I just left Mama J’s, a soul food restaurant in Richmond, Virginia’s Jackson Ward neighborhood. If you are from the South, this mall, family-run business lays down a product that will compete with anything your mom or grandmother or grandfather has ever cooked. And I don’t care if your mom is Paula Deen or your daddy is Justin Wilson. This is seriously awesome Deep South cooking.
I recently read that a cookie factory in Virginia had to shut down for two weeks to “change the recipe” for frozen cookie dough it manufactures. The same plant had a recall of cookie dough last year for some other reason. This time there was e coli in the dough. No cookies, thank God, were shipped this time.
But E. coli tainted cookie dough? And they had to change the recipe to get rid of it? What the hell did the recipe call for, two cups of flour, a half-cup of sugar and a spoonful of manure?
During the holidays I was hit by a moment of revelation while watching Bobby Bowden coaching his last game at Florida State. After his final win, he gave a press conference. He was classic Bobby B. I flipped channels and there was Paula Dean on the Food Network. That is when it hit me; Paula Dean is Bobby Bowden in a wig. They both have the same face, accent, voice, mannerisms and enthusiasm for their profession.
Have you tried reducing your salt intake? Try it. Go to the grocery store and read the ingredients chart on the back of anything you may find remotely edible. It’s filled with sodium. Ever tried sodium-free ketchup? Give it a shot. It tastes like a mouth full of pennies. Tried salt-free peanut butter? It sucks like a Dyson on the heels of a hairy dog. (more…)
Today, I heard something that proves people have no idea what they are putting into their mouths. If I start laughing before I finish, forgive me.
My son told me this story. The topic of conversation was pimento cheese sandwiches, a triangular staple of Southern church socials, at least from my recollection. During a conversation about food with several friends, he mentioned that he loved pimento cheese sandwiches. One person in the group had never heard of pimento cheese. (more…)
Even before I saw Food, Inc., my family and I had started a garden to produce some of our own food. We thought it would be healthier. No good deed goes unpunished.
I created some seriously pungent compost from kitchen leftovers. Our tomato plants started out like normal horticulture. Then they grew to be huge – stupidly huge. Now they are the size of trees. I sit in the shade of their crinkled leaves; they are that big. There are few tomatoes on the sturdy branches, maybe six. Squirrels have stolen most of them. (more…)
Flipping through channels the other night I noticed that Toby McGuire was in both Spiderman and The Ciderhouse Rules. Not that Mr. McGuire ‘s roles have anything to do with this story, but it connected synapses in my brain that conjured up memories of a man in California selling apple cider near the mountain town of Julian, east of San Diego. He called himself Ciderman.
It is not often that people drive forty miles to get a loaf of bread. We did.
I’ve known Mark McIntyre, the owner, chef and chief baker at Norwood Cottage Bakery for years. His homemade artesian bread was rumored (on Facebook) to be sinful. As I recall, Mark was the one doing the rumoring. After roaming amongst babies, kids and dogs at South of the James (a farmer’s market near Richmond), we found him in the back, grinning in the middle of a tangle of people. The rumors worked, or more likely these people had tasted his bread before. (more…)
Back when I spent a lot of time in drive-thru lanes waiting for fast food that I didn’t order, I pondered the impressive mistakery. It was consistent, almost every trip. Checking the bag became a ritual. The order was wrong at least 7 out of ten times. You have to have hours of training to perfect such a FUBAR system.
“I’ll take a ham biscuit and a small coffee with one of those hash browned potato things.”
“That will be $6.78 at the second window.”
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Food is food. Drugs are drugs. We need someone watching out for each category individually instead of together. The job is just too big. The Food and Drug Administration has to ride herd on all of our drugs and our food at the same time? Those have become two pretty different groups. But if we combine the DEA and the FDA (since both deal with drugs), we even out the creation of a separate Food Department. (more…)
Some people love water. They drink it 24-7. I have always looked at water as something you bath in, swim through, boat over, fish in or make iced tea with. I am not a big fan of drinking water even though it makes up 98% of my body. Juice is good. Cokes are amazing (especially Vanilla Cokes). I used to drink about 10 a day. I am pretty sure I was personally keeping a bottling plant in operation somewhere near Richmond. Now I am under new management and I find myself drinking nothing but juice; still not fond of water. (more…)