not so reasonable is why it became known as chow chow. Nor is it reasonable to think there is a set recipe…there isn’t.
So, what is it? As in what is chow chow? Chow chow is a pickled relish dish that was used to preserve summer vegetables for later in the year. Recipes for the relish are regional, and tend to be generational recipes, passed down through families. Check any old Methodist or Babtist cookbook and you will be likely to find a recipe. While no one batch is the same, most Southern chow chows use green tomatoes, cabbage, bell peppers, and onions.
Aunt Alta Rodgers Howie, my grandmother’s sister, made use of green tomatoes, cabbage, bell peppers, and onions. The Amish version was good, but I don’t remember green beans, lima beans, carrots, cauliflower, and corn. This Amish version was more of a pickled vegetable medley like Giardiniera…without the pearl onions.
Aunt Alta was typical of the Rodgers’ girls. Short and a bit squat in her later years, she had been blessed with a green thumb as her backyard flowers and shrubs attested, and an outstanding “cook’s” gene that might have skipped my grandmother. Like the rest of the Rodgers’ girls, she liked to “put up” her own vegetables. Put up means can, and chow chow was one of her specialties.
Aunt Alta Rodgers Howie, Pretty in Pink
According to her daughter, Cousin Cindy, this is close to her mother’s recipe. Enjoy but it is a time and labor-intensive endeavor as are most things worth their salt.
Aunt Alta’s Chow Chow
Ingrediants
½ gallon green tomatoes, Chopped
1 small cabbage, Chopped
½ pint onion, Chopped
1 Red Bell Pepper, chopped (Add Cayenne or Jalapeno if you want heat)
1 Green Bell Pepper, Chopped
All the above can be ground together using a food processor
⅙ cup salt
5 cups vinegar
½ cup water
3 ½ cups sugar
2 tsp mustard seeds
1 ½ tsp celery seed
1 ½ tsp turmeric
1 tsp pickling spices
Directions
Grind the green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and peppers together using a food processor. Aunt Alta used a hand grinder I am sure.
Place the veggies into a stainless steel, glass, or porcelain container and sprinkle with salt. Cover and let them stand overnight.
Using a colander, drain and rinse well.
Using a saucepan, bring the vinegar, water, and spices to a boil in a stainless-steel pan. It needs to be a constant boil and the sugar needs to dissolve. Stir frequently so that the spices are well mixed.
Add green tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and peppers and bring back to a boil.
Simmer at a low roll for 3-4 minutes
Prep sterile pint jars using Ball lids. Boil lids for at least 10 minutes, jars at least 25 minutes and keep them simmering until you are ready to use them.
Fill pint jars up to the mouth, cover with lid, tighten with band, and process jars using a boiling water bath for at least ten minutes.
“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” ― James Beard
I doubt James Beard grew up with bad cornbread, with or without butter. I did. Come to think of it, rarely have I had good cornbread. Mostly it is too dry. Dry like the Sahara Desert. Did you know the word Sahara means “desert” in Arabic? We’ve been saying the “Desert Desert” in all our geography courses.
Photo of the “Desert Desert” by Greg Gulik on Pexels.com
The Sahara gets between zero to three inches of rain per year with some areas not receiving any moisture for years and years. The Sahara isn’t even the driest desert. That goes to the Atacama in Chile and Argentina. How dry is it? As dry as Nannie’s cornbread.
I have made it a lifelong quest to find good cornbread. I have been thwarted…mostly. Most people would have quit but being a Southern gentleman, I feel compelled to continue eating cornbread or give up my Southern gentleman’s card.
My grandmother, Nannie, made bread for every meal. Biscuits or cornbread. On those nights she made cornbread I cringed. Dry, dry, dry. How dry was her cornbread? If it had been a cow, it would have given evaporated milk. “Ba-dum…BUM” rimshot.
I can remember my grandparents crumbling up their cornbread into Their Looney Tunes jelly glasses filled with buttermilk. Sylvester the Cat did not look impressed. Any liquid, even buttermilk, adds moisture to the driest cornbread. Adding Nannie’s cornbread to buttermilk seemed to be combining two evils to make a greater evil. I like buttermilk in dishes like biscuits but have never developed a taste for it as a libation with or without crumbled cornbread in it. Okay, I’ll be sending my Southern gentleman’s card back ASAP.
With Linda’s malady many friends and family have contributed meals for which we are thankful. Many have featured cornbread to be crumbled into soup. Good thing. Good cornbread by taste but…dry. Dry cornbread goes good in soup…if the soup is good and it has been. Thankfully, no cornbread has included sugar in its recipe.
My wife, by chance, tumbled onto an alternative recipe. She made ‘close’ to good cornbread before the alternative recipe. She will tell you it is because I like my cornbread just underdone and she would take the pone out early and cut a few wedges out just to suit me before returning the cornbread to the oven to finish.
I agree with her. Truth be told, I like my biscuits slightly underdone, too.
I have memories of being allowed to eat raw biscuit dough made with lard and how many times did I lick the spoon from cake batter made with raw eggs, and unpasteurized milk? The horror! Raw lard and yet, I survived. Same with cookie dough.
So, what was the alternative recipe? The same as a regular recipe except for one ingredient…squash.
One summer we had an overabundance of squash. I gave it away to friends, family, and unsuspecting souls who drove by my garden with their car windows down. Still, I ate it every day for a month.
