Posted under Cuisine & Culture & Music
Noooooooo!
The coming a-pork-a-lypse could be the end of the world as we know it. In memory of happier times for us pork lovers, I offer this tribute to Lexington-style North Carolina barbecue:
Posted under Cuisine
… of raw milk.
I, for one, am just grateful that our public servants can find the time to tackle this existential threat to America’s well-being, what with all the other really important and beneficial missions they’re occupied with.
Posted under Cuisine & The South
Jefferson’s Monticello makes ale inspired by past
Among the third president’s lesser-known pursuits was making beer, and modern-day visitors to his mountaintop estate at Monticello can soon get a taste of the past.
…
Thompson calls the unfiltered wheat-style beer “very light on the palate with a clean finish,” with citrus and earthy aromas.
The ale will make its public debut at the Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center museum shop with tastings on Feb. 21. The ale will be sold at Monticello and Charlottesville-area restaurants.
Posted under Cuisine & The South
Maurice’s BBQ Takes Down Some Confederate Battle Flags:
Maurice’s Gourmet Barbeque’s Maurice Bessinger, who hoisted the stars and bars over his nine Columbia-area restaurants on the day, almost a decade ago, when South Carolina permanently lowered the Confederate flag from its capitol dome, told a local television station this week that he could no longer afford to keep his controversial flags flying — and it’s not for the reasons you’d think.
Bessinger’s empire, built on a secret recipe for yellow sauce and his reputation as an old-style Southern charmer, was once the nation’s biggest commercial barbecue operation. But his open embrace of a symbol indelibly associated with slavery disgusted many of his customers and dismayed most of his business associates. Walmart pulled his Southern Gold sauce off its shelves, and, according to Bessinger’s autobiography, Defending My Heritage, the company lost 98 percent of its wholesale business.
Still, Bessinger claims he isn’t trying to woo back barbecue fans who were repelled by his rebel politics. He’s instead blaming the recession for the rising cost of dry cleaning.
Posted under Cuisine & Environmentalism & Globalism & Science
GM pigs: Green ham with your eggs? :
The project here is called Enviropig. The animals inside the clean, warm barns look like normal pigs and behave like normal pigs, but they are living, breathing wonders of modern science.
Each one contains genes from mice and E.coli bacteria, which have been inserted into their DNA with absolute precision.
Continue Reading »
Posted under Cuisine
Maurice’s BBQ is famous for its refusal to take down the flag (a costly stance), but it also once sold books defending slavery, seeking to educate its customers [thus freeing Southerners from guilt]. Now, were I in the same position I likely wouldn’t defend slavery in the restaurants (though there’s nothing inherently immoral about it provided a society treats its slaves well), but my point is culture war books were sold with the Southern cuisine. Select music and videos (e.g. “Gone With the Wind” and perhaps “Braveheart”) could be added too. Where is the Olde South today? Most of it stops in at a BBQ joint at least a few times a year. A local Greek restaurant has a map of Greece on its wall, and a group of Vietnamese has declared its presence with a restaurant of its own. These are culturally important.
There’s one demon in particular I’d like to slay though: unhealthy Southern food. The philosophy of New Orleans chefs is “anything worth doing is worth overdoing”, and that might extend to the South as a whole. However, I wish this spirit were moderated by health concerns. I can think right off of Low Country dishes that are as healthy as what one finds in a Whole Foods without sacrificing the taste. It’s certainly possible to gather them up, and an enlightened Southern restaurant would promote good health for its patrons (e.g. fewer fried foods and no soft drinks).
Continue Reading »
Posted under Cuisine & Culture
Down near Charleston, SC, is a small tea garden known as the Charleston Tea Plantation. The garden has an exquisite albeit expensive assortment of black teas for sale – as with many things, you get what you pay for. Continue Reading »
Posted under Cuisine
Check out this month’s issue of The American Conservative that offers three articles on the growing food issues: “Food for Thought”   “Table Talk”   and “Burning Dinner” Â
Posted under Cuisine & Culture
Would you like an order of Orwellian “hate-crime” legislation with that?
————————————————————————————————————————————
Last week LifeSiteNews.com reported that the McDonalds restaurant chain had put an executive on the board of the U.S. homosexual chamber of commerce. McDonald’s is now attempting to obscure the issue of their support for the homosexual agenda in an e-mail they are sending to those who contact them about the matter.
The first point McDonald’s makes is, “At McDonald’s, we treat all our employees and customers with dignity and respect regardless of their ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or any other differentiating factor.”
While this may be true, it has nothing to do with the world’s largest fast food chain collaborating with an organization that seeks to “advance the ideas and causes of the LGBT business community” (from the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce website), and lobbies the U.S. Congress to enact laws that could be used to repress freedom of expression and religious freedom…
Posted under Cuisine
The morel mushrooms (a delicacy which appear in the Midwest in April / early May) have arrived, and we were fortunate enough to find 100 on our property this weekend, which we prepare in the conventional manner (dipped in flour and sautéed in butter). Bon appetite!
