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From one of my knitting pals: 

I had a lovely sandwich experience while on my way to the airport in Phoenix a couple years ago. A well-connected, restaurant friend there told me to try La Grande Orange, and what a treat! I can’t remember the exact sandwich I had, but I believe it was some version of pesto/tomato/mozzerella, and it was delicious. The atmosphere was hectic and delightful (since I wasn’t in a big rush) and it was fun to do a bit of shopping for specialty items (I found some gridded, wire-bound Rhodia notebooks) while I stood in line.

Heidi L  

LA GRANDE ORRRRRANNNNNNGE 

Tis the season for citrus. I do miss the large box of oranges and grapefruit of my childhood that arrived annually with a large thud on the porch. My grandparents, children of Wisconsin-settled, Scandinavian and German immigrants, packed their things and resettled in Orlando in the 50’s, dreaming of sand-paved streets and owning their own little piece of commerce, a restaurant.

Their cinderblock, truncated rambler sat on a corner lot shaded by fruit trees and, until the thorough freeze of 1989, we were shipped a seam-bursting carton each year. There were a few blood oranges mixed in with the oranges and grapefruits which fanned the gambling flames in me, compelling me to peel and eat till I struck pay dirt. There was a hole in the floor of the unheated porch where the unmovable box sat hard. The hole was round and big enough to accomodate a dozen’s peelsworth, and so we stuffed ’em down it.

• The Southern Food and Beverage Wiki is up!!

Featured on the site is Matzoh Ball Gumbo, Culinary Tales of the Jewish South, by Marcie Cohen Ferris, edited by the extremely capable Miriam Rubin.

Chapter 1, There’s No Place Like Home, page 1: Ms. Ferris writes about Blytheville, Arkansas. There was the Dixie Pig, where you could order barbecue chopped, shredded, plate-style, or a “white pig sandwich with cheese,” possibly one of the most nonkosher combinations in the world.

This is a lovely book, a dream of a read, loaded with fascinating photographs and, hazarding a guess, an eye-opening education for most of us.

• Miriam and I cooked together about a bazillion years ago at Le So Fab Pavillion . Whew. Glad those days are behind me and I lived to tell the tale. Just about died from the exhaustion of cranking out about a bazillion half-inch carrots and turnips – seven sided and one-eighth-inch wided. And that was just in the first 3 minutes of each double shift.
• Read Miriam’s lovely Passover story for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette here.
• Poked around a bit on the SoFab site with muffulettas, po-boys and oyster loaves in mind, and found this (a very nonkosher recipe, and out of season to boot), from New Orleans Chef John Besh:

“BLT” Buster Crab, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich

Serves 1, Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1 each buster crab, cleaned

2 tsp. aioli

1 pinch micro greens

1 slice brioche, toasted

¼ c mixed red, yellow and green grape tomatoes, peeled

1 tsp. extra virgin olive oil

1 dash 25-year-old balsamic vinegar

1 pinch minced chive

¼ c cornmeal

¼ c seasoned flour

¼ c canola oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

In a sauté pan heat the canola oil over a medium high flame. Season the buster crab with salt and pepper. Toss into a mixture of seasoned flour and cornmeal. Place the crab into the hot canola oil and allow cooking for one minute on each side.

Season the tomatoes with salt, pepper, vinegar, chive and extra virgin olive oil. Place the tomatoes over a well- toasted brioche crouton and place onto a serving plate.

After cooking the buster crab, remove and allow it to drain over some absorbent towels for a moment. Place the crab over the tomatoes and top it with a dollop of aioli, which you in turn cover with a pinch of micro greens or any lettuce sprout.

To Serve:Garnish the plate with additional chopped chives, chive oil and beet juice if you please.

Mmmm. Beet juice. Mmmm. I do please.

• 
• (That’s a mighty big sandwich for a Boston terrier. Do you think he knows he’s got that bow tie on?)
•  A: She lies awake at night wondering if there really is a dog. Or, in my case, she gets up in the middle of the night and semi-sleep walks to the kitchen, fixes a sandwich and chews it slowly in the dark, thinking that if there were a god she would be less worried about the afterlife and sleep better. But my demons fall into the OCD, atheistic, insomniac sphere. So all bets are off on the God thing.
• I read in the NY Times food section (August 22, 2007) that, “food and the environment is the civil rights movement for people under the age of 40,” and that folks are “farming for the soul”, in other words, in the name of God.

