Wisdom...or Lack Thereof

When speaking of his wisdom teeth, my grandfather used to say, “I’ll never get my wisdom teeth cut out, I do some of my best chewing with those teeth.”

Once again, I should have listened to my grandfather.After 44 years and some extremely successful chewing, I have removed all four of my wisdom teeth.Day after day, I kept waiting for the wisdom to kick in, to no avail.

After returning from the dentist’s office, heavily medicated and without a care in the world, I fell into the bed. My wife did as the doctor instructed and placed two ice packs on my cheeks to help prevent swelling. The bags wouldn’t stay in place and so she looked for anything to help secure the ice packs. This is where the trouble began.

Feeling all powerful and a little mischievous, my loving wife of 13 years dug deep into her closet to find the ugliest, most flower-filled scarf in her drawers. She returned with a gaudy blue, orange, and yellow number with assorted spring flowers which she proceeded to tie around my face, securing the ice packs, and leaving a large floral bow on the top of my head.

My head— full of some heavy-duty medication at the time— had no clue, or care, as to what was occurring.Moments later I was awakened by a series of bright flashes. I opened my eyes to find my wonderful spouse— the love of my life, my supreme caretaker at that moment— laughing, camera in hand, taking incriminating photos of her chipmunk-cheeked, floral-scarf clad, big-bow adorned patient. I am sure the photos will resurface at a later date. Still very much out of it, I mumbled a few choice words, gave her a gesture or two, and rolled over.

She whispered, “I’m going to the drug store to get your prescription filled. The phone is right here if you need me.”

Approximately five minutes later the doorbell began ringing, and ringing , and ringing. I tried to ignore it, but it continued to ring. Finally, I slid out of bed, wearing only a pair of shorts and the aforementioned bow-tied floral scarf. I shuffled through the house and opened the door.

Standing across from me were four of the most shocked housekeepers you have ever seen. To my recollection they were speechless. I looked at them. They looked back at me. I looked at them a little longer, they stood, jaws dropped, looking back at me. Finally, still only an hour out of surgery, I mumbled, “I got my wisdom teeth out.” Which, with my mouth full of gauze, probably sounded like, “I duh muh wunnuah teee how.”

Note: I am never home during the day on Fridays when the housekeepers show up. They don’t know me and I have never met them. We know each other intimately now.

I shuffled back to the bedroom, crawled back into the bed, and dreamed of banana pudding.

When my wife returned from the drug store I was sprawled out, flat on my back, in the middle of my bed, knocked out cold and without a care in the world as the housekeepers were busy vacuuming and dusting around me.

Like my grandfather, I, too, used to do some of my best chewing with those teeth. I’ll think of them often (mostly when I’m eating steak) and wonder why they never imparted any wisdom.Alas, I’ve always got banana pudding.

Joan Holland's Almost Heaven Banana Pudding

1 cup Sugar
6 Tbl Flour
Pinch of Salt
4 Egg yolks (reserve whites for meringue)
2 cups Milk
2 tsp Vanilla
6 Tbl Butter
Vanilla wafers
4 Bananas, ripe, peeled and sliced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine sugar, flour, salt, eggs, milk and vanilla in a small nonreactive sauce pot. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until the custard thickens. Remove from heat, stir in butter until dissolved.

Butter a 2-quart baking dish. Arrange the vanilla wafers around the outside and across the bottom of the baking dish. Spread a layer of custard over the wafers. Place sliced bananas on top of custard and spoon the remaining custard over bananas, spreading evenly.

Meringue

4 Egg whites
6 Tbl Sugar
1/2 tsp Cream of tartar

Beat the egg whites with an electric mixer. When they start to increase in volume, add the sugar and cream of tartar. Continue to beat until soft peaks form. Spread over the pudding and bake at 350 degrees until golden, about 8 - 10 minutes. Allow pudding to cool completely before serving (refrigerate at least 4 hours).

Yield: 8-10 servings

Robert St.John is an author, chef, restaurateur, and world-class eater. He is the author of “A Southern Palate,” “Deep South Staples,” “Nobody’s Poet,” “My South,” and the upcoming “Deep South Parties.” He can be reached at http://www.robertstjohn.com/ or nobodyspoet.blogspot.com

Santa Fe


SANTA FE— Travel notes and food quotes from my dining diary the week of July 8th:

Have you ever wished for something for so long that there is no way the experience will live up to the “build up?” For 15 years, one of the restaurants on my “get-to list” has been the Coyote Café in Santa Fe, N.M. I am a big fan of Southwestern cuisine. It is one of my favorite regional/ethnic cuisines.

Chef Mark Miller is one of the foremost authorities on Southwestern cuisine. Actually, he has been credited for starting the Southwestern food movement in the early 1980s. I used to frequent his Washington, D.C. restaurant, Red Sage, and enjoyed many fine meals there.

Although Coyote Café was the restaurant that started it all, it has been surpassed by many. The meal I paid for at Coyote Café and the lunch at Miller’s neighboring Rooftop Cantina didn’t live up to the billing or acclaim.

I was in Santa Fe to meet with a movie-director friend who is helping me with a TV project. I learned a lot in two days. I learned that movie making is not magic. Watching the filming of a movie is akin to watching water evaporate. Even if it’s an action-comedy, it’s long and slow and boring. I watched two days of filming that will amount to 10 seconds on screen. In addition to that epiphany, I learned that John Travolta is tall and friendly, William H. Macy is even friendlier (and had a grandmother that lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast that made fine gumbo), Ray Liotta is intense, Martin Lawrence is gracious, and Tim Allen is difficult.

Note: I hesitated to write the above column for fear that some might think I was dropping names. Actually, I believe that one earns the name-dropping moniker only when the names that one drops happen to be friends or acquaintances. The actors listed above have no idea who I am, and had forgotten me within seconds of meeting me, possibly while meeting me.

I did, however, meet a veteran actor and Jackson, Mississippi native, M.C. Gainey, who has friends in Hattiesburg and eats in my restaurants when he is in town (Now that, my friends, was a first-rate name drop).

Two restaurants that were pleasant surprises, and one meal that will certainly make my 2006 Top 10 List, were Café Pasqual and Geronimo. The former being an example of one of the best Southwestern breakfasts I have ever enjoyed and the latter being one of the finest lunches, of any style, I have enjoyed this year.

The breakfast consisted of an organic breakfast quesadilla made with top-notch chorizo, scrambled eggs, guacamole, cheese, salsa, in a grilled whole wheat tortilla, and an impressive order of French toast. Beautiful.

Geronimo, in my opinion, is tops in Santa Fe. The multi-course lunch began with sautéed morel mushrooms served with an English sweet-pea potato cake finished with first press New Zealand olive oil. A second course of macaroni and cheese, was the highlight of the meal, it consisted of Eliche semolina pasta, aged Asiago, Sage Derby, and Fontal cheeses, a julienne of smoked country ham, white truffle essence, English peas, and fresh herbs. A mesquite-grilled flat-iron steak with New Mexico roasted chilies, pommes frites, and veal sauce was the main course, and a banana tart ended the meal.

Possibly the most interesting entrée on the menu was one my dining companion ordered. The entrée was listed as “Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup.” However, just as with the macaroni and cheese, it was nothing like your standard lunch variety grilled cheese and soup combo. This entrée featured Artisan smoked cheddar cheese, prosciutto ham, and black truffles sandwiched between two slices of delicately toasted brioche and served with a frisee salad and a roasted Roma tomato soup with burgundy and grilled calabacitas (Southwestern squash and chilies). Amazing.

Geronimo was a stark, yet elegant, space located on Canyon Road among hundreds of art galleries and studios and is a not-to-be-missed dining experience when one is visiting Santa Fe.

The disappointment of the Coyote Café and the bursting of the bubble of movie-making magic were not trip killers as they were surpassed by two excellent meals, beautiful art, and 70-degree weather.

The Sword, the Bathroom, and the Pirate



My son has a the bladder the size of an English pea.

He also likes pirates.

These two seemingly diametrically opposed statements converged during one fateful incident in a restaurant bathroom.

I have often written of my son’s bouts with bathroomitis. Bathroomitis is a malady that strikes early in life and usually affects boys in the three to five-year old age group. It is not a condition recognized by the American Medical Association, but it is surely experienced by fathers of young boys everywhere. The symptoms are easily detected and the condition is effortlessly diagnosed. During any restaurant visit, my son makes multiple trips to bathroom.

He might not need to go for hours while at home. But take him to a restaurant and he’s up every five minutes.

What does any of this have to do with pirates, you say? Read on, dear reader, read on.

My five-year old son chooses a favorite toy as some might choose a pair of underwear. It is a random procedure that usually involves picking up the first thing he sees in his toy chest or the toy nearest the back door on the way out of the house. No deep thought goes into the process and he likes it that way.

During a 48-hour period in June his favorite toy happened to be the Elite Operations Medieval Fantasy Sword, Barberia design, from Toys R Us, $5.95. Granted, an ancient Celtic sword is out of place in the world of pirates and buccaneers, but five-year olds don’t split hairs when playing games, it was the toy that was at the top of the pile when he was in search of a pirate weapon, and one sword is as good as another when forcing someone to walk the plank.

The sword is approximately 36-inches long and is made of hard, shiny plastic. If one didn’t know it was a harmless toy, it might look like an intimidating weapon. At a quick glance, it might even look like a real sword. In the hands of my son, a swashbuckling kindergartener, it can be the cause of much grief and embarrassment.

While driving my daughter to camp last month, we were to meet my mother-in-law, who was going to babysit the five-year old buccaneer for a week. The rendezvous point for the obligatory child trade off was a restaurant just off of the interstate in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

At this point I should note that when my son chooses his toy-of-the-moment, the choice is made and he doesn’t turn back. At least until the next toy catches his fancy. Nevertheless, the toy, whatever it may be, stays in his hands. He doesn’t let go. Whether it is a small rubber ball, a Star Wars action figure, a Sponge Bob pencil eraser, or a pirate sword, it goes everywhere with him. It is the parental path of least resistance. Better to let the boy keep his toy— whether in church or in a restaurant— than to deal with the alternative. As parents we choose our battles. His affection for the toy-of-the-moment is a battle we choose not to fight.

Back to the mother-in-law trade off.