One of those days we had leftovers of boiled squash and onions and had earlier run out of different ways to use squash. With a mess of green beans cooking away on the stove, cornbread was an option. We pondered what we might do with the leftover squash. One of us suggested she use it in her cornbread and my quest for moist cornbread came to an end.
The cornbread was wonderful and so moist I had to eat it with a fork. With cornbread containing squash, and a mess of green beans, we had the “Three Sisters” covered and I was happy to ask for a second helping of cornbread. Summer squash is so mild it really didn’t change the taste of the cornbread.
After doing some research I feel a little akin to that lost explorer, Christopher Colombus. I discovered something that wasn’t lost. Seems like I’m not the only one looking for moist cornbread and recipes abound on various internet sites incorporating squash.
Ok, I’ll be takin’ my Southern gentleman’s card back! Truth be told, I loved Linda’s cornbread before we added squash.
Linda’s Cornbread
Ingredients
Two cups of Aunt Jemima’s self-rising cornmeal
One cup of White Lily self-rising flour (Used Red Band until it was discontinued)
Two Cups of buttermilk…maybe. Add buttermilk until you get the consistency you want along with a squirt of water.
One egg
One large tablespoon of Duke’s Mayonnaise
A dash of salt and pepper
A pinch of sugar (Optional)
Butter, Bacon grease – enough to cover the bottom of a cast iron frying pan
If using Squash, a cup of pre-cooked, drained, and chopped
Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Coat the bottom of frying pan with butter or bacon grease, or both. Yes, you can use vegetable oil if you must.
Place frying pan in the oven but don’t let butter burn.
Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix well.
Turn down oven to 350 degrees.
Remove frying pan from oven and carefully pour the mix into the pan. There should be a satisfying sizzle.
Cook for twenty to twenty-five minutes and see if it has browned enough. If not, turn it back up to 425 until it is. A toothpick inserted in the middle should come back clean.
“100% True Fact: Spam means; Sizzle, Pork and Mmmm. Someone tell me I’m wrong…”― Skylar Blue
SPAM actually stands for spiced ham according to its producer Hormel.
A pig trail ran through shredded Spam and scrambled eggs, twisted to lettuce, tomato, and Spam sammies, switched back to Spam and fried potatoes, to a now dead college chum and his recipe for Spambalaya. Johnny Bolt, you little bald-headed demon, I miss you, I do.
Miracle Meat not Mystery Meat
If you are newer to this earth, Spam is tech lingo for unwanted, unsolicited mass communications. While the term is most associated with email, it can also be used to refer to spam comments on blogs and social media, physical junk mail, robocalls, and more.
The newer description is an assault on a once proud delicacy created by Hormel in 1937 to sell more pork shoulder, the weakest selling part of the pig at the time. For those not in the know, pork butts are not butts but pork shoulder. Back in the day, they were shipped in what were known as butts (barrels), after being butchered in New England or Boston. That’s how they got their name, Boston Butts, but more importantly, they are the star ingredient in pulled pork barbeque…and Spam.
According to Wikipedia, Spam is sold in forty-one countries, trademarked in one hundred, and sold on six continents. It tends to freeze too easily in Antarctica I reckon. In the U.S., Hawaii is the state with the highest per capita consumption of Spam, which has become a major ingredient in Hawaiian cuisine.
Muriel Miura’s Hawaiian Spam Cookbook
Why did it become such a seller? During World War II, the U.S. government sent Spam to the troops because it was easier to deliver than fresh meat. It came precooked in a can, so it didn’t need to be refrigerated or cooked to consume, necessities under battlefield conditions.
By mid-war, Hormel was producing fifteen million cans of Spam for the troops each week. Hormel was buying 1.6 million hogs each year, and 90 percent of the canned goods were going to the military. After the war, soldiers returned home with either a taste or disdain for this odd product, and Spam has adorned grocery store shelves ever since.
We also supplied it to our allies including England and the Soviet Union. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his autobiography, “Without Spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.” Before she became the English Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, a teen at the time called it, “a war-time delicacy.” “Spam the food that won the war!!!”
Spamville somewhere in the Pacific during WW 2
My father was a World War II vet, and he brought home a taste for the salty processed canned pork made primarily from pork shoulder and ham…with a bunch of nastier ingredients like fat, sodium, and preservatives. People were not deterred by its high fat and sodium content. Austin, Texas even celebrates it with their annual “Spamarama.”
During my childhood, we ate it a lot along with bologna, deviled ham, and Vienna sausages. We considered Spam to be a higher quality meat. Bologna, deviled ham, and Viennas were lunch selections, what we call dinner here in the South. Spam was reserved for a simple supper, the evening meal.
“Don’t knock it till you’ve fried it” was once a catch phrase for Spam. I honestly haven’t seen a Spam commercial since…well…since the last time I ate it which has run into decades ago. I don’t know why.
It is not a healthy meat choice, but I would say I wasn’t eating it well before I turned my lifestyle around after a 2006 heart attack. I’m not inclined to run out and grab a tin, but if I do, I might try Johnny Bolt’s recipe.
Johnny passed over a decade ago. Our lives first tangled in college the fall of 1968. He was a cocky little fellow, mostly bald by age eighteen. By the time his hair fell out, he had quit growing upward, topping off at about five-five.
When it came to playing the saxophone, he had an ego the size of a sperm whale. I was the only member of the saxophone section of our jazz ensemble that wasn’t a music major and played like it. Johnny was at the other end of the spectrum, and I guess I was a bit jealous. What is it they say? “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it?” Johnny could do it.