On the second day God created the dog. God said, “Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. I will give you a life span of twenty years.” The dog said, “That’s too long to be barking. Give me ten years and I’ll give you back the other ten” So God agreed. 

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• “John Thorne’s Mouth Wide Open is a journey around his own kitchen,” writes Linda Kulman in Insatiable Appetites, her recent review of current cookery books for holiday giving. Mr. Thorne’s “exhaustive essays, most of which were previously published in his food letter, Simple Cooking, tackle all manner of dishes, including some, like fried eggs, that might seem beneath consideration.” 
• Or the Bacon and Dandelion Sandwich eloquently considered in Serious Pig, Mr. Thorne’s 1996 bedside-table-grounding book. It anchored my bedside table for a full summer. John Thorne’s writing enthralls me. I can’t imagine a food more worth consideration than a fried egg. Unless it’s a fried egg sandwich, which one would have to call a dish rather than a food.
• It must be noted that on the Simple Cooking site there is a section headed up Midnight Snacks. Here is a review of Mouth Wide Open.
• File under Fluffernutter: Linda is a friend of mine, but obviously I have not investigated her past closely enough. Googled her just now and came upon the story of her courtship and marriage to Ralph Alswang in Weddings:Vows, the NY Times Style column. Now that got my attention. Surprised I missed it the first time around. Had she been on the front page and I had missed it – totally understandable as I turn straight to the fluff.  Need I say more about the depth of my intellect? You could drown in it, if you believe that a person can drown in an inch of water.
• An appetizer from the Vows piece: Mr. Alswang, 33, says he fell in love with her there and was especially taken by her stylish black coat and her appetite. ”I said to her, ‘Can I get you something?’ ” he remembered. ”And out of her mouth came, ‘I want a chili dog with the works.’ ” He added, ”Then, like an old pro, she got this huge chili dog into her mouth, while holding a drink. I thought, ‘That’s an amazing person.’ ”

Prepare for a conflicted reaction should you click the link to Eat Yer Heart Out Rachel Ray, Dan Epstein’s brilliant, albeit a bit disgusting, dot connector to Steve Don’t Eat It. Scroll down to Volume 3, if you are feeling strong.

Beggin’ Strips are bacon-shaped, bacon-flavored treats for dogs. In the commercial a dog runs around the house like a maniac shouting (shouting? a dog? bizarre) BACON, BACON, BACON, BACON, BACON! It’s weird, because I do the exact same thing. Steve follows the natural trajectory to Beggins, Lettuce and Tomato. So glad I don’t live with this guy.

Speaking of dogs, a topic I have not worn thin on this blog – surprisingly, I am reminded of a story.

• My friend Barbara, chef/proprietress of Columbine in NYC, is a very funny person. The funniest person I have ever encountered in the flesh, actually. She can’t help it. Anyway, remember Spy Magazine? Right.
• In B’s words, The year was around ’88 or ’89. Bryan Miller was writing about restaurants for the Times. Truly enamored of the word nubbins, he scattered it with abandon in his reviews. So, a kid from Spy called and asked how I would describe a nubbin. I said, “I think it is the thing that doesn’t melt when hot water is poured onto the Gravy Train.”
• Here she is, in Wisconsin, circa 1997 or so, in Rosendale – speed trap capital of the world, where we made an emergency brat stop, or brot stop. At 10 am we were the first customers of the day.
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• Speaking of dogs and food. I do a fair amount of work for Vegetarian Times Magazine (don’t tell their readers about the stylist with bacon grease up her sleeves). Had some vegan biscotti sitting around a photo studio left from the previous day’s shoot. Vegan biscotti miss the eggs real bad. Take it from me. (Apologies to any vegans out there.) So, in comes the client, a guy from USA Weekend Magazine, and I say, “Try a biscotti!”. One bite and he quips, “Will it make my coat shiny?!”
• Btw, I know this post is a mess with font sizes, lack of paragraph breaks and so on. I beg (gin) forgiveness and promise you IT IS NOT MY FAULT. It is in fact, a server problem. Was shocked to find out that the quirk is in the tool, not the operator. So.

