Tonight it's turkey meatballs in a coconut curry sauce with brussel sprouts on the side. While it's cooking I'm enjoying Dunhill Flake and a Vermouth cocktail.
@vtgrad2003 My grandfather was a butcher in the "Little Italy" of Boston. He would not eat them and warned us not to eat them he called them "dirty swill." Trust those who know!
Hot dogs are the great American food, and my personal favorite. I always have one with just mustard and ketchup, one with mustard, onions and kraut, and one with mustard, ketchup, onions, a dill pickle, and jalapeno slices!
@vtgrad2003 In the earlier days of hotdog manufacture meat and scraps gathered from the floor were part of the recipe. It must have been the Democrats that ended the practice by making government bigger. The meat is still sanitized and sodium nitrate is added to make sure they arrive to your table healthy!
Regulations have changed since @Balisong was making hot dogs. The regulations are continually updated and FSIS regulations enacted in 2004 to protect consumers against Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, mechanically separated beef is considered inedible and is prohibited for use as human food. It is not permitted in hot dogs or any other processed product.
Mechanically separated poultry has been used in poultry products since the late 1960's. In 1995, a final rule on mechanically separated poultry said it was safe and could be used without restrictions. However, it must be labeled as "mechanically separated chicken or turkey" in the product's ingredients statement. The final rule became effective November 4, 1996.
Because they are healthier to eat now than they used to be. Not that it matters to me because growing up I saw how people in Louisiana made things like Boudin and Hogs Head Cheese (back when they really used a hogs head to make it.)
Okay. I try to eat what I like, not what's "healthy", and the two rarely occur in the same meal. For instance, for breakfast on weekends (I don't normally eat breakfast on weekdays) I first cook my bacon then without draining the pan, I crack in my 3 eggs--mmm, nothing better than eggs, sunny side up in bacon grease! I am from the South after all 😁
@PappyJoe, @vtgrad2003 Both me and my wife have food allergies and additve sensitivities. Her allergies began after the course of antibiotics that cured her bacterial meningitis and mine after the antibiotics to stop lyme disease. During the aftermath of each of those we both were advised to stay away from processed foods and after following that advice became sensitive to chemical additives. My treatment killed all the bacteria that digests gluten and lactose. Hence no more bread, beer, or milk. I still can eat cheese but ...
@Balisong I’m with @vtgrad2003, weekend breakfast sounds exactly the same. I need some good white bread toast with real butter to dunk in my egg yolks though😋.
Mmm hotdogs over a campfire then just served with a bun and plain yellow mustard (French’s or Plochmann’s…..you can forget about the sugared up Hienz). I do like a hotdog with fresh tomato, pickle spears, raw white onion, sport peppers, celery salt and yellow mustard (hold the relish…too sweet).
I think I would be dead already if I had your dietary issues @Balisong 🙁
@PappyJoe My dad made hogshead cheese once when I was about 5-6. I remember him burning the hairs off of the head over the gas stove burner, cleaning out it’s ears with something?, and brushing it’s nasty graing filled teeth and gums with a toothbrush, then he dropped it in the big ole pot. Oh, it had been sitting outside under a juniper tree next to the house (it was fall/late fall, or maybe late spring…cool anyway daytime 40F-ish maybe? not freezing and definitely NOT July or August when it’s 100 in the shade😳) for a few days? before he was ready to cook it. P.S. I did NOT eat any of the finished product, and I don’t think it is one of my big life regrets🤔…nope, no regret.
I'm glad you both made it through your maladies...especially the lime disease thing, that can be particularly a pain in the ass (I know two people who've had it and neither are the same since). You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes.
@vtgrad2003 I just had two hot dogs with chili for lunch.
I don’t know of any food allergies that I have. There’s only a few things I don’t eat, like crabs, especially Dungeness crabs. I’ve seen what they eat.
Sounds great! Now we just have to get rid of that crab aversion you have...crabs that Blue Star Ointment can't cure 🤣
I eat any and all seafood as long as it was actually raised in the sea and not some piss/crap filled lagoon like some shrimp is. Here on the NC/SC coast has some of the best in the world!
@Balisong I feel for you and your wife, antibiotics can really screw you up; I know from personnel experience as I had legionnaire's disease in 98 and just barley survived.
After that insane treatment (for which I am grateful to have survived) my gut was never the same, though I suffered no new food allergies, I've had to take Pepcid AC twice a day ever since as I seem to have lost some flora or fauna that helped regulate acid production.
Though I do to a degree avoid fatty foods, I still eat pretty much what I like and pay for it occasionally. We had a motto where i lived, Live hard, die young and leave a good looking corpse because no gets out alive.
I've always read labels so adjusting my diet was easy. One Saturday my wife defrosted some shrimp for shrimp cocktail. We went out for some reason and she told me we had to stop for cocktail sauce. Grocery stores on a Saturday are off limits in my mind so I asked if we had ketchup, horseradish and Worcestershire sauce. She said yes to all and I told her she had cocktail sauce. It hasn't made the shopping list since!
@vtgrad2003 We stayed on Kill Devils Hill about 15 years ago and had a delicious seafood meal at Dirty Dick's!
I'm not offended. There's good food in New Orleans but if you want great food you need to skip all the high priced restaurants in New Orleans and go to the places the locals go. Little Mom & Pop places outside of New Orleans are definitely better than chain restaurants like Bubba Gump's.
@PappyJoe There are times I wish I lived in Louisianan. I would like to try to see how far through a 1/2 ton pickup box of boiled crawfish/crawdads/mudbugs I could get through😋. I’m not a fan of Gumbo or Etouffee, I’ll eat it sometimes, but I really like just a basic crawdad boil. I can find a few crawdads in some warmer lakes and rivers here, but they are usually really small ones and then not many at a time. The very first crawdad I ate was back in college when we had a dorm floor party on the Madison river, west of Bozeman (MSU). We caught a few crawdads, and I always had camping gear in my ‘53’ Willys Jeep, so I brought out the pot, built a fire, dipped some river water with it, got it boiling, and dropped in 1-2-3? crawdads we had caught. The small morsels were plenty tasty, even cooked so basically.
I agree with @PappyJoe . The non-theme restaurants are nearly always better or at least offer up fresher and more local seafood--although they are hard to find unless you ask the locals. So many people miss opportunities for great food by not engaging in conversation with your everyday local at a gas station, super market, wherever. I love chatting with locals especially here in the South and I'm always shaking hands with strangers--its the best way to get to know the area. That's one reason my wife and I love RVing so much. If you stay at a hotel you are unlikely to engage as much with the local population versus if you went to the local supermarket to stock the RV's refrigerator.
When my wife and I were in Buxton, NC in December, a relatively new restaurant was there (one of only a few on that end of the island) that was owned by a local woman (who also owned a burger shack on another part of the island). They served the best, freshest, truly local seafood I've had in quite a while (and my wife and I spend about 40 days a year on the coast); it wasn't cheap--I think the bill for my wife and I was about $150, but it was very good.
What's interesting is that back when I was a regional director for Piccadilly Cafeterias (based out of Baton Rouge), there was a big deal then whether it was proper or even legal to call seafood "fresh" that has been quick frozen (also known as "IQF" in restaurant lingo); now its common to do that. Even at your supermarket where you see "fresh" tuna or something, it's almost always IQF then thawed. Same with theme seafood and such, they always serve IQF meaning that its not "local caught"; nothing wrong with it and if done properly it is quite fresh tasting, but when the sign out front says "fresh seafood", I expect off-the-boat fresh seafood and am willing to pay for it.
It's hard to weed through all the crap sometimes and find places that actually get their product off of local boats and actually serve it fresh anymore, and when you do, you pay up the ass for it.
@vtgrad2003 Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) does seems to muddy the waters of what is fresh. I understand the theory of it behind some seafood that is caught hundreds of miles offshore and processed and quick frozen. It's prevents the fresh fish from spoiling while the boat is underway for days. I've watched Deadliest Catch about the guys who fish for crabs off the coast of Alaska. I guess they don't worry about freezing the crabs since the holding tanks are filled with sea water.
@vtgrad2003 & @PappyJoe Having done a bit of commercial fishing I can tell you, fresh is not frozen, there is fresh frozen which of course is not the same
Crabs are kept alive in the holding tanks and then off loaded and cooked and then canned or frozen, if crabs die or are frozen before being cooked you would not want to eat them, tastes like shit.
Processing ships go out for repetitively long trips so they have to process their catch but there is another reason and that is processed fish take up less space.
Most of the boats I worked on (shrimp, scallops,mid-water trawling salmon and mackerel would go out for 7-8 days at a time and we used ice, these were your standard 90 to 150 foot fishing rigs.
I've crabbed in Alaska but not commercially, just with my brother for dinner. had a good friend here in the Chicago area who crabbed commercially in Alaska, he lasted 17 years before the Bering Sea got him, no exaggerations on how dangerous it is.
@mapletop That's what I said about the crab. They are kept in holding tanks flooded with the cold sea water. Only the live ones are processed when they get back to port.
@Londy3 Dirty Rice, like gumbo has as many recipes as there are cooks and I've never had any that was bad. My dad and his family are from Bayou Sorrel and Bayou Pigeon areas (If you watch Swamp People about the alligator trappers, we're from that area). The traditional way I learned to make it was with chicken liver and gizzards and ground meat but they would use ground squirrel or rabbit every now and then. Adding shrimp on top of it like in the your photo would be putting a Creole twist to it. The usual difference between Cajun and Creole is the Creole will use more tomatoes.
Comments
That's no fun 🌭
My grandfather was a butcher in the "Little Italy" of Boston. He would not eat them and warned us not to eat them he called them "dirty swill." Trust those who know!
Hot dogs are the great American food, and my personal favorite. I always have one with just mustard and ketchup, one with mustard, onions and kraut, and one with mustard, ketchup, onions, a dill pickle, and jalapeno slices!
In the earlier days of hotdog manufacture meat and scraps gathered from the floor were part of the recipe. It must have been the Democrats that ended the practice by making government bigger. The meat is still sanitized and sodium nitrate is added to make sure they arrive to your table healthy!
Regulations have changed since @Balisong was making hot dogs. The regulations are continually updated and FSIS regulations enacted in 2004 to protect consumers against Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, mechanically separated beef is considered inedible and is prohibited for use as human food. It is not permitted in hot dogs or any other processed product.
Mechanically separated poultry has been used in poultry products since the late 1960's. In 1995, a final rule on mechanically separated poultry said it was safe and could be used without restrictions. However, it must be labeled as "mechanically separated chicken or turkey" in the product's ingredients statement. The final rule became effective November 4, 1996.
Why are you two telling me this? I could care less how they're made, they're good as a bitch! 🤣
Because they are healthier to eat now than they used to be. Not that it matters to me because growing up I saw how people in Louisiana made things like Boudin and Hogs Head Cheese (back when they really used a hogs head to make it.)
Okay. I try to eat what I like, not what's "healthy", and the two rarely occur in the same meal. For instance, for breakfast on weekends (I don't normally eat breakfast on weekdays) I first cook my bacon then without draining the pan, I crack in my 3 eggs--mmm, nothing better than eggs, sunny side up in bacon grease! I am from the South after all 😁
Both me and my wife have food allergies and additve sensitivities. Her allergies began after the course of antibiotics that cured her bacterial meningitis and mine after the antibiotics to stop lyme disease. During the aftermath of each of those we both were advised to stay away from processed foods and after following that advice became sensitive to chemical additives. My treatment killed all the bacteria that digests gluten and lactose. Hence no more bread, beer, or milk. I still can eat cheese but ...
I’m with @vtgrad2003, weekend breakfast sounds exactly the same. I need some good white bread toast with real butter to dunk in my egg yolks though😋.
@PappyJoe
My dad made hogshead cheese once when I was about 5-6. I remember him burning the hairs off of the head over the gas stove burner, cleaning out it’s ears with something?, and brushing it’s nasty graing filled teeth and gums with a toothbrush, then he dropped it in the big ole pot. Oh, it had been sitting outside under a juniper tree next to the house (it was fall/late fall, or maybe late spring…cool anyway daytime 40F-ish maybe? not freezing and definitely NOT
July or August when it’s 100 in the shade😳) for a few days? before he was ready to cook it.
P.S. I did NOT eat any of the finished product, and I don’t think it is one of my big life regrets🤔…nope, no regret.
I'm glad you both made it through your maladies...especially the lime disease thing, that can be particularly a pain in the ass (I know two people who've had it and neither are the same since). You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes.
I just had two hot dogs with chili for lunch.
Sounds great! Now we just have to get rid of that crab aversion you have...crabs that Blue Star Ointment can't cure 🤣
I eat any and all seafood as long as it was actually raised in the sea and not some piss/crap filled lagoon like some shrimp is. Here on the NC/SC coast has some of the best in the world!
Not going to happen. However I do eat King or Snow crab.
@vtgrad2003 We stayed on Kill Devils Hill about 15 years ago and had a delicious seafood meal at Dirty Dick's!
Not to short change New Orleans, we had a great shrimp dinner at Bubba Gump's about ten years ago!
I'm not offended. There's good food in New Orleans but if you want great food you need to skip all the high priced restaurants in New Orleans and go to the places the locals go.
Little Mom & Pop places outside of New Orleans are definitely better than chain restaurants like Bubba Gump's.
There are times I wish I lived in Louisianan. I would like to try to see how far through a 1/2 ton pickup box of boiled crawfish/crawdads/mudbugs I could get through😋. I’m not a fan of Gumbo or Etouffee, I’ll eat it sometimes, but I really like just a basic crawdad boil. I can find a few crawdads in some warmer lakes and rivers here, but they are usually really small ones and then not many at a time. The very first crawdad I ate was back in college when we had a dorm floor party on the Madison river, west of Bozeman (MSU). We caught a few crawdads, and I always had camping gear in my ‘53’ Willys Jeep, so I brought out the pot, built a fire, dipped some river water with it, got it boiling, and dropped in 1-2-3? crawdads we had caught. The small morsels were plenty tasty, even cooked so basically.
When my wife and I were in Buxton, NC in December, a relatively new restaurant was there (one of only a few on that end of the island) that was owned by a local woman (who also owned a burger shack on another part of the island). They served the best, freshest, truly local seafood I've had in quite a while (and my wife and I spend about 40 days a year on the coast); it wasn't cheap--I think the bill for my wife and I was about $150, but it was very good.
What's interesting is that back when I was a regional director for Piccadilly Cafeterias (based out of Baton Rouge), there was a big deal then whether it was proper or even legal to call seafood "fresh" that has been quick frozen (also known as "IQF" in restaurant lingo); now its common to do that. Even at your supermarket where you see "fresh" tuna or something, it's almost always IQF then thawed. Same with theme seafood and such, they always serve IQF meaning that its not "local caught"; nothing wrong with it and if done properly it is quite fresh tasting, but when the sign out front says "fresh seafood", I expect off-the-boat fresh seafood and am willing to pay for it.
It's hard to weed through all the crap sometimes and find places that actually get their product off of local boats and actually serve it fresh anymore, and when you do, you pay up the ass for it.
Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) does seems to muddy the waters of what is fresh. I understand the theory of it behind some seafood that is caught hundreds of miles offshore and processed and quick frozen. It's prevents the fresh fish from spoiling while the boat is underway for days. I've watched Deadliest Catch about the guys who fish for crabs off the coast of Alaska. I guess they don't worry about freezing the crabs since the holding tanks are filled with sea water.
Exactly. It's the processing vessels they offload to that IQF the crab.
Tonight: New Orleans style dirty rice also known as rice gravy.
Say What?
My buddy from Louisiana has this recipe. I've never heard of it. But I can say it twas good.
That's what I said about the crab. They are kept in holding tanks flooded with the cold sea water. Only the live ones are processed when they get back to port.
Dirty Rice, like gumbo has as many recipes as there are cooks and I've never had any that was bad.
My dad and his family are from Bayou Sorrel and Bayou Pigeon areas (If you watch Swamp People about the alligator trappers, we're from that area). The traditional way I learned to make it was with chicken liver and gizzards and ground meat but they would use ground squirrel or rabbit every now and then. Adding shrimp on top of it like in the your photo would be putting a Creole twist to it. The usual difference between Cajun and Creole is the Creole will use more tomatoes.