November 24, 2011 by The Yum Yum
While this woman actually does drop the f-bomb twice in the video, she actually makes a good point and is rather hilarious when you get right down to it. Her recipe ideas aren’t so bad, either, especially the way she makes her turkey gravy.
Have an EGG-cellent Thanksgiving!
Beaux
Category Uncategorized | Tags: delicious,eating,food,just put the f*cking turkey in the oven,postaday2011,thanksgiving | No Comments
November 23, 2011 by The Yum Yum
Tanksgibbin’ comin’ up real soon
Betta getcha self down to da town
And buy ya turkey roun’
Betta cook ya gravy brown
Betta make it mouf good
Make it taste like it should
’til we start ackin’ like a clown
Tanksgibbin’, woah, Tankgibbin’, yo.
I wrote the above poem/song/lyrics on my friend’s dry-erase board in their house some three years ago, go me!
I doubt anyone but Veggie Table will be able to appreciate the semi-Jamaican, semi-rap, semi-semi lyrical style, and that’s okay.
Also, linguists might enjoy it.
The goal now is to start writing several blogs in advance in order to be productive and have content ready to go up when the time comes instead of posting funny videos about turkeys that are impossible to grasp and inevitably knock one’s husband out.
Admittedly, if I read the Onyx Plate or Veggie Table’s blog and heard that either of them had knocked out their respective husbands with a turkey, I would be at once horrified and laughing until I turned blue. Advocating knocking one’s husband out with a turkey should only happen in extreme circumstances; I do think there’s a time and a place for that. Adultery is the first thing that I would put on the list. I mean, if I had a husband and he came in to tell me he had cheated on me, hitting him with a turkey larger than Brookyln’s doggy Salvador would probably be a blessing compared to what I’m capable of doing at that point.
And speaking of turkey, I’ve been having my Tofurkey sandwiches lately. I highly recommend the Tofurkey Deli Slices for everyone who avoids the consumption of actual fowl. Most vegetarian “meats” taste fine in context. Truth be told, I always thought turkey slices by themselves tasted weird, but hidden in mayonnaise and bread, they’re delicious. The same is true of Tofurkey; there’s an odd flavor to it alone, but boy-oh-boy, you put those slices with the mayo and bread, and the world comes tumbling down.
I’ve also learned that spinach makes a much better friend to sandwiches and food in general than does lettuce. Spinach has its own definite flavor that isn’t just a kind of rancid water, and it plays nicely with everything I put it with. I also prefer the deep green of spinach to the light green of lettuce.
So, tomorrow, I plan to make wraps for Thanksgiving at Mimi’s. I’m going to wilt and chop the spinach, put it on the layer of cream cheese in a burrito, wrap that sucker up, and then chop, chop, and chop. I know I’ll end up being fashionably late, which is fine; my entire life has been defined by being fashionably late in everything.
Happy Thanksgiving Eve to everyone, and have an egg-cellent day!
Beaux
Category Uncategorized | Tags: comedy,eating,food,postaday2011,thanksgiving,turkeys,wraps | 2 Comments
November 22, 2011 by The Yum Yum
In honor of the upcoming Happy-We-Stabbed-All-the-American-Indians-in-the-Back-and-then-Slaughtered-Them-Da- I mean, Thanksgiving, I’m posting a video about something I don’t personally eat: turkey.
This commercial is actually hilarious, and I will also say, I’m SO much stronger than that woman.
Have an EGG-cellent day, and have lots of laughs!
Beaux
Category Uncategorized | Tags: comedy,eating,food,hilarious,postaday2011,sarcasm,thanksgiving,turkey,wit | No Comments
November 21, 2011 by The Yum Yum
As promised, here’s my interview with Drew about his family’s pizzeria!
1. How long have you been making pizza?
D: I’ve been making pizza for about 14 years.
2. Where did the recipe for your pizza come from?
D: It originated in Germany, but when my family came here to New York City, they changed it to fit the American (New York) taste buds.
3. When did your family establish the pizzeria?
D: Back in the mid 1970’s in upstate New York after being removed from New York City.