We both became teachers; he was band director, and I became a science and history teaching football and baseball coach. It was inevitable we would run across each other when our schools faced off, but in the early Nineties, we found ourselves teaching at the same school.
It was at Riverside High School that the powers that were decided we should publish a “Cookbook” as a fund raiser. Johnny’s submission was “Spambalya so good it will make you want to slap your momma.” Before you ask, I did “Chicken Cooked in theGround,” one of the only things I learned in the Boy Scouts.
As it turns out Johnny’s recipe for Spambalaya came directly from a Spam cookbook from the Fifties. Teachers are adept at stealing good lesson plans, why not a recipe? I did add some spices to “kick” it up a bit.
“Spambalya so Good it Will Make You Want to Slap Your Momma!”
Ingredients
1 (12 ounce) can spam luncheon meat, cubed (It called for lite, but I’d use regular. Why bother.)
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
1 cup chopped onion.
2⁄3 cup chopped green bell pepper.
1⁄2 cup chopped celery.
A tablespoon of chopped garlic
1 (14 1/2 ounce) can diced tomatoes (use liquid from tomatoes)
1 (10 3/4 ounce) low sodium chicken broth (I use regular)
1⁄2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 1⁄2 – 2 teaspoons hot sauce (recipe read 6 to 8 drops)
1 bay leaf
1 cup long grain rice
1 tablespoon chopped parsley.
If you wish to add shrimp or chicken, please do.
Cajun spice mix, if you desire, and I would.
Directions
In a large non-stick skillet over medium heat, sauté spam until browned.
Add vegetable oil, onion, green pepper, celery, and garlic. Cook until all vegetables are tender.
Except for rice and parsley, add remaining ingredients.
Bring to a boil and add rice.
Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes or until rice is done.
Remove bay leaf, and sprinkle with parsley.
Best served with an ice-cold pilsner beer. Put on some Zydeco and laissez les bons temps rouler.
***
I could not find a live version of Jambalaya On the Bayou. This will have to do.
“Everybody says, ‘I have problems overcooking steak on the grill. Just take it off earlier!” – Bobby Flay
I know Bobby. Grilling isn’t rocket science but there seems to be a fine line between slightly under cooked and incinerated.
Not to belabor a point that I have made before, and despite what your favorite dictionary might tell you, barbeque is a noun not a verb…or an adverb…or adjective…maybe. My English teachers are looking down from heaven shaking their heads.
Okay, after much thought, it is okay to say you ate barbequed pork or chicken. That denotes it is a type of chicken or barbeque, not an action. I am belaboring a point, but one prepares barbeque. One eats barbeque. One does not say “I’m going to a barbeque for chicken or steaks in the backyard.” That is grillin’.
Moving along, my subject is grillin’. My subject is not serving succulent meat slowly cooked over wood coals for most of the day before the meat succumbs to gravity and falls off the bones. That is barbeque, usually pork in my part of the world. I didn’t move along far, did I?
My subject matter today is the rapid roasting of meat, hamburgers, or hotdogs…or in my case chicken. I do try to feed my obsession with food in a healthy manner…not really. I also like to prepare it slowly over indirect heat out of regard for my Southern, slow-cookin’ roots. Indirect heat allows me a margin of error.
I rarely grill beef. A man must know his limitations. I can’t seem to get it right. Goldilocks I could never be because nothing is “just right.” Beef requires perfect grill marks on the outside and a pink juicy middle. I blame my grandmother and mother. To them steak wasn’t done until it was crisp. Honestly, I never ate steak anyway other than crisp until I was out of college.
To defend my mother and grandmother, I grew up in an age when round worms could still be found in beef and pork. Yuck. Round worms cause trichinellosis, a parasitic disease that is muy malo. Don’t hear of it much in the United States because we have standards…FDA standards. We also didn’t cook many “premium” cuts of meat. Cubed steak, Chicken fried steak, or hamburgers were about the best we could expect.
Hamburgers on a griddle I can do but the grilled ones end up over cooked and dry, hotdogs that are exactly right suddenly become crispy critters as I look for my misplaced tongs to remove them from the grill. Do I have to give up my “man card?” Laud help me if I decide to grill expensive cuts of beef. Have you eaten filet de ash covered splinter?
For some reason, chicken seems to be more forgiving. Maybe because I didn’t ring the poor creature’s neck myself. Fact is, chicken should be served over done rather than underdone…that is a salmonella fact. So how do you keep it from drying out and becoming tough? Brine it, marinade it, pound it with a mallet, use dry rubs, or cook it over indirect heat…or all.
I find the perfect way to prepare grilled chicken is whole, roasted over the indirect heat provided by my thirty-year-old Weber Kettle grill. The grill is really that old. The legs rusted off a decade ago and I built a stand for it. I’ve contemplated a new one but decided to wait until the bottom rusts out of the old one.
Here is my favorite recipe for whole chicken. Note, you may brine it, use your favorite marinade, or dry rub. You can’t pound it. You must use indirect heat.
Don’s Beer Butt Chicken- File under grillin’ and I didn’t create the recipe, I just perfected it.
Ingredients
1 cup butter, divided (I guess you could use vegetable oil, but I’ve never tried.)
