Mama Dip's

A slow and steady drizzle fell down upon Rosemary Street. The lingering chill of winter in late spring’s breeze had subsided making way for the foul breath of summer’s humidity that was only days away.

But people could worry about that then, for now we all just tried to stay dry.

For locals, a spring shower was nothing more than a weekly occurrence which none would look upon with similar romanticism. But having spent the last decade in a state that rarely gets rain, this shower was something of a nostalgic big deal for me. That being said, when my car door opened I sprinted like Usain Bolt to the front porch of Dips restaurant.

I can’t with all certainty say if I was racing to the shelter of the wrap around porch or if I was just simply that eager to eat Mama Dip’s traditional country cooking. Regardless, I made it in record time.

Mama Dip has been fixing food for the folks of Chapel Hill since November 1976. And today was no different. There she was, all six-plus-feet of her, leaning against the kitchen wall and surveying the scene, all the while being interrupted by comments from full and happy customers on their way back to work where they would almost certainly close their doors and fall asleep to the sound of rain pelting down on aluminum a/c units outside their office windows.

After opening a menu, I decided I wanted it all. Luckily, my mother was with me, so between our two orders we got a chance to taste almost all of it (and I knew she would insist on picking up the tab).

We started out with an order of fried green tomatoes. Three thick slices of green tomatoes were fried to a golden brown perfection and served with a side of creamy ranch dressing. Although I had a whole heaping of food yet to come, I believe I would have been satisfied had they told me I was getting nothing else.

But they never told me that.

And because they didn’t, they continued to bring out more food. A basket of hush puppies was immediately followed by our meals. I was having the 3-piece fried chicken dinner. However, our server informed us that Mama Dip had deemed my three pieces too small and added a fourth to my plate. That was good, because I would most certainly need a fourth piece of chicken after finishing up my mess o' greens, gooey mac and cheese, flaky buttermilk biscuit and inevitably the majority of my mother’s BBQ sandwich and her trough of Brunswick stew which I knew she would certainly fill up on before even nearing completion.

Sure, that fourth piece of chicken was necessary.

I ate it.

All of it.

I was so stuffed that food was backing up in my throat simply because my stomach had reached capacity and there was nowhere else for it to go. This was a shame because I longed for a nice slice of pecan pie to top things off.

But pie wasn’t happening today. And that was okay, because I would soon be boarding an airplane for a ride across the continent where I would be in for a five hour nap with all the joy that comes from having a belly full of good ol’ southern cookin’.

Here's a recipe for fried green tomatoes. While they probably won't be as good as the ones Mama Dip is frying up, they sure can't be bad.

FRIED GREEN TOMATOES

2/3 c all-purpose flour
salt & pepper
3 lbs green tomatoes, cut into 1/2" slices
Oil for frying

In pie plate, combine flour, salt, and pepper. Dip in tomato slices to coat both sides. In 12 inch skillet over medium heat, heat 1/4 cup oil. Fry slices, a few at a time, until golden on both sides and heated through. Drain on paper towels. Repeat, adding more oil as needed.

The Perfect Bloody Mary

For Memorial Day weekend I found myself visiting the great state of North Carolina. Not because during these hard times I decided to turn paparazzo and shoot fish in a barrel by snagging a few pics of the anything but elusive Kate Gosselin and her 8 children frolicking on the beach, but rather because it is the state from which I am from and I like to visit it every now and again...and my buddy having a place at the beach and a boat may have factored into the equation just a bit as well.

By the time Sunday rolled around there had been two full days o’ sun &
fun with enough drinking to send an Irishman into detox. But as this was a long weekend, there was still at least one more day of no holds barred excitement left. But upon awakening the beers just weren’t going down like they had been the previous two days. This was cause for serious concern within my group and we made the decision to remedy it stat.

There was a place in town that we had visited briefly the night before and were told made the best bloodies in town…as well as out of town for that matter. So that became our destination. A few vodka-tomato drinks and we should be back on the road to debauchery once again. So we packed into the car and headed to downtown Wilmington to a place named the Duck and Dive Bar & Pub.

