March

I'm going to combine food and music in this post. First, the music:

24. Oxford American Music Sampler - 1999

I told y'all there would be several of these. This one is probably my favorite. It was the one that really hooked me on the OA and the music issue itself. Here are some of the artists that make it so great: Alex Chilton, Bob Dylan's "Oxford Town," The Flying Burrito Brothers covering "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man," Jelly Roll Morton and John Prine...

Probably the most amazing part of the album is this sequence: A lovely, lazy Southern song by Terri Binion called "Locomotive"> Nina Simone's "I Want a Little Sugar in my Bowl"> Isaac Hayes' "Do Your Own Thing"> June Carter Cash singing "The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore." The first time I heard those songs back-to-back, I was blown away and impressed by the variety of genres represented in the OA - which of course was indicative of just how many different types of great music come from right here in the South. It made me proud.

25. Oxford American Music Sampler - 2001

Another great OA offering. This one begins with "Jesus is on the Mainline" by Mississippi Fred McDowell, a footstomping testimony of a song. Other highlights include "You Are Loved" by Victoria Williams, "The Lonesome River," a duet by Ralph Stanley and Bob Dylan, The Gants' "Little Boy Sad," Dolly Parton's upgrade to the Eagles' "Seven Bridges Road," and Emmylou Harris' stunning "Orphan Girl." The great thing about the albums is that the magazine features stories behind or about each of the songs. I have tried to save all my OA music issues because the stories are so good and it's a great education about our Southern music history.

26. The Hold Steady - Heaven is Whenever
I gave the Hold Steady a try not long ago, along with some other "new" groups, because I felt like my taste in music was kind of growing stale. I wasn't listening to any new music at the time, and I didn't want to become one of those people who say things like, "They just don't make music like they used to anymore." Granted, there's a LOT of crappy music out there these days, but this album and a few others like it let me know that it's not all that way. I wasn't totally blown out of the water by this album, but I do really like the songs and the fact that it isn't overproduced, auto-tuned-to-death music. It's just real rock.

27. Beck - Guero
I love Beck. He's probably near the top of my list of top 5 solo performers pretty much ever. I was excited when this album came out in 2006 because Beck went back to his roots for this one, both musically and in the subject matter (many of the songs are a nod to his days growing up in southern California amongst the Latinos there - "Guero" is a slang term for a white guy.) I don't think I've bought a Beck album since this one, so I probably have some catching up to do, actually. (Now you're saying, "What kind of fan are you?" But I rarely buy albums anymore at all. I need to fix this problem.)

28. Parliament Funkadelic - Greatest Hits, disc 1
Uncut Funk, the Bomb! I love P-Funk. I put this on this past week in preparation for the St. Paddy's festivities. Nothing gets you relaxed and in the mood to party like P-Funk. I wish they'd come back to Jackson. I saw them at Jubilee JAM years ago and even though George and the others are getting a little long in the tooth, they still put on an awesome show. Who else puts 30+people onstage at one time? I can't even imagine what their tour bus situation must be like.



29. Depeche Mode - Greatest Hits, disc 2

This is not my favorite of the 2-disc set. But it does have a good live version of "Everything Counts," so that is a redeeming quality. The rest of the songs are newer, I guess, and just don't have the same "oomph" of the earlier DM stuff.





30. The Clash - The Story of the Clash

There's too much I can say about the Clash. We'd be here all night. This album is kinda cool because it has some excerpts of interviews with the band, but I can't understand half of what they're saying.





Food:

We've had a busy couple of weeks, so our gastronomic trip around the world has slowed down a bit. We did draw Rome last weekend, so the BF whipped up Spaghetti all'Amatriciana for a Sunday lunch. Here's a recipe . He didn't follow this exactly (he uses Mario Batali's tomato sauce recipe), and he used regular bacon instead of pancetta, but it was still very delicious!

I drew Brazil for this coming weekend, so I'm looking forward to some meat dishes and general yumminess all around.

It's Oh So Quiet

So this week, we drew Iceland!

What is Icelandic cuisine like, you might say? Well, we didn't really know, either. Thanks to
this site and inspiration from Miss Bjork, we found some recipes to try. I was rather alarmed to find out that Icelanders eat both horse meat and PUFFINS! Cute, cuddly puffins. I'm going to pretend that it's because they can't get chicken there.