4. How many secret ingredients does your family use?
D: Sometimes none, but historically there has been one secret ingredient.
5. How long does it take to make one of your pizzas?
D: Cooking, about 15 minutes at 500 degrees. Making it can take 10-15 minutes.
6. How often do you make pizza?
D: At least once a week, on Fridays.
7. What’s been your favorite topping for your pizza?
D: I’m kinda simple, so I just leave my topping as cheese, but everyone has options to choose from.
8. What’s been your least favorite topping for your pizza?
D: Oh, man, probably mushrooms. I know a lot of people love them, but I’m not a fan.
9. What’s the strangest topping you’ve had on your pizza?
D: To me, mushrooms are pretty strange- not many foods can you wander into a forest, look down, and say, “Hey, that looks tasty!”
10. How large are your pizzas typically, i.e., how many people can a typical pizza feed?
D: The pizzas feed about 4-5 people each on average.
11. Why are you not currently running a pizzeria?
D: Because the family business closed its doors in early 2000’s, citing my grandfathers health.
12. Approximately how many times have you made pizza?
D: To infinity and beyond. Seriously, I don’t think we can calculate that completely, but if it was under 1500, I’d be stunned.
13. What’s your favorite part about making pizza?
D: Laying on the cheese, because in general, it’s the easiest thing. You are more likely to get complaints for too much or too little spice, too much sauce, but it’s a rare day if someone complains about too much cheese.
14. What’s your least favorite part about making pizza?
D: Stretching and/or making the dough- They are both the most time consuming and require the most finesse, and it can be tedious at times, especially if a dough is not fully warmed up.
15. What beverage goes best with your pizza?
D: Eh, your choice of beer or soda; some like a juice of some sort. Water, milk, and orange juice, tend to be poor choices for our pizza.
16. What side dish goes best with your pizza?
D: Normally, people don’t add them, though some sort of hot wings wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Though I know that doesn’t work for you. (Drew’s referring to my being a pesco-vegetarian.)
17. What variations of your pizza do you make, e.g., do you do thin crust, deep dish, and so on?
D: Well, the people around here prefer regular thin crust pizza.
18. Which season is most popular for your pizza?
D: It’s popular year round. During the summer, due to the heat, we cook later around 7-8, whereas the winter, we will start about 5.
19. What’s the story behind your family’s pizzeria, i.e., why did your family establish one in the first place?
D: My family had settled down in New York City, but due to the construction of new bridges, we were ousted from the land. With that money, my grandparents decided a great idea was to open up business. My grandfather opened up a pizzeria/restaurant/bar, and my great aunt opened up a popular chocolate shop in the same town upstate New York.
20. Have you ever tried to make a pizza using pesto sauce instead of tomato sauce?
D: Can’t say I have, but it’s worth a try.
Thanks to my friend Drew for agreeing to do the interview and answering the 20 cooking questions!
Have an egg-cellent day!
Beaux
Category Uncategorized | Tags: food,food interviews,foodies,italian food,pizza,pizzerias,postaday2011,thanksgiving | 3 Comments
November 20, 2011 by The Yum Yum
So, as luck would have it, I came down with a sinus headache the day before the First Thanksgiving on the Deck, and the next thing I knew, I was put out of commission. Four pills and two sinus tablets later, I still wasn’t better, but my pasta salad was waiting at Earle’s, and so I pressed on- completely out of it.
Let me tell you, when people say, “Oh, just get up and get going- you’ll feel better,” they are ABSOLUTELY LYING THROUGH THEIR TEETH. What they really mean is, “Oh, your being sick is inconveniencing me.” But that’s human nature, I suppose; when we do it, it’s top notch okay; when other people do it, well, that’s grounds to be annoyed enough to punch a kitten all the way to Iraq.
So I woke up in the middle of the day with the sinus headache, took medicine, was awake for three hours, when back to sleep, and then woke up way too late to go get the burritos that I forgot to get at Publix to make the wraps. Yes, folks, I arrived home from Publix with two packs of Tofurkey, a pack of baby spinach, two tubs of cream cheese, and NOTHING WITH WHICH TO WRAP IT ALL UP!
