What's on my Mind?

For all you BBQ and Blues folks out there.

There was a BBQ Grilling Contest this weekend at Nashoba Ski Area in Westford, MA. The Pig n' Pepper. In case you didn't know, there is a BBQ Society in New England - The New England BBQ Society (NEBS).

After mentoring with Andy King and The Bastey Boys for a year, Que Tease started in 2011 to compete in Tailgate Competions run by NEBS. The Pit Boss is BBQ_Mike who is assisted by the Que Tease Cutie, Christine Wright.

Over the weekend Que Tease BBQ competed in our third competition this year at the Pig n' Pepper. This was a two day event. Saturday was chicken wings and ribs. Sunday was Chicken, Beef, Pork, and Peppers.

Fourteen teams began arriving at 6:00 AM to set up their cooking sites, get their fires going, prep meats and have them cooked by 1:30 for the chicken wings and 2:00 for the ribs. Both categories were won by Grannie's BBQ Team. Que Tease came in 7th in both categories and 6th overall. It was a fun day even though it rained for a short time. We met plenty of folks we knew and met a few more. People came from as far away as New Hampshire at the Canadian border, Connecticut and western MA.

Sunday we were back at it again. The entries Que Tease put in were Chicken stuffed with Asparagas, andouille sausage and goat cheese, Rib Eye steak, Pork Tenderloin with an Asian Glaze, and Stuffed Poblanos. We had better results on Sunday.

So imagine you're walking down the street in a nice downtown shopping area, looking for some dinner with one other person. You are a dedicated foodie, but your friend is a more cautious adventurer.

You come upon Pretentious Pete's Hifalutin Bistro and read the menu together. The duck breast sounds delicious, the cassoulet incredible, and the terrine of goat innards sounds daring and maybe a possibility for another visit.

Your friend looks to you in dismay and says "There's nothing for me here."

So you continue your search, coming next to Plain Polly's Home-Style Chophouse, where your companion sees the usual array of salads, burgers, and familiar appetizers. You guess they are probably all right off the Sysco truck, but you know it's going to be one of those dinners that keep body and soul together for another day and you can hope for an epicurean experience another time.

Pretentious Pete, despondent at seeing you examine his menu and walk on by and into Plain Polly's, has a revelation. He realizes that he lost TWO customers because he couldn't feed ONE. After a bit of brainstorming, he adds a special to tomorrow night's fare: a half a roast chicken with rosemary potatoes.  

The next night you walk the same street looking for dinner. Your friend has no interest in Pete's, but you can't resist torturing yourself about what awesome foodie goodness you will miss tonight.

Look at that! What do you think of a nice half a roast chicken for dinner? Your friend agrees that last night's fare, while unchallenging, was also not worth a return visit. Chicken sounds good. Your friend dons sunglasses so as not to be recognized in this hifalutin eatery, and you have a fine repast.

I think a few words are in order about what it means to me to be a foodie. After all, if you consider yourself a foodie and I claim to be a foodie, then we have expectations of what the word means and what we expect of each other's foodie thoughts.  

Appreciating food isn't only about how it tastes or how it's made or whether the ingredients are locally-grown and organic; appreciating food includes the circumstances under which you appreciate it. Food should do more than keep body and soul together, it should nourish the soul as well as the body.

Here's an example: a breakfast of fishcakes and beans at a diner can be excellent or awful with almost no concern for the quality of either the fishcakes or the beans depending on your diner experience. Some diners are quirky and charming, evoking feelings without trying to manufacture them. Others are phony from the new chrome exterior to the fake juke box in the corner. My breakfast might have come right off the Sysco truck in both cases, but the settings can make all the difference.

When Proust fell into a reverie over his madeleine before writing his masterwork, he wasn't at a Dunkin' Donuts!

Please add your thoughts in the comments section below.  