2 tablespoons of your favorite rubbing spices, divided
2 tablespoons of paprika, divided
salt and pepper to taste
1 (12 fluid ounce) can of beer
1 (4 pound) whole, washed and patted dry chicken
Put on your favorite grillin’ apron. Mine says “I like my butt rubbed and my pork pulled” but then this is about chicken not pork.
I am a traditionalist or a “charcoalist” I use charcoal. I don’t use starter fluid and start it with a tower. There are no unwanted chemicals affecting the taste of the chicken. I set the heat vents on both the top and bottom to barely open. You may use a propane grill, just heat on one side, and cook on the other. You may have to adjust the time.
While my charcoal is catching fire, I combine half of my spices, salt and pepper, and paprika while drinking half a can of my favorite beer in a can. Set the remaining beer aside for later.
I rub down my washed and dried chicken with half of the butter and then sprinkle half of my spices over the chicken, on all sides and inside, and pat them down into the butter.
By now the coals should be caught and I divide the coals leaving the middle of the grill clear of charcoal. If you want to add wood chips, now is the time. I would suggest pecan or apple wood.
In a small sauce pan I melt the remaining butter and when melted mix in the remaining spices. When combined, I CAREFULLY add it to the beer can with the remaining beer. BE CAREFUL, the beer will foam.
On a grill pan, I place the chicken with the beer can stuffed up its butt forming a tripod with the chicken’s legs. Carefully place the chicken on the grill pan, in the middle of the grill and cover with the grill lid. Note, there is a stand that you can purchase to hold the chicken and beer can in place but as I said, I’m a traditionalist.
I cover the grill and then walk away for forty-five minutes, about two to three beers in time. Don’t peek, that just allows the heat to escape.
After forty-five minutes, using a meat thermometer, I check the breast, which should be 165 degrees F. and the thigh which should be 170 degrees F. If not at the correct temperature, drink another beer and check again. If chicken has reached the correct temperature, remove it from grill and wrap in aluminum foil and let rest for ten minutes. Drink another beer if you want but remember you might not want to pass out before eating your chicken.
Shane Walsh: [about eating frog legs] When you get down to that last can of beans, you’re gonna be loving those frog legs, lady. I can see it now… [imitating Lori Grimes] “Shane, do you think I could have a second helping, please? Please? Just one?”
Lori Grimes: Yeah, I doubt that.
Shane Walsh: [to Carl Grimes] Don’t listen to her, man. You and me, we’ll be heroes. We’ll feed these folks Cajun-style Kermit legs.
Lori Grimes: I would rather eat Miss Piggy. Yes, that came out wrong.
Snappy Repertoire from The Walking Dead
Warning: This is not about The Walking Dead but about my addiction to cooking shows, food, and memories involving frog legs. They do taste like chicken.
Not that I’m ever going to prepare Chicken Kiev or Beef Stroganov, but I watch cooking shows allowing The Pioneer Woman to cause Pavlovian responses cooking brisket with cowboy baked beans featuring burnt ends or Giada De Laurentiis preparing anything. Just stand there Giada, just stand there. Another type of Pavlovian response.
My thoughts raced down a pig trail after a conversation with a Northern friend about what we might have eaten at a restaurant had it been named the “Roadkill Café.” Much of our banter centered around squirrels and possums along with my favorite saying, “flatter than a toad frog on a four-lane highway.”
I pointed out that I had grown up “country rich”, never having to resort to roadkill. I admitted to having been permanently scarred for life cleaning fish and turtles, plucking and gutting chickens, skinning squirrels, and slaughtering hogs to supplement the protein requirements of our diets. I feel fortunate my family drew the line at possum. I did occasionally eat frog legs, the subject of this rabbit hole I fell into.
Later in the day, as I looked for a recipe for fried frog legs, I stumbled across a YouTube video featuring one of the Duck Dynasty boys preparing frog legs. I watched it. Fifteen minutes of my life I’ll never get back. I realized frog legs may taste like chicken, but no one ever shows the nasty side…gigging and skinning little green Kermits or wringing little Henny Penny’s neck.
For some reason, the video reminded of a young lady whose bright light had burned out, who asked, “Why do people raise beef? We can go to the supermarket and buy it.” I’m sure there is a logic there that only she understood. I’m also sure one can find pre-skinned frog legs somewhere but somewhere else there is a frog walking on stumps.
I was first introduced to frog legs when I was quite young. An uncle home from college and a couple of cousins had spent the night gigging frogs…and I suspect, participated in activities my grandmother would have frowned upon involving distilled spirits. Still, they were sober enough to deliver a croker sack of frogs to my grandmother who skinned them and prepared them along with grits and eggs for breakfast.
I remember awaking to the smell of something I was unfamiliar with frying. Sautéing frog legs heavily peppered were literally twitching in butter in a big cast iron frying pan. They were twitching, I kid you not.
Gross alert, view at your own risk
Did you know that Mary Shelly was inspired by twitching frog legs while writing Frankenstein? Sorta inspired. The frog legs weren’t frying but according to the Smithsonian Magazine, Shelley was inspired by the concept of galvanism—the idea that scientists could use electricity to stimulate or restart life. Galvanism, using an electrical current, would cause frog legs to jump. Feel smarter? I wonder if they fried them afterwards.
The French consider frog legs to be a delicacy, but this, according to differing theories, has nothing to do with calling the French the derogatory term, Frog. It is more likely due to the Frog that was a part of the counter-revolutionary flag flown during the French Revolution. No matter what theory do not call a Frenchman a Frog. It’s not nice.