It seems that, so far anyway, many of the countries on our list have fish-centered cuisines. We had hoped to get a nice piece of cod or even haddock to bake, but Kroger, in addition to being one huge Charley Foxtrot right now because of reorganizing, had no good fish to offer. We spent so much time trying to find the ingredients we needed that we quickly settled on having salmon again. I grabbed some red potatoes for an interesting side dish - Caramelized Potatoes , and the BF picked up some pickled beets and pickled herring for Sildersalat. I wasn't convinced about the salad, and the BF wasn't so sure that caramel sauce and potatoes would go together.

This recipe was super easy. Just peel potatoes and boil until tender but not soft enough for mashing. Make caramel sauce with sugar and butter (and I had to add a little water because it got too hot too quickly), then coat the potatoes in the sauce and simmer for a few minutes. We decided to add some carrots too, because carrots and caramel sauce? Come on!

The herring salad was also pretty easy to put together, and interesting to look at. Just slice beets, apple and herring, and toss with mayo and/or sour cream or yogurt. We did 1/4 cup greek yogurt and 1/4 cup mayo, and we also added a little sliced onion and salt and pepper. Chop the pieces pretty small and you've got yourself a pink appetizer! We ate the salad with club crackers, and y'all, it was pretty good! I might make this for Soup Night sometime.

So here is our plate: salmon with a tarragon/mayo sauce, and caramelized potatoes and carrots. We also made some honey oat bread, but it wouldn't be ready until after dinner.

So you're probably wondering how those potatoes turned out? Y'ALL. They were delicious! It was so weird! Somehow that caramel sauce just went right along with the potatoes. The carrots were a nice addition, but I would've eaten this either way. The sauce brings out the sweetness in the potato, but not in a crazy way. And the salmon with tarragon was a nice contrast in flavors.

The coolest thing about this project is that we get to learn about a country and/or culture that we may not have otherwise known much about, and it's a great excuse to try some new foods. I didn't think I'd like pickled beets or pickled herring, but I was wrong. And who knew caramel and potatoes could be so tasty?

We'll be skipping next weekend because I'll be in New Orleans for the Rock and Roll 1/2 marathon , but I am looking forward to pulling the next country out of the jar.

And just because I can only go so long before I post another Sifl and Olly link (at least this one is relevant):

Around the World in 80 Plates

As if the CD Project isn't enough for me, I've decided to use this blog to document another project for 2012 (and probably beyond).

The BF and I don't necessarily see each other every day, but we talk several times a day and we always make time for each other on the weekends. Weekends usually revolve around food for us, either cooking or occasionally going out to eat. (We're still on a tight budget because he is still without job.)

Wednesday or Thursday of each week, we have the same conversation: "What are we going to eat this weekend?" Inevitably, because we can both cook pretty well (thankfully) and have such varied tastes, we often cook from a different style of cuisine every week. The BF had the great idea recently to just pick a different country every week to cook from. Our method of choosing countries? See that jar above with the slips of paper in it? That's it. We sat down and thought of every country/region we could come up with that had viable cuisine and wrote them down. We also referenced the Frugal Gourmet's "Our Immigrant Ancestors" cookbook (an EXCELLENT one to have if you can find it) and the international foods section at Kroger. Before cutting them up, I counted, and I think we have well over 70 countries and styles of cuisine in there. For some regions, such as China, we broke it down into the different types of Chinese cuisine. There are some countries in there that I don't know anything about. It will be an adventure learning how to cook recipes native to that area.

This past weekend, we drew our first pick. I was more than a little thankful that it was something relatively easy: San Francisco/Pacific Northwest. The BF didn't think it was as easy at first so he suggested we draw a backup, but when it was Hawaii we realized we were going to be eating seafood either way. I think we put Hawaii back - I hope so, because I do think that one stands on its own (and we discussed having some kind of Spam-related dish because of its prevalence in Hawaii!).

Here's what we came up with:

Clockwise, from top: wild rice, spicy teriyaki-glazed salmon, quinoa crusted scallops, and mixed green salad with dried apples, pecans and a gorgonzola vinaigrette.

