In My Next Life I Want to be a Restaurant Critic

I am going to start practicing now:

The other evening I had the opportunity to have dinner at The Lady and Sons in Savannah, Georgia.  I was looking forward to it because I love watching Paula Deen on the Food Channel.  Well, I don't really love watching her, because she's so loud and annoying, but I like the fact that her recipes often modernize the traditional Southern food I grew up on. I was very excited about the opportunity to eat at her restaurant. I expected to enjoy food with an interesting twist on traditional Southern food. 

Because we were a very large group, we were not given the option to order some of the really cool food from the menu.  We were only given the option of helping ourselves from the buffet. I was not thrilled by that, but I was with a group, and I did not plan the event, so I did not complain.

They seated us at a large table in the very back of the restaurant, up against the windows. Getting to the buffet was very inconvenient for the people at the back of the table. The table and chairs were  very rustic, and quite uncomfortable. There were no table cloths. The plates sat on paper doilies. The napkins were paper.  The plates were pottery.  Most of our party ordered beer.  They didn't bring glasses (even though I asked for one).  Ordinarily, none of that would have been a problem for me.  Hell, my idea of fine dining is bars that serve my beer in glass mugs as opposed to plastic.  My problem was that the bars where I usually eat cost less than $10 a plate. Our meal was $25 a head. For $25, I want a glass for my beer and a cloth napkin!!

Next they brought bread. We each got a biscuit and a hoecake.  The biscuit was okay, but very small. The hoecake was just nasty; it was greasy and otherwise tasteless.  I am a bread eater.  I was not happy about the bread. Things were not looking good.

We took turns at the buffet. The meat options consisted of fried chicken, pork chops and pot roast.  I don't like fried chicken; I passed on that. If I'm going to eat pork, I want it to be pulled pork with barbecue sauce, pork roast with some awesome glaze or crisp bacon. Otherwise, I pass on pork.  I make great pot roast, and I could tell by looking at the gravy that Paula's roast would not pass muster with me. I decided to skip the meat. No points off for that. I usually skip the meat at a buffet so as to save room for the best part of any meal -- the "go withs."

The starch options included mashed potatoes (presumably for Yankees who don't know any better) and perfectly cooked long grain white rice.  I made a bed of that on my plate to hold the veggies.

Veggies were: stewed cabbage, black-eyed peas, baby Lima's, collard greens, and green beans. At the end  of the line were the signature candied yams (without the marshmallows, thank you, Paula) and mac 'n' cheese.  

I skipped the collard greens (I vowed when I left home I would never eat collard greens or turnips again, and I have kept that promise for more than 35 years) and the green beans (also not a fave with me).  I loaded up on cabbage, peas and Lima's (the latter of which is my favorite veggie in all the world).  I tried a yam. 

I debated about the mac 'n' cheese.  Somewhere along the line in my life, somebody gave me the world's greatest mac 'n' cheese recipe.  My family loves it. People invite me to potlucks and request it.  The first time I saw Paula Deen on TV she made her mac 'n' cheese. I tried the recipe, and my entire family agreed that mine is better.  I took some of Paula's just to taste. It was good. Mine is definitely better. Daughter Dear and Wonderful Boyfriend agreed, but they said they liked the fact that she puts that layer of grated cheese on top. I can do that. I will do that next time I make mac 'n' cheese.  Then mine will be totally perfect!

Everything tasted wonderful!  The cabbage, peas and Lima's were perfect.  I loved the yam, which was not adulterated with (nasty) marshmallows.  The mac 'n' cheese was better than when I made Paula's recipe of it, but not as good as my recipe.

Dessert options were: peach cobbler, some chocolate brownie thing, and banana pudding.  I was disappointed that there was no rice pudding or bread pudding.  I opted for the peach cobbler.  It tasted like butter! It needed ice cream or at least a glass of milk to cut the richness. It was good, but way to rich for my blood, literally. 

All in all, it tasted exactly like dinner at my mother's house on any given Sunday when I was a kid, or at my house when I get a hankering for Southern cooking.  