I never knew there was any true distinction between a bar and a pub, but the Duck and Dive made sure it was both so you were taken care of, no matter your fancy.

I think we were all secretly hoping it would be closed on Sunday just to buy us a little more time in the car where we weren’t expected to be drinking, but no such luck. The bar could have not been more wide open and empty. With that we parked and went inside ready to jumpstart our day with a round of bloodies.

The ever-so-friendly bartender whupped us up a batch and it took no longer than 10 minutes to do so. He even brought the things over to our sorry asses where we were sprawled out on benches in a sort of lazy prayer ritual begging the gods to make our headaches to subside.

Our prayers were answered.

With only one sip of this concoction, we knew we had indeed found something special. Several more glasses and we were well on our way to an encore performance of the previous two nights.

I’ve written the recipe here. It’s not exact, but is bar tending truly ever an exact science (mixologists please save your comments)? Anyway, if you can’t make it to Duck and Dive in Wilmington, NC anytime soon, try your hand at this recipe and alter accordingly. I think you will be happy.

Oh, and yes, it is not a typo. Guinness is indeed included in these bad boys!

Duck and Dive Bar & Pub
114 Dock St,
Wilmington, NC 28401


Best Bloody Mary Ever

Fill a pint glass with ice.
Add vodka to your liking
Zing Zang Bloody Mary Mix
Splash of pickle juice
Dash of Worschire sauce
Emeril’s horseradish mustard (first and only time you will see Emeril’s anything listed in a recipe on this blog), to taste
1-2oz Guinness
Shake well and garnish with lime, olives and a gherkin.

Michoacanas Carnitas and the Rise of the Taco Truck

The taco truck is alive and well in Los Angeles. Despite a recent campaign by jealous restaurant owners to shut them down, the taco trucks prevailed. And now, one can find a truck serving tacos at almost any hour in one part of the city or another; if not all parts.

But why do you care about the taco truck? Unless you live in L.A. you probably don’t. So I guess the question is better off phrased, why do I care about the taco truck? I care for two reasons:

1) I like tacos.
2) I want to start my own taco truck…which won’t necessarily serve tacos.

As I am learning, taco trucks take lots of planning and preparation. Not to mention a nice chunk of change to get one up and running. So that friends is why I have taken so long to post another blog; I have been researching taco trucks.

And just the other day I actually did my first ride along on a real-life taco truck. The gentleman I rode along with is named Tito. Tito is a wonderful man who was very open and friendly. He answered all my questions and didn’t hesitate to give me advice. The folks on Tito’s route seem to really love Tito. As they poured out of factories and plants in the greater Glendale area, they all greeted Tito by name and seemed generally glad to see him. Tito would chat with them about their families and their weekend, in both Spanish and English, as if they were old friends.

But while Tito is the face and personality of the truck, Alisia is the heart of it. Alisia is Tito’s cook. And what a cook she is!
Starting at 4am Alisia arrives at the truck and begins cooking beef tongue, tacquitos, al pastor, “grilled” chicken (which may well be the best grilled chicken I’ve ever had…and the most fattening.) soup, oatmeal and a whole host of other things. And it is all delicious. Not just kinda good, but deeeeee-lish-us!

While drooling over all of Alisia’s dishes in the warming box of the taco truck, I was taken back when I saw carnitas! For those of you not knowing better, carnitas is kinda like Mexican BBQ (pulled pork for all of those non-southerners out there). I wasn’t taken aback because carnitas is a hard to find delicacy; in fact, about any taco place worth its weight in Tapatio, has carnitas. But rather b/c I was under the assumption that carnitas needed to be slow cooked in an oven, and taco trucks don’t have ovens. This is when Alisia explained in brokenesque English that she fried the pork.

In case you missed that, SHE FRIED THE PORK! Being that fried and pork are my two favorite flavors I was eager to learn more.

Alisia went on to tell me that the carnitas she cooked was Michoacanas style carnitas. What this means is that this is essentially a pig confit. The pork cooks in its own fat giving it all the piggy flavor one could ever desire.