While I was in college, I went gigging with a couple of fraternity brothers and a chemistry teacher. In a flat bottomed jon boat, armed with gigs and flashlights, we paddled the perimeter of a small lake looking for little green eyes glowing in the reflection of our lights. We would paddle in close, gig the frog, and put him in our own croker sack. We might have partaken of some distilled spirits like my uncle but I’m not sure.
All was grand until a snake crawled into our boat. Instead of using an oar to stun the snake and put him back into the water, one of my frat brothers pulled a concealed pistol and put three bullet holes in the bottom of our boat.
The snake? Perfectly safe and still in the boat under the croker sack. The rest of us? Paddling for dear life to get back to the landing while avoiding the snake before we sank. Since that time, I’ve not gone frog gigging again and have only eaten frog legs on an all you can eat seafood buffet a hundred years ago.
It seemed safer to look online and inquire where I might find some preskinned frog legs. Ten dollars a pound plus shipping? Imported? Geez. I guess that is why they are a delicacy. Well since chicken also tastes like chicken, I think I’ll grill up some wings instead.
“Little roadside restaurant we artfully complain, Rudy tells the waitress that his chicken died in vain” – Opening Lyrics of Jimmy Buffett’s Coast of Carolina
Earlier in the week I made note of the passing of the last, orange roofed, Howard Johnson’s restaurant. Once it boasted hundreds of restaurants along with motels. First the motels were sold off to Marriott, who later sold them themselves. The restaurants were closed until there was only one left standing in St. George, New York. I was surprised to learn that it still existed. I also noted that as a child I referred to it as Howard and Johnson’s. Stupid kid thoughts.
Yes, “Another baby-boomer icon has bitten the dust. The last remaining Howard Johnson’s restaurant, the orange-roofed baby-boomer favorite known for fried clams and twenty-eight flavors of ice cream including both peanut and pecan brittle, shut its doors, bringing down the curtain on a chain that once boasted 1,000 locations across the nation, the Times Union reported. The outlet, in Lake George, New York, closed this spring after almost 70 years.”
I am a baby-boomer, but I am not a gourmet of wine or food…I don’t speak French either. I do know what I like, and Howard Johnson’s was never what I liked…ice cream not included. I can’t remember any ice cream I didn’t like.
I ‘m certainly am not making a definitive epicurean review but when I hear the lyric, “Rudy tells the waitress that his chicken died in vain,” several restaurants come to mind, HoJo being one of them along with the cafeteria style S & S my father and brother and I frequented when we visited my mother in the State Hospital in Columbia.
My mother was part of a study of ALS, known as Lou Gerig’s Disease, at the state mental hospital, less than affectionally known as the crazy house. Our Sunday visit lunch choice was the S & S. I do not have fond memories of the S & S, but it is more about the death of my mother than their food offerings. Well, there was their green Jell-O salad.
Cafeteria style right down to the plastic plates and glasses. Good, cheap food…well cheap at least. With their different food choices and ambiance, I shouldn’t equate HoJo’s and S & S to each other, except their “facture de tarif” should have been accompanied by a gastric SOS. Facture de tarif is bill of fare, but I had to look it up.
Howard Johnson’s died due to the fast-food industry and the lifestyles we are forced to live. Most of us don’t have the means or the time to sit down for even a cafeteria style meal. There are other restaurants that died too, thanks to the fast-food hamburgers and fried chicken…along with some of their fans as ground beef patties fried in fat clogged their arteries.
The first hamburger chain in the States was White Castle, which opened in 1921. It was opened by Billy Ingram and Walter Anderson who started with the first White Castle restaurant in Wichita in 1916. They had a small menu which had cheap, square shaped hamburgers and they sold them in large numbers. The first franchises appeared in 1921 (A&W Root Beer franchised their syrup) and the first restaurant franchise appeared in the 1930s by Howard Johnson.
Johnson didn’t know he was contributing to the eventual demise of his restaurant and honestly it didn’t begin to snowball until the Fifties when the American love for cars became associated with suburbs, drive-ins and in my part of the world, the Hardee’s fifteen cent hamburger that made its appearance during the Fifties and Colonel Sanders’ KFC sold its first franchise in1952.
As bad as I thought Howard Johnson’s food was, it didn’t die because of its chicken dying in vain. It was American lifestyle changes. Well, the chicken might have contributed.
I do feel remorse that another symbol of my youth is gone even though the orange roof had been previously forgotten by me. I also regret all fast food doesn’t taste like Burger King hamburgers smell. But then Burger King hamburgers don’t taste like they smell.
May all your fast-food hamburger patties be larger than the pickle slice topping it and may you not die of a heart attack from eating them.
A little live Buffett for your listening enjoyment. No, not Cheeseburger in Paradise.
“I am tighter than a tick. I cannot eat another bite…pecan pie you say? Well, maybe a smidge.” -quote from Thanksgiving tables across the nation
It is that time again. Belt bustin,’ pants button poppin’, asleep watchin’ the football game time. Turkey and dressing time…cornbread dressing with a lot of sage and not bread stuffing, thank you. Moist on the inside, crispy on the outside. Impossible? I take mine sans gravy.
Cranberry sauce right out of the can with the little ridges so you know where to cut it for a serving. That was a joke, I hate cranberry sauce right out of the can even though there is a warm memory from my youth there somewhere.
