I'm back...

Sooooooo ... I haven't posted anything for 3 months. Awkward.

I wish I had a good excuse. But... I've got big news for the blogosphere. My lovely wife and I have started catering! So far we have had 3 jobs with several others in the hopper. And we are calling our new endeavor: e. No pics yet, but we'll be working on that. If you want to book us, shoot me a note.

Also, the peppers I've been growing have started coming in.

The first one was a little disappointing.


Yes, that's a penny.

Curried Stuffed Peppers

DSC_1975, originally uploaded by foodies4thought.

Madras curry powder, crispy beef and saffron rice. Mmmm.

Garden & Gun 100

Garden & Gun magazine put out their 100 Southern Foods You Absolutely, Positively Must Try Before You Die.  My foodie friends and I are making our way down the list.  Here's the latest I've knocked off the list:

McKinley's Bar-B-Q and Soul Food - Stewed Oxtail

(McKinley's isn't in the best part of town.  The food and company is great though.)

Parasol's - Roast Beef Po' Boys

Parasol's was right down the street from my friend Stew's place.

Trust me it lived up to the billing.

More to come...

...and we're back.

Sorry for the delay... I think the reality of not having a blog schedule overwhelmed me with relief.  I needed that few weeks off to recharge the urge to blog. 

We've been cooking a lot of curries and stir fries.

Curried Chick Peas with Chicken and Peas (oh the wordplay!)

Brassicae Stir Fry with fresh tomatoes and cilantro.  

With brussels and broccoli, it's a hit with kids.

The Standard:  Stir fry with anything (and everything) in the fridge.  

My new favorite breakfast.  Eggs over easy with goat cheese and pepper relish, hash browns & carrots, and bacon (of course).

Supper Club Contributions: 

I. Cheese Grits (Low Country Themed Palmetto Style)

II. Corn Muffins with green onions, red bell peppers and cilantro.

Oh and I'm on a diet now.  Woof. 

At least I'm not doomed to $5 footlongs.

A Food Blogger's Quandry

It has been pretty busy at work... thus the lack of posts! We'll get back into it soon enough.

We've been eating out a lot lately and I have a fear of/aversion to taking quality photos in a restaurant. I've tried using my trusty iPhone with terrible results...

These delicious looking dishes were from Hot and Hot Fish Club .

Is it just me or do these look like undercover police photos taken from a camera mounted on a tie clip? "Exhibit A is a picture of the grouper cooked in parchment. The picture was taken by officer Malarky at a sting operation in the Harpersville Motel at 1 AM on February 21st."

Moe's Barbeque. Good BBQ, bad picture.

Tortilla Soup at Las Poblanas in Childersburg, AL.

The soup was good but I think my wife got the flu here.

Surin's Curried Eggplant Noodle. My absolute favorite dish at Surin 280.

I don't know why I refuse to take "real" pictures in restaurants. Maybe I feel it makes the other patrons uncomfortable or distracts from the dining ritual. (I enjoy the act of dining as much as the act of eating. Yes, there is a difference.) Is it not insanely awkward to pull out an SLR and start a photo shoot in a restaurant? But I want to be able to share my dining out experiences with some degree of quality. Or do I? Do I really care to do all that it takes to get a good photo of some food at a restaurant? Am I just not as "hardcore" as I thought?

Maybe, just sometimes, I want to eat a meal like everyone else does, without writing my thoughts/criticisms down in a notebook and snapping 10 pics with different aperture settings.

A quick phone picture is enough, sometimes.

It is hard to discern between blog-worthy, un-blog-worthy, and experiences too good to ruin with over-documentation.

Log this one under lessons learned in my short time as a "food blogger". And until something changes, just expect crappy photos to accompany posts about restaurants.

The Well Rounded Blog: Snow Day!

"Oh my goodness!  There is snow everywhere!"  That is the phrase I woke up to on Sunday morning.

We NEVER get this much snow.  You know what that means... family pictures!

David did not like the snow and immediately tried to go back inside.  So we did what any good parents would do when they need family pictures.  

We forced him to participate.

Look at how much fun we are having!

Oh look at us playing in the snow!

Can we go inside now?  It's freezing.

This Week in Food!

Unclean! Unclean!  The WHOLE family was on quarantine this week.  Wife had the flu, I had a terrible cold, and Daveman, we feared, would get both.  It was really a crummy week.  Since I was "less" sick, I was on cooking duty.  Which gave me a chance to dive head first into this:

That is 10 lbs. of ground beef ladies and gents!  Patty melts for all!  Or spaghetti and meatballs!!

I haven't cooked spaghetti and meatballs in years.  I think I felt it was too plain jane, too ordinary, too easy.  I know, I'm such a food snob :(.  But when you're sick and you don't feel like making a fancy dinner, you gotta go old school.  Spaghetti and meatballs is back baby!  (Oh, and sorry about the bad pics, didn't feel like takin' fancy photos either.)

Classic.

David thinks I've been holding out on him ... and I have.  Sorry, man.

Asian stir fry with ramen noodles.  Comfort for the sick.

This weekend we recovered and I figured out how to fix imitation cheap Mexican food.  You know, the Americanized Mexican food that is nothing like true Mexican cuisine.  Is it just me, or are there approximately 34 million Mexican restaurants in Alabama that serve the same food?  We have love the stuff for some reason and now we can make it ourselves!  Although, I think the ambiance is 75% of the reason we go.

First up: Chicken and Cheese Quesadillas

Ok, I had to snob it up a bit.  I can't help it, I have a problem.

So in other news, I am doing away with the blog schedule.  It was too much pressure to produce.  This is supposed to be fun and it was starting to get away from that.  So I'll be blogging more "free form" from now on ("free form" - phrase I stole from Alex.  Nice word choice, Al.).  So sorry if you dig the schedule, it's gotta go.

Speaking of... Alex and his wonderful wife treated us to some fabulous ox tail and polenta this evening.  Delicious!  I've never had ox tail before, but I must say "bravo".  Offal has been getting a lot of press lately... I'll probably jump on the bandwagon soon.