Category Archives: Food and Drink

How’re you doing on those resolutions?

I'm back to reading The Guns of August...

I’m back to reading The Guns of August…

Come on, be honest. Here, I’ll tell a story on myself to give you courage…

I got some Cromer’s peanut brittle in my Christmas stocking (yes, my wife and I do stockings for each other), and it was awesome. I have a diet-related resolution, but allowed an exemption for finishing the stuff in my stocking, which I’m making progress on. But the exemption didn’t cover this: Today I left the office and went and bought another bag of it at Cromer’s. Then, I opened the bag for dessert after eating lunch at my desk. The cellophane accidentally ripped in a way that made it hard to close the bag, so I ate it all.

Fortunately, none of my resolutions dealt specifically with peanut brittle. No, wait. I just remembered that peanuts are banned on a paleo diet, and going paleo was my diet-related resolution.

Oh, well. I won’t do that again. And I’m still going to try to go paleo, going forward. And mostly I’ve been doing well. I haven’t had grits once, and it’s been a whole week, so get outta my face.

Anyway, I’ve got another, more interesting resolution that I hope will lead to some fun posts this year: I’ve decided only to read books I haven’t read before.

That means no more going back and reading Master and Commander over and over. Or Red Storm Rising (actually, I just skim through it to read about the Air Force guy and the three Marines in Iceland), or The Dirty Dozen, or Stranger in a Strange Land, or The Ipcress File, or Dune, or any of the other dogeared things I will pick up and entertain myself with for a few moments, without expanding my mind one whit.

I’ve got a house full of books that I thought I wanted to read and asked loved ones to give me as gifts, and I’m going to start reading them. I’ve started by returning to Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August. I had bogged down at the start of the part when the Russians mobilized, which was just one cock-up after another (no wonder they had a revolution).

Then, I’ll return to Alexander Hamilton, which I put down right after the Revolutionary War. And while I’m on a Chernow kick, I’m going to dive into Grant. Or maybe I’ll allow myself some fiction between the two.

I’ll be sharing with you what I read.

Meanwhile, do any of y’all have any good resolutions? How are you coming with them?

Some of my many unread books.

Some of my many unread books.

So much for my best-selling diet book

When I first joined the Smith campaign, Doug Ross suggested I take good notes so I could write a book about it when it was over.

That didn’t really appeal to me, but I did think for a moment that maybe I was onto an idea for a best-selling diet book.160.7

That’s because I lost several pounds in the first month of the campaign, even though I was eating like a horse.

I had already been steadily losing weight in the months before, what with my walking/elliptical regimen. I had dropped down from 177.6 on the last day of December to 166.7 on June 26, a few days before joining the campaign on July 1 — which had taken a lot of work.

I felt good about that progress, but as you know, it took a lot of hard work. I was a walking demon, averaging more than 16,000 steps a day in some months.

But once I joined the campaign, my workout regimen was severely curtailed (like a dog watch) — I’d do the elliptical in the morning — maybe — and make no particular effort to walk further during the day.

But as I said, I ate as much as I wanted. Yet on the last day of July, I had dropped to 160.7 pounds. I appeared to be on track to weigh less than 150 by Election Day, easily.

And all it took was stress like I had never experienced in a job before! Pressure all day and into the night! Going from 0 to 60 by 6:30 a.m. each day, and it never letting up!

A small price to pay for eating all you want, exercising only moderately, and still losing weight.

I was onto a best-seller, called “The Campaign Diet:” All you had to do is get someone to hire you as the most visible staff person on a statewide political campaign, doing a job you had never done before in your life! No problem!

But then, my premise started to fall apart. My weight hit its low point on Aug. 23 — 160.6.

Then, it started climbing back. Inexorably.172.2

It hit 165.7 on Sept. 25, and then 168.7 on Oct. 22. Then, during that week on the RV, my workout regimen fell completely apart, and despite the fact that I was missing meals, it kept climbing. And as stressful as that week was, it didn’t do the trick any more.

This morning, at my lowest point in the day — after a short workout, and before breakfast — I hit 172.2.

I think the problem is, you get used to stress. Your body adjusts. It ceases to be a magic potion for weight loss. And then there’s the fact that eventually, the stress itself goes away. You get used to a new routine. You might even enjoy it.