Anyway, I’m glad I took the medicine because there were tons of folks at Kelly’s house, and the medicine made me fairly out-of-it. And that was just good for me, to really be spaced out beyond all belief.
Then my pasta salad was late getting there because it was all at Earle’s house, and he and Jessika took 10,000 years to arrive, so by the time it appeared, everyone had already eaten and no one really touched the pasta salad, leaving me with two huge bowls that would not possibly both fit in our fridge. Earle’s bowl stayed at Kelly’s; I brought our bowl home.
Luckily, Gigi loves pasta salad, so it’ll be a field day for her.
The weird thing happening now is how much food I’m craving is totally random. I’m having pasta salad (which needed salt, bt dubs), and I’m craving a Tofurkey sandwich with spinach while also wanting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
What’s up with that?
Thanksgiving was a blast, and I dove into the mashed potatoes that had both mayonnaise and butter in them; they were absolutely amazing. Three plates of mashed potatoes and pumpkin bread later, I pepped up a bit, and after about four cups of Goji Berry and Raspberry tea, the sinus headache went away (but first it moved from the left side of my head to the right side.)
So, here we can conclude that either the medicine works slowly, my sinuses are a bit slow, or tea truly is a cure-all. I’m going with the last answer.
This also means that buying presents for me is incredibly easy: hot tea, hot tea, and more hot tea. I suppose I’m just bougie that way.
What’s in my pasta salad:
noodles of your choice
mayonnaise
peas
bacon bits (the soy kind)
and chopped onions
There are no specific proportions; I literally eyeball ALL these things. Also, salt is a must unless you have high blood pressure and don’t eat the salt because of it, which is understandable.
Basically, the colorfulness is how you judge if you’re doing the recipe correctly. The more it looks like Mardi Gras, a gay pride parade, or something Lady Gaga would wear, then the more you’re on the right track. A simple way to remember this is Pasta Salad = MG, GP, LG.
Next time, I’m going to the store and buying a can of cranberry sauce instead of troubling myself with Rejected Pasta Salad. It’s so emo I fear that it could be cutting itself in the fridge as I type this.
Have an egg-cellent day!
Beaux
Category Uncategorized | Tags: bacon bits,delicious,food,gay pride parade,humor,lady gaga,mardi gras,onions,pasta,pasta salad,peas,postaday2011,thanksgiving,yummo | 2 Comments
November 18, 2011 by The Yum Yum
I just keep forgetting to write blogs!
Tonight, I had a valid excuse- I was actually involved in a phone conversation.
And today, I finally had a sandwich that I’ve never had before. Drumroll, please…!
Cream cheese and jelly.
Yes, yes, I heard about cream cheese and jelly sandwiches long, long ago. They’re actually fairly decent, though as of late, I do prefer the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead.
Also, an update: my brother tells me that we actually have purchased a new refrigerator, which is great news!
Also, an update: we’re still without an oven, but little Ms. Suzy Creamcheese here is smart enough to work around it.
I’ve been eating fish sticks lately, which is not exactly my favorite food in the world, but they do hit the spot sometimes. Gigi made really good coleslaw, and I’ve eaten the fish sticks with the coleslaw in a kind of “salad” by chopping up the fishsticks and adding them to the mixture. Deeeeelicious!
Tomorrow begins the Greatest Great Publix Adventure Ever: Earle, myself, and a new person I’ve yet to meet all will venture into the famed halls of Publix and will return with food to be prepared for the Thanksgiving Extravaganza at Kelly’s this Saturday. Macaroni and cheese is what I want to make, but methinks the pasta salad is the most viable route, along with, you guessed it, delicious wraps.
In addition to these, I’ll also have to make something for tomorrow night, so I’ll be cooking for quite some time, needless to say.
This will be my first Thanksgiving eating Tofurkey, and I adore Tofurkey! It’s totally going in the wraps, along with cream cheese, pesto, and spinach leaves. BRING IT, TOFURKEY DAY!