My Aunt’s butterscotch pudding topped with a toasted meringue that reminds me of my mother’s butterscotch pudding that was passed down from generation to generation but went with her to her grave. Pecan pie, oh my.
My cousin Kim’s broccoli casserole, Bob’s ham, and any new dish my brother, Steve, decides to try out on us. Those bacon wrapped brussels sprouts in a balsamic vinegar reduction were dang good. My bride’s tomato pies. Yes, Thanksgiving will give me a good start on my holiday ten-pound weight increase that I don’t need.
Now if we can keep the political discussions to a minimum….
Thanksgiving and before you turn around, Christmastime…and then New Years. I hear my arteries clogging as I contemplate sausage balls washed down with alcohol laced eggnog before a drunken, snack filled evening ringing in the New Year. That is a lie, I haven’t rung in the New Year anywhere but at home in a coon’s age. Drunken? Not in forty years. I do admit that there might be a liquor drink before I kiss my bride “Happy New Year’s” …and one after.
Truth be known, I will kiss my bride “Happy New Year’s” a couple of hours ahead of time. I am usually asleep when the New Year officially begins, and it won’t be Jack Daniels’ fault.
I hate to be a Grinch, but this is not my finest time of the year. A Grinch or a hermit? A Grinch that is a hermit. The children of Whoville are safe. I will not be coming out of the mountains to steal their presents.
The nights have grown longer, and we are still over a month away from the longest night. I feel like a mushroom and not the ones swimming in brown gravy. SAD on top of clinical depression and the anxiety that comes with the darkness…exacerbated by the holidays.
Depression and anxiety steal your happiness and while food might be a soothing anodyne it is a placebo. Vast quantities of food and drink only covers the symptoms and does not treat the disease. To add insult to injury, I wake up the next day feeling like the Muffin Man stuffed into a sausage casing or a “blivit” which for the uneducated is ten pounds of poo stuffed into a five-pound bag…yes, more like a blivit. I get to add the guilt of a five-pound weight gain to the anxiety and depression.
No, it is not my finest time…no matter all the blessings I will receive from being around my slightly dysfunctional family at Thanksgiving, my daughter, son-in-law and two wide-eyed grandchildren at Christmas, and the Christmas elf that is my bride…but then she is just as depressed, and anxiety ridden as I am. No, not my finest time.
Fortunately, I am a functional Grinch and with resolve will overcome my tendency to hideout in a hole somewhere. I will come down out of the foothills of the Blue Ridge and mingle, smile, sing, and of course eat. I will even have fun despite my anxiety that I will not.
The holiday season can be stressful and depressing for people who are not clinically depressed. For those of us who are, the holiday season is exhausting…just thinking about it is exhausting. Just taking a first step is exhausting and only those who are clinically depressed understand that.
Still, the logical me knows that I am blessed. Better health than I should expect, a loving wife who is crazy enough to make things interesting. A daughter and grandbabies, my brother who is crazy funny and his wife who tolerates him. My mother’s sister and her three daughters and a grandson, the only ties to my youth that I have left. A beautiful place to live. A roof over my head, food on my table, heat…so many things we take for granted that everyone does not get to enjoy.
I’m thankful for the wonderful memories of people now gone. Friends and family who have transitioned to the stars. Friends and family who still have a place at our Thanksgiving table.
I am blessed and thankful. Now if I can just make it back to those lengthening days of spring and summer. Happy Thanksgiving to all, depressed, stressed out, or not.
Summer is upon me. According to John Phillips, “The Mississippi River runs like molasses in the summertime.” I know the summer humidity is as sticky as molasses…just like discussions about my heritage.
The steamy humidity is a part of my heritage, as are lightning bugs and mosquitos, or violent thunderstorms, and the refreshing cool afterward. Cutting sweet corn off the cob and salting it with the sweat off my brow. Seems much of my heritage runs the gamut between opposite poles of good and bad.
My Southern heritage is being debated across the far reaches of this country…again. The left is celebrating a statue of General Lee and Traveler, along with Stonewall Jackson being whisked off to a museum and the Right continues to debate the evils of Critical Race Theory, a theory I believe most have never studied…including me. CRT is a graduate school or law school course that has been around for some forty years and is beyond the scope of what is being taught in grade schools. Some people are confusing the truth about our checkered past for CRT. I notice the folks crying the loudest about General Lee are also crying the loudest against CRT. Maybe they aren’t confused at all.
These statues were erected to glorify men so gallantly in their Confederate gray or butternut. Many monuments were bought and paid for by the Daughters of the Confederacy. Statues bought and paid for by our grandmothers and great grandmothers can’t be bad, can they?
The problem is many were erected in the badly segregated South of the Jim Crow era, celebrating men who caused the deaths of so many and who brought havoc and destruction to the South. Erected by those who advanced a segregated society for another hundred years after the war. I find nothing to celebrate on this issue.
I believe there is much to celebrate about my Southern heritage. What I celebrate doesn’t increase the resentment associated with enslaved people bullied and beaten by gun bulls and patty rollers on tall horses. The enslaved whose present and futures were lorded over by Southern aristocrats whose propaganda led poor whites to their deaths on distant hillsides. Our heritage doesn’t have to involve a Battle Flag that flew over an army in the employ of a rebellious cluster of Southern states intent on keeping and expanding their “peculiar institution.” A “country” that only lasted for four years.