My friend John travels widely in the New York-New England area, always on the lookout for special foods and food related ideas. It was on one of his rambles that he encountered a cassata. Sometimes known as a Cassata alla Siciliana, it's a kind of cake that hails from Palermo, Sicily, where it was introduced during a period of Arab rule. John became intrigued after his wife noticed one in the pastry case of La Trattoria in Gloucester, which gets them frozen from Italy. He went down the street to a Sicilian bakery where he inquired of the baker how he might make one himself.

The man scoffed haughtily at the very idea and said in effect, "This is a job for trained professionals; don't attempt it at home." Challenged, John examined a slice of the imported cassata for structure and tasted it for ingredients. It's made of layers of sponge cake, the inner one cut out to hold a load of cannoli filling made from sweetened ricotta cheese and small chocolate chips. The dessert is edged with a thick layer of green tinted marzipan, topped with fondant, and decorated with candied fruit.

He made one for Annette's birthday, but wasn't happy with the results. In his words, "It tasted good, but there were structural and aesthetic failures..." He'd tried to make it in three layers, cutting the center out of the middle layer, which cracked under the load of the filling. He was disappointed in both the marzipan and the fondant. Annette considered it a great cake, but even as we enjoyed it, John's mind was back at the drawing board.

He made a second one for his company Christmas party.

The White Horse Tavern

26 Marlborough Street, Newport, Rhode Island

As the hostess turned on her heel, there was rigid set to her shoulders that ought to have warned me I was in the wrong place.  The small parking lot in the White Horse Tavern in the historic district of Newport was full, and I’d inquired whether leaving my car in the church lot next door would result in it being towed as the sign threatened.  This, she replied, was a possibility, and she recommended I park on the street.  I said, “There are no places on the street.” 

I cannot truthfully say she shrugged, but her body language as she walked away conveyed the message that parking was my problem, not hers.   After some minutes of driving around the narrow streets, I discovered I could park for a fee in a nearby lot to which she might easily have directed me. 

I’d been warned that the White Horse Tavern required appropriate dress, but this appeared not to be the case.  I was the only man wearing a tie, and three men were in jeans.  Most, including two who had sports coats draped over their chair backs, ate in their shirt sleeves.

Our waiter was tall in stature and wide in girth. His plain white shirt was open at the neck and in danger of becoming untucked from his black pants.  He brought no bread.  Other servers were delivering breadbaskets to tables, but none of his diners were so favored. He greeted a gentleman near us, saying he’d taken his course in economics, but even the economist went without bread.

Once upon a time under the grassy plain of Alberta, Canada, hundreds of prairie dogs built and maintained a network of burrows and tunnels. If they were happy, they didn’t know it. This was simply life as it had always been, but not as it would always be. Nearby, strangers built the cow town of Calgary, which grew into a city. Eventually the prairie dog community was replaced by an airport surrounded by motels, restaurants and all manner of retail businesses and small manufacturing. The prairie dogs were gone with the exception of one, who lived in a hole in the foundation of the local Hooters.

Mr. and Mrs. Talbot were not in the habit of dining at Hooters. They were a couple in their sixties who lived in a faraway place called Massachusetts and were staying at the Day’s Inn. They choose Hooters for its propinquity and thought they might find adequate sustenance before an early bedtime and an even earlier departure the next morning.

They asked for a table on the outdoor terrace to get away from the loud music that filled the interior of the restaurant. The table was right beside the hole. The prairie dog felt no need of a name, but when he emerged, Mr. Talbot began to think of him as Gus. Pretty soon Gus squeezed under the glass windscreen that protected the patio and began running around. Mr. Talbot took a liking to him, but Mrs. Talbot considered him a rodent and objected when he ran over her feet. He wasn’t the only wild animal about. Nibbling on the lawn was a lanky jackrabbit Mr. Talbot thought of as Jack.

Diners at Hooters are served by young women who differ from the employees of the surrounding commercial wasteland primarily by the scantiness of their attire. They are known as Hooters girls.