I’m totally behind on my Veggie Table and Onyx Plate readings, too, and I think my respective ladies will create food-seeking missiles to destroy me if I don’t get around to commenting soon.
As for everyone else’s comments, forgive me for not responding soon! I’ll get to them ASAP!
Have an egg-cellent day!
Beaux
Category Uncategorized | Tags: food,pasta salad,postaday2011,publix,thanksgiving,wraps | 2 Comments
November 14, 2011 by The Yum Yum
Okay, so this weekend’s Thanksgiving Extravaganza should prove really interesting: we’ve not a oven to use, but I’ve got dishes to cook.
Mother of God, HELP ME! (I mean that sincerely, not in a pre-post-modern 90s secular blasphemous way.)
The saving grace is that Earle may be able to get off work and go to the festivities this weekend, which means he and I could spend Friday evening’s Great Publix Adventure cooking dishes for Thanksgiving One.
My goal is to make macaroni cheese; I make some excellent mac’n'cheese, y’all. Naturally, wraps are on the menu, though I’m not sure what I’m using with that (but I can hear pesto calling my name), and then pasta salad is a favorite at all times.
Anyway, these days, I cook so little that I feel basically like Sandra Lee. Maybe I can start my own show on the Food Network and drink gallons of whiskey while Not Really Cooking™; we can name the show “Barely Cooking with Beaux.” When I do cook, my food all goes to hell. Something’s not right here.
Also, as you can see in the above comment, I’m not a big drinker; I said “gallons of whiskey.” However, I do know the drinkers caught the humor in that one.
If Earle and I can’t do the cooking Friday night, the macaroni and cheese will have to be damned, because I bake mine and refuse to simply take a pot full of my deliciousness unbaked anywhere.
I guess I could try making cranberry sauce, too. I mean, what is there to it? You open a can, and ta-da!
That’s a joke.
But you know, HPE has seen a real lack of fruit aside from yours truly, so maybe something fruity would really be kinda nice.
ON TO THE GREAT THANKSGIVING ADVENTURE!
This is my second post today to make up for the lack of posts earlier this week. I actually missed two days in a row quite by the accident.
Have an egg-cellent day!
Beaux
Category Uncategorized | Tags: cooking without an oven,cranberry sauce,pasta salad,postaday2011,thanksgiving | No Comments
May 26, 2011 by The Yum Yum
I did it.
After several days of foretelling the Gospel of Green Beans, I have cooked a dish I’ve never cooked before- Green Bean Casserole.
Not only did I do Green Bean Casserole, I made it in a special Beaux-style. So YAY!
Green Bean Casserole normally consists of the following:
Different people have different variations on how they make it, depending on how much they want to make and so on.
Again, this time I didn’t measure exactly, but I will give you the recipe, along with my secret ingredients!
What you need:
What you do:
And there you have it, my delicious variation on the traditional Green Bean Casserole. It turned out FANTASTIC, just to let everyone know!
What are you waiting for? Get to your kitchen and get to cooking!
Beaux
Category Uncategorized | Tags: green bean casserole,postaday2011,potato soup,thanksgiving,vegetables,vegetarian | 2 Comments
January 5, 2011 by The Yum Yum
(In case you missed it and would like to read it, Part 1 can be found by clicking here.)
Have you ever heard the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table? Sitting around the Lazy Susan Table at my grandfather’s house with my family made that particular legend come even more alive for me.
Provided, none of us were medieval knights.
In fact, I’m really curious to know what exactly Poppy would have done if someone had dressed in a full knight’s suit of armor and sat down at his table.
I have an inkling of what my grandmother would have done- she would likely have acted like there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary and offered the knight-in-shining-armor some peas.
That or she would have thrown a small fire-cracker in his suit when he wasn’t looking, but I’ll tell the story of Mama Harris’s pranks and antics another day.
