Vacation Recap

We're already into the second week of January, so I fell like I've missed the window to do a Christmas vacation recap, but, heck, I'm just going to do it anyway. I'm just not ready to write any serious post about a restaurant or recipe.

I had fun going home over the holidays, visited family and friends in two states and four cities, ate some great food, and drank way, way too much.

After twelve hours on the road, we pulled into my Dad's house in South Carolina the day before Christmas Eve, where two kinds of pimento cheese are kept in the fridge. Pimento cheese sandwiches all around!Our Christmas Eve tradition is to eat an assortment of cheese, cured meats, and crackers with chutneys, jams, and honey, and other bits and bobs like marinated Brussels sprouts. We also drink lots of champagne.
My favorite gift I gave was an original drawing from Philly's own Hawk Krall. I've been admiring his artwork on sites like Serious Eats and Hawk's own site for some time, and wanted to get his print of a pimento cheese hot dog from Sandy's, a small chain from my hometown.

Well, Hawk's a super nice dude, and after a few back and forths over email I ended up getting two original Sandy's drawings. Hawk's also so super nice that he agreed to do a custom drawing for me to give my Dad for Christmas, and he did it with only a short notice. I couldn't be happier with his artwork, and my Dad was just thrilled with it, as well.

The story behind the Banana Dog is this: the Banana Dog is similar to the popular (well, it's not unheard of) mayo, peanut butter and banana sandwich, but my Dad claims to have invented the Banana Dog one day when there was no sandwich bread in the house, and he ingeniously improvised with a hot dog bun. His claim to fame is now memorialized thanks to Hawk.
After all the gifts were opened we did a moonshine tasting. What, that's not what every family does for Christmas?

I've tasted some pretty bad moonshine (usually brought to the party by that guy no one really knows), but these two bottles that my Dad got from a friend were absolutely the best I've ever had. The one called Favorite Child was aged in an oak barrel, making it essentially bourbon. The other was called Apple Pie, and it tasted exactly like fresh apple cider with nary a hint of alcohol taste. Apple Pie is dangerous!
Then it's the divorced kid shuffle off to my Mom's house for Christmas Day where the champagne flowed, as well.
Anson Mills is not the only story in South Carolina when it comes to milled grains. It seems that everyone is growing heirloom corn and milling nowadays. We packed our car with grits to bring back home from those who've been milling for over a century (Adluh), and grits from a new kid on the block (Keisler's Mill).
Anyone from Columbia remember back in the late 90's when Ital Island, this crazy, African art-filled, soul food and Caribbean vegan restaurant popped up for about a year or so, then disappeared to leave all us vegans and vegetarians crying? Well, after more than a decade it has reappeared at a new location, and with a new name. Lamb's Bread Vegan Cafe is Ital Island. Same African masks, same incense, same owners, same cook, same food. So glad to have you back!
With all the truly good food I ate, I'm ashamed to say the most memorable and delicious thing I ate was this can of Hapi Spicy Sriracha Peas. Ate the whole can! The combo of sweet, spicy, salty, garlic-y, and crunchy is unstoppable.
This sweet old dog lives at a house near a mountain trail in Hot Springs, NC. She was our guide for the day, expertly walking us to the overlook, then back down. I imagine she does this many times a day, every day, with all the mountain visitors. Not a bad life!Then it was time for a wine and cheese picnic in the hot spring-fed hot tubs in Hot Springs. These outdoor tubs seated at the edge of a river are stupidly cheap. Your skin is so soft afterwards. I was upset that I didn't get any banana pudding from Glass Onion in Charleston (sold out one day, and didn't make the next day), but I did get a pimento cheese omelet and creamed greens for New Year's Eve brunch.
This gorgeous live oak and treehouse is in my brother's Charleston backyard! That picture is pretty much my childhood fantasy.
After an explosive New Year's Eve celebration in Charleston, we awoke a few hours later to get in the car for a long and miserable, hungover car ride back to Philly. I actually thought ahead and bought black eyed peas and collards down South to save myself a trip to the grocery store in Philly when we got back. Ignoring the reveling Mummer's outside my door (remind me to never come back to Philly on New Year's Day), and in a weird hungover/long-car-ride haze, I somehow managed to make collards and hoppin' John for a late dinner before crashing into bed.

Good to be back!