So, we were in the rendezvous point making the exchange when the wannabe pirate was struck with his usual case of bathroomitis. I took him to the restroom, sword in hand, to do what needed to be done. Unfortunately it was a small restroom and there was only one stall, and what needed to be done, needed to be done in that stall. As fate would have it, the stall was occupied. I know this because my son said, “Look daddy, cowboy boots.” He had done as we all do— the universal method to make sure the stall door isn’t stuck and there’s actually someone inside— the-bend-down-and-peek-under-the-stall-door maneuver.

While waiting for the stall to empty, nature called. Daddy was struck with a case of bathroomitis and I went to the urinal to stand and do what one does at a urinal. While standing, I turned around to check on my son.

The boy was bent over with his arm reaching under the bottom of the adjacent stall. Unfortunately it was the arm that held the aforementioned pirate sword and he was waving it back and forth on the other side of the stall wall.

I was stunned for a moment and baffled to the point of speechlessness as I tried to figure out why my son was waving the sword under the stall. Then I remembered the cowboy boots.

For some strange reason the man on the other side of the stall wall remained silent. Maybe he was struck speechless as he sat in his most private of private moments, dumbfounded as a 36-inch sword appeared under the stall wall swishing back and forth cutting the air.

My son had a strange look on his face as he was up to his elbow in swordplay. It wasn’t a look of mischievousness, but rather a look of determination to try and make contact with whatever might be on the other side of the wall. To my knowledge he never did.

“Stop!” were the only words that would come across my lips. He looked up at me puzzled. It was a look that said “Why in the world would I stop doing this? It’s too much fun.”

I grabbed him and ran out of the men’s room, shoved him towards my mother-in-law and said, “Run! Good luck! See you next week!”

In conclusion, to the cowboy-boot wearing man who was nearly assaulted by the Elite Operations Medieval Fantasy Sword in the stall of the Shoney’s restaurant in Vicksburg, Mississippi, around noon on June the 3rd, 2006, wherever you are, just blame it on a chronic case of bathroomitis.

Destin


DESTIN, Fla— Greetings from the remnants of the world’s luckiest fishing village.

As a kid, when driving over the bridge into Destin, I was greeted by a large plywood sign that stated “Welcome to Destin… the World’s Luckiest Fishing Village.” A few days ago I crested the peak of that same bridge and was welcomed by a behemoth condominium structure being constructed where the pass meets the harbor, some call it progress.

A good portion of my youth was spent in the bars and on the beaches of this town, but it wasn’t until the mid 1980s that I became a fan of the food.

At that time, regional cooking was just coming into favor. Paul Prudhomme had put redfish on the culinary map a few years earlier. Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower had started the California food movement, and Norman Van Aiken was just getting cranked up in South Florida.

In 1986 Destin had its own cuisine. A classically trained French chef from Baton Rouge was hired to man the kitchens of the Beachside Café. Located at, what was then the center of town, Beachside was one of the first restaurants to deviate from the old-line, stuffed flounder and fried shrimp, tried-and-true dishes from the 1950s Coastal cafes. At the time, Beachside was the hottest restaurant in town.

When the Beachside Café Executive Chef moved to Destin, he brought with him a group of high school boys who had worked in the kitchen of Joey’s restaurant in Baton Rouge. Some came as dishwashers and busboys, others were line cooks. At the time, most of the boys were more interested in playing on the beach and chasing bikinis than working in the kitchen. Before long, the restaurant bug bit the young chefs and their passion for cooking grew and the Destin restaurant industry blossomed overnight.

It was an exciting time. I was working as a waiter and watched, one by one, as each of the Beachside sous chefs ventured out into other restaurants, some built exclusively for them, others long established. Before long, the Flamingo Café, Louisiana Lagniappe, The Marina Café, Paradise Café, Prescott’s, and others began to flourish.

There was one common factor that held all of 1980s new-line Destin restaurants and cooking styles together— The Beachside Café. The dishes that the new chefs were developing came out of the Classical French School of cooking. They used hollandaise and its many variations and paired it with soft shell crab. They used the recipe for Joey’s beurre blanc, one of the classic French butter sauces, to finish filets of fresh red snapper. And veal-stock based meuniere sauces, which were more derivative of New Orleans and Baton Rouge than France, were used to accompany beef and veal.

Overall, the Destin cuisine of that era focused on fresh seafood of the Panhandle treated simply and finished with rich butter sauces. It is the first fine dining food— outside of New Orleans— that I fell in love with. It is the cooking style that I first learned, and one that I revert to, often.

The opening chef at the Purple Parrot Café was one of the Baton Rouge boys that traveled to Beachside Café in the mid 80s. Although he only worked here a few weeks, his touches still show up in some of our dishes.

By the 1990s the chefs had mostly moved on or burnt out. A few remain, others have gone into other fields of work and forgotten the restaurant business altogether. In the early 1990s, Harbor Docks restaurant introduced sushi, and Destin cuisine began to move in a lighter direction blending Asian influences with natural reductions.

Most of the restaurants that popped up in that era are gone. A Mexican restaurant opened in the Beachside Café’s location, and The Marina Café has followed the Asian trend and left its French roots behind. The young chefs have scattered and settled down to become family men and responsible business owners. The next food trend is waiting to be born. I’ll be there ready to embrace it, but I doubt it will replace the excitement I experienced the first time I ate a piece of grilled grouper topped with jumbo lump crabmeat, beurre blanc, and lemon meuniere at the Beachside Café.

Per Se

New York, N.Y.— I have just eaten the best meal of my life. Hands down. No question.

That is a powerful statement for someone who eats for a living. Yet, there is no other way to describe my dining experience at Per Se as anything less than “perfect.” From the service to the food to the atmosphere, it just doesn’t get any better.

These days the Holy Grail of restaurants is The French Laundry in Yountville, California. Reservations are taken two months in advance and seatings fill instantly. I rarely travel to the Napa Valley, so Per Se, The French Laundry’s New York cousin, is my East Coast Grail. Reservations at Per Se are hard to come by, too. I applied the “squeaky wheel theory” and received a table on the last night of my visit.

Per Se is located on the third floor of the newly constructed Time Warner building. The elegantly sparse but spacious dining room has only 16 tables. The view overlooks Columbus Circle to the tree line of Central Park South with the Upper East Side skyline in the distance.

Never have I eaten such a worldly meal in one place. Eleven courses featuring jet-fresh foods flown in from all over the world. The first course was salmon crème fraiche in a tuille cone. The next course featured oysters from Greece, poached in butter and served over a savory sabayon of pearl tapioca with Russian Sevruga caviar.

The third course was a salad of Hawaiian hearts of peach palm. It was at this point that I realized that no component of the meal would be overlooked and all details would be covered down to the two butters that were served with the bread. One came from a small creamery in France and another from an organic farm in California. The bottled water was shipped in from a small company in Wales.

The fourth course was a seared lobe of foie gras dusted with finely crumbled walnuts and served with a small compote of poached apples. I have resigned myself to the fact that I will never eat foie gras prepared as expertly as that one.

The fifth course was a sesame-crusted filet of Hirimasa, a Pacific fish that might have been the mildest, whitest fish I have eaten. That was followed by a fricassee of Nova Scotia lobster with a confit of artichokes, Pincholine olives, oven-roasted Roma tomatoes, Piquillo peppers, and a spicy lobster broth.

After a rabbit course, the server brought a pan-roasted sirloin of Australian Wagyu beef that was served alongside a Wagyu brisket that had been braised for 48 hours, a roasted potato gratin that was 16 layers thick but less than one-inch tall, a forest mushroom duxelles, crisp haricots verts and sauce bordelaise.

The next course featured pickled Tristar strawberries from a farm in Upstate New York paired with Tellicherry Pepper shortbread, cheese from France, and Blue Moon Acres Mezza arugula. A pineapple sorbet course followed, and was served with a compressed pineapple and Macadamia nut “nougatine” which, when I look at my notes from the meal, I described as, “unbelievable” and, since I am not allotted enough space in this column to do the dish justice, I will let that description stand.

Two more courses followed the sorbet course, but I was numb.

I was given a guided tour of the kitchen, unusually large by New York standards, actually, large by any standards. During the day, 40 chefs do the advance work to prepare that evening’s meal. At night it takes 14 chefs to carry out the dinner service. That’s a total of 54 chefs working to service a 16-table restaurant. Again, unbelievable.

On the kitchen wall was a 60-inch plasma monitor with a live, closed-circuit camera focused on The French Laundry’s kitchen, Per Se’s Napa Valley cousin. The French Laundry, on the other hand, has a monitor in their kitchen showing the Per Se kitchen. Wherever Chef Thomas Keller is, he can observe his chefs at work.

The meal was perfect, down to the silverware, serving pieces, china, and crystal, each unique and of the finest quality. As I write this column and think back to my meal at Per Se, I am trying hard to be critical and think of something— just one thing— that was even slightly disappointing. I can’t think of one thing. I guess when a restaurant goes to the trouble to import their water and butter from thousands of miles away, every other detail, whether large or small, is covered.

Will I eat a better meal sometime in the future? Maybe. I certainly hope so. I am currently trying to get a table at The French Laundry for my July visit to that area. Stay tuned.

New York



NEW YORK, NY— I’ve just finished five days on the island of Manhattan with one goal: Eat well.

Being one who is passionate about food, and also one who travels to the nation’s top restaurant city only once or twice a year, I usually have a lot of gastronomic ground to cover during my stay.

Ten years ago I developed a system for eating at my favorite New York restaurants. On a business trip I checked into my Midtown hotel and handed the concierge a list of eight restaurants that I hoped to visit during the course of my stay. He looked at the list, chuckled, and said, “Sir, there’s no way you’ll get in any of these restaurants. Some take months to secure a table.”

I told him, “I don’t care what time of day I eat. I’ll be the first customer of the evening or the last customer to be seated at dinner. I’ll sit at the lousy two-top by the kitchen door, the noisy booth by the kitchen, or at the bar. I just want to eat there. Give it a shot.”

He gave me a smirk and said, “I’ll try.”

Thirty minutes later, the phone in my room rang and, with a note of surprise in his voice, the concierge informed me that he had secured seven out of eight reservations.

It’s all about the food.