Sitting around the Lazy Susan Table felt important. Our meal time was a big deal. Eating together as not just a family, but as an extended family, many times with neighbors and friends, is something that happened as a weekly event, a commonplace reality for me. People did not split up and sit in front of the TV, people did not eat at random times or separately- people sat down together, they ate together, and they enjoyed themselves together.
Being fortunate and blessed alike, even to this day I sit and eat with friends and relatives sometime throughout my week. The experience doesn’t feel quite as ceremonial as it did at Poppy’s house, where it happened week after week like clockwork, and oftentimes my friends and I improvise and are sporadic about when we’re dining together, and our menu changes frequently.
Unlike Poppy, who had accumulated over 80 years worth of cooking wisdom, most of us are in our 20s.
That means we occasionally make cooking mistakes.
You just have to accept that when you’re still in your 20s, sometimes the cookies burn.
Speaking of burning, allow me to recall one particularly vivid memory of Poppy: I had the chickenpox as a child. I was in 4th grade, so that means I was about 10 or 11. Because both of my parents worked, I stayed at Poppy’s. He and Mama Harris had both had the chicken pox when they were younger, so there was no danger of anyone catching it.
I was with him in the kitchen, watching him prepare lunch. Bear in mind that the majority of the time when we arrived on Sundays, most of the food had already been prepared, and people were getting ready to eat. Rarely did we see Poppy cook most of his food, so this day was especially unique to me.
He stood at the stove, frying cornbread. (To this day, and with my own mother as my witness, I am not a fan of baked cornbread, and that’s to put it rather mildly.)
Then he tossed the cornbread out…
… on his hand…
…and flipped it back into the pan on the side that hadn’t been cooking.
I must’ve been gawking, because Poppy started laughing and said, “You thought I was gonna burn myself, didn’t you? The trick is not to stand there like a fool with it on your hand and to get it right back in the pan!”
I’ve never actually fried cornbread myself, and I would be deathly afraid of an attempt to repeat the trick.
The only other time I saw this trick again was once when my Aunt Katharine was frying cornbread at Poppy’s house, but she was making multiple pieces of small cornbread.
Apparently, that was the tradition in the household for a long time- smaller, individual pieces of cornbread. The shift to the larger, singular piece of cornbread from which everyone torn a piece happened due to Poppy’s heart trouble, or so I was told by my mother many years ago.
From RIGHT to LEFT: my grandfather (age 88, I think), my father (a few days shy of being 50), and me (age 7.)
Well, I promised that in this blog, I would provide more information about the history of the Lazy Susan Table’s entrance into my family and the role it’s played, but I seem to have filled the whole thing up with my own memoirs and how much the table means to me. So Part 3 will tentatively be dedicated to the history of the Lazy Susan Table.
Another photo of family in the kitchen from 1990. As you can see, my father is busy stirring something on the stove.
One thing my father and I have talked about doing in recent years was actually constructing and selling Lazy Susan Tables. That would be an amazing thing. They really are a lot of fun, and it would keep the tradition alive by sharing it with other people. I can’t explain how great that table was to sit around.
Also, at the time of the writing of this blog, I have just been informed by my aunt about my grandfather and his lemon juice. According to Aunt Era Jo, Poppy would take a lemon, poke holes in it with a fork, and then squeeze what he needed into his tea.
Visitors and guests to the house would inquire about which end of the lemon the juice came from.
Either way, I adore lemon juice in my tea to this day.
Eating around the table was almost a religious experience for me; never mind that we went to Poppy’s on Sunday. But to say that religion and food are intertwined with one another in the general sense would be an understatement (especially from the perspective of Sociology), and this fact should be highlighted a thousand times over for the South.
It’s not just that our food tastes so good that it makes you want to sing praises to God (or gods or the universe depending on what you believe), it’s that people in the South, especially churches, will find excuses to eat.
There’s an old joke that goes something like this that my friend Doc told me a while back:
It’s show and tell day at school. A little girl gets up and says, “I’m Catholic, and this is my rosary.” A little boy gets up and says, “I’m Jewish, and this my Star of David.” Another little girl gets up and says, “I’m Baptist, and this is my Casserole Dish.”