Coastal SC Eats

To go to the beaches of South Carolina for an entire week is to lose all sense of time, as well as good internet connection. After the initial night of exuberant partying and excessive drinking in celebration of the commencement of vacation, time slows down, days of the week are forgotten, and the day's agenda involves nothing more serious than taking a shower — at some point.Everyone brings essential provisions, as well as summer's last hoorah from their gardens to stock the kitchen. Trips to the Piggly Wiggly for restocking Blenheims ginger ale and beer, stops at the roadside vegetable stand for peaches, and visits to the seafood store down the road for fresh local shrimp complete the kitchen.



Not a single meal was eaten at a restaurant the entire week. Why? Because it doesn't get any better than homemade coastal Carolina cuisine.

This roadside farm stand sign just about sums up what you'll be eating at the beach in South Carolina come late August.

As well as pimento cheese. Lots of it! These are pimento cheese sandwiches I made in Philly to take along on our ten hour road trip to the coast.

The first night, M. rocked her pimento cheese on toast set under the oven broiler. The house has canners, too! Two kinds of pickled okra, dilly beans, and pickled Jerusalem artichoke accompany fresh veggies for the evening happy hour of snacks and drinks. Deep into puzzle mania (three puzzles were completed before week's end), C. busted out her version of pimento cheese presented on celery sticks.

Everyone makes pimento cheese a little bit different. K. likes to add a little hot pepper to her pimento cheese. Sorry, but SC peaches really are better. There's both a little bit of bias and truth in that statement.You know you're at a beach in SC, when the realty company dishes out boiled peanuts as a welcoming gift. These huge cans of boiled peanuts displayed under the boiled peanut hot bar (yep!) at Piggly Wiggly are actually not bad, especially the spicy ones.But you'd do better getting them from the side of the road, though. This is a lowcountry boil, which is a traditional one-pot coastal dish. Shrimp, sausage, corn, and potatoes are all boiled in a big pot with seasonings, then put in the middle of the table to be ravaged. Blue crabs were caught right off our marsh deck one evening. Crabbing involves tying a chicken neck to a trap, casting the trap, sitting back drinking a beer, and checking on the trap whenever the mood strikes. Might be even lazier than fishing. The collaborative cooking of fried okra, grits, and gravy. Gravy here is not red sauce or a flour-based sauce, but diced tomatoes, corn and onions.



The coarse-ground grits we used are actually from Bradley's Country Store near Tallahassee, FL, and they are exceptional! Bradley's is a tiny county store known for their homemade smoked sausage and grits. They ship 'em, if you're interested.



If you want exceptional SC grits, there's always Anson Mills. They ship, too.Shrimp and grits with gravy. Shrimp salad. Hush puppies fried up in a cast iron skillet as an afterthought to frying fish. Did you know that black eyed peas are green when they're fresh?Homegrown speckled butterbeans with tomatoes, slaw, and a slice of soft white bread. 'Nanner puddin'.

And a plate of some of SC's best whole hog barbecue from Scott's Bar-B-Q in Hemingway, SC. Pit master Rodney Scott stopped by our house to chat a bit on his way to Myrtle Beach. We talked about his uncomfortable new-found fame from being featured in The NY Times, as well as the documentary Cut/Chop/Cook produced by the Southern Foodways Alliance; felling trees; and how he comes to Philly for Eagles games. Turns out he was born in Philly!

Oh, how I'll miss the pimento cheese and boiled peanut snacks, happy hour every hour, warm ocean waters, and marsh dock sunsets. Til next year!

Vacation: Portland

In the middle of our week in Seattle, we ducked down to Portland, Oregon, for two brief nights. Before heading south to Portland, though, we rented a car and took a little detour. We pointed our car north to get on the Kingston ferry, which took us over to the tippy-top of the Olympic Peninsula. It's not very populated on the Olympic Peninsula, so much of the drive looked like so, with tall evergreens and yellow ribbons of invasive Scotch Broom. Oh, and gorgeous, steely blue lakes. Forks, Washington, the small town and setting for the Twilight books happens to be on the western edge of the Olympic Peninsula, which you'll drive through to get where you're going.

What a depressing little town. Not nearly as romantic and quaint as I had imagined it to be from reading the book (I stopped at book one, unable to stomach Bella's dependency issues). Trust me, if you lived in Forks, and a sparkly vampire showed up, you too would want to jump his cold, cold bones. There's just simply nothing else to do there!