Before I left for this trip I made my usual restaurant wish list. At the top of the list sat Per Se. Reservations at Per Se are typically booked two months in advance. Bypassing the hotel’s concierge, I called Per Se as soon as we touched down and gave the reservationist my standard I’ll-eat-early-or-late-it-doesn’t-matter routine. It didn’t work. I was placed on a waiting list.

I began making the other reservations on my list with the knowledge that one of them might have to be cancelled at the spur of the moment to make room for Per Se. I had five days— ten meal periods— and one goal: Eat at Per Se.

Per Se was opened by The French Laundry’s Thomas Keller two years ago. For lovers of art, there are local flea market painters, then there are noted practitioners who are recognized in national publications and galleries, and then there are the masters. In golf, there are local hackers, pros on the tour, and guys like Nicklaus and Palmer. In basketball… well, you get the picture. In the world of fine dining, there are guys like me, then there are guys like Emeril, and then there is Thomas Keller, and he stands alone behind the pulpit of the nation’s foremost culinary cathedral. Ask the nations top 25 chefs to name the best chef in the country and 23 of them will say— without missing a beat— Thomas Keller.

Keller, a modern-day Michelangelo of food, is the chef/owner of The French Laundry in Yountville, California, widely acknowledged as the best restaurant in the country. On my only opportunity to eat there, I had my, then two-year old, daughter in tow and, though she would have been a model customer, children were out.

For me, Per Se— The French Laundry’s New York cousin— is the pinnacle, the grail, the culinary summit of Everest, the restaurant where no other has gone before.

Over the course of the visit, I dined at all of the other restaurants on my list, yet Per Se remained a tough nut to crack. After yellowtail and jalapeño at Nobu, I called the Per Se reservationist, no dice. After lamb’s tongue and beef cheek ravioli at Babbo, I called again, no luck. Hoping that the squeaky wheel would get the grease, I made calls during frisee salads at Gotham Bar and Grill and crispy rice with spicy tuna at Koi, to no avail.

I was down to my last full day in town and holding out for a cancellation at Per Se’s 10:00 p.m. and final seating. Holding theatre tickets for an 8p.m. show, I made late lunch reservations at Union Square Café. We ordered multiple courses, assuming it was going to be very late before we ate at Per Se, if we were able to eat there at all. During our third course at Union Square Café, sometime around 2:30 p.m., I received the call I had been waiting for all week. We were in, but not at 10 p.m. Per Se’s only opening was at 5:30 p.m.

I immediately hung up the phone and told my wife to drop her fork, we were about to eat a nine-course meal at Per Se in three hours.

Next week: New York Part II, Dinner at Per Se

Anticipation

In the early 1970s, pop singer Carly Simon hit the top 40 charts with a song called “Anticipation.”

A few months after the song’s release, a company that manufactures ketchup purchased the exclusive rights to use it in a series of television commercials. It forever changed my connection with the song. Instead of thinking about a slinky, sexy Carly Simon singing, “Anticipation is making me wait. It’s keeping me wa-a-a-a-a-aiting.” I began to associate a thick glob of ketchup slowly oozing out of a ketchup bottle. Big difference.

Music has such strong connections to our memories.My association with that particular song has changed once again. Yesterday, while driving my daughter though Arkansas on her way to summer camp, “Anticipation” came on the radio. As Carly Simon sang, I watched my daughter’s face in the rear view mirror. She was wide-eyed, eager, and excited about going to summer camp. It was the same look her brother had on his face an hour earlier when we dropped him off at his grandmother’s— the excited anticipation of good times to come.It struck me that there is nothing quite like the anticipation of summer camp and summer activities during one’s youth. It is an eagerness that we never seem to recapture with the same intensity once we grow older. The anticipation experienced during one’s youth is unlike that in any other period in our life.

As I write this, I am sitting in a room in the Peabody Hotel in Little Rock waiting to fly to New York to meet with publishers, agents, and publicists. Certainly nothing I am looking forward to with excited anticipation, though the prospects for eating a few good meals have me contemplating the parental summer formula: Son with grandmother + daughter at camp = parents alone. Parents alone + one free week = New York City. New York City + restaurateur/food writer = great dining, squared. I am certainly anticipating a week’s worth of excellent meals.

Suddenly it strikes me that Carly might have had it wrong. She sang, “Anticipation is making me wait. It’s keeping me waiting.” Actually, anticipation is the result of waiting. It is not making one wait, or keeping one waiting, but the by-product of the act.

As we offered our goodbyes to our daughter and prepared to leave her in the able hands of the Camp Ozark staff, she gave us the I-don’t-want-to show-too-much-affection-to-my-parents-while-the-other-kids-are-watching brush-off. Her friends were urging her to follow them as they hurried off to their first activity of the camp session. She gave us a half-hearted hug, said, “bye,” and ran off with the others. We were a little disappointed but couldn’t point the finger too strongly as her mother and I had probably done the same thing to our parents when we were younger.

Slightly dejected, my wife and I began the slow walk up the hill that led to the camp exit— in an instant, my anticipation changed from a culinary field trip to New York, to the joyful reunion with my daughter seven days away. Halfway up the hill— about five minutes after we had said our goodbyes— we heard a sweet, but excited, voice, “Momma, daddy.” It was she. Our daughter had left her friends to come and give us a huge bear hug, a kiss, and a final thank-you for sending her to camp. Somewhere in the middle of the Ouachita National Forrest, on the side of a dirt hill that led to a parking lot, I experienced the greatest hug of my life. It was a moment that I will never forget.

The song was still swimming around in the back of my mind as her mother and I finished our walk to the car. Carly was singing, “…and stay right here, cause these are the good ol’ days.” Yes ma’am, they certainly are.

Freeze! This is a Ham Up!



I read a news story a few weeks ago with this headline: “Robber Allegedly Holds Up Bar With Ham Sandwich.”

O.K., I thought, you’ve got my attention, I’ll bite.

The story stated: “Police say a man used what they call a ‘gun-shaped’ object in his attempt to rob a Humboldt Park bar at 1013 N. Western Monday night. But a tipster tells CBS 2 the weapon was actually a ham sandwich molded into the shape of a gun. The ham-robber fell on his way out of the bar and was arrested. Brian Latuszek has been charged with aggravated robbery.”

And people wonder why I never run out of things to write about.

So much for the carved-block-of-soap and black-shoe-polish trick, now we have moved into the realm of luncheon meat hold-ups

How drunk does one need to be to rationalize— not only robbing a bar— but doing so with two pieces of Wonder bread, pressed ham, and a side of mayo as your weapon? Better still, how drunk would someone need to be to be threatened by a man holding a ham sandwich?

Granted, the robber should get marks for creativity as I am sure that it is not easy to mold a ham sandwich into the shape of a 38-caliber handgun. I wonder if he used white or wheat?

If this incident would have taken place in New Orleans (and it certainly could have, and sometime in the past, might have), I believe that the robber’s attempt would have been successful. First, they don’t eat a lot of ham sandwiches down there. Most of the sandwiches that are consumed are po-boys. It would be much easier to shape a po-boy into a believable assault weapon than a ham sandwich. Second, there’s no shortage of drunks in New Orleans. If they can elect Ray Nagin for another term, they could certainly fall for a po-boy being used as a firearm.

A po-boy would work, but so would many other foodstuffs. As a matter of fact, I could think of at least seven better weapons in the grueling 15 minutes it took to write this column:

SPAM. A can of SPAM would certainly be a more effective weapon than a ham sandwich. One could still stay within the “ham” theme. Though a can of SPAM is compact and could be easily concealed. It is also heavy enough to hurl across a room and do some damage.

Vienna sausage goo. That gelatinous goo floating on top of Vienna sausages is deadly stuff when in the hands of a trained professional.

Boiled Brussels sprouts and cabbage. Walk in your neighborhood bar with a large pot of boiled sprouts and cabbage and watch the place clear out faster than a group of Marilyn Manson fans at a Barry Manilow concert.

A week-old bag of Krystal burgers with extra onions. In college, I left a bag of Krystals in my car by accident. They stayed there two days. I couldn’t get a date for two years.

My wife’s broccoli and blue cheese casserole. One bite and they’ll hand over all of their worldly possessions.

A potato gun. During down times in the early days of the Purple Parrot Café, we shot potatoes out of a homemade PVC cannon from the front door across the street to a large billboard that advertised trial lawyers.

A medley of the greatest hits from the Waffle House jukebox. Not a food weapon, but a deadly threat, nonetheless. A few choruses of “Waffle House Stomp” or “Waffle House Hash Browns, I Love You” and the patrons of any business will fork over all of the money in their wallets to stop the ear-bleeding misery.

We don’t need stricter gun control laws in this country. We need more sandwiches. Now, if someone could just get Dick Cheney to use a ham and Swiss on rye the next time he goes quail hunting.

Heroes

The world is filled with heroes; unfortunately we sometimes don’t know where to find them.

Years ago I was closing a deal with a very successful businessperson. One of the principals involved in the negotiation ran a large national company that was responsible for inventing a certain product. I was given the lengthy details of his business success story immediately before the deal was negotiated in the hopes that I would be awed and intimidated during the negotiation process. I wasn’t.

I am not easily awed. Especially when basing someone’s worth on the size of his or her bank account.

Our society has misplaced the worth and value of its people. We are all valuable, each and every one of us. Basketball stars are put on a pedestal simply because they can jump high and throw a ball through a hoop. For this they receive millions and millions of dollars and the general public’s admiration.

Actors make a living by pretending to be someone else while speaking dialogue written by someone else. For this they command salaries as high as $20 million per movie and become the subject of half of the magazine topics on the news rack. It’s as if the more money they make, and the more “celebrity” they garner, the more we become enamored with their lives.

Those people are not heroes. True heroes are people such as Cookie and Bill Proubt, a couple who had successful professional careers and left it all to start a soup kitchen to feed those who couldn’t afford to eat. Twenty years ago they formed Christian Services, Inc. in my hometown where they feed, clothe and counsel, tens of thousands of people every year. I’ll take Cookie and Bill Proubt over the roster of every NBA team, any day.

Heroes are people such as Tommy Griffin who was forced to sell his family business and spend a year away from his wife and three children to honor his National Guard duty in Iraq. I’ll take one Tommy Griffin over the entire audience at the Academy Awards and not think twice about it.