So I’m back to long walks and watching what I eat, if I want to get back down into the 160s.

So much for the best-seller…

About bars closing at 2 a.m. in Columbia

For my second post of the day based on Twitter, I’ll give you something I retweeted this morning:

Kevin Fisher

Kevin Fisher

First, let me tell you of a sorta kinda indirect conflict I have. Or at least, apparent conflict: Phill Blair, co-owner of The Whig, is one of my elder son’s oldest friends, and one of the leading opponents of an earlier closing time for bars in the city. (For that matter, Free Times has a much closer connection than that his partner Will Green, but no one makes a secret of that or anything.)

And their argument is this: Their bar, which benefits from staying open later, would be penalized when it isn’t one of the bars causing the problems the policy is designed to address — which is more of a Five Points thing. (Phill and Will, let me know if I didn’t state that clearly.)

Of course, that flies in the face of my Grownup Party instincts, which embraces such concepts as “Nothing good happens after 2 a.m.” So I tend to lean toward what Kevin is saying:

In case you didn’t know it, we are very much the outlier on this issue, with Charleston and Greenville both requiring bars to close at 2 a.m.

Yet somehow the hospitality industry in those cities has survived and thrived without serving alcohol past 2 a.m. That’s right, all the bar activity on the peninsula in Charleston and all the bar activity on Main Street in Greenville comes to an end at 2 a.m.

What do their City Councils know that ours doesn’t? Maybe how to run a city, for starters.

Kevin was as wrong as wrong can be in the column before this one. If there was a perfect example of an issue that should NOT be decided by referendum, it’s the Dominion-SCANA deal. But he’s on more solid ground this week.

Did you know SC had an Official Snack? I did not…

Krista via Flickr

Krista via Flickr

I learned about it from this release today from Lindsey Graham:

Graham, Scott Introduce Bill to Better Represent S.C. Peanut Farmers

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) introduced the South Carolina Peanut Parity Act, which would put an individual from South Carolina on the Peanut Standards Board at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Companion legislation was introduced by U.S. Representative Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) and passed the House of Representatives in October 2017.

Graham and Scott noted that even though South Carolina has the fourth largest peanut industry in the country, the state is not represented the Peanut Standards Board. The board, created by the 2002 farm bill, advises USDA on proper standards for peanut quality and handling.

“As growers of our state’s official snack, South Carolina peanut farmers deserve a say in matters that affect their livelihood. I’m proud to work with my colleague, Senator Scott, on this important bill to ensure South Carolina’s peanut farmers get adequate representation at USDA,” said Graham. 

“Ensuring South Carolina peanut farmers have a seat at the table is incredibly important,” Scott said. “I want to thank Senator Graham for working together on this important bill, and I look forward to sharing some South Carolina boiled peanuts with our colleagues when it passes.”

#####

I didn’t know we had an official snack. I didn’t know anyone had an official snack. And I quite naturally wonder whether we need an official snack.

But as long as we’re going to have one, I can’t think of a better one than boiled peanuts. Can you?

And in fact, now that I know it, I find myself growing quite indignant at the knowledge that heretofore, we were unrepresented on the Peanut Standards Board!

In light of that, I’d like to propose a new Official Battle Cry for the state of South Carolina:

No Goobers Without Representation!

A man does not need a game to drink, if he is a man

A man does not need company to drink. Nor does he need games...

A man does not need company to drink. Nor does he need games…

I noticed the other day that the MSM (the Charleston paper) had reported on the Nancy Mace video (yeah, that one). This part of the story, relating the reaction of Mace opponent Cindy Boatwright, jumped out at me:

Boatwright, a mental health counselor making her first bid for office, confirmed she has played beverage games in the past.

“Yup, I have,” she told Palmetto Politics. “However, not last year. I went to college. There was beer pongs.”…

First, I think it’s beer pong, not “pongs,” but I could be wrong, having never played. (Weirder was the paper’s description of the Mace video: “In the clip, Mace, who won the House District 99 GOP runoff Tuesday, is seen drinking a beverage and then pouring the liquid from her mouth into the mouth of another person at a table.” Don’t know about you, but “pouring” seems the wrong verb. Whatever.)

But here’s my question: Who needs a game in order to drink? I mean, I went to college, and I drank my share of beer and wine (and maybe someone else’s when he wasn’t looking). I don’t remember having to play games as an excuse to imbibe.