Should you ever find yourself in the industrialized section of Gelendale, might I recommend trying to search out Tito and his truck. The search for the pig will be well worth your time.
In the future I will develop a southern version of this pig and if it is delicious as I think it can be, well, you can come buy it on at my truck!

Should you wish to try this on your own, here’s a recipe I put together from several recipes I found online.

WARNING: There is very little safe about this process.

Michoacanas Carnitas

3 pounds pork shoulder chopped into 3” pieces.
1 lb of lard
12-16 oz of coke, orange juice or water

Melt the lard in a large pot. When lard is nearly smoking, pour the liquid into the oil. Yeah. The oil will then pop like an erupting volcano. This is no exaggeration. Explosions leapt out of the pot about 4 feet into the air. Take caution because you are going to get burned. The severity of your burns depends one your safety measures. I put a screen in front of my face and wrapped a towel around my arm and thus minimized the blisters on my skin the next day. Give the oil and liquid time to re-heat and then add the pork. Let pork cook in oil that remains at about 250 degrees for 90 minutes. Stir occasionally. When the meat reaches an internal temperature of 190 degrees, remove from oil, drain, shred and eat.

As Southern As Mango Ice Tea

Recently, a friend suggested we have lunch at Baby Blues in West Hollywood. Not being one to say no to southern food, I took her up on her suggestion. Not to mention I had only heard marvelous things about the flagship store in Venice and had been wanting to try it for some time.

So last Saturday* my friend and arrived just as they were opening for business. We were promptly greeted and taken through a dining room decorated just like a southern dining room. Well, maybe not exactly, but exactly like the dining room in the head of someone who has read a lot about the south but maybe never actually spent too much time there. Nonetheless, the restaurant’s décor was lots of fun: a scattering of knickknacks, mismatching chairs, bottles of pepper vinegar at every table and even more mismatching chairs hanging from the ceiling (a very wise move I thought to myself for 2 reasons: 1- All southerners have chairs hanging from nails on their ceiling. 2- because those patrons not killed by flying furniture in the next earthquake will need a place to sit and regroup once it’s over).

Within seconds of us taking our seats, we were greeted by our very cheerful and friendly server. So far we had been at Baby Blues for 45 seconds and already had been greeted, sat and then greeted again. I was really starting to like the place.

The bubbly lass took our drink order. I ordered my standard ice tea. And then I heard the phrase that one just doesn’t hear outside of the south (and even then, it is only uttered in select parts of the south), “Sweet or un-sweet?” What? Sweet tea?! Are you kidding me? IT HAS ARRIVED!!! I truly hadn’t been this excited since I saw the giant billboard back in ’98 announcing the arrival of Bush Light Draft to California.

Like any good southerner I ordered it sweet. But to have sweet tea is not enough. I mean, let’s face it, any moron can make the stuff, its just tea, sugar and water after all. But making good sweet tea is an art that takes time and precision to master. Some (my darling mother who I love dearly being among them) never get it right no matter how hard they try. In fact, another common phrase often used when discussing dining establishments in the south is, “How’s their tea?” This is either answered by replying that the tea is good or “get a coke.” Note “coke” is not capitalized. For in the south, “coke” refers to any kind of soda, pop, soft drink or whatever your region of the world calls it, not just that brown beverage made by the Coca Cola Co. But I digress.

While our server disappeared to fetch my heavenly nectar, my friend and I perused the menu. Ribs, mac n cheese, gumbo, pecan pie and even Po’ Boys immediately stood out. This is one heck of a menu I thought as my smile got bigger and bigger. While everything on the menu looked great, I was here for one thing and one thing only. I was here for bar-b-q. Good ol’ NC style bar-b-q I had heard countless people talk about. And there it was…or was it?

I feel that any southern restaurant worth its weight in fatback must serve bar-b-q. But Baby Blues was serving up “pulled pork.” This concerned me a little. Yet, I overlooked it figuring it was a choice made by the menu writing folks at Baby Blues in order to make it easier for those patrons who could only read Californiaeese. Besides, my sweet tea had arrived making it hardly the moment to waste time splitting hairs. It was probably just an oversight, I thought. And with that I ordered the “pulled pork” sandwich while my dining companion ordered a shrimp Po’ Boy along with a country salad and an order of mac n’ cheese for us to split. Our server disappeared and excitedly I took a great big gulp of my sweet…what in the name of fatback is this! The milky concoction they were attempting to pass off as tea was made even worse by the fact Baby Blues sweetens their tea with brown sugar!

