Tonight I'm going to my favorite dinner of the year. It is at my Godparents' mother's house and it is "The Feast of the Seven Fishes." It is an Italian American tradition and will include baked mussels, steamed mussels, baked clams, minced clams, salt cod, crab and avocado salad, prawns in more forms than you…
But do you really need a holiday as an excuse to make a good punch?My brother has been making this for years. It's quite good. He makes it strong but you can make a mild version.In addition to white wine and rum (not the expensive kind), you'll need citrus.Which you let macerate in the rum…
This is one of my favorite stews. It is perfect for the really cold months and for large gatherings when you have a lot of people to feed. In isn't your everyday beef stew. For one, it has equal parts lamb in it and then it also has a middle eastern flair...a little dried fruit,…
I have a mold. I don't know where it came from. It just appeared one day. It's always in the way, it doesn't fit anywhere nicely. It was suggested at one point that we throw it out, but it wouldn't go. So today I finally used it, in honor of our Christmas party this evening.I…
I'm going to take a pause from my deer hunting adventures to share with you what showed up on my doorstep yesterday. I think my non-hunting oriented readers might need a rest. Plus I want to talk about chocolate. This chocolate.It comes from a charming chocolate factory called Charles Chocolates in Emeryville, California.His things are…
That brown thing glistening in the florescent light is a whole hog. It has been roasting on that big grill all day. The man puffing a cigar is my host Paul Michael and in his hand is a nice cold PBR. "I don't drink it cause it's cheap, I drink it cause it's deelicious," he…
We spent a lot of time in a cold wet deer stand this weekend. And sometimes you have to entertain yourself as a distraction from your numb toes. So Freddie Black, the commissioner of fish and game in AR (and also my hunting partner), stole my camera from behind me and started snapping photos.That's my…
I just returned from a beautiful place. It was a deer hunting lodge along the Mississippi river near Lake Village, Arkansas. The weekend was filled with a remarkable set of characters from the surrounding south, a whole roasted pig dripping with molasses and bacon, good scotch and cigars, and good guitar playing. And it was…
I am always so impressed with people who produce oceans of Christmas cookies of various kinds and dole them out in charming tins. The woman who took care of me growing up has about twenty or so kinds of cookes that she makes every year. She doesn't break a sweat. They are all very different…