 From Doug Michels of Ant Farm, Blue Star Human Dolphin Space Colony, Dollenium, The National Sofa, Cadillac Ranch and Media Burn.     

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• The sandwich, not the man.  Went to lunch with Peter Brett Wednesday. He’s majestic, but not po. Rich in all that counts. He’s famous, don’t you know?! The reservation at The Majestic Cafe was in his name and I was the happy beneficiary. “Casually Swank” says the Majestic’s site and, believe me, we were!
• We did a little recreational celebrity bashing. In the same vein as Frank Bruni’s recent story, TV Chefs, Far From Reality, although not (quite) as eloquently.  
• Scannned the menu for the choice with the highest housemade saturation and fixed upon the oyster po’ boy – housemade bread, pickle and fries. I gotta tell you, that pickle was remarkably tasty. Excellent balance of flavor. Hit each note and ricocheted back. 
• Peter Bakes is the name of Mr. Brett’s custom cake business, although For Pete’s Cake, was a contender, and my personal favorite. 
• An essential element of true celebrity, a celebrity we can love? Modesty! In a post-lunch email Peter writes, “I won’t really be a celebrity until I show up on your blog behind that po’ boy.” What’s not to love?

• I come by this brat pre-occupation honestly. My grandfather, Frederick Henry Schroeder, is responsible.
• FOOD MUSEUM OF THE WEEK
• Deutsches Bratwurst Museum Holzhausen
• Thuringia, Germany.  Focused on the social and political history of bratwurst, particularly Thuringian Rostbratwurst, for which a 1432 document has recently been found that established the rules of production. The exhibition includes documents, butchering tools, historical photos, and folklore. 
• When I was a kid in the late 60’s, we moved to DC from Wisconsin and my parents maintained a brat connection. At the time, bratwurst was exotic and unavailable in the Mid-Atlantic, a region (DC in particular) that was largely by-passed by the waves of Northern-European immigrants that arrived in the early 20th century. What was a good ex-pat Midwesterner to do? I remember suitcase hand-offs at National Airport. A plain, brown, businessman’s suitcase, heavy with cold, stuffed casings, packed so close the sausages were square-sided. Followed on the weekend by a backyard brat bash.
• My grandmother, other side of the family, the, ahem, pork-free side, came for visits with a large, brown case as well. Packed tightly, no wrapping, day old bakery. Ack. From my grandfather’s dairy and bakery, the Quaker Dairy. Quakers they were not. Boris and Anna Cherkasky from Ukraine. Nope. That day old bakery was a cross to bear, so to speak.

• The headline reads Germans Take Pride in the Wurst and goes on to tell the story of the bratwurst purity law, a “holy find”. I already knew that ketchup on a bratwurst was Barbarian, but was unaware that to fry it is a sin. Even pan fry? Oh heavens! Friars!
•  Sitting in my sunny kitchen, while out the window the wind floats the swing up high, carrying a phantom child, I could not be happier with my lunch. Still wearing the jacket I put on for the ride over to the German Gourmet where the sign read HOT BRATS TO GO – oh joy! My heart leapt. Condiments sanctioned by yours truly: sauerkraut, onions (red, paper thin, raw and wilted so unctuously) and mustard.  On a roll that is just right, crevasse down the length of the top, sharply edged with brown, looking too generous but disappearing from the plate, slathered as that bread is with brown mustard and kraut. I’m glad to be nearly alone, don’t mind my dog staring down every bite. Can you blame her? Licking my chops I’ll sacrifice a tidbit to her. We both believe in telekinesis.

The German Gourmet is a lovely place to shop for chocolates, wine, pastries, pickles, mustard, cheese, licorice, chic European toiletries and scores of other irresistible fancies. The sandwich menu will make you breathe hard if you are there just before lunch, as I was.

The place sparkles.

Loaves of bread rest in wait. Ask and someone will slice off a chunk and sell it to you by the pound.