Is there nothing else we can celebrate regarding Southern Heritage? Is there nothing else to be proud of? Is there nothing more than flags flown from pickup trucks and belt buckles and bumper stickers proclaiming “Forget, Hell!!!!” Are we simply the sum of our rebellious past?
We have a rich culture that doesn’t have to harken back to “old times there are not forgotten.” If you are going to lionize the exploits of soldiers on a battlefield, why look past the Revolutionary War? More Revolutionary War battles were fought in my state than any other and some of the greatest military leaders of the war fought here. South Carolina born and bred, Sumter, Marion, Pickens, and Moultrie, along with adopted sons like Morgan, Greene, and Shelby left their mark, not only on my state but on the nation as a whole.
Wait just a “cotton pickin’ minute.” Weren’t some of these men slave owners? Yes, some were and despite this fact, we should neither purge them from history books nor should we discount their contributions. As some of my right-leaning friends have told me, “It’s history”. I agree, it is history and history should be taught warts and all. It shouldn’t be sanitized, nor should it be taught as propaganda like my eighth-grade Cold War Civics class. History is simply what was. We shouldn’t cover it up and we shouldn’t hide from it.
We have a rich Southern culture and heritage going back centuries despite our “peculiar institution” and resulting Jim Crow…let me rephrase that…” including our peculiar institution and resulting Jim Crow.” It’s history. We don’t need a flag or statues to worship under any more than we should deny the existence of mosquitoes and high humidity in our travel brochures. They are facts we can’t or should not attempt to escape. Facts are facts and history is history.
We have a rich and diverse heritage in my state alone. Gullah language and art from the coast to Appalachian culture in the mountains and foothills and to German Lutherans in the “Dutch Fork” middle. Native American tribal influences from the Catawba River, across to the Savannah, and down to Pee Dee just to mention a few. We have art, music, and literature that sprang from slaves and sharecroppers. Beautiful cities and small towns. Architecture, music, visual arts, cuisine, sports, a heritage that shouldn’t include praise for men enslaving other men or men who fought for them.
When I say “shouldn’t include” do I mean we should ignore it? Certainly not. We shouldn’t heap praise upon the heads of my long-ago, dearly departed great, great grandfathers for fighting under the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia. Whatever their motivation, they rebelled in the name of supporting slavery. If there was any honor in that flag it was lost when it was co-opted by the KKK and like minded white supremacists while we or our parents did nothing.
My grandfathers were poor men with little education. Maybe they bought the propaganda about the state’s rights that included the right to enslave. Maybe they believed in an unfair tariff that was placed on goods raised on the backs of the enslaved. Maybe they believed it was a War of Northern Aggression. I doubt they thought much past the surface. Wars are started by rich, old men and fought by young, poor ones. Still, they fought and died under the wrong banner and should not be memorialized or immortalized.
No, I’ll stick with being proud of a heritage that includes BB King from Mississippi singing the Blues, a Southern invention. I might sip a bit of Jack Daniels from Tennessee with a bit of Coca-Cola invented in Atlanta, Georgia. Maybe later I’ll select from a menu that includes Cajun or Creole food from Louisiana or BBQ from anywhere in the South or shrimp and grits, from my state. I’ve eaten enough Soul food to cause my arteries to collapse.
Afterward, I might go sit on my front porch, a Southern culture trait in itself, while smelling honeysuckle, jasmine, or gardenia with a Pat Conroy, Ace Atkins, or a James Lee Burke novel. All notable Southern authors who follow a lineage of fine Southern authors from Faulkner, Walker, O’Conner, and Williams to name just a few.
Depending on the season I might watch my favorite sports teams, The Braves from Atlanta, The Tigers from Clemson. I might catch a NASCAR event, a sport begun in the South that sprang from moonshiners and dirt track racers. We have a Southern heritage attached to our sports teams and college football is a recognized religion with an attending congregation in the millions on any given Saturday. Why can’t we Southerners be proud of that?
Again, and with fervor, my Southern Heritage doesn’t involve a battle flag or statues saluting dead Confederates. My Southern Heritage is too rich for that. My Southern heritage is about beautiful and historic homes and cities, sharecropper shanties, and Sears cottages. It’s about kudzu, cotton, and long-abandoned textile mills. It’s about old men, white and black, plowing behind a mule on the river bottoms.
It is about rich music from Nashville or Muscle Shoals and even richer food from New Orleans, Atlanta, or anywhere on the coast. It’s great literature that can be as heavy as Southern humidity or as light as the scent of Jasmine. My Southern heritage is about beautiful flower and vegetable gardens, and cotton fields bursting white in the fall. It is about sitting on the front porch with family and friends after church and a Sunday dinner.
My heritage is about friends and families of all races. It is about celebrating diversity.
Am I the only person who talks in naughty whispers to their hamburger? Is it normal? What is normal? Am I the crazy Southern uncle or grandfather being paraded out to entertain the kiddies? Am I the guy the youngin’s talk about in their own whispered tones, “Don’t mind him, he’s harmless. Just a degree or two off of plumb. He’s talking about hamburgers not…you know.”
Talking to a hamburger as if it were an alluring female striping down to her unmentionables is not normal, but I guess it is because I eat so few. Get your mind out of the gutter, you degenerate, I’m talking about hamburgers.
When the rare hamburger finds its way onto my menu, I tend to cook them myself. I think I should give up my “man card”. Grilled, dry, ninety-ten blends that don’t satisfy me at all. All in the name of health. I don’t think hamburgers and heart health should be used in the same thought. But then again, hamburgers shouldn’t be a sexual experience either. Can you guess what kind I just ate? The hamburger equivalent of a cracker.