After dinner, we went into Paula's store. The store is bigger than the restaurant, which is probably the whole point.  I looked around, but ultimately decided not to buy anything. I already know how to make all those Southern specialties, and I prepare them for my family on a regular basis.  I decided that $25 for a meal of rice and veggies with a dollop of peach cobbler at the end was profit enough for Miss Paula.  

Bottom line: The Lady and Sons serves perfectly prepared Southern comfort food that is sinfully overpriced. If you grew up on Southern cooking, but do not cook yourself, it might be worth it for the sake of sentiment.  Otherwise, I'm sorry to say, I thought The Lady and Sons was kind of a rip off.

I would not go back there.

Thanksgiving Evening

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! In recent years (because I'm a fanatic about my weight), I over-eat only about once a year, and that day is almost always on Thanksgiving. I hate the feeling of being so full, but I love all traditional Thanksgiving foods so much, I just can't help myself. I love cooking them (and tasting along the way), and I love eating them. I especially love watching my family enjoying the food I so lovingly prepared for them.

Daughter Dear elected not to help cook the meal. For one thing, I started my preparations at the ungodly early hour of 10:30 a. m. Heaven forbid that she should get up at such an hour. Moreover, she's reading a good book, which is why she stayed up way too late last night. She slept late today and then spent most of the day sprawled across her bed reading. I would have been inclined to throw a hissy fit because she didn't help with Thanksgiving dinner as she had promised, but I just don't have it in me to interrupt a kid who's actually reading a book. [She did notice the "timetable" hanging on the refrigerator door and remarked, "You write out a schedule?" That gave me the opportunity to explain the theory of the timetable. As a "teaching moment," that was better than nothing.]

The upshot was that I made the entire dinner all by myself, except for carving the turkey, which is DH's job. [Well, to be honest what DH does to a turkey can't exactly be called "carving." I've watched Julia Child and Emeril Lagasse and Food Channel chefs actually "carve" a turkey. What DH does to it is more like a massacre. But, it gets the meat off the bones, and I sure as heck could not stomach getting my hands in all that grease, so I would never never complain about how he goes about it.] Quite honestly I enjoyed the whole process.

I did all the prep work for the side dishes while the pie baked (thanks be to Mrs. Smith's). After I put the turkey in the oven, I had a few hours of downtime, so DH and I went to the beach for an hour or so. When we returned I had just enough time for a shower before the turkey was done. While the turkey was setting and then being "carved" [ahem] by DH, I baked the side dishes, finished setting the table, and made the gravy. Dinner was finished and ready for the table exactly 20 minutes ahead of schedule, which gave me a chance to sit down and have a glass of wine before putting the food on the table.

We ate and ate and talked and talked. It was wonderful. There was not one argument or cross word. I am very, very thankful for that.

Now the carcass is simmering away on the stove, rendering a stock that I will use for for soups, gravies and sauces in coming weeks.

My favorite Thanksgiving side dish is Corn Pudding. My mom gave me the recipe years ago, and I've made it every Thanksgiving since. It's one of those Methodist Church-lady recipes that could not possibly be easier, but it soooooooooo good. I would skip the turkey on Thanksgiving, but not the corn pudding!

I share it with y'all:

1 package Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix
1 can creamed corn
1 can corn (drained)
8 oz sour cream (I use a little more sour cream and less butter)
1 stick margarine (I usually use 1/2 stick of butter)

Melt the margarine/butter in a glass baking pan while preheating the oven. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly. Bake, uncovered, at 350-degrees for 30-45 minutes.

This stuff is absolutely fabulous warm. It's almost better cold the next day. It pairs perfectly with fresh cranberry sauce.

Thanksgiving Morning

I am enjoying the calm before the storm. Everybody but me is still in bed (a common occurrence). The house is absolutely silent but for the clacking of my fingernails on the computer keys. (That is also a common occurrence in our house.)

I just mapped out the cooking schedule for today. I grew up in a household where cooking and entertaining were almost the raison d'etre for my mother. She's a great cook and until recently she loved to entertain. She is also a great home economist: organized and amazingly frugal.