Edward will show you to the ladies' bathroom at Forks' Chinese restaurant!The whole reason we went hours and hours out of our way from Seattle to Portland was to hike around the Olympic National Forest. We chose to romp around the Hoh Rainforest. It's absolutely gorgeous! Lush and green every where you look. Massive spruces, firs, and hemlocks shoot above the fern and moss-covered ground. It also rains in the rain forest pretty regularly. Go figure.After hiking in the rain forest, we headed a bit south to our home for the night, Lake Quinault Resort, a little inn with ten or so rooms set on the north shore of Lake Quinault. This place was so freakin' cute with cabin-like rooms lined up along a long deck covered with wisteria and potted flowers.
It was raining and misting that evening (we were still pretty much in the rain forest), so at times the lake vanished before our eyes even though it was just on the other side of the foxglove covered ridge just steps beyond our room and deck. We enjoyed a dinner on the deck of cheap Washington wine and Doritos from the corner store down the road. Absolutely perfect!
On the way from Lake Quinalt to Portland the next morning, we saw a roadside stand for cherries, so we stopped to experience Washington cherries while actually in Washington. These weren't life changing.Our first stop in Portland was for lunch at some of the food cart pods in downtown. A post on food carts is coming!
And, yeah, we did Voodoo Doughnuts, too, like good tourists. A post on that is also in the works.
We stopped in Powell's Books, a gigantic independent book store that takes up an entire city block in downtown Portland. These types of places overwhelm me, and I can never think of what to look for, so I just wandered aimlessly. The sides of their carts for re-shelving books have different themes and doodles. Above is a kitty cart!

We didn't really have much of an agenda for our two nights in Portland, other than to just show up and spend some time with the boy's friend who lives in Portland, which we did by hanging in bars, restaurants, and back yards. We picked our friend up after work in downtown, then drove out to his house in a neighborhood north of Portland.
Portland is über-cute! Every house has a flower garden or vegetable garden out front, and is just so damn cute (like the random house above) that you could pinch it. Houses have porches! How I miss porches.You can also have backyard chickens in Portland. These are our friends' chickens. They also had a yard with a vegetable garden out front, and a vegetable garden in the back.

I was really digging the vibe of Portland. It's a city with a downtown large enough that you feel like you're in a real city, and has quaint neighborhoods of cute houses (with yards and porches!) anchored by retail and restaurant districts. Portland reminded me a lot of Austin, Texas, but obviously with a different climate.

Speaking of climate, in those two nights we were in Portland, the weather did get to me. Even though it didn't rain at all when we were there, it was cloudy and cold. The mornings were in the 50s, and didn't warm up to the low 70s until the afternoon. For me, that is just not acceptable in the summer. My hands were freezing, and I was grumpy. When I found a patch of sun, I'd stop and soak up as much of it as I could. I don't think I'd survive in Portland. We stopped by the Portland's famous International Rose Test Garden one chilly morning. I hate roses (I have to take care of them, and, it's true, every rose has its thorn!), but even I, a rose-hater, appreciated the over 8000 immaculately cared for roses in this free-to-the-public garden.
Right next to the rose garden, is the Portland Japanese Garden, a very nice traditional Japanese Garden that is worth the admission fee.

A bit down the road from the rose and Japanese garden is the Hoyt Arboretum, which is free to enter. Go here if you like strolling or running on wooded trails with botanical names tagged on trees.
Every last Thurday of the month there is a Last Thursday festival with artists, performers, and food vendors lined along, oh, maybe ten or more blocks of Alberta St. This event is huge. Thousands of people. Some serious freak flags flying! I might get tired of this event after a couple of visits, and certainly if I lived right off Alberta St. (thousands of people also need to park somewhere), but it was fun that once.

Above is a Prince tribute band at Last Thursday. The singer had the look and body size down, except he was Prince's not-quite-so-sexy cousin. I'd probably still do him.
The morning we woke up to head north for Seattle, the forecast was for "abundant sunshine" (that's what the news kept excitedly repeating), so we decided to take the hour detour off highway 5 up to Mount St. Helens. We were warned that on cloudy or rainy days the view of the volcano can be cruddy, but with "abundant sunshine, " the view was perfect!

I highly recommend you stop by the Johnston Observation Ridge, which is situated directly across from the side of Mount St. Helens that was blasted off in the 1980 volcano eruption. The Johnston Observation Ridge visitors center is very nice, with an engrossing movie (volcanologists were monitoring the volcano and knew of it's impending activity, so there is plenty of footage of the blast and subsequent destruction), and state-of-the-art exhibits relating tales of survival and tragedy. Amazing! Very glad we stopped.