We figured haute cuisine with lots of fresh ingredients was pretty representative of the Pacific NW. The quinoa-crusted scallops I copied from a dish I had at a restaurant called Andina in Portland a few years ago. It was so good I've been trying to re-create it ever since. The last time I tried it, I couldn't get the quinoa to stick. This time I coated the scallops in cornstarch, then egg, then cooked quinoa, and pan-fried them. The coating stuck on a little better and was more crunchy, but still not quite like what I had at Andina. I'm not complaining, though, because the scallops were tasty and huge.

The salmon was divine and I could have eaten a lot more of it, but as you can see that's a lot of food on that plate so I was really full. The salad was also delicious - the dressing was a vinaigrette that tasted something like a mix of honey-mustard and that ginger dressing you get at Japanese restaurants. You'd think blue cheese would have no business getting all up in there, but it was super delicious.

The rice? Well, of course we couldn't do San Fran/Pacific NW without the San Francisco treat!
It was actually pretty tasty, although these box mixes always have too much sodium.

I am excited about this adventure! It nearly solves the "what's for dinner" question for at least the next year of weekends, and gives us one more reason to be excited about the weekend. Can't wait to see what comes out of the jar next time!

Big-Ass Blog Update Part 1

There is just no way I can catch you up on everything that I've been up to in the last month in one blog post, so I'm splitting this bad boy up!!

I've started keeping notes for myself when I think of something to blog about, and it's been so long I have a few notes now, so here is what I wanted to talk about as of several weeks ago:

1. The movie "Taken" with Liam Neeson. If you haven't seen it, and you're in the mood to see some pure-D ass kicking, check it out. This movie is basically what my mom thinks is going to happen to me every time I leave the house, and then Liam just totally kicks ass and kills nearly everyone for an hour and a half.

2. I went to a Magnolia Roller Vixens bout a few weeks ago to watch my friend Dawn, from WAPT, and my friend Donna, from the JFP, have a skate-off. It was a lot of fun, and just reinforced my desire to strap on some skates again one of these days. I don't have time for roller derby, but I just want to skate around a rink a few times for fun. Also, my sister and I watched the movie "Roller Boogie," which that Of Montreal video I posted a while back is set to a clip from that movie, and it is my new favorite cheesy '70s film!! It has everything: short shorts, tube socks, roller skates, feathered hair, disco and Linda Blair!

3. I am willing to describe myself as a Foodie. I blame the BF, he is the ultimate Foodie and he totally turned me into one too, what with his gourmet cooking and fancy recipe books and whatnot. So I'm not very picky about what I eat, although I have a few caveats: I don't like olives, mushrooms (although things cooked with mushroom are usually tasty), oranges (but I like orange juice), pineapple or grapefruit (it's texture for all but pineapple - I just plain don't like pineapple at all), licorice, okra or radishes. Everything else in the food world is pretty much up for grabs, but there is another exception that has more to do with preparation rather than the actual ingredients.

During the holidays a few years ago, the BF invited me to dinner at his parents' house. His mom is an excellent cook, so I expected great food of course. And it was, but the first course took me by surprise. It was tomato aspic, and it was something I just could not swallow. She served it with sour cream and caviar on top, and I thought I just might hurl right there at the table. I like tomato, I like sour cream and caviar, but in my humble opinion, jello should never, EVER be savory! I can't even think of a good use for it, unlike Bloody Marys, which I also don't like -- they would make a terrific marinade. So I had to politely decline from finishing my aspic.

Cold soup is another item I can't wrap my brain around. As with the Bloody Mary, I'd marinate some lamb in gazpacho or pour it over a salad. But to just sip it out of a cup? GROSS.

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So I spent some time in Vegas a couple weeks ago, both for work and for fun. The first day or so I spent by the pool with some coworkers, soaking up rays and enjoying fruity adult beverages. There were nice ladies walking by every few minutes to see if anyone needed a cocktail, and I couldn't help but wonder - what would it be like to put on a bathing suit for work every day? Would it get old? How much sunblock would you go through each week? These are questions that I had.

Another question: Does Carrot Top have a girlfriend? And if so, who the hell would date him? I dare say there aren't too many other people in the world as annoying as him.

I'm pretty tired of Vegas actually, this having been my third time to visit there in almost as many years. But I had a good time with my fun coworkers and I even won a President's award, which was awesome! I even got a 2-mile run in on the treadmill while I was there. As for the rest of the week, well... tune in later. That will be part 2! It's bedtime for me now.