The Lunch Encounter

Would you like to supersize that?

A Search for Haute and Juicy !Yikes!

Katie Norwood’s shots ran in the Washington Post today under the headline Seeking Bliss on a Bun.

All these photos were taken by Katie Norwood.

Know what? Katie, who is a friend of mine, might be described as Bliss On a Bun…. She’s awful happy, that girl.

Did somebody say haute and juicy?

It’s the amazing egg, not quite round
Oeuf, huevo, ei, they’re all the same
Yolk in the middle and white all around.

Delicious with toast, well, Eve had to boast,
When she scrambled some up at the beginning of time
Evolution brought us souffles, monte cristos, chopped with mayonnaise
First of not, Darwin had to admit they’re sublime.

Photo by Renee Comet

Ukee Dogs
1576 Imperial Lane
250.726.2161

Renee and fam went to British Columbia for summer vacay. In Ucluelet they coulda gone to Smiley’s or Jiggers but nope, they choose Ukee DAWGSS!!

Do your vacation food snapshots look like this? Mine sure don’t. Must be the camera. Ha ha.

Illustration by Mara Cherkasky

Merv Conn is “King of the Strolling Accordionists”! From the White House to your cousin’s Bar Mitzvah, Merv has entertained Washington, DC, for more than 70 years. THE LEGEND OF MERV CONN premiered to a sold-out audience at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, MD on February 18, 2007, the day before Merv’s 87th birthday, and now officially “Merv Conn Day“! This DVD tribute continues the celebration with about 75 minutes of new material, including the AFI Birthday Gala, featuring the World’s First Ever 21 Accordion Salute.

Order now from http://www.squeezinart.com

Wallace and Gromit
Is Wensleydale good grilled?

Brother, do we eat a lot of cheese around this house. Grilled cheese, eaten too frequently, can cause visions.

Some people see Virgins. We see Old Glory.

Cheese Souffle – was really hoping this is what my son would answer at school when they asked about his favorite foods. But no, he wrote:
1. Cande
2. Fastfod
3. Bacin
Although he sure does like cheese souffle.

Fondue – every Thursday night, in fact. Scraping up the crust at the bottom is the best part. That and occasionally stabbling yourself in the palm with a cute pointy fondue fork. Dang, that’ll make you bleed. Drop your bread in the cheese, gotta kiss the person to the left of you. Bleed in the cheese, gotta leave the table.
.
Cheese should be in my blood actually, seeing as my dad owned a dairy when I was a kid. The kind that makes ice cream and cottage cheese, and brings it to your house, early in the morning. Can you imagine!?

My grandfather owned the dairy/bakery and he was not, to make a gross understatement, a nice man. My uncle Si made a sharp left when he finished high school and headed straight to med school. None of that family business stuff for him. Smart man.

Si’s words when he was about 75, in a taped interview:
I never ate dairy stuff because my mother never liked it. That’s why I can’t stand butter or cheese or cream or milk. I hate ice cream above everything else.

That’s the power of family, alright. Thankfully I was never an employee of my granddad.

Cheese pizza? Let’s don’t even mention it. Ack, if I never saw a flat greasy box coming up my front steps again it would be too soon

The obvious queries:
How do I do my make-up to look so, well, burnty?
AND
Is that sandwich nestled in cotton balls?

And finally, Museum of the Week.
Ta da!
Cuba Cheese Museum
P. O. Box 34
Cuba NY 14727

Mission: The museum and education facility tell the story of the cheese and milk industry, focusing on western New York State, an historic center of cheese production. Operated primarily by volunteers, with a small annual grant from New York State.

Admission Info: Closed during winter months. Open Friday, 2 – 4 pm; Saturday, 10 am – 1 pm.

Photo by Renee Comet
Foodstyling by Lisa Cherkasky

Sandwiches You Will Like

A Primanti on the heel of the loaf, kolbassi and burger with sauerkraut, and slammers rank in Rick Sebak’s top ten. It’s enough to make a person throw themselves in the car and put the pedal to the metal.

…I can wrap my mind around.

Even CatDog.