Cat Cora, a native of Jackson, Miss, is nowhere near the pinnacle of her career, yet on her way up she founded the Chef’s for Humanity organization, which is the only group of its kind.

Chef’s for Humanity was formed to be a first responder of food during crises and emergencies. In the immediate days after Hurricane Katrina, Cora and a group of notable volunteers mobilized to the coast and set up mobile kitchens to feed those in need. Today, the organization continues to grow and expand its mission.

One idea, one thought, from one person is making a huge difference in the lives of those who need help the most.

Today there are people on the Gulf Coast who wake up every morning in tents and FEMA trailers not knowing what is in store for them, that day, or any day in the future. All across the country, people are in need. We’ve got plenty of stars, what we need are more heroes.

I am truly awed by the Proubts, Griffins, Coras of the world.

The true heroes aren’t in the pages of “People” magazine or “Sports Illustrated” but right next door, down the street, and across town. Join them and be a true hero to someone in need

Bring Back the Bone



In my estimation, one out of every four new restaurants that open in my hometown is an establishment that features fried chicken fingers as its main offering.

When I was a kid, fried chicken eaten outside of my grandmother’s house came in buckets and had bones in it. I don’t remember seeing small finger-sized boneless chicken breasts served in a restaurant until 1982— the dawning of the McNugget era.

According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, “McDonald's Chairman Fred Turner approached one of his suppliers in 1979 and requested ‘I want a chicken finger-food the size of your thumb. Can you do it?’ The McNugget was quickly invented thereafter.” It wasn’t until 1983 that the McNugget was rolled out on a nationwide scale, but by then the Saturday morning cartoons were filled with advertisements for chicken nuggets and Happy Meal boxes were filled with McNuggets. There was no turning back.

The children who were born in the late 1970s and early 1980s represent the first in many subsequent generations that prefer fried chicken without the bone and white meat over dark meat.

Therein might lay our two biggest tragedies— people don’t eat as much dark meat as they used to, and people eat fried chicken away from home more than they do at home.

In my day, kids ate drumsticks. I don’t remember anyone fighting over who was going to get the breast at a family event. My grandfather always said he liked the wing, but I suspect he knew that it was the least popular piece, and he was taking one for the home team.

I love dark meat chicken and turkey. In a modern world where mass-produced chickens go from an egg to the freezer in a matter of weeks, we have given up a lot of flavor, and in our rush to eat white meat over dark; we have given up still more.

Today free-range chicken is available in most areas. Free-range chickens have been allowed to walk around and eat a more varied and healthful diet. In South Mississippi there has been a recent movement towards pastured poultry where farmers raise chickens in pens that are moved daily from one grassy area of a pasture to another. The end result is a substantial increase in flavor over mass produced chicken.

I refuse to be a parent who raises a kid who eats nothing but fried chicken fingers. It frustrated me so much last week; I busted both of my kids out of school, drove them to New Orleans and made them eat lunch at Galatoire’s. They ate crabmeat au gratin, Crabmeat Maison, Oysters en Brochette, and fried shrimp (the underwater cousin of the fried chicken finger, but adventurous enough for a four-year old) and loved every minute of it.

On the way down to New Orleans my wife reminded me that our children hardly ever eat chicken fingers. “I don’t care,” I told her. “We’re doing it as preventative medicine.”

I make my kids try everything. One bite is all I ask. When eating in a fine-dining restaurant we usually hit about 20 percent, but that’s 20 percent more than they were eating, and after four or five visits they have usually added six or seven new food items to their dining repertoire and chicken fingers begin to seem boring and unappealing.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a food snob. My restaurants serve a lot of fried chicken tenders to kids and grown ups alike. I eat a boneless chicken breast sandwich every once in a while. But given the choice of fried boneless skinless chicken breast over a fried drumstick or a thigh, and I’m going with the latter every time. It just tastes better and that is what I want my children to learn.

This is not a fried chicken vs. grilled/roasted chicken argument. Of course roasted chicken is healthier, but in the Deep South, fried chicken is king.

We are raising a chicken finger generation. It’s probably too late to turn the tide. I guess we can count our blessings that it wasn’t the McRib that caught on 25 years ago.



Roasted Chicken

1 5-pound Chicken, whole
2 Tbl. Light olive oil
1 Tbl Kosher salt
1 Tbl. Black pepper
1 Tbl Poultry Seasoning
1 /2 Onion, small, rough chop
1 /2 Carrot, peeled and rough chopped
1 stalk Celery, rough chop

Preheat oven to 320 degrees.

Thoroughly rinse and drain the chicken. Pat dry with paper towels. Rub the entire surface with olive oil. Season inside cavity and skin with the salt, pepper and poultry seasoning. Stuff vegetables into the cavity of the chicken. Truss chicken. Place in Pyrex baking dish, breast side up.

Bake one hour and 20 minutes. Remove from oven and allow chicken to rest for 20 minutes before carving. Yield: 4-6 servings

The Basket and the Box



My friend Wyatt became a grandfather last week.

I am beginning to come to grips with the fact that I am old enough to have friends that are eligible grandparents.

Before driving to Jackson to be present at the birth, I grabbed a large wicker basket from my house and traveled to the drug store to fill it with candy, chips, and cookies.

A basket full of junk food might seem like an unorthodox baby gift, but the basket wasn’t for the baby, but the mother, Wyatt’s daughter.

When my daughter was born, the best gift my wife and I received while in the hospital was a similar basket filled with candy, chips, and cookies. The basket was placed on a table in the corner of the room next to a pile of other gifts— flower arrangements, pink baby blankets, rattles, and booties— and went mostly unnoticed until 2 a.m. on the first night.

The baby was brought in for one of her many late-night feedings and my wife and I realized we hadn’t eaten all day. In the excitement of the birth, we had forgotten about food. We tore into the junk basket with abandon. Potato chips never tasted better. It was a simple, yet wonderful, gift from someone who had been in the same situation a few years earlier. After two long nights of multiple feedings, we had emptied the basket.

I love being a father. It is the best job I will ever have, and by far, the most important. I had wanted to be a father since I was a kid. My father died when I was six, and I guess I felt like I could fill a void by playing the role of something that I was never able to experience.

Even though I wanted badly to be a father, it didn’t happen until I was 36-years old. In all of the years I had dreamed about being a father— thinking about what it would be like, and how it would feel to have a child of my own to raise— there was no doubt in my mind that I would love my child. I had no idea.

When they placed my daughter in my arms it was like a box that had been hidden deep inside of me opened for the first time, and my capacity to love another human being became stronger and deeper than I ever could have imagined. Parents know exactly what I am talking about.

I knew I would love my children, though I had no idea of the depth of that love until the box was opened. There is no joy like the sheer joy that is the privledge of parenthood.

Last week in that Jackson hospital room, I was taken back to a moment almost nine years ago. My wife and I were sitting on a hospital bed, I was holding my daughter in my arms— a brand new life with fresh, pink skin, tiny fingers, wisps of dark hair, toes like her mama’s, and a head that smelled of lavender. We were eating chocolate chip cookies and staring at this wonderful little human being that seemed to have come from nowhere. Nothing in the world existed outside of that moment.

For Wyatt and his family, the box is open, again. Welcome to the world, Dylan Cade.

The New Mississippi Oil Boom



Yesterday I spent $70.00 to fill my vehicle with gas.

Gasoline prices are at an all-time high and experts are forecasting even steeper prices in the near future. I am not worried.

With all of the recent talk of record-high gas prices affecting the economy, more information is now being released about biodiesel as an alternative fuel. Biodiesel is a reformulated diesel fuel that is produced from animal fat, vegetable oil, or recycled restaurant grease.

I won’t worry about high gas prices because I live in Mississippi the recycled-restaurant grease, deep-fat frying capital of the world. This biodiesel stuff is going to place us into the driver’s seat for the 21 st century, just as cotton did in the 19 th century. Folks, we’re back!

This is exciting. One can’t throw a rock in Mississippi without hitting an all-you-can-eat catfish buffet or fried chicken franchise. Hell, we even fry biscuits, Twinkies and Snicker bars down here. We’ve got more grease than any region on the planet.

Mr. Bush, we don’t need more foreign oil, we need more fried catfish restaurants.

Iowa and Nebraska only thought they had a leg up on the alternative-fuel solution with their corn-made ethanol. Mississippi now has the edge with recycled restaurant grease. Though we need to speak to someone about a better name, biodiesel doesn’t exactly roll off of the tongue.

I propose Lardinol (Note: I hereby register the word Lardinol and want a percentage of all future sales for coming up with the catchy name) Not only does Lardinol® sound more elegant than ethanol, it does what all great product names should do— it tells the consumer what it’s about. Lardinol® is produced because we have “lard in all” of our food. Mississippi, it’s us. It’s here. It’s now. It’s brilliant. I’m proud.

The fossil fuels giants’ best days are behind them. Move over Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Mississippi is soon to become the petroleum capital of the planet.

The Nissan plant in Canton can do their part by retrofitting their automobiles to burn Lardinol®. Better still, maybe one of the Nissan engineers can develop an SUV with a built-in deep fat fryer in the third row seat. Americans could fry chicken gizzards while driving to and from work, never once having to stop at a gas station.

Ah, the possibilities.

So long “Black Gold,” “Texas T,” the Lone Star state’s oil monopoly is over. The wells will run dry. The glass skyscrapers in Houston will empty. Movies such as Giant and TV shows reminiscent of Dallas are long gone. Look for the new nighttime soap opera Tutwiler— the riveting weekly saga of a catfish farming family’s biodiesel dynasty in a small Mississippi Delta town— complete with the first season cliffhanger: Who shot Billy Earl?

And we thought being the fattest state in the union was a detriment. On the contrary, we have only been going back for seconds to do our part in helping solve the world’s energy needs. From now on, each and every Mississippian should line up at the fried seafood buffet a minimum of three times a week. It is in our country’s best interest. National security is at stake. Pile a few extra hushpuppies on your plate; it’s your duty as a patriotic American, and a citizen of the soon-to-be richest state in the union.

When the oil-rich nations’ power began to increase, they formed the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, better known as OPEC. As the Lardinol® craze catches on, and cars begin to burn recycled tater tot grease, we will need to form our own alliance. Therefore, as of today, I am establishing the Federation for Lard Advancement through Biodiesel, FLAB. Again, a name that tells it all, and again, I want a cut for creating the catchy handle.

Our new state motto: Save gas, eat catfish. E Pluribus Eatum, Amen.

A Tale of Two Pancakes


When I am on the road, the first thing I ask the front desk clerk at a hotel is: “Where is the best independent, locals-only restaurant that serves a good breakfast?”

I never miss breakfast when I’m out of town. While spending the morning in a local diner, one can learn a lot about a town or city, not to mention, have a good, non-chain breakfast.

A recent book-promotion event landed me in Nashville. During the late-evening check in, I asked the front desk clerk the standard where’s-the-best-locally-run-independent-breakfast-restaurant question. Without hesitation, he said, “Pancake Pantry.” Another clerk at the desk enthusiastically agreed.

The next morning I asked the front desk personnel on the new shift the same question. All agreed, “The Pancake Pantry.” While hailing a cab the valet asked where we would like to go, “The Pancake Pantry,” I replied.

“Lucky man,” he said, “I wish I were going with you.”On the ride over, the taxi driver gave us detailed instructions on the best time to arrive at the Pancake Pantry and which time of the day has the longest line. “There’s a line?” I said.

“There’s always a line,” he replied.

I was excited. The prospects looked good for an excellent dining experience. Never before had so many different people unanimously endorsed one restaurant.

As we pulled up to The Pancake Pantry, an older building with faux Swiss-chalet architectural features not far from the Vanderbilt University campus, there were several people standing in a line that stretched down the sidewalk. The sign inside read: “Sun, rain, or shine, there’s always a line.” My anticipation grew.

After a short 15-minute wait, we were seated. The menu boasted of made-in-house maple syrup and pancakes prepared with “specially ground flour from an Eastern Tennessee mill” breakfast was looking better by the minute.

The menu listed several pancake styles and variations. I asked the waitress which ones she recommended. “The sweet potato and buckwheat are my favorites, and we sell a lot of the strawberry,” she replied.

I figured if I were going to judge this much-acclaimed pancake restaurant on its pancakes, I would need to try the plain buttermilk variety. We also ordered the buckwheat and strawberry.

The pancakes arrived and were just O.K. — not great, but not bad. However, during the course of the meal the waitress brought by a sample of the sweet potato pancake and it was excellent.

What made The Pancake Pantry a memorable dining experience was not the food, but the atmosphere. Tables were filled with college students, vacationing families, businessmen, and women on there way to play a round of tennis. It truly felt like a community breakfast.

My next stop was Chicago. We arrived late in the evening and the next morning, in the hotel’s lobby, I asked the front desk clerk the breakfast question. Without hesitation he mentioned a restaurant across the street from the hotel.

It was Saturday morning; the theatre district of downtown Chicago was still. The restaurant— one with a Greek name that I can’t remember— had only a few tables occupied. The food was bad. It was a wasted breakfast. As I was paying the tab, I looked across the street to the bottom floor window of our hotel and a bustling breakfast business was in full swing.

I walked across the street and learned that the restaurant was connected to my hotel. The menu looked great, the people looked happy, the restaurant was packed. The “question” had backfired. In my search for a “local non-hotel restaurant” I wound up in a dud.

What did we learn from this experience, children?

Even if there is a line out the door, the food might be mediocre.
House-made Tennessee syrup tastes just like Aunt Jemima’s.
Always take the waitress’ recommendation.
Always ask the front desk clerk about the quality of their in-house restaurant, first.
Vanderbilt might not have a football team, but they’ve got a pretty good breakfast joint.

The Bug Truck


Yesterday I was on my way home from the office and passed an ice cream truck just two blocks from my house.

I can’t remember the last time I saw an ice cream truck in my neighborhood. It was probably sometime around 1974.

As a kid growing up in the thick heat of the South Mississippi summers, the circus-like jingle of the ice cream truck creeping down the street was always a welcome sound. It could be heard from blocks away and a mad dash always followed, with dozens of neighborhood kids running frantically to make sure they ended up on the same street as the truck before it passed.

There was an excited eagerness that preceded the advent of the truck that was unique only to that occasion. Hot and sweaty kids anxiously waiting for ice cream is an unrivaled enthusiasm. Those who anticipated the truck’s arrival earlier in the day were already packing pocket change. Others, unprepared, had to run beg money from their mother and hurry back before the ice cream man bolted. When the truck finally stopped, a swarm ensued.

The only other sound that generated as much excitement in my neighborhood was the hum of the bug truck ambling down the street.

The Bug Truck was a city-owned vehicle and the lone soldier in the battle for a mosquito-free neighborhood. It had a large white tank on the back that spewed a thick white fog as it slowly ambled down the block, sort of a crop duster on wheels. In those days, the fog that billowed from the back of the truck was laced with DDT and highly poisonous.

Wherever the bug truck traveled, a crowd of at least half a dozen kids riding their bikes in and out of the fog would certainly follow. No matter what was happening elsewhere in the neighborhood, weaving in and out of the thick white mist was THE place to be at that moment.

The bravest of our crew would stand on the bumper of the bug truck, their faces only inches away from the source of the insecticide, eyes watering, toxic fog blowing furiously in their faces. I am fully prepared to grow a second head and a third eye by the time I am in my sixties, just for breathing in a few summers’ worth of DDT.

My mother, a single mom, was an early warrior in the battle to save the environment. She subscribed to environmentally conscious magazines and had read a theory that the fog from the bug truck did, indeed, kill mosquitoes, but then the birds ate the mosquitoes and died, the cats ate the birds and died, the dogs ate the cats and died, and eventually everyone on our block was going to croak because the bug truck passed in front of our house.

One summer evening, my brother and I were eating an early supper when we heard the seductive sound of the bug truck turning the corner at the end of our street. We looked at each other and just as we were about to jump out of our chairs and head outside our mother yelled, “No! You boys sit back down. I’ve had enough of this!”

She stormed out the front door and stood in the middle of our street, feet planted, left arm outstretched in a Tiananmen Square-style tank-halting protest. My brother and I watched wide-eyed from inside the house as she walked towards the drivers-side window, and began shaking her finger, lecturing the driver on the long and drawn out birds-eating-the-mosquitoes theory. The kids cycling behind the truck scattered.

The mosquito lectures continued for a few consecutive nights, until, after a few weeks of environmental sermons, the bug man finally started avoiding our street altogether. Consequently all of the mosquitoes moved into our neighborhood and the St.John boys were the ones who returned to school at the end of the summer looking like they had a chronic case of chicken pox.

Nowadays they have removed the DDT from the bug truck’s tanks. The vehicle that travels in front of my house, today, spits out a weak stream of a barely visible mist, certainly nothing that could be considered fog. There are no children pedaling their bikes behind the truck or riding on the bumper. Consequently, all of the dogs and cats are healthy and accounted for; they might have my mother to thank for that.

We do, however, have an ice cream truck, and the next time I hear its alluring call, I’ll grab my two children and a handful of change and join in the chase.

Baseball, Red Dirt, and Apple Pie.



Baseball and food are numinously entwined. The two go together like peanuts and Cracker Jack.

Times have changed from the popcorn, peanuts, and hot dog days of our youth. Today’s major league ballparks feature servers who take your order while you sit in your seat, enter the order on a wireless computer device, and deliver the food directly to your seat. From San Diego, to Seattle, to Maryland, baseball fans are eating fish tacos, tofu hot dogs, and crab cake sandwiches.

In Hattiesburg the local baseball parks are still serving the all familiar peanuts, popcorn, and candy bars. I know this because I am now officially entering the next phase of my life: The always-at-the-soccer-field-or-baseball-park phase.

My four-year old son is playing 5-6-year old coach-pitch baseball. It is his first ever exposure to the sport.

At the conclusion of his first practice, the coach gathered the team in the dugout and asked, “What’s the number one rule of baseball?” My son’s hand shot into the air. It was the only hand raised.

“Harrison,” the coach said, nodding in his direction, “What’s the number one rule in baseball?”

“Don’t hit dogs.”

“Well, Harrison, that’s a good rule, but that’s not rule number one. Rule number one is ‘don’t throw dirt.’” I had to pull the coach aside later and tell him that my son wasn’t an animal abuser. He walks around the house with his bat and his mother and I are constantly telling him not to swing the bat anywhere near the dog.

Driving home after practice, I was trying to figure out the logic behind rule number one. I could come up with at least a thousand other baseball rules that were more important than throwing dirt— keep your eye on the ball, keep your other hand above your glove when fielding a grounder— then I attended the second practice. It was a red-dirt throwing and kicking free-for-all. I became a huge fan of rule number one that day.

I have also learned that 5-6 year old baseball can turn into a full contact sport. There is an innate desire imbedded in these children to chase the ball, wherever on the field it might be. Every time a ball is hit into the outfield there is a mad dash of at least six boys chasing it down. They run from all areas of the infield and then jump onto a pile. At the second practice, my son, the right fielder, was chasing down foul tips behind home plate.

His baseball team is Piercon, named for a local construction company. His soccer team’s mascot was a panther. Yesterday he asked what type of animal a Piercon was. He has a friend who plays for the Hattiesburg Clinic’s Gynecology group. Luckily, they don’t have a mascot either.

I was worried about my boy playing coach-pitch this season for several reasons: being the youngest on the team and having not yet turned five-years old, not having played T-Ball last year, and the fact I hadn’t worked with him much on baseball until a few weeks ago. After watching him in the batter’s cage minutes before his first game, he only hit one out of 30 pitched balls. In a game, the batter only gets seven pitches. As he stepped up to the plate I was already composing my “father speech” which would be delivered in the hopes of cheering him up and making sure he held his head high after he swung and missed the seventh ball. Then he got a hit! He was excited. I was ecstatic.

We are currently three games into my son’s baseball career. He has six hits, 47 errors, and three tackles and I’ve never had more fun in my life.

On July 20, 1969, I was eating popcorn and peanuts in Yankee Stadium watching a double header between the Yankees and the Washington Senators when an announcement was made, “America has just landed on the moon!” Everyone stood and cheered. The game was stopped and the national anthem was played. Until last Saturday, that was my most memorable baseball moment.

I am proud to say that, to me, America landing on the moon can’t hold a candle to Harrison getting his first base hit.

Please keep Darian Pierce, coach of the Piercon Dirtkickers, in your prayers. He needs all the help he can get.

The Denomination of Punch and Friday Night Lights



In 21st Century life, there aren’t too many settings in which punch is served. Today, punch is strictly a church party offering.

Years ago my grandmother and her friends owned elaborately decorated sterling silver and crystal punch bowls. They were brought out at bridge clubs and sewing circles and loaned out for weddings and receptions.

Those days have gone. Most punch bowls in use today are made of glass and come from the party rental store.

At weddings, the punch bowl has given way to the champagne fountain. I am not a fan of the champagne fountain. The champagne fountain is a health-inspector’s nightmare. Stand around the champagne fountain at the next wedding you attend. Within five to seven minutes, someone is going to sneeze or cough in the direction of the fountain. Moments later someone will stick their glass under the fountain— champagne splashing on their unwashed hands, and falling into the bottom of the fountain to be re-circulated.

The cascading chocolate fountain is just as bad, if not worse. The first time I attended a party with a liquid chocolate fountain, I stood and watched as guests stuck strawberries into the cascading chocolate. The chocolate oozed over the berries and their fingers and then back into the bowl to be recirculated, and no one knows where those fingers have been.

Today, punch is usually reserved for weddings and religious socials. Usually, both are church events. There are many forms of church punch. I have always felt that one could determine one’s denomination just by keeping a close eye on the punch bowl.

Baptists dunk the entire cup into the bowl when serving it. Methodists only sprinkle a little bit of punch at a time. Catholics add a lot of wine to their punch. Lutherans will only drink punch if the recipe has been nailed to the door. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in drinking punch, but only if they can do it two at a time. Mormons, on the other hand can drink as many glasses as they want.

My high school had a punch that was served after football games at the post-game dance in the gym. Named for the school, it was called Beeson Punch.

Beeson punch was a non-alcoholic variety most of the time. Occasionally, if a chaperone was asleep at the wheel, it was given a little spike by one of the students. But I have no idea who would have done anything like that, and if I did, hopefully the statute of limitations has run out.

Beeson Academy was located on the edge of town situated directly behind the area’s landmark drive-in theatre, The Beverly Drive In. On Friday nights, the screen at the Beverly Drive-In was in full view of the Beeson Academy football field.

Beeson wasn’t big enough to have a marching band, so in lieu of drum majors, majorettes, and tubas, our halftime entertainment featured the Beverly’s huge screen filled with Burt Reynolds, Sally Field and Clint Eastwood, without sound.

In the latter days of the Beverly Drive-In, and in the waning days of the drive-in movie craze, new management at the drive-in resorted to cheesy soft-core skin flicks to help jump start their dwindling business. This posed quite a dilemma under the Friday night lights of the Beeson Academy football field.

I can remember looking up from the huddle and seeing all manner of depravity shining forth on the Beverly Drive-In screen. Our team had grown accustomed to the momentary flashes of flesh (or as accustomed as any 17-year old boy can become to a sight such as that). However, it served as a great strategic distraction for the visiting team. Nothing created a better home-field advantage than Swedish stewardesses on a gigantic screen in front of 11 testosterone-filled high-school football players from out of town.

Blonde stewardesses in the distance will thwart any opposing teams play calling. To this day I think that it was the 10,000 square feet of exposed and jiggling flesh, rather than the mighty Beeson Trojan’s awe-inspiring football prowess, that helped our tiny school win as many football games as we did.

In a state where breast feeding in public is punishable by six months in jail and/or a $500.00 fine, the ultimate home-field advantage was the sight of a 75-foot tall bosom bouncing up and down in the distance and was always worth 7 to10 points on the home team’s scoreboard.

After the game, punch for everyone!



Beeson Punch

1 46-oz can pineapple juice
1 small can frozen orange juice
1 small can frozen lemonade
1 quart ginger ale

Add enough water to make 1 gallon. Serve chilled.

The Egg Man…


Food suppliers are the ultimate behind-the-scenes partners of the restaurant business.

In an industry where margins are sometimes as thin as a slice of prosciutto, a good food purveyor can mean the difference between a profitable year and a used restaurant-equipment auction. When building business relationships, the successful business owner looks for a supplier that always keeps his customers in good hands.

Tommy Griffin personifies everything that is good about the restaurant business.

As the owner of Griffin Egg Company, Tommy is a restaurateur’s best friend. Griffin Egg Company is a small operation that sells eggs in various forms and top-drawer dried spices of all flavors and varieties to restaurants and grocery stores. As one of my company’s main food purveyors, we have been in the good hands of Tommy Griffin for 17 years.

As a small-business owner, Griffin works long hours while performing multiple tasks. Opening the office at the crack of dawn, he takes orders, processes orders, fills orders, and sometimes delivers orders, all while doing the books, billing, and payroll. In the spirit of the successful American entrepreneur Griffin has always done whatever it takes to keep his customers happy and his business profitable. At 8:00 pm on a Saturday night or 6: a.m. on a Sunday morning, Griffin could always be reached by phone to deliver emergency supplies for unsuspected shortages, with a smile on his face— again, good hands.

I slightly biased because I have been friends with Tommy Griffin, a fellow graduate of the Class of ’79, for most of my 44 years. Nevertheless, I know a good businessman when I see one, and know a valued friend when I need one.

The term, “there’s not a finer guy around” is clichéd, and often used to describe someone for lack of a better depiction. In Tommy Griffin’s case, “there’s not a finer guy” is a gross understatement.

When one encounters a person in the course of an average work week a snap judgment can sometimes be made that instantly sums up the person and his character. Maybe its more of a feeling than a judgment. Some people I encounter give me the feeling that they are sneaky and generally up to no good. Some folks I see and get the feeling that whatever they are doing, it must be good. Some I meet and get the impression that the person is probably praying for me minutes afterwards. Whenever I am around Tommy Griffin, the one thing that I am absolutely sure about is I know that he will always be doing the right thing. No matter what the “thing” is, it will be the right, morally just, and proper choice.

Like the restaurants he has supplied, Griffin’s family, too, has always been in good hands. He is a caring father, loving husband, devoted church member, faithful friend, and patriotic citizen. He is also a dedicated soldier.

Last week, Tommy Griffin shut the doors on the 54-year old family-owned business he took over from his father in 1987. On April 17th, Lt. Col. Tommy Griffin, a member of the 108 th National Guard Division out of Charlotte, N.C., will ship off to Iraq for a one year tour of duty.

This father of three, husband of one, and friend to many, will be supervising the training of Iraqi troops. When asked what the future holds when he returns, he’s not sure. Maybe he’ll start another business, maybe something in the food trade, maybe even a career in politics.

We will certainly find another egg and spice supplier. Will we find one who was as helpful, hard working, honest, and friendly as Tommy Griffin? No way.

Tommy, his wife Caren, his three school age children, and his mother all need our prayers. The war suddenly feels a little closer to home.

No matter how you feel about the conflict in Iraq, with men like Tommy Griffin over there, the Iraqi people, the Iraqi Army, and the rest of the world are in very good hands.

PARK CITY, UTAH— Do Mormons eat breakfast? I’ve been in Utah for four days and still haven’t eaten a decent breakfast.

Granted, this is a ski resort and everything is centered around getting everyone to the top of the mountain as quickly as possible. It is my opinion that it would be a much nicer chair-lift ride to the summit if one had just enjoyed a first-rate breakfast.

I have eaten in four different restaurants on this Spring Break vacation and all four served fake eggs. I hate fake eggs. We have enjoyed almost 20 inches of new snow, but nothing that remotely tasted like breakfast.

My $64 breakfast this morning consisted of fake eggs, freeze-dried hash browns, limp, tasteless bacon, orange juice that tasted like grapefruit juice, and warm milk. (I hate warm milk almost as much as I hate fake eggs). My wife ate yogurt and granola, no harm done, there. My daughter had a fruit crepe that was nothing more than a crepe topped and filled with canned cherry pie filling and my son ate a waffle that tasted like toasted Wonder bread.

There is a universal rule for traveling Southerners: Once one leaves the South, his or her chances of eating a passable breakfast diminishes incrementally with each mile traveled in any direction away from the region.

Utah is a Western state. However, the American West is not devoid of passable breakfasts. I have eaten good breakfasts in Aspen where the Paradise Bakery serves an excellent quiche muffin. Yountville, California is home to a mostly locals diner that serves an extremely memorable breakfast. Nevertheless, avocados belong in guacamole not omelets, so give me a good Dixie breakfast of fried eggs, salty ham, homemade biscuits, and mayhaw jelly any day of the week.

No one can touch the South when it comes to breakfast. Two years ago I ate an early morning meal in a New York restaurant that one national magazine claimed served the nation’s best breakfast. Another publication called it THE place for a New York power breakfast. Folks, I spent an embarrassing amount of money at “The nation’s best breakfast restaurant” and could have been just as happy with my friendly neighborhood Cracker Barrel.

Yesterday a good friend rang my cell and stated that he had just eaten the perfect piece of bacon. He is a preacher and not prone to exaggeration, so when he says he has eaten the “perfect” piece of bacon, I am a believer.

He was traveling in North Carolina and he and his wife had stopped in a local breakfast joint. The bacon was so perfect it warranted a long distance phone call to Utah. I have yet to eat the perfect piece of bacon and have no hopes that I will find it here among the cheap steak houses and sushi restaurants of this ski town (by the way, the coolest sushi restaurant in the world is The Flying Sumo in Park City, Utah).

My friend Carol Daily is a member of the Bacon of the Month Club. She receives a rasher of bacon each month shipped from a different supplier or boutique smokehouse. I am absolutely positive that none of the bacon samples ever come from Utah. Carol, too, has probably eaten the perfect piece of bacon.

It is good to know that my friends have their priorities in order. The folks in Park City, Utah could learn a few lessons from them.

Las Vegas II

LAS VEGAS- My friend Bud Holmes used to own a casino in this town. He told me that in the 1970s he and his partners came up with a novel idea: A 99-cent breakfast buffet.

Some might wonder how any establishment could survive, much less thrive, serving a 99-cent breakfast. According to my friend, people would line up waiting to be seated in the dining room, meanwhile every available square inch in the waiting area was lined with slot machines. It didn't take long to turn a meal served for less than one dollar into a profitable offering. It revolutionized how foodservice was done in Las Vegas.