OK, I feel most anyone who has ever made sweet tea on any kind of a regular basis has had the original bright idea of sweetening tea with brown sugar. However, most of these amateur mixolgists only do it only once. You see, brown sugar dominates the flavor of the tea and causes an otherwise splendid beverage to taste like an herbal pancake and maple syrup smoothie.
The tea was horrible. Absolutely horrible. I have consumed oceans of tea. Most of it good, but also lots of bad. And this crap was hands down the worst to ever cross my lips. I flagged down my server and opted for un-sweet instead. Again, with lightening like speed, she appeared with my un-sweet tea. The cloudy mess she then served me couldn’t have been older than 2 weeks. I say this with a fair degree of certainty because the restaurant had only been open for about two weeks (otherwise I would have sworn this tea to have a vintage of 1997). But I was pretty sure this batch had been sitting around in a back closet since the grand opening and only this morning had been re-discovered.

Next out was our salad. While simple and visually unappealing, the salad was not bad for one comprised primarily of iceberg lettuce. Our server even brought us two mismatching plastic plates on which we could split it up (I honestly didn’t know my people were all about mismatching. I mean, at my house we always used plastic plates that varied in their degree of whiteness, but NEVER when company came around. Company got the good plates. And I would like to think Baby Blues thought of me as “company.”)

Just as we were finishing up our salad, our server arrived with our meals. And wow, there it was, a sesame seed bun stuffed with “pulled pork” and topped with a heaping helping of coleslaw. They didn’t put it on the side, oh no, they slapped it right on top of the meat like any good bbq place would do. God bless you Baby Blues. That’s how a sandwich should look no matter how you spell the meat that goes on it.

Wiping the drool from my chin, I glanced over at my friend’s Po’….nope. It was not a Po’ Boy. It was a shrimp sandwich. And albeit a tasty one, to call it a Po’ Boy was a disgrace. For the essential element in a Po’ Boy is the crispy French-style loaf that holds the meat. A multigrain bun is NOT a crispy French-style loaf. Not even close. The shrimp was also grilled opposed to fried. This I could live with in the name of health consciousness had it at least looked like a Po’ Boy, but it didn’t. But that was her problem. I had a sandwich with a slight identity crisis of my own to demolish.

My bun was indeed top notch and perfect for a bar-b-q sandwich. The coleslaw tasted every bit as good as it looked. But the bar-b-q left much to be desired. Slightly old tasting and lacking anything reminiscent of flavor, the shredded pig on my plate made this sandwich fall flat. A little bit of Baby Blues’s extra hot sauce helped the sandwich a lot. And though a little thicker than the typical eastern NC style sauce that I like most, it was genuinely a good sauce. And genuinely a very hot one. The hotness burned away my taste buds and made it possible for me to choke down the rest of the poor pig that was never allowed to reach its full potential.

I also mentioned a side of mac n’ cheese. But mushy noodles void of clinging cheese and an excess of breadcrumbs made Baby Blues’s mac n’ cheese too pathetic to even write about.

Maybe I am naïve. Maybe “bar-b-q” has flavor and “pulled pork” is just its B-team, generic equivalent and the joke was indeed on me for hoping for somethng that I wasn't even technically ordering.

Because I’m a sucker for fantastic service, I’ll probably give Baby Blues one more shot. I can honestly say without a doubt that it is the best service I’ve had in any restaurant in a very long time. But its going to take a lot more than a friendly and attentive server to sway my opinion of this joint.

If you're looking for good southern food in LA, I'm afraid Baby Blues is not the answer. A much better place to start would be Harold & Belles. But if you don't really know better, Baby Blows just might be the spot for you. Enjoy and watch for flying chairs!

*Though I say I was there 2 weeks ago, this post has been sitting in my computer for about 2 months.