Soooo…not just any hamburger gets the sexy talk, but the kind that starts out as a ball of ground beef the size of a baseball and is squashed flat by a spatula onto a greasy griddle. A miraculous metamorphosis occurs. More flavor is imparted and an even sear too. Crisp on the outside and oh so moist and juicy on the inside. It is the difference between a silk nightgown and a wool nightshirt. I’m having both a Pavlovian and an erotic reaction. My very own “Cheeseburger in Paradise” moment but hold the cheese, please.
If I were writing a book my short order cook would be more round than tall, wearing a stained white apron and wearing a hairnet under one of those paper hats that resembles a World War Two garrison cap. The hat would be worn at a jaunty angle and have grease stained finger prints all over it. With a toothpick wedged into the side of his mouth, the cook would answer to the name Earl or Mose…or maybe Ike. He would be as greasy as his hamburgers. The Chesterfield unfiltered resting behind one ear is optional. He’s not sexy…he’s my pimp. If hamburgers were violins he would be Antonius Stradivarius.
My first “foodgasam” occurred in college. I was seduced as an immature Newberry College freshman and my “affaire de l’estomac” lasted for the next four years. It was not my first hamburger. I had been around the corner once or twice, Porter’s Grill, The Wagon Wheel, The Clock. No, I was not a burger virgin but this was like seeing my first Playboy centerfold…live and in living color without air brushing or filters…or clothes. The only difference was, unlike the Playboy centerfold, this hamburger was going home with me.
I was sorely tempted and was finally worn down. I gave into what would become “heaven waiting in a brown paper bag”, the “Dopey Burger.” Dopey, who looked nothing like the cook I created earlier, ran a hole in the wall hamburger joint named The Tomahawk Café across the street from Cromer Hall, the jock dorm. He had a real name, John Edwards, but everyone just called him Dopey and the café, Dopey’s and not the Tomahawk.
Names didn’t matter…we were two nameless ships passing in the night. This was a “third rate romance, low rent rendezvous.” built on nothing more than lust…the lust for the best burger I have ever stuffed into my mouth. A burger featuring a huge handmade patty, fried on a grill before being bedded down on a soft and sensual sesame seed bun.
I watched wantonly as he placed a ball of meat on the griddle before smashing it flat. I felt my heart skip a beat and my breathing become labored when Dopey went about spreading mayonnaise copiously on both bun halves, edge to edge.
With a sweet onion slice, I really didn’t need the lettuce and tomato on the burger but watching him add them reminded me of a beautiful, long legged redhead wearing a sexy negligee…in reverse I guess, putting it on rather than taking it off. And any hair color is acceptable, just no catsup or mustard please.
I snuck out the diner like a man guilty of breaking one of the Lord’s commandments…I wasn’t breaking a commandment but I’m sure I hit a couple of the deadly sins. Let me see, lusting for a burger…check. Gluttony, self explanatory…check. Sloth…as I lay in my bunk glistening with hamburger grease and burping contentedly…check. Three out of seven ain’t bad.
Despite the paper bag and its wax paper covering, I fondled and felt its seductive shape as I made my way back to my dorm room. As soon as I closed my door behind me, I locked it and turned down the lights. This was for my eyes only! Peeking inside the bag and…oh my. I couldn’t control myself. The bun was buttered and toasted. I understand why porn addicts have issues breaking their habit.
Taking the burger out and slowly undressing it from its wax paper wrapper, I exposed it naked to the world and my salivating lips. It’s very scent played to my basest instinct, my greatest sin, gluttony.
Mayonnaise and grease leaked out, ran down my hand, covering my fingers…more dripped down my chin…staining the paper napkins on my desk…I licked my fingers carnally giving into my depravity. I took a bite, and then another. I was out of control.
As I looked at the last bite I asked, “Was it good for you? Not so much?” I’m not satiated either…but I ordered two. My own little ménage à trois. Just me and two beguiling Dopey burgers. I promised to take more time with the second one…I lied.
Unfortunately, my love affair ended badly. I was addicted and found myself broke.
“Where will I get my next fix? “, asked the Dopey Burger addict.
“You can run a tab payable at the end of the semester?”, said the Dopey Burger dealing pimp.
“Like water to a thirsty man. I’ll have two.”
Four years later, “I can’t graduate until I pay how much?”
To quote author Rick Bragg, “I know magic when I taste it.” This was magic and Dopey was the wizard, his spatula replacing his magic staff.
Unfortunately the magic that was my love affair is no more. Like the memory of my first kiss, Dopey and the Dopey Burger are lost among the sands of time. The “brothel of hamburger delights” transitioned to where ever hole in the wall diners transition several years ago. I’m sure the rats and roaches were devastated. Progress sucks.
Still I search. Especially after I eat one of my own creations. Like Sir Galahad, I search for the hamburger holy grail…or maybe more like Monty Python. My grail is a hamburger that reminds me of a Dopey Burger. My quest continues.
Note: After Newberry College changed their mascot from The Indians to The Wolves, The Tomahawk Café became known simply as Dopey’s Café. Dopey’s closed for good in 2017 after sixty plus years, the building and its memories torn down. Progress sucks bigly…lust like my hamburgers.
Ravings of a Mad Southerner 