Your Mummy’s Coming to Dinner

When the mummy comes to life in Universal’s 1932 movie The Mummy, Boris Karloff does little more than slowly open his eyes, and almost as slowly, drop his bandaged hand from his chest to his side. Yet it is that combined series of small movements which makes the scene so effective. The mummy is not a villain that is going to win by brute strength or agility (unlike the 2001 remake). It is Imhotep’s will that is the source of his power. It’s a shame we only see Karloff wrapped up as the mummy briefly in the opening scenes. Unfortunately, the series’ sequels lacked both Karloff and his intensity: The Mummy’s Hand (1940), The Mummy’s Tomb (1942), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944) and The Mummy’s Curse (1944).

Waiter, there’s a hair in my beef chow mein!

“I saw Lon Chaney walking with the queen doing the werewolves of London.
I saw Lon Chaney Junior walking with the queen doing the werewolves of London.
I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic’s.
His hair was perfect.”
“Werewolves of London” by Warren Zevon

Few are those who are unfamiliar with Warren Zevon’s most popular song. Jimmy Buffett has covered it. Kid Rock has sampled it. Thousands, if not, millions, have gone in search of Lee Ho Fook’s. An even greater number have wondered what a werewolf was doing with a Chinese menu in his hand. What many do not realize is that Lee Ho Fook’s was an actual restaurant in the Soho district of London, now sadly no longer around. Allegedly, they did not give out menus.

The Notes of Autumn

The chromatic scale consists of 12 notes, out of which endless variations exist to give us everything from Beethoven to the Beatles. The seasons number only four but account for an almost equally diverse number of possibilities for combining flavors and ingredients. One flavor note that most people associate almost exclusively with autumn is apple cider. Apples have their place nearly year round, from crisp green apples in summer salads to caramel apples at Halloween. Apple cider, however, is one of those flavors that just seems fundamentally wrong if you encounter it at any other time of the year besides the harvest and holiday seasons.

The first word in healthcare is…

“You say you want a revolution…”
John and Paul

I don’t make it a habit of reading the editorial pages of newspapers. However every so often, in a rare while, I’ll find a piece published that almost universally restores my faith in the print media. Several weeks ago the New York Times published what is possibly the most intelligent article I’ve read yet in the whole sordid healthcare debate. It was the kind of article that made me want to jump out of my chair, pump both fists in the air and scream “Yes!” at the top of my lungs.

Simple as Salsa

It’s that time, towards the end of summer, when the garden really begins to give up it’s bounty. Around here that means it’s salsa time. In Kentucky it’s not until late August that the hotter variety of chile peppers start to flourish. Convential wisdom is you never plant anything you want to keep before Derby Day (the first Saturday in May). Even then, it’s a race to bring in a harvest of some of the hotter chile’s (like Tabasco’s) before the cold night air starts to cut off the plants’ fruiting. This summer with it’s unusually cool nights has been a particular challenge in the old chile pepper patch.

Twenty Years Ago

“Twenty years ago I struck out on my own
Couldn’t tell me nothing I didn’t already know.”
Twenty Years Ago by Montgomery Gentry

Food changes. And food changes people. When we’re young there are foods we would never dream of eating, and things we ate then that we haven’t tasted again in years. Food changes how people interact with each other. Put a roomful of people together without food or drink, and the conversation seems forced, with no one being sure why they are there. Produce – as if by magic – a platter of hors d’oeuvres, or a bottle of wine, and people immediately loosen up. Friendship flows as freely as the wine. Now they know why they are here. Maybe it’s not for the food, but for each other. However, for that evening, the meal is what binds them all together.

Random Seasonings – April 11th, 2009

More serious posts are forthcoming, but for tonight, here are a few random thoughts.

Spring is finally here – sort of. In spite of the fact that the first week of April brought 2 days of snow flurries, it seems everyone is starting to come out of hibernation. The crowd at the food shoppes around town have started to pick up, the restaurant patios have been set for the season, and the opening week crowd at Keeneland certainly drove hungry race enthusiasts to enjoy everything Lexington has to offer. The Farmer’s Market opened yesterday. As for me, I have more or less recovered from hosting two dinner parties in a span of fourteen days and am now throwing myself whole heartily into the final month of prep work for the High Hope Steeplechase. Excursions and culinary adventures will now pick up speed and frequency, as this weekend surely demonstrated.

Random Seasonings – A Snow Day Blog – January 28th, 2009

The Lone Sentinel - a tiki torch, a reminder of summer past, stands guard next to the limbs of a pine tree weighted down by ice and snow.

Snow day equals blog day. After a vain attempt to make it to work this morning, I turned around and drove back home to spend the day watching the snow and ice come down, along with the trees and power lines. School was out, but since my son was at his mother’s robbing me of my normal side kick, accomplice and co-conspirator, I had to find other ways to pass the time. Like catching up on all the news that’s fit to eat. My first preference would have been to spend the afternoon in the kitchen, but since each news update brought word of Mother Nature’s ever expanding involuntary rolling blackouts I decided launching into some new culinary enterprise probably wasn’t a good idea. As it turns out, we lost power around 2pm for nearly three hours, just long enough for nice cat nap, which is apparently how my cat spends every day. Given the choice between writing something serious or frivolous, I decided to keep it casual. So here are the fruits of my afternoon and evening labors, more random thoughts from the Honaker household.

Obama(food)palooza: One thing is certain, never has so much been written about the food likes and dislikes of the President.

And now the work begins…

New Year’s Day is always a time of sorting through, throwing out, putting away and generally trying to take back control of my house from the festivities that have ruled it since back before Halloween. While the decorations aren’t coming down just yet (my six year old son won’t hear of it for another week), it will feel nice to soon see the place without any type of holiday ornamentation. After all, there are menus to plan and cooking to be done…

Blogging for Peppers at Fiery-Foods.com

If you love spicy foods, chile peppers and the chile-head culture that goes with them, then you’ve probably heard of Dave DeWitt. Dubbed “The Pope of Peppers”, Dave has been featured on numerous TV programs over the years and is responsible for the annual Fiery Foods and Barbecue Show. Now in its 21st year, next year’s show will be held at the Sandia Resort and Casino in Albuquerque, New Mexico on February 27th through March 1st, 2009. Dave is also a prolific author on all things chile related (one of my favorite’s is The Whole Chile Pepper Book). Dave put out a call a few weeks ago for assistant editors for his website www.fiery-foods.com, and to my delight I was one of those selected. The site is part chile bible, part cookbook, part science text and much more. The depth of information is really astounding, especially if you have a deep interest in gardening and chile pepper cultivation. Of course, there are recipes galore. My first blog post for fiery-foods.com appeared this morning, entitled “The Last Pepper In The Patch”. And yes, the photo above is in fact the last pepper from the patch this year. Check out the post and accompanying recipe for Voodoo Jerk Chicken Wings at www.fiery-foods.com, just look for the picture of the wings on the top right of the site.  This is same recipe that helped us win the 2003 High Hope Steeplechase “Best Food” award for our “Wasting Away Again In Margaritaville” menu. You can see more menu items from this and other events on my “Tailgating Steepelchase Style” and “Recipes & Menus” pages.

Enjoy the post, the recipe and most importantly continue to check out www.fiery-foods.com.