Green Garlic (for girls only)

The other day I discovered a Friday farmer’s market in Echo Park. I guess I did not so much discover it as much as my friend, and blogger extraordinaire, Diana took me there.

The market opens at 3:00 on Friday; a very odd time for a farmer’s market. But it was soon made clear to me that it was the BEST time for a farmer’s market. You see, at 3:00 most people are still working and as a result the market is not overrun with people as are the neighboring Silverlake and Hollywood markets during their hours on the weekends. However, there are still enough people present that people watching remains an option as you scarf down a handmade blue-corn quesadilla or a rotisserie chicken from the chicken truck guy. And as it is in Echo Park, the people watching is still top notch.

While any of you that have read my blogs know, I am all about meat. So what you are about to read may shock you. Should you find yourself at the Echo Park farmer’s market ordering a blue-corn quesadilla, opt for the mushroom before the chorizo. I know, I feel every bit as blasphemous writing it dear reader as you do reading it, but trust me on this one. While the chorizo quesadilla still delivers everything one could want with spicy pork blended with melted cheese, topped with homemade salsa and wrapped in hearty blue-corn goodness, the mushrooms used by the quesadilla lady are thick, perfectly sautéed, plentiful and just too good to pass up.

But this blog is not about mushroom quesadillas. It is about something much more serious. It is about sexism! Sexism and garlic! More specifically, green garlic (pictured above).

Let me explain.

After examining the various booths at the Echo Park farmer’s market, Diana and I decided that one stand in particular stood out from the rest. The stand had the most beautiful red leaf lettuce and Swiss chard I have ever seen in all my days of perusing farmer’s markets. Purple kale so vibrant and fresh that I was forced to put my sunglasses back on (Who are we kidding, this is LA so I never took them off to begin with. But you get the point).

Diana and I stuffed our bags full of veggies. I was very happy and my mind filled with excited anticipation of how I would prepare all of these vegetables over the next few days. I planned to feast like a vegetarian (if that was even possible to do) week in and week out all thanks to this wonderful man and his Echo Park farmer’s market vegetable stand.

As visions of broccolini with ginger and oyster sauce danced in my head, I stood patiently in line behind my friend as she settled up with the proprietor; a seemingly very nice man who made eye contact when he spoke and did his best to be overtly friendly. After Diana paid him, the man reached down and pulled out a gorgeous stem of green garlic. It was enormous and beautiful and best of all, FREE! He handed it to Diana and informed her she was to eat the entire thing, roots and all. To do anything else, he assured her would be a waste.

Wow, I thought. This could be no better. Great vegetables and free green garlic to boot make for a very good score. With that, the cheery gentleman turned his attention to me and my bag of fresh goodies. Again, he was very friendly and gave me great deals on vegetables that would even justify paying Whole Foods’ ridiculous prices for them. I then handed over some cash and waited…and waited…and waited….until finally the farmer moved on to the next person in line.

But where was my green garlic? I smiled. I was friendly. Why didn’t I get any green garlic?

Perplexed, I walked with Diana to get a slice of pizza from another booth. While she ordered I took a seat at a table and that is when I learned the glory of the mushroom quesadilla mentioned above. In fact, had it not been so wonderful, I think my mood would have even soured the chorizo quesadilla, until now a feat I thought impossible for anyone or anything to accomplish. But as I chomped away I observed something that shocked me to the core; the farmer was giving other customers free green garlic! I was appalled! Why not me?! That’s when I noticed something else: the farmer was only giving green garlic to girls! Not one single male received as much as a second glance.

I understand the whole concept of “Ladies Night” at bars. I understand Moms getting a free corsage at Mother’s Day brunches. I get it. But this was no special event or marketing ploy, oh no, this was sexism at its finest. I am a white male! I am supposed to get everything! Life is easy street for me and my kind. Why not green garlic? Was this the beginning of something greater I thought? Was my elite status no longer enough to secure everything I need and want in life? Would all females soon start getting free vegetables at farmer’s markets? Next time, would ovaries equal free oranges? Or boobies, bananas? What’s a guy gotta do for an eggplant? This was an eye-opening experience that I would rather not have.

Apparently, Diana noticed my sadness at being excluded from the giving of the green garlic. Whether it was the sadness in my eyes or my 10 minutes of complaining/whining, I cannot be sure. But she did notice. And being the friend she is, she handed me her green garlic. Instantly I was taken back to childhood and when a bank teller would pacify me with a lollipop so my mom could finish her business. Guess things really haven’t changed much.

I will go back to the Echo Park Farmer’s Market today. I will give the farmer one more chance to offer me free green garlic. And should he do it, I will accept with a smile and all will be forgotten. After all, green garlic is plucked from garlic fields to give other garlic bulbs more time to grow and develop. So really, it’s just kind of a weed as far as farmers are concerned. But it is a weed I covet.

Because the green garlic was so fresh I wanted to taste it with little else to overpower it. So heeding the farmers call to eat the entire thing, I took it home, chopped it up, slathered a loaf of French bread with butter and freshly grated Parmesan, topped it with green garlic and some crushed red pepper, slid it under the broiler and in a matter of minutes was crunching on one of the best pieces of garlic bread mankind has ever known.

Maybe the farmer will read this blog and realize the error of his ways. If not, sexism will live on at the Echo Park Farmer’s Market and I will be forced to pay for my green garlic.

Oh well.

***UPDATE***
I returned to the same vendor a few weeks later and I was given my green garlic. However, I did not return the favor to Diana and indeed kept my garlic for myself.

Dealing

We all deal with grief in our own way. Red meat and haiku are my personal vices of choice.

This was the result of yesterday's grieving upon realizing that CBS would not be broadcasting any of the North Carolina basketball game on the west coast.

UNC's not on
I made hamburgers instead
Happy once again

Mom, Why Are There No Easter Eggs This Year? Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Rabbit

It doesn’t take too much driving around the southeastern United States on a fall Saturday afternoon before one comes across a church, school or volunteer fire department having a fundraiser. The fundraisers are easy to spot, as usually there is a…well, there’s a sign. And that sign usually reads something like, “Brunswick stew $4 a quart.”

Should one miss the sign, a group of people standing around a voluminous cauldron taking turns stirring its contents with a large wooden paddle is another sure-fire sign that someone is trying to raise some money (however, should they be dropping dead bats and kitten tails into the pot, you have probably stumbled across a witching ceremony and it is best to continue down the road). At the very least, it is a sign that folks are about to partake in some good eatin’ and you should try to sweet talk your way into the party.

Brunswick stew is a popular fundraising food because it is fairly simple to make, it’s filling, with a little going a long way and because it is really good stuff. People in the southeast consider it a comfort food and buy the stuff up by the gallon; usually buying a quart or two for immediate consumption and a couple of more to stash away in the freezer for the next snowy day.

Brunswick stew is best eaten with a column of saltines and a bottle of your favorite hot sauce. And though it is a relatively low-fat food, it will fill your belly for the rest of the day.

But what exactly is it?

Brunswick stew is similar to a very thick vegetable soup, with meat. It is cooked slowly over a small fire and stirred constantly for hours until all flavors meld together. Stews usually contain corn, butterbeans, potatoes, onions and stewed tomatoes. Most people usually use chicken, pork and sometimes stew beef when making this delicious regional dish (the region, however, is still not precisely defined as Brunswick County VA and Brunswick, GA each make a claim to being the namesake). Regardless of the meat used, I’ve yet to taste one that is less than phenomenal.

However, it was not until the other day that I tasted one that was authentic. You see, old timers will tell you that a true Brunswick stew contains small game animals such as squirrel or rabbit. While one can find about most anything one wants in Los Angeles, squirrel is not one of those things. I suppose I could have shot my own, but the city tends to frown upon civilians walking around parks with hunting rifles. So I opted for rabbit.

I had never cooked rabbit before. Not because I had an ethical problem with it, but rather because it just never seemed all that appealing. You see, fat equals flavor. Rabbits live on vegetables and exercise daily which results in a very lean meat. And if I wanted tasteless meat, I would eat