Not this though:

Duck Dog – 9
House made duck sausage, spicy mustard, fig relish and shallots

On the menu at Salt, in Baltimore.

Wiggling Piggies

From the outer fringes of sandwich lore…

(Not to reveal too much, but a person could make a sandwich of sliced pork head. Oh ugh. I’m disgusted with myself for typing those words.)

I worship at the feet of Soufside. He is intrepid.

This happened when I was in 3rd grade and my brother was in kindergarten.

My other grandmother made her own Pickled Pigs Feet (speaking of worshipping feet),which are also fairly horrible.
Soufside

Soufside is sitting in, thank the heavens above, cause I am so whupped from work. Now that I have obtained a “Blanket Release For All Soufside Maunderings” (BRFASM) I can post his words and, aaaaah, rest.

We are on a pork jag.

Back to sandwiches. There used to be another place (other than Crown Candy Kitchen in St Louis) near here. They are not related, just had the
same name.

A lot of the Crown’s Candy posters talk about how bad of a neighborhood it is in, well Crown’s Southern Kitchen was much worse. The Crown’s Candy (CC) area was/is mostly junkies and abandoned buildings, Park’s Drug was famous for filling any and all prescriptions (at about triple the going rate.) Have a ‘scrip with “Take 2 Aspirins and call me in the morning” written on it? Well just cross that out and write “lots of morphine” on it (crayon is OK) and they would fill it. Eventually got them closed down, sent to prison, etc…

Anyway, Crown’s Southern Kitchen (CSK) was located on Dr. Martin Luther King Avenue. Chris Rock has a routine about “if you are on a street named after a Black hero, you are in trouble” this was very true about Crown’s. It was also located across the street from a police station, you would think that would make it safe. Well they had a pay-phone on the wall, and, back before the evil cell phone takeover of the world, there would be a steady stream of felons, near-felons and folks who had just escaped custody waiting in line to use it.

They had a great juke box though, lots of gospel music, and on Thursday Pig Ear Sandwiches (Listener Sandwiches).Pig Ears on Wonder Bread with Yellow Mustard – that’s living!! (Well not really – kinda chewy.) There was always a long line for them on Thursday. They made them assembly line style. Lay out some bread, slap some mustard on it, then come by with a big tray of listeners, sometimes there would be 10-15 sandwiches lying there. They look just like pig ears on a piece of bread. Even with all your food skills I don’t think you could make that look appetizing. (Case you don’t know, I’m a food stylist. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind having at a pig’s ear.) Something about a sows’ ear into a silk purse…

(This ear is on Niecie’s in Kansas City, Missouri.)

All the side dishes were cooked with pork, you could get more pork in the greens and black-eyed peas than most places give you as the main dish. All the ladies behind the counter were great, on slow days we would put on some Mighty Clouds of Joy and have a gospel sing-along.

Some fools bought the place, re-modeled and expanded, cut the portion
sizes and killed it.

The Hunting of the Snark

From the source for any wisdom of significance, the Bottle Rockets message board.
(In case you don’t know, the Brox are a Festus/St. Louis rock-n-roll outfit.)

Kirbie:
Ok. I think this is a snark hunt of sorts. I don’t think there is any special ingredients to a Missouri pork chop sandwich–I think it’s just a pork chop raised in Missouri, on bread. They could have just said ‘pork chop sandwich‘ and probably described the product accurately. I have never seen a concessionaire in Missouri displaying any significance to Missouri pork chops: usually around here, concessionaires sell pork tenderloins, fritters, or occasionally bbq pork loin.

In context with Farm Aid though, there is a significance to Missouri pork products, via Patchwork Farms. Patchwork Farms is right up Farm Aid’s alley with their essentially (nearly) organic, non-cruelty raised, environmentally low impact etc. small farm practices. No special sauce, as far as I know. But a Patchwork pork chop really is special and worth the extra money, and it comes from Missouri.

And Kirbie’s previous post:

A pork chop is a chop of pork.

Patchwork Farms is a consortium of high quality pork farmers here in missouri. It is sort of a regional stamp of excellence: high quality feeds, low confinement, low chemical/antibiotic raised oinkers, that sort of thing. We take our pig seriously around here!