But the Baptists are not alone in eating. There’s the old joke about the Baptists and Methodists trying to finish their sermon sooner than the other one so they can beat them to the buffet line at the restaurant.
If you’ve ever driven in a Southern city on Sunday around noon, you understand that simple truth. Hungry religious people will mow you down and steal parking places to get in line in front of you at the restaurants.
Other than that, there’s a simple rule you must remember in the South: “If a church can find a reason to have a communal dinner of some sort, they will.” This holds true regardless of the denomination. Many churches even have a coffee and donuts hour just after the service, especially to welcome newcomers. This is how they rope you into the “Sacred Rite of Eating in the Name of Jesus”- the one thing any Christian can get right the first time theologically.
I say that in slight jest, but there really is something special about eating with people communally, and the point of the small tangent upon is that the same effect happened at Poppy’s house. Thereto in addition, as I mentioned in the former blog, he always initiated the meal with a prayer.
Regardless of what you believe, the prayer of thanksgiving before a meal is important, because it is the act of giving thanks, of expressing thanks, of showing that one is grateful that one has food, that one is about to share that food, that has such meaning to it.
Some people argue that you can’t cultivate gratitude. I disagree. You can imagine something you have or like, and then imagine yourself being without it, or in some cases, remember when you were without it. (My MacBook is one such case. I am eternally grateful for my fantastic computer!) If anything, Poppy taught me through example to express gratitude for things.
He also taught me the joy of large meals, cooking lots of food, and spending time with people you love.
That Lazy Susan Table, with its food rotating to each person and the patriarch of my father’s side of the family at its head, has more stories to tell than you can imagine.
Another photo. You can see my grandmother’s head in the picture. My younger brother is sitting at the table, and you can see me looking at the camera, pushing my head back for some reason. This was taken in 1988, so I was about 3.
More stories about Poppy and Food coming up soon. In the meantime, happy cooking, and also, is anyone interested in the idea of owning a Lazy Susan Table?
Beaux
Category Uncategorized | Tags: alabama,baptist,catholic,cornbread,family,fried cornbread,gratitude,heritage,history,jewish,lazy susan,lazy susan table,macbook,memoirs,poppy,postaday2011,religion,Southern food,thanksgiving,tradition | No Comments
November 30, 2010 by The Yum Yum
Thanksgiving, at least for me and Tyler, was celebrated over the course of an entire week and involved three different dinners that we attended.
Because of the sheer number of photos that I had to take, these blogs will be broken up into a series so that none of us will be overwhelmed by them.
The most recent Thanksgiving affair saw us venturing to Dothan with a dressing and a home-made, entirely made from scratch sweet potato pie.
I made the dressing. Having only made dressing once before, the entire venture was daunting to me, but I managed to persevere notwithstanding.
The dressing consisted of regular bread crumbs which took forever to tear apart, chopped celery and onion which Tyler kindly prepared for me, two eggs, spices included sage, and chicken bouillon spiced up just right.
This was all mixed together, put in a glass casserole dish, and popped into the oven at 425 degrees.
Little did I know how long the dish was actually going to take to cook. The result was something like 30-40 minutes, and I thought it would only take about 15. Also, it was reheated at Kelly’s house.
The result?
Nothing short of a beautiful and delectable dressing!
Interestingly enough, most of the dressing I’ve eaten in my life used cornbread. I used regular bread and the dressing still turned out to be amazing, something for which I’m truly grateful. There was also something of a hint of cornbread taste to it, so I’m wondering what I did to cause that particular flavor?
My dressing turned out both flavorful and moist, which is something that I highly prize in dressing. Too often I’ve eaten dry dressing, and while dried out dressing complements its sister side dish cranberry sauce rather well, I much prefer the moist variety.
I hope everyone had as great of a Thanksgiving holiday as I did! What’s your favorite dish?
Beaux
Category Uncategorized | Tags: bread,christmas,cornbread,dinner,dressing,eggs,feast,meal,sage,stuffing,thanksgiving,vegetarian | No Comments