Is it a woman thing? I ask because another thing I did in college was read a lot of Hemingway, which is why I know that a man does not need a game to drink like a man. A man need only get up in the morning. First, he will do some work, which he will do cleanly and well. He might do some journalism to pay the bills, and then work on the next chapter of the book, the one about the war. Then he will stop while the work is still good, and when he knows what comes next.

Then he will go to the cafe and he will drink. He will do so deliberately and with purpose, as a man does. He will read the Herald-Tribune while he drinks. He may start with one of those Dutch beers that are so cool and so clean in the green bottles. Then the man will proceed to another cafe, where he will read the letters from his publisher while having an aperitif. He will then eat his lunch with a bottle of rioja alta, which is an honest wine and red, like the red that spills from the bull at the end of the corrida . He will take satisfaction in this because the work he has done this day was right and true, so that he knows he has deserved the wine.

He will not speak during any of this. If Brett starts to speak, he will say, “Don’t talk about it. If we talk about it, we will lose it…”

OK, I forget now where I was going with this…

It’s getting harder and harder to believe Trump doesn’t drink

The most powerful man in the world feels so picked on by these people that he lashes out like a middle-schooler writing in a slam book.

The most powerful man in the world feels so picked on by these people that he lashes out like a middle-schooler writing in a slam book.

A guy is up at 3 a.m. spewing out Tweets that are nearly or completely incoherent (covfefe!), filled with offensive vitriol, lashing out at everyone who has ever — in his surly, dim perception — done him wrong. Especially if they’re women. The next day, everyone who knows him is in an uproar. The whole world, including some of his friends, says this must stop! The next night, he does it again.

This is a classic pattern, right? So how is it possible that there’s not alcohol, or some other intoxicant, involved?

And yet, we are so often reassured, the man who Tweeted that gross effusion about Mika Brzezinski — just the latest in a sickening, unending series (it still blows my mind that a president of the United States finds time to tweet more than I do) — does not touch strong drink. There’s a compelling, tragic backstory to this — Trumps older brother, an alcoholic, died at 42.

And I continue to believe it.

But how, then, do we explain the Tweets? Or the rest of his behavior, for that matter? But the Tweets seem the perfect distillation of all this other unhinged behavior, set down in writing and shared with all…

What grown man who is sober would write about a woman, “She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” (Especially when there’s no truth in it.) A sober 12-year-old might. But not a sober grownup, under any circumstances.

Oh, and by the way — I cited above the pattern of middle-of-the-night Tweets. This wasn’t even that. The two Tweets leading to the latest uproar went out at 8:52 a.m. and six minutes later. You know, at a time you’d expect a POTUS to be getting his morning intelligence briefing, or making calls to Congress to try to pass his agenda, or meeting with foreign dignitaries, or something other than watching a TV show and obsessing about how much he hates the hosts, and publishing rude, crude comments about them — the sort of childish, mindless insults that kids wrote in “slam books” when I was in middle school.

If Trump were a guy who started drinking at breakfast, like Winston Churchill, this would make some kind of sense.

But once you take alcohol out of the mix, how do you explain it?

So then, what’s the ‘Texas Stack’ going to look like?

 

Alternative headline: “What’s all this, then, eh?

This ad, for a menu item McDonald’s only sells in Britain, is just beyond bizarre.

What were they thinking? This would be like Americans promoting a “London Stack” with a guy wearing a tam o’ shanter and kilt and complaining about how much the meal costs.

Reference is made to a “sweet and tangy South Carolina sauce.” That would be a bit of a step up. Have you ever tried the ketchup in a McDonald’s in England? I have. It’s the weirdest. They seem to leave the vinegar out — it’s just pure sweetness. No tang at all. It comes in the same little packets that say “Heinz” on them, but it’s nothing like American ketchup. Ask for some brown sauce instead…

Brits are at their most creative when describing bad tea

Arthur Dent, yearning for a true cuppa...

Arthur Dent, yearning for a true cuppa…

This is something that I just realized.

All who have read Douglas Adams are familiar with this gem:

After a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur’s mind was beginning to reassemble itself from the shell-shocked fragments the previous day had left him with.

He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject’s brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea….