Thanksgiving in our house usually involved days of advanced preparation. There was not just one Mrs. Smith's frozen pie from Target. No. There were homemade pies: pumpkin, mince meat, apple (from our tree), and, usually, pecan (if we received the box of pecans from the Southern relatives in time). Depending on the size of the crowd and how many of the Southern relatives were coming, there might be several pumpkin pies or maybe some sweet potato pies as well.

Bread was my department. I baked homemade rolls and breads on Wednesday evening.

Mom always had snacks galore so people could load up all day. She worked on snacks and hors d'oeuvres for days.

Thanksgiving day was a frenzy in the kitchen. She normally cooked at least one very large turkey, plus a ham. There were always mashed potatoes (real ones not the boxed ones from WalMart that my family thinks is the only way you can get mashed potatoes) and sweet potato casserole. Due to a diversity of family tastes there were always three bowls of dressing: one with giblets (yuck!), one without giblets and not cooked inside the bird (that was my dish), and one cooked inside the bird (I don't know if that one had giblets or not; I never ate it). Sides included three different kinds of cranberries: smooth, chunky and a cranberry salad with nuts and citrus, plus an ambrosia salad to die for. Vegetables? You name it, she cooked it. Mostly I remember there were always Lima beans because they are my favorite vegetable. Other than that, I don't remember. Who eats the veggies on Thanksgiving anyway? She made gravy both with and without giblets. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but it was always an amazing feast.

We also used the good dishes for Thanksgiving, whether it was just the family (which happened rarely) or whether we were feeding the masses. We did not have a dishwasher and I wasn't much help in the kitchen, so doing the dishes was my job. Mom was one of those wash-as-you-go cooks. Therefore, I was usually washing pots and pans and mixing bowls pretty soon after I dragged my ass out of bed. (Which tended to be hours after she had started cooking).

The kitchen looked like the aftermath of a hurricane all day long until about five minutes before we sat down at the table. At that point, it all came together like a magic spell in a movie. There were a few minutes of total chaos while we tried to get all the dishes on the table while they were still hot, then peace reigned by the time we said Grace.

It never ceased to amaze me, but it happened every year. She never forgot anything, and everything came out done at the same time. Her secret was not magic. It was hard work, done according to a rigid timetable. A week or so before Thanksgiving she would sit down and work her way backwards from the Zero Hour, scheduling every single task she had to do to make it come out. Making that schedule took a long time, but she always said if she stuck to the schedule, she knew she could pull it off. She stuck it to a cabinet door with a magnet, and it was her Bible and road map from the moment she hung it up until she sat down to eat.

The "timetable" was one of the many wonderful valuable lessons I have learned from my mother. I use it for every large meal I ever make (even though the largest and most elaborate meal I make today barely rises to the level of Mom's normal Sunday dinner). I use a "timetable" for packing for trips, and anything else where I have a deadline to finish multiple tasks.

This week I had conversations with two different people who said they would have absolutely no idea how to go about preparing a Thanksgiving dinner. I find that sad. I have eaten out for Thanksgiving and I have been a guest in other peoples' homes, and it's just not as good.... because you don't have the best part of the Thanksgiving dinner: THE LEFTOVERS.

So, I'm cooking this year, just as I have every year since we moved to Florida. My meal is much simpler than my mother's and I have done absolutely no advance preparation ... other than to make my timetable. I used my menu to generate the shopping list and also to generate my timetable. My Zero Hour is 5:00 p. m. According to my timetable, have until 10:30 a. m. to mess around, and get in a good long walk.

This year, Daughter Dear said she wants to help make the meal. I am not very good at sharing my kitchen, but I'm going to try to make the effort so she can learn how to manage the process. I don't want to think that someday she might stand around at work lamenting that her mother never taught her how to organize and cook a Thanksgiving meal.

Happy Thanksgiving! (I gotta go... I have two hours for a walk before I have to organize my ingredients and get out the pans...)