Before long ultra cheap prime rib specials and inexpensive steak promotions popped up everywhere. Food was an afterthought, something to fill the bellies of the masses so they could keep gambling.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s the town was focused on one thing and one thing only: Money. Nothing has changed. Everything in today's Vegas centers around money, but they have found even more clever ways to disguise the mission. First they tried to promote Las Vegas as a family destination. I don't care how many roller coasters are erected, this town is as far away from a healthy family destination as any place can get. Next they brought in Broadway shows to add to the Wayne Newton-type offerings. Finally, celebrity chef, Wolfgang Puck, opened a restaurant here.

On my last visit to this town, 1993, I ate at the Las Vegas version of Puck's legendary Los Angeles eatery Spago. I remember telling my wife that my pesto was the best I had ever eaten. To this day I haven't eaten a pesto better than that one. Spago was a huge success, and success never goes unnoticed in Las Vegas.

Over the next 10 years the hotel properties got bigger, the décor grew more elaborate and the carrot was dangled in front of some of the nation's top chefs. Many high profile chefs have built satellite restaurants in the hotels here. Puck opened the floodgates for chefs such as Emeril Lagassee who has three properties in town. New York's brilliant sushi chef Nobu Matsuhisa is in the Hard Rock Hotel, Todd English opened an Olives in the Mirage, Bobby Flay, Stephan Pyles, Julian Serrano, and a long laundry list of others have joined the fray.

Common wisdom would leave one to believe that there is no way that the satellite restaurant in Vegas is anywhere as good as the mothership in New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. The counter argument would be that those restaurants operate on such a high level in the first place, a slight drop in food quality or service still puts the property miles ahead of most restaurants.

The truth is the celebrity chef is as good as his staff, and his staff needs to move up the restaurant ladder or they will jump ship. Having satellite restaurants gives the high profile restaurateurs a growth vehicle for their staff. Odds are, in the original restaurant, the celebrity chef is developing the food and the legions of sous chefs and line cooks are doing the production. In Vegas nothing changes in that paradigm. The chef moves his top talent to Las Vegas giving them an opportunity to run their own property, while others move up into the vacated positions back home. Everyone is happy, especially the Vegas dining public.

Michael Jordan worked for years as a sous chef in Lagassee's New Orleans restaurants Emeril's and NOLA. When Emeril moved west to Vegas, Jordan was the perfect choice to make the trek. Today, the top rated Zagat restaurant in Las Vegas is Rosemary's which is owned by the former NOLA sous chef, Jordan, and his wife. Thomas Keller owner of the French Laundry in Napa Valley is the nation's premiere chef. I dined at his restaurant Bouchon at the Venetian Hotel. It was an excellent dining experience. Was Keller in the kitchen? No, but his touch was everywhere.

My most memorable dining experience was at Aureole in the Mandalay Bay hotel. Aureole is my favorite restaurant in New York and Charlie Palmer is one of my favorite chefs. This would be the true test of whether the satellite can hold a candle to the home base.

Everything I had heard of Aureole Las Vegas had to do with the three-story wine tower that was the focal centerpiece of the dining room. In classic Vegas style, a girl supported by wires is raised and lowered along the wine tower pulling wines that have been ordered, a Glitter Gulch wine cellar, if you will. I can safely say that the meal I ate at Aureole Las Vegas was as good as any I have eaten in the New York property, and, in person, the wine tower didn't seem Vegasy at all.

In conclusion, if you are a non-gambler, non-drinker, family man who loves fine dining, Las Vegas might just be the place for you.

Wise Men Say.

LAS VEGAS- Greetings from the Glitter Gulch. I'm here on a business trip, my first visit here since 1993. Since then, celebrity chefs from all around the globe have opened branches of their famous eateries.

I arrived at 1:30 a.m. last night ready to eat in as many of those restaurants as I can over the next few days. Details to come.

Much has changed in Las Vegas since 1993. One thing that hasn't changed is The Graceland Wedding Chapel. In 1988, when I met my future wife, I told her that if I ever got married the service would have to be performed by an Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas. I was adamant about it.

Four years later we were engaged and I compromised. We were married by my uncle in our church in Hattiesburg and then flew to Las Vegas the next day to get remarried by an Elvis impersonator.

In two days we went from getting married by Hugh the Episcopal rector from Virginia to reciting vows to Norm the Elvis impersonator on the Sunset Strip.

The Graceland Wedding Chapel is exactly what one would think the Graceland Wedding Chapel would be: Just as tacky as the real Graceland. I opted for the deluxe ceremony, which came with flowers for the bride (a tacky bouquet of hard plastic red roses similar to the type used outdoors in cemeteries), a red garter for my wife, a complimentary "I Got Married at the Graceland Wedding Chapel" t-shirt, and three songs sung by the king.

I am not a big a fan of Elvis, I just liked the campiness of getting married by someone who is so dedicated to one human being's life and career that he still wears dyed-black lamb chop sideburns 30 years after they were en vogue, if they ever were.

A limousine picked us up at our hotel and drove us to the older part of the Strip where the Graceland Wedding Chapel was located. We were greeted by Norm and a fellow named Stewie who was there to witness the event and to play the Casio keyboard. Norm asked us which three songs we would like. I chose "Kentucky Rain" and "In the Ghetto" which weren't exactly wedding songs but they were my two favorite Elvis songs, and it didn't really matter because we had been officially, legally, and spiritually married the day before.

Stewie escorted my wife down the aisle as Norm the Elvis impersonator broke into "In the Ghetto." I leaned over and whispered to my wife, "At least it wasn't "Hound Dog.'"

During the ceremony, my wife and I got tickled and were stifling laughs so as not to offend the Graceland wedding Chapel crew. It was the type laughing that one tries to stifle while sitting in the choir loft during church in junior high school. The harder one tries not to laugh, the more one wants to laugh.

I learned on that fateful day, February 7th, 1993 that a stifled laugh, when observed by a third party doesn't look like a stifled laugh at all. A stifled laugh obviously looks like something akin to sheer joy.Norm the Elvis impersonator mistook the stifled laughs as a sign that we were overjoyed and emotionally moved by our visit to the Graceland Wedding Chapel. Before long, three songs turned into four, four turned into six, and six turned into eighteen.

Almost an hour later, we learned from Stewie that we had just witnessed what he described as, "A real treat." Norm, seeing the "joy" on our faces, had performed his entire nightclub routine for us. "No one has ever looked as happy as you two and he gave you the full treatment."

By the eighth song, "All Shook Up," our stifled-laugh grins had morphed into a panicked looking expression of sheer desperation. That didn't stop Norm.

At the time, Vickie Lawrence, of "The Night that the Lights Went Out In Georgia" fame had a daytime talk show. Norm asked us to stay over two days to get married again during his upcoming visit to the Vickie Lawrence Show. Alas, the slopes of Aspen were calling, three wedding ceremonies in four days was too much to ask of anyone, and my wife had barely agreed to get remarried by an Elvis impersonator in the first place.

Now I am back in Vegas. My wife is home with the kids. I don't drink. I don't gamble. I don't like Celine Dion, Wayne Newton, or Tom Jones. Maybe I'll drop by the Graceland Wedding Chapel and say hello to Norm and Stewie. Maybe I'll sit in on a couple of nuptials just for old times sake.

Besh at Bat


My friend and chef, John Besh, from Restaurant August in New Orleans, was a recent guest on the Food Network’s cooking competition Iron Chef America.

The following is an account of that competition with reverence to Ernest Lawrence Thayer.



Besh at Bat


The outlook wasn’t great, for young Chef Besh on that fateful day
For he had drawn the toughest ticket, Chef Mario was ready to play

The judges were all in place; Alton Brown was behind the mic
But the humble chef from Slidell town was crouched and ready to strike

The secret ingredient was unveiled, and when the hoopla had all died down
Who would have ever known that they used andouille in that Big Apple town?

Chef Besh had a gleam in his eye, for he had drawn the perfect match
Who, me? Cook with Cajun sausage? Don’t throw me in the briar patch!

The sous chefs were hustling and knives were tapping that oh so familiar sound
Besh was cool, calm, and relaxed as he plated his first round

Mario had every stovetop eye filled, and sweat ran from his brow
As John shaved fragrant truffles on all the dish would tastefully allow

Now when it comes to pasta, the orange-clogged Batali is considered king
But they hadn’t tasted Besh’s agnolotti and the gastronomic joy it brings

Besh even made an aspic of crawfish, corn, and the secret forcemeat
“A savory gelatin?” asked one of the judges, “Will it actually taste sweet?”

Mario was frying artichokes and stuffing porcini caps
And sautéing rock shrimp and onions while keeping his menu under wraps

Besh boiled lobster and sweetbreads; he pulled out all of the stops
He fried up Meyer lemons as he used all of his props

Batali cooked polenta, yellow-grained corn meal lest we forget
Besh said, “Way down in the Chocolate City, we just call them grits”

Now beignets are usually served at Du Monde, it’s here I should insert
But, Besh on a limb, shocked them all, by frying sausage for dessert

As time wound down, the scurry ensued, and sous chef’s hands were shaking
The home audience sat on sofa’s edge, was a legend in the making?

The judges showered praise on the Iron Chef, “Mario we think your great.”
With no idea that soon they’d be cleaning the challenger’s plates

Lester Holt seemed not to get it, a Mario homer I grew aware
And his fear of the aforementioned beignets gave Besh quite a scare

The judge in the middle loved Chef John, female fans he has many
And the judge on the end was mainly notable for helping keep Oprah skinny

In the end, the plates were taken away, and all the scores were tallied
Then they went to a commercial set, and we had no idea who had rallied

But when the chairman announced the winner, a roar rose through the crowd
It was the former Marine from New Orleans that made his city proud

And somewhere out in TV land the sun is shining bright
The Doc Gibbes Band is playing on Emeril’s show, and Rachel Ray’s heart is light
And, in the Crescent City men are laughing, and little children shout

But there is no joy in New York—
mighty Mario has struck out

Larry Jackson



I have written often of my favorite barbeque restaurant, Leatha’s, in Hattiesburg.

It is one of the most unique restaurants on the planet. Not because the barbeque ribs are fall-of-the-bone tender, the sauce is sweet and inimitable, or the beef brisket is smoked to the core, but because of the people. So many times the human element is taken for granted in the restaurant business.