That one never fails to delight.

But recently, rereading Patrick O’Brian’s The Fortune of War, I was struck by the height of creativity to which he rose in describing Stephen Maturin’s suffering upon the occasion of his being served tea by Americans:

tea 1tea 2

… which, while drier, I found almost as delightful as Adams’ characterization.

Apparently, there is something in the experience of drinking bad tea that kicks the brains of British writers into a higher gear….

 

The Whig and last summer’s anti-flag rallies

organizers

Jeremy Borden brings to my attention a piece he wrote for a site called The Bitter Southerner. It’s about the role The Whig played in helping get the Confederate flag down.

Basically, the role is this: It was a gathering place — and a fertile one, for those wanting a better South Carolina — for the folks who planned the two anti-flag rallies last summer. That would be Mariangeles Borghini, Emile DeFelice and Tom Hall, pictured above in a photo by Sean Rayford. (And below in a grainy screengrab from video I shot at the first rally.)

That was a natural part to play for a bar located just yards away from the Confederate soldier monument. And this piece was a natural fit for The Bitter Southerner, which apparently has its roots in its creator’s bitterness about Southern bartenders not getting enough respect. No, really.

The piece appealed to me because I appreciate what Mari, Emile and Tom did. And even more because one of the owners and founders of The Whig, Phil Blair, is one of my elder son’s best friends. Remembering his days playing in local punk bands, I marvel at what a pillar-of-the-community successful businessman he’s become. Whenever there’s something going on downtown to advance the community, Phil is there.

It’s a piece with a strong sense of place, and that place is the very heart of our community. You may recall that, just as getting rid of the flag was, for The Whig, about “Neighbors… cleaning up their trashy yard,” Emile saw the banner as bad for his own business, Soda City. As I wrote about Emile in June:

He fantasizes about getting a bunch of Confederate flags, some poles and a few bags of cement, and driving them in a truck to the places of business of some of these lawmakers — their law offices, their insurance agencies and so forth — and planting the flags in front of their businesses and seeing how they like it…

Anyway, you should go read the piece. Excerpts:

In the wake of the murders, Hall and others had gathered mournfully at The Whig that same June week to try to digest the event’s enormity. And to make plans. Hall and two others — Emile DeFelice, Hall’s close friend and fellow South Carolina native, and Mari Borghini, an Argentine immigrant — began to stoke local furor. DeFelice described the trio this way: “Old, rich South Carolina,” he said of Hall. “Old, poor South Carolina,” he said of himself. “And a recent immigrant,” he said of Borghini. “Awesome.”

At The Whig, they planned protests they hoped would pressure the state’s leaders to bring down the flag they viewed as as plague on the statehouse grounds. But their plans had been made with some trepidation.

“Do we go for this now while these people are not even cold dead?” Hall asked. “And we all said yeah. Yeah, I’m grieving I don’t know them; I’ve never been to that church. But that (the Confederate flag) was his (the killer’s) Army, that was his uniform. We’re not waiting and not sitting back.”

As Borghini put it, “Why would they not do something about it?”…

Whig denizens don’t like the word “hipster,” and they’re probably right that the self-righteousness implied doesn’t fit — even if the bar’s detractors detect a whiff of it. The Whig is one of only a few eclectic gathering places in what many complain is Columbia’s often banal college-town existence wrapped in a family and church town’s restrained conservatism.

The bar differs from its stiffer neighbors in more ways than one. The statehouse politics steps away are usually divisive, ugly and superficial. But even many of those bow-tied politicians and operatives sidle up to The Whig’s bar, where the conversation is generally more elevated and congenial….

Phil Blair, the bar’s co-owner who runs it day-to-day, calls it “alcohol philanthropy.” He wants to do more than sling beer and burgers. “I’m from here,” Blair said. “I have that local chip on my shoulder that we’re trying to catch up to other cities around us.”

The Confederate flag on the bar’s front perch was yet another reminder for Blair and others that Columbia hadn’t yet entered the 21st Century.

Those who inhabit The Whig are usually passionate people who rail against the status quo from the sidelines….

rally 2

 

 

 

Now THAT’S what I call extra lemon! Good job, Lizard’s Thicket!

lemon

OK, first, I know I shouldn’t be drinking a jumbo (why do they have to call it “jumbo?” I ask for a large; they repeat it back to me as “jumbo”) sweet tea, in light of my current dietary goals.

But set that aside, and allow me to give some props to the Lizard’s Thicket on Elmwood, for going above and beyond.

I didn’t used to drink much sweet tea, because it was frankly too sweet for me. Then I discovered a couple of years back that I could tolerate any amount of sugar as long as there was enough lemon in it. And that, in fact, super-sweet tea with plenty of lemon was really good stuff.

So — and yes, this is how bad habits start — I started ordering sweet tea “with extra lemon” instead of my usual water or unsweetened tea.

But some restaurants have an odd idea of “extra lemon.” Sometimes I’ll get only a couple of slices — whereas “extra” is at least three, right? That’s how many I get when it’s self-serve — I don’t want to be greedy; I just want to offset the sweetness.

But today, the Lizard’s Thicket on Elmwood gave me tea with seven slices of lemon in it! More than twice as many as I would dare to grab for myself!

Now that’s what I call service. And since I didn’t realize it until after I got back to the office and therefore didn’t get to thank them, I’m posting this…

I was SUCH a good boy this morning

sausages

I resisted temptation, but I DID take a picture. So does this qualify as food porn?

 

So here it is the second Friday in Lent, and this morning, for the first time in a couple of weeks, the breakfast buffet at the club had those lovely, juicy, fat sausages that I like so much.

But… I… did… not… indulge!

So I expect you all to be terribly impressed at my virtue and self-discipline…

Important business tip: Know your market

vegan

I had to stop and get a picture of this when I was driving down St. Andrews today.

First I saw the vegan sign, and wondered how that business was faring, and whether it was doing better as that than as a Mexican place (going by the facade), then I saw what it was becoming. And let’s just say I was not shocked.

Know your market.

When I was driving back after visiting the thing that has replaced Barnes and Noble on Harbison, and I saw this sign again, I experienced a moment of identification: There was probably someone who really dug having this vegan restaurant here, and hated to see it go. And seeing that it would be replaced by yet another sports bar, he or she must have thought, “Like we need another one of these.” Just like the way I felt at the former B&N

I enjoy serendipitous juxtapositions

B2PrNvwIcAABOGx

I enjoyed this juxtaposition of headlines on the business page of The State today. The headlines go to this story, and this story.

For a split second, I thought maybe the stories actually were related. And in a global, trend-tracking sense, I suppose they are. Except, of course, that the larger posteriors some women seek are more of the muscular variety. Doughnuts alone won’t give you that…

Urgent call for field peas

A reader in Tennessee who apparently read this post of mine from last summer is obviously a guy who's got his priorities straight, and I'd like to be able to help him out:

I'm TN and would like to know where I can order Dixie Lee Field Pea seed for my garden.
 
Thanks Chris

Anybody know where he might be able to obtain these seeds? One of our correspondents wrote in July as follows:

A few years ago I planted a patch of these peas and I agree that they
are some of the finest. I purchased my seed at Bob's Ace Hardware in
Leesville, which is across the street From shealy's bbq. Also, you may
want to try Consumer Feed and Seed in Lexington, which is next to Addy
Dodge.

… but I don't know whether that will be helpful or not, to a guy in TN. Any other tips for a guy who knows what's good? (Actually, I'm assuming the "guy" part, and on thin evidence, it now strikes me. If Chris is a gal, I apologize.)

I have a hunch something exciting is going to happen in the pork belly market

That's about all I wanted to say, after I saw this item on thestate.com:

    This recipe is the Bacon Explosion, modestly called by its inventors “the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes.”
    The instructions for constructing this massive torpedo-shaped
amalgamation of two pounds of bacon woven through and around two pounds
of sausage and slathered in barbecue sauce first appeared last month on
the Web site of a team of Kansas City competition barbecuers. They say
well more than 16,000 Web sites have linked to the recipe, celebrating
or sometimes scolding its excessiveness. A fresh audience could be
ready to discover it on Super Bowl Sunday.

Don't anybody tell Paula Moore over at PETA. Or George the Lobster, either.

Even I might want to pass on this carnivorous extravaganza. Although, on the upside, I'm not allergic to the recipe, which is not something I can often say about junk food…

Pork bellies, of course, are where we get bacon, which you might find in a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich