Les Jones

The Pizza at Sam and Andy’s Deli

Thursday, January 14th, 2010 | East Tennessee, Food & Drink | Permalink | No Comments |

Sam and Andy’s is a Knoxville institution. They’re best known as a deli, originally on the UT campus, with branches in West Knoxville and North Broadway.

We ate at the West restaurant today after the girls’ ballet recital. Katie wanted cheese pizza. I had eaten Sam and Andy’s pizza ages ago on campus. I remember their menu proudly proclaimed that they were the first restaurant in Knoxville to serve pizza.

ZOMG that was good pizza. The whole pie - crust, sauce and cheese - probably didn’t have more than eight or 10 ingredients, but it was unbelievably good. Thin, non-drooping crust that was slightly charred around the edges, ever so slightly sweet tomato sauce and excellent mozzarella. We’re getting that again.

Food Network and HD

Saturday, December 12th, 2009 | A&E, Food & Drink | Permalink | 4 Comments |

We upgraded to HD cable this week. My friend Adam told me that Food Network HD had some of the best-looking programming of the HD channels, I’m guessing because their content is all new and taped with HD cameras.

I told Melissa and she tested it. Food Network and Food Network HD broadcast the same shows at the same time. Sure enough, flipping back and forth between them you can really see the difference. The regular Food Network channel looks out of focus compared to the sharpness of the HD broadast.

They should call it “wood-fired style pizza”

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 | Food & Drink | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Knoxville News-Sentinel - Gloves come off in Hard Knox-Brixx pizza competition:

Hard Knox lawyer Michael McSunas issued a complaint to New South Pizza Inc., which does business as Brixx Wood Fired Pizza, on Oct. 23 and called for Brixx to “cease and desist making the false and misleading claim regarding its use of wood fired ovens on its website, signage, menus, and elsewhere in advertising and that it will not make similar claims in the future.”

“Specifically, Brixx claims that its pizzas are ‘wood fired’ when in fact the ovens Brixx uses to cook its pizzas are heated by gas burners,” according to Hard Knox’s letter to Brixx’s lawyer.

Attempts to reach Brixx representatives in the Charlotte headquarters were unsuccessful. But in a response to Hard Knox’s October cease and desist demand, Brixx lawyer Joe S. Major III stated that “neither Brixx’s web site nor advertisement states a ‘wood fired oven.’ The oven does burn some wood to flavor the pizza.”

Previously - Pizza Hut’s “Hand-tossed Style Pizza”.

Cheri’s Brown Sugar and Citrus Brine for Turkey

Thursday, November 26th, 2009 | Food & Drink, Holidays | Permalink | No Comments |

This sounds tempting. It’s too last minute for me to use it, so I’m bookmarking it for next year.

This year I’m using an injection of butter, garlic, onion powder and a hint of cayenne pepper for my fried turkey. Melissa is stuffing the cavity of her roast turkey with apples and fresh herbs for moisture and flavor and using a butter injection. My mother-in-law is making the ham with pineapple, brown sugar, and cloves.

That’s a nice thing about Thanksgiving - you make basically the same menu every year so you’re free to experiment over years or even decades until you get each dish just the way you want it.

Study: Splenda kills beneficial bacteria in GI tract

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 | Food & Drink, Science | Permalink | 2 Comments |

Seth Roberts - Splenda Reduces Gut Bacteria in Rats:

This 2008 study done at Duke University found that small amounts of Splenda — similar to what a person might consume — reduced “beneficial bacteria” in the guts of rats. The effect was very large (reduction by about 50% in 12 weeks) and occurred even at the lowest dose, which was lower than what the FDA allows. Most ominous of all, the effect had not levelled off after 12 weeks. The number of bacteria was still going down.

He further notes some possible links to things like Parkinson’s disease. Nothing conclusive at this point, but kind of worrying. The reduction in beneficial GI flora alone is disturbing enough.

Things like this make me consider quitting artificial sweeteners altogether. The tradeoff is that artificial sweeteners have fewer calories than sugar, but since I haven’t lost weight drinking diet soda I’m not sure there’s anything to lose by giving it up.

Another interesting link from Seth: Acid Reflux is Immune Problem, Says Rat Study

Mexican lamb BBQ at Los Amigos in Maryville

Saturday, October 10th, 2009 | East Tennessee, Food & Drink | Permalink | No Comments |

Los Amigos in Maryville had a special on their board today, Mexican lamb BBQ. De-lish. It’s shredded lamb cooked with onions and served with fresh cilantro. The BBQ sauce is soup-thin, served in a bowl for dipping, and unbelievably tasty.

It was today’s special. I have no idea when they’ll serve it again, but try it if you get the chance.

Los Amigos has been in business 20 years now. Here’s hoping Hector continued success. I’d love to see him open more restaurants. If he took over Deadbeat Pete’s in Townsend that place would be a raging success.

Black Flag at Vic and Bill’s Deli, Knoxville 1985

Thursday, October 8th, 2009 | A&E, East Tennessee, Food & Drink | Permalink | No Comments |

Oh hells yeah. My first Vic and Bill’s Deli show was Teenage Love, the STDs, and Guadalcanal Diary. I was 16. Vic and Bill’s was all about the punk rock and the serving beer to underage kids.

Before I graduated high school I saw the Circle Jerks and the Dead Kennedys there, too. I think I saw Black Flag, but I honestly can’t remember for sure. This was the old Vic and Bill’s, next to Stefano’s Pizza on the UT Strip.

Via Swanky’s Facebook. He BTW won a Metro Pulse bartender award. Not that he’s ever mixed a delicious tropical drink for me. Hint hint.

Tags: can you believe that guy?, i love me some rum, youtube

I ate at Rocky Top Burger in Knoxville

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 | Food & Drink | Permalink | 5 Comments |

That’s a darned good burger. Better than Five Guys.

For Knoxville folks: Rocky Top Burger is in Turkey Creek cattycornered from J.C. Penney’s where Gridiron Burger used to be.

The War on Food Poor People Eat

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 | Best Of, Food & Drink, Politics, Science | Permalink | 5 Comments |

Slate - Let Them Drink Water!What a fat tax really means for America:

It’s ironic that so many advocates for healthy eating are also outspoken gourmands. Alice Waters, the proprietor of Chez Panisse, calls for a “delicious revolution” of low-fat, low-sugar lunch programs. It’s a central dogma of the organic movement that you can be a foodie and a health nut at the same time—that what’s real and natural tastes better, anyway. Never mind how much fat and sugar and salt you’ll get from a Wabash Cannonball and a slice of pain au levain. Forget that cuisiniers have for centuries been catering to our hedonic hunger—our pleasure-seeking, caveman selves—with a repertoire of batters and sauces. Junk foods are hyperpalatable. Whole Foods is delicious. Doughnuts are a drug; brioche is a treat.

But of course. Politicians and food nannyists will tax candy bars, but not creme brulee. They’ll tax the Mello Yello at McDonald’s, but not the Espresso Macchiato at Starbucks. The distinction isn’t the nutritional content of the food - it’s who’s eating it. Poor people’s cheap food will be taxed. Expensive foods won’t. Nanny foodism isn’t about health. It’s about social class, political power, attacking corporations, and demonstrating who gets to tell whom how to live.

Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary, Supersize Me, chronicled his experiment in eating every meal at McDonald’s. While no one would argue that McDonald’s is health food, Spurlock could have gained just as much weight if he had eaten at high-priced French restaurants. If there’s ever a rational fat tax it will add ten bucks to the price of every Julia Child cookbook.

Any tax on “bad” foods assumes that nutritional science can actually tell us something useful about what to eat and what not to eat. The evidence on that count is mixed. The long-held consensus of low fat dieting is under withering attack. Advice on the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption keep being revised in both directions. Sweet and Low packets used to carry warnings that saccharine caused cancer in lab rats, but those labels were removed a few years ago. Most notable of all, after decades of diet books, diet products, and more attention paid to weight America is now fatter than ever.

The crossroads of science and public policy is a dangerous place. Policy should be informed by science only when the science is long-settled. That means that the most pressing topics - the ones that are most likely to be in the spotlight and the subject of new law - will rarely be informed by good science. They will instead be settled by politics and the pressure of political interest groups.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Do you want Uhura or Captain Kirk?

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 | Food & Drink, Home Life | Permalink | No Comments |

With the kids and my mom and everything that’s been going on in our lives the last few years we haven’t been entertaining much. Two weekends ago we invited some folks over for Sunday dinner and realized something.

Our glass collection had broken and dwindled to two drinking glasses and two tumblers from the last set, four Burger King Star Trek glasses, a stack of red Solo plastic cups, plus a drawerful of sippy cups for the toddlers. So out we went to buy a set of glasses.

Mashed Potatoes in a Cocktail Glass

Monday, August 31st, 2009 | Food & Drink | Permalink | 2 Comments |

From Melissa’s high school reunion, Knoxville Convention Center. Mighty tasty, too.

LATER: Bob Benz, commenting on Facebook: “So is the goal to wait for them to distill into vodka?”

In fried chicken news

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | Food & Drink | Permalink | 2 Comments |

Popeye’s may be opening a Cedar Bluff location in Knoxville.

This has been the fried chicken report.

Tags: fried chicken

Recently made at home: ice cream

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 | Food & Drink, Home Life | Permalink | 2 Comments |

Melissa’s Mother’s Day present was a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, the ice cream maker attachment, and an ice cream recipe book. The ice cream maker attachment consists of a heavy bowl, paddles, and paddle head. The paddlehead goes into the mixer head. You freeze the water-filled bowl for 17 hours, then attach it to the mixer base, insert the paddle, and lower the mixer head. Freeze time is about half an hour.

The kids weren’t crazy about the ice cream at first. After we froze the excess and brought it back out the next day they gobbled it up. Note to self: our kids like hard ice cream, so harden it in the freezer for a few hours next time.

Is the KitchenAid ice cream attachment worth the seventy odd bucks? TBD. Our old-fashioned electric ice cream maker - the kind you pack with ice and rock salt - cost a third as much, doesn’t have to spend a day in the freezer, and makes ice cream that’s harder when it’s done. The KitchenAid solution can make sorbets, so if that’s successful I’d say it might be worth it for the versatility and the fact it’s quieter.

Li’l tip on what not to do. The recipe said to mix all of the ingredients in a bowl and pour into the ice cream maker. “Why dirty a bowl?” I thought, and poured the ingredients one at a time into the ice cream attachment, which had been in the freezer for days. Imagine my surprise when the ice cream paddles wouldn’t turn because the liquid ingredients had frozen up glacier-like to the side of the ice cream maker. So, yeah, mix everything in a bowl, start the mixer, and then add the mixture.

Best steak cuts for the least money

Thursday, May 28th, 2009 | Food & Drink | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Washington Post - Affordable Steaks That Make the Cut

There are bargains to be had in the meat case, for $5 to $7 per pound. Affordable cuts of beef tend to fall into three groups: hanger and flatiron steaks, long prized by chefs; flank, flap, tri-tip and skirt steaks, which used to be even cheaper when they were less popular; and gems such as chuck eye, chuck shoulder and top sirloin steaks, which are, for the moment, the least expensive of the lot (less than $5 per pound).

There are some good grilling tips there, too. One I’ve gotten in the habit of is pulling meat out of the fridge before grilling so it can warm up a bit. That makes it easier to get the inside and outside of the meat cooked to the right levels. It’s especially helpful with thick cuts.

When I grill or sear marinated meat I use paper towels to remove excess marinade before cooking. If you don’t the outside of the meat gets boiled and doesn’t develop the texture it should get from the heat of grilling or pan searing.

P.S. I’ve added a grilling tag to older posts for easier browsing. Have I mentioned how much I like keyword tags?

Previously

• Zenreich’s Tri-tip Steaks
• Grilling: Flat Iron Steak

Tags: grilling, This Here De-pression

George Dickel Cascade Hollow is good stuff

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 | East Tennessee, Food & Drink | Permalink | 7 Comments |

My new fave cheap sour mash whiskey is George Dickel Cascade Hollow, AKA red label.

Previously Dickel’s (slightly) discount version was the No. 8 black label. I always spent the modest premium to get the much better No. 12 tan label.

The Cascade Hollow red label is significantly cheaper than both and pleasant to drink. My nearest store has it for $10 a fifth, which is about half the price of Jim Beam or Jack. It’s worth a try if you like your whiskey Southern. It isn’t the best sour mash whiskey I’ve ever had, but it’s the best in its price range by a wide margin.

Dickel is a Tennessee whiskey, which is a sour mash whiskey, like bourbon. Bourbon has its own legal definition and is not necessarily made in the Bourbon region of Kentucky, though it must be made in the United States.

Tennessee whiskey can likewise be made outside of Tennessee. Dickel was originally made in Tennessee, then was made in Kentucky during Tennessee’s state Prohibition of 1910, but as of 1958 is now made once again in Cascade Hollow in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

By definition what makes it Tennessee whiskey is charcoal filtering prior to aging. For the aging process it’s stored in new oak barrels that are charred on the inside. After one use they’re discarded. Here in Tennessee you can find Jack Daniels whiskey barrels at garden centers such as Lowe’s cut in half for use as planters. We have one in our garden we’ve fitted with a pre-formed hard plastic pond liner and a pump/filter for use as a decorative pond with goldfish and aquatic plants.

Jack Daniels is the best known Tennessee whiskey, but I’ve never cared for it. Give me George Dickel or bourbon instead.

UPDATE: Here’s a little background on how Cascade Hollow came to be. It was originally aged three years, but is now aged at least four years.

Previously

• Elijah Craig Bourbon (Elijah who? Oh, nobody. He’s just the Baptist preacher who invented bourbon!)
• George Dickel No. 8 Shortage
• Buy That Man a Drink

Tags: bourbon

Dinner and a Movie: La Parigo and “Star Trek”

Saturday, May 16th, 2009 | A&E, Food & Drink, Home Life | Permalink | 6 Comments |

The Dinner
Melissa had been wanting to go to La Parigo in downtown Knoxville since they opened six months or so ago. It’s a small setting inside with a covered patio outside where we ate and watched the rain. Apparently they used to be in Bearden in Mango’s old building and Southern Living them named them one of the top three French restaurants in the South, which for all I know is like being one of the three best BBQ restaurants in France.

Everything we ate except the dessert was from the du jour selections. Salad was an ahi tuna tartar with blueberries. I liked it; Melissa was crazy for it. Soup was a creamy potato and leek. Melissa liked it; I thought it was delicious and would order it again. The entree was a white fish whose name I didn’t recognize with a caper sauce, tomatoes, and sauteed Brusell sprouts, which were better than they sound, I swear.

Our waiter was especially professional, unobtrusive, and likable. I wish I had asked his name so I could thank him here for his hospitality.

Dessert was a pistachio creme brulee. It was good, but not as Pistachio-ey as I expected (and it wasn’t green, either). I prefer the Northshore Brasserie’s creme brulee with its incredibly delicate caramelized top, and in general I couldn’t help comparing La Parigo to two other Knoxville restaurants we like, the Brasserie and Bistro By The Tracks. The former is explicitly French, while the latter has French as one of its influences and is my favorite restaurant in Knoxville for the sheer enjoyment of food I can’t get anywhere else.

Right now La Parigo is in third place. We liked it quite a bit, but it stopped short of being mind-blowing. Still, I’m looking forward to our next visit to have my mind blown.

The Movie
Star Trek on the other hand was completely mind-blowing. On the big screen its vision is enormous and overwhelming. The young actors inhabiting the rebooted Trek universe are brilliant and charismatic - you can’t help worrying about them when they’re in danger, which they are constantly. I’m not a big Star Trek fan and I’m ready to pay to see it at the theater again.

From reading Jason Kottke I knew going in that the movie made extensive use of lens flare. It’s as if they’re so close to the stars with no atmosphere to protect them that there is blinding light everywhere that the camera can’t escape it. Normally lens flare is something the director and cameraman try to avoid. But just as with distortion in musical instruments you can use that mistake, that input overload, to create new textures and background and that’s what they did here to good effect.

This morning I mentioned jwz’s take on time travel: “If your story is not about time travel, but it has time travel in it, then your story sucks.” The new Trek movie falls into the sucks camp by that standard. I don’t think the time travel here really makes sense since it’s of the going-back-in-time-to-change-history variety. (If that’s the case, someone should go back in time to undo the bad guy’s actions. Either events mean something or they don’t.) It also wasn’t strictly necessary. They could have changed the story ever so slightly to change the bad guy’s motivation and done away with time travel altogether.

Slight spoilerage - highlight the text to read. It’s almost as if they used the time travel conceit to shoehorn Leonard Nimoy into the movie. And if that’s the case that would be bad, except that I really, really enjoyed him here. It’s as if my favorite uncle came back from the dead and I just can’t get enough of listening to his gravelly but wise voice. So all in all I’ll take the time travel nonsense to see the original Spock better than ever.

Ratings

La Parigo - Magnificque

Star Trek - Mother Vulcan Awesome

Tags: dinner and a movie

Cheaper to make or buy?

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 | Food & Drink | Permalink | 1 Comment |

Slate experiments with yogurt, cream cheese, crackers, bagels, jam, and granola. It makes me want to buy this book so we can make our own yogurt and mozarella (which is supposedly the easiest cheese to make at home).  The bagels sound pretty easy, too.

Conversation about a shallot

Sunday, April 19th, 2009 | Best Of, Food & Drink, Home Life | Permalink | No Comments |

WIFE: Have you seen my shallot?
ME: Nope.
WIFE: It was next to the sink.
ME: Yeah?
WIFE: It was brown. It looked like an onion.
ME: That was a shallot?
WIFE: Yes.
ME: I thought shallots looked like green onions.
WIFE: This was brown.
ME: Oh. I didn’t know that was a shallot.
WIFE: What did you do with it?
ME: Uh, I threw it away.
WIFE: Les!
ME: I thought it was an old rotten onion.

Turns out there are two kids of shallots, though what I was thinking of is usually called scallions. Oops.

Tags: conversations

The Market and Ciao Deli in Maryville

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 | East Tennessee, Food & Drink | Permalink | 4 Comments |

I finally got around to visiting Maryville’s new gourmet food market at the corner of Washington and High Street. The market serves gourmet and local produce, baked goods, cheese, seafood, and meats.

The Laurel Creek Farm’s Meat case was especially impressive, with a variety of beef, pork, bison, lamb, and goat. The most tempting thing I saw were the bison filets. Mercy, they looked yummy, but at $40/pound I’ll be saving that for a special occasion. (And no, the price doesn’t including any sexual favors. I asked.)

Inside, the Ciao Deli serves sandwiches, sides, BBQ, and a du jour menu of hot food. The day I went I had a smoked hamburger, fresh collard greens, and cornbread. They have imported beer and microbrews for takeout or on-premise consumption at the deli. The deli hosts a monthly beer tasting social.

P.S. They’ve partially removed the second story floor to give it an open feel, but ages ago my older brother had an apartment in the upstairs of that building. The one clear memory I have of it is sitting on the steps reading a comic book featuring Spiderman and Nightcrawler. Back then the downstairs was a gas station. A Mobil, as I recall. Later the downstairs became a laundry mat.

Tags: bbq

Word of the Day: Vacuum Pot Coffee Maker

Friday, January 9th, 2009 | Food & Drink, Word of the Day | Permalink | 4 Comments |

I’ve mentioned vacuum pots to several people this week and no one else knew what they were. I mostly know them from seeing them in antique stores. From Wikipedia:

The principle of a vacuum coffee maker is to heat water in the lower vessel of the brewer until expansion forces the contents through a narrow tube into an upper vessel containing coffee grounds. When the lower vessel has more or less emptied itself and enough time has elapsed, the heat is removed and the resulting vacuum will draw the brewed coffee through a strainer back into the lower chamber from which it can be decanted. The device must usually be taken apart to pour out the coffee.

An early variation of this principle is called a balance siphon. This implementation has the two chambers arranged side by side on a balance-like device, with a counterweight attached to the heated chamber. Once the vapor has forced the hot water out, the counterweight activates a spring-loaded snuffer which smothers the flame and allows the initial chamber to cool down thus creating a vacuum and causing the brewed coffee to seep in.

Previous WOTD - Scaramouche

Tags: youtube

Conversation at the new Cafe 4, downtown Knoxville

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 | Food & Drink | Permalink | No Comments |

WAITRESS: And what would you like, sir?
MELISSA’S CO-WORKER: I’ll have the All-American Burger.
WAITRESS: Excellent choice.
MELISSA’S CO-WORKER: So you’ve had it?
WAITRESS: Well, no. I’m a vegan. But if I wasn’t a vegan I think I’d really like it.

Tags: conversations

Bad news, Waffle House fans

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 | Food & Drink | Permalink | 4 Comments |

Robb reports the awful news -”Franchisee Of 146 Waffle Houses Files For Bankruptcy”:

TAMPA - The days may be numbered for “scattered, covered and smothered” hash browns at Waffle House. The iconic roadside grill’s biggest franchisee has filed for bankruptcy protection.

Northlake Foods Inc. of Brandon, which operates 146 Waffle Houses in Florida, Georgia and Virginia, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in mid-September. Chapter 11 allows a company to reorganize its finances while protected from its creditors.

According to the bankruptcy filing, 90 of Northlake Foods’ Waffle House locations are in Florida, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether it operates any local restaurants.

The company filed for bankruptcy because Waffle House Inc. of Norcross, Ga., was threatening to terminate the franchise agreement that gives it the right to operate the restaurants, the bankruptcy filing says.

P.S. When we were in St. Petersburg last month I thought it was totally weird that the Waffle Houses had palm trees. One day I hope to go to Europe and see how they landscape their Waffle Houses. With windmills, maybe, or guard towers. I’ll bet the ones in Scotland have moats. Knoxville Waffle Houses have next to no landscaping, but at least there are lots of them.

Hat tip to an email from Uncle.

Sugar’s Ribs BBQ in Chattanooga, TN

Monday, September 29th, 2008 | East Tennessee, Food & Drink | Permalink | 6 Comments |

I had seen the sign off the interstate for Sugar’s Ribs, so on the way back from Manchester I stopped in Chattanooga to get BBQ for the family.

When I got to the counter I met the lady above. I had to ask. “Are you Sugar?” The answer: “Honey, there ain’t no Sugar. She fictional. Caucasians own this place.”

I’m usually not a fan of BBQ chicken, but Sugar’s is unusually good. They cook their chicken on a broiler that uses ceramic wicks. The brisket was also good, but the whole pork was just OK. Give me pulled pork any day.

Sauces are Classic, tomatoey Tennessee Sweet and Goopy, Mustard, a red pepper and vinegar Carolina, a habeneros and vinegar sauce they call Clearly Hot, and a hot green sauce.

The potato salad is out of this world. It has seeds that I thought might be carraway seed, but the cook says they use celery seed and dill seed. Like a lot of good BBQ joints, Sugar’s has both vinegar slaw and mayonnaise slaw. I liked their vinegar slaw better, but I always like the vinegar better.

That’s the end of the food review. Pictures follow. Sugar’s is on a hill, and hills are hard to mow. That’s why they have an all-goat mowing squad:

Continue reading the rest of this post right here ›››

Tags: bbq

California Saucer Peaches

Monday, August 11th, 2008 | Food & Drink | Permalink | No Comments |

I bought some of these white peaches at Kroger’s. Dee-lish.

If Lovin’ Beer Mixed with Clam and Tomato Juice is Wrong, I Don’t Wanna Be Right

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 | Food & Drink | Permalink | 5 Comments |

This summer I’m loving Budweiser’s Chelada, which is Budweiser beer mixed with Clamato (which in turn is clam juice mixed with tomato juice). Love it. Go ahead and hate, haters. It’s delicious.

I never bring Budweiser home, but for some reason (novelty, maybe) I like Budweiser Chelada. And even though I usually hate light beer the light version is much better, which is even more perverse. The regular version is too heavy and has too much of a Worcestershire-ey flavor. The Bud Light version is just right, God help me.