Leatha’s is a family-run restaurant. Mrs. Leatha is always there. Her daughters Bonnie, Carolyn, and Myrtis are there, too. They, along with dozens of grandchildren, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, and cousins are what make Leatha’s restaurant great.

They all work with one singular purpose: To serve the finest barbeque in the South. Many restaurants use the term ‘family” in their name. Leatha’s restaurant practices what it preaches.

That is why it is so hard to write today’s column. The family at Leatha’s has suffered a massive loss. Larry Jackson passed away last week.

If you had ever visited Leatha’s, you knew Larry. He was Mrs. Leatha’s youngest child. He greeted people when they walked in the door and sang to them at each table. He had done this for most of his 43 years.

Actually, Larry had grown into somewhat of a celebrity. Not only did he sing for those who visited the restaurant and at local talent shows, he was a regular guest on the nationally syndicated Steve and D.C. radio show.

Larry was my friend.

Larry was developmentally disabled. He was a special person, but I don’t mean “special” in the way that some use the term “special.” Larry was special because he touched so many lives and gave them joy.

One can tell a lot about a family by watching them interact when they think no one is looking. I remember sitting in Leatha’s one evening waiting for a carry-out order. Larry was having a disagreement with his two sisters Bonnie and Carolyn. The dispute was over one of his homemade CDs. Larry was insisting that there were three songs on the CD. The sisters maintained that there was only one. There was nothing special in the words they were using; it was the tone of the give and take. Even in disagreement, there was the deepest of love in the words.

I purchased the CD as I always did when Larry had something to sell. On the way home I popped it into the CD player. It was Larry singing one of his favorite songs, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (complete with the Vincent Price narration). It was the same song on the CD three times.

Larry Jackson was the most passionate human being I have ever known. His singing might have been off key now and then. He might have missed a lyric or a note, or both. But he was passionate about it. He gave 100% no matter what anyone thought and everyone within earshot couldn’t help but celebrate his passion. I learned a lot from Larry.

I imagine that some people asked Larry to sing to get a laugh at his expense. Ultimately, the joke was on them. Larry loved to sing. It was his passion. He didn’t care if you liked it or not.

There is a huge difference between making people laugh and making people happy. Comedians make people laugh. Larry Jackson made people happy.

Last year he was asked to sing the national anthem at an intra-fraternity football game at the University of Southern Mississippi. He invited me and I brought my camera. It was a proud moment for Larry. He was on the 50-yard line of M.M. Roberts stadium singing to all in attendance. I had planned to have the photo framed one day to present to Larry. I assumed there would be plenty of time. I was wrong.

Mrs. Leatha could have done what many mothers do in her situation and sent Larry to a home for the developmentally disabled. Not Leatha. She celebrated what God made Larry and put him to work sharing that blessing. When one celebrates what God has made instead of hiding or being embarrassed, they become truly blessed. Letha celebrated Larry and Larry became a celebrity.

Leatha did what Jesus would have done. In biblical times the marginalized and disadvantaged citizens were left outside of the city gates. One of the first things Jesus did when arriving in a town was to lift those people up and have them walk into the city with him. Larry certainly would have walked with Jesus, and he would have been singing all of the way.

Larry was my friend. I miss him already.



A scholarship at the University of Southern Mississippi Foundation has been established in the name of Larry Jackson. I encourage everyone who feels the urge to give a little to honor Larry.

Screaming Yellow Zonkers II



A few weeks ago I wrote a column about one of my all-time favorite snack foods Screaming Yellow Zonkers.

Until then, I thought that Screaming Yellow Zonkers had been relinquished to the junk-food trash heap of history. I hadn’t seen them on supermarket shelves in years and had resigned myself to living a Zonker-free existence for the remainder of my days.

Then I came upon a magazine article that sang the praises of Screaming Yellow Zonkers. I Googled them immediately and found a company in Upstate New York that would ship them to me for $6 per box, plus shipping.

Six bucks, what a bargain, I thought. I hadn’t had a bite of one of the elusive butter and caramel coated popcorn snacks in 30 years. I ordered six boxes and planned to ration the allotment— only letting a few, extremely close friends try the product— to make sure that they lasted a long time. There was no guarantee that I would ever have the chance to eat a Screaming Yellow Zonker, ever again.

The column ran and the e-mails poured in.

I would have expected the correspondence to contain praise and accolades for doing the extensive research needed to track down such a hard-to-find foodstuff. Or maybe even a few queries as to where one might find a company that would send a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers. Not so.

Most of the e-mail responses included lines such as, “You idiot. I was at the Dollar Tree today and they had a shelf full of Screaming Yellow Zonkers.” Or, “Why would anyone pay a New York company $6 per box plus shipping when you can go to the Dollar Store and purchase them for…you guessed it… ONE DOLLAR!”

After scraping my ego off the floor, I traveled to a local dollar store. They were right. Sitting on the shelf, only a few blocks from my home and office, were boxes of Screaming Yellow Zonkers. As the man said in his song, “So close, but yet so far.”

My first thought was to get to work on another column notifying everyone that Screaming Yellow Zonkers are alive and well and sitting on the shelves of their local dollar store. Then I worried that there might be a run on the candy coated popcorn and held off.

I cleaned the shelves in one dollar store and bought half of the stock from another before I wrote this piece. I am now hoarding 42% of the Hattiesburg area’s Zonker supply.

Now that my home and office shelves are fully stocked with dozens of 8 oz. black boxes of Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and my stash is intact, I can admit that I have quickly become addicted to the butter-glazed snack, and am in the market for a twelve-step program to help me with my snack consumption problem.

During the week that all of the e-mails were pouring in I received a note from Allan Katz, a California man, who was the award-winning creator of the original box, ad campaign, posters, and marketing of Screaming Yellow Zonkers, the snack that The New Yorker magazine called one of its best bets. After leaving the boutique agency that did the Screaming Yellow Zonker work, Katz traveled to Hollywood and became a writer and producer on some of television’s best shows including Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, All in the Family, Cher, M*A*S*H, and Roseanne.

In addition to designing the humorous copy on the box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers, Katz led the crew that designed an elaborate circus poster that was available in 1970 to those who sent in $2.95.

Actually, 35 years ago I sent $2.95 to the manufacturers of Screaming Yellow Zonkers and the poster hung on my wall for a number of years. I was saddened to learn in the letter sent by Katz that one of the posters recently sold on EBay for $5,000.00. It seems that. I am either paying too much for popcorn, or not holding on to my collectibles as long as I should.

Nevertheless, I’ve got my Zonkers stored under lock and key and I plan to keep the dollar stores in business for the next few years.

Watershed



How far will a man travel for a good piece of fried chicken?

The answer: 383.75 miles.

While attending a party in Atlanta last year, I was approached by numerous people on several separate occasions over the course of the evening. All asked one question: Have you been to Watershed? Some added …and have you eaten their fried chicken?

I had not been to the restaurant Watershed, although I was a fan of Chef Scott Peacock and his collaborative cookbook project with Edna Lewis, The Gift of Southern Cooking. The fact that all of these people were separately talking about one thing, Watershed and its fried chicken, roused my curiosity.

I told my traveling companions that after the cooking demo on the following evening, we would travel East on Ponce De Leon Avenue into neighboring Decatur, Georgia, and eat this fried chicken that everyone was raving over.

After arriving at Watershed we learned two things: 1.) The famed chicken is only served on Tuesday nights. 2.) We better get there early because it sells out quickly.

It was Wednesday, we were 24 hours late, and though we enjoyed an excellent meal of contemporary Southern cuisine in a very modish atmosphere, we weren’t able to order the fried chicken everyone had been talking about.

The meal that evening was outstanding. I remember a butter bean hummus that was served with a warm homemade pita. Someone in our group— maybe me— ate trout, another ordered an organic pork chop with greens and the most upscale macaroni and cheese I had ever tasted, and another ate chicken— but not fried chicken.

For eleven months I have lusted after the fried chicken at Watershed. I have talked to countless friends on numerous occasions of the three-day process used to prepare the chicken. I have planned road trips and tried to organize business meetings in the Atlanta area, all for naught.

Last week I was in Atlanta on a Tuesday. The day had finally come. I called Watershed and asked the receptionist for the earliest reservation available. She gave me a table for three at 6:45 pm. “Will there be any chicken left at 6:45?” I asked.

“Probably,” she said. I crossed my fingers.

We arrived at 5:30 pm and asked to be seated early. After 383.75 miles, I didn’t want to risk missing out on the chicken, again. She saw the desperation in my eyes and complied.

We all ordered the fried chicken which is served with mashed potatoes, garlic green beans, and two buttermilk biscuits. As I looked around the restaurant everyone was eating fried chicken. The full menu is available on Tuesday nights, but no one seems to care. They, like us, came for fried chicken.

Every Sunday the chefs at Watershed begin preparing for Tuesday’s fried chicken night by marinating 50 birds in a saltwater brine. On Monday, the chicken is transferred from the brine into a buttermilk marinade where it sits for the next 24 hours. On Tuesday, after three days of brine and buttermilk foreplay, all of the cook tops are lined with cast iron skillets filled with lard, a little bit of butter, and a touch of bacon grease.

A half of a bird is served. Only 100 orders are prepared, when they’re gone, one must wait until the following Tuesday.

As we were waiting for the chicken to arrive, I asked my dining companions, “Can you remember the best mashed potatoes you have ever eaten?”

“I can,” I said. They were eaten on March 2nd, 2005 on my first visit to Watershed.

One would think that a mashed potato is a mashed potato is a mashed potato. Not so. Think about it. Have you ever eaten mashed potatoes that were so good that you remember exactly where and when you ate them?

The chicken arrived. Eleven months had passed since I first heard of the famous three-day fried chicken process at Watershed. The build up had been significant. The pre-billing was considerable. Expectations were high. So many times these situations are ripe for a major let down. Not so with the Watershed chicken.

Each piece was perfect. The meat was plump and juicy, the crust was light and crisp, just like my grandmother used to make.

Isn’t that the gold standard for everyone’s fried chicken— will it be as good as my grandmother’s?

I am not prepared to say that the Watershed chicken was better than my grandmothers, but it was at least as good. And seeing that she passed away 15 years ago, this is the closest I will ever get.

Was it worth traveling 383.75 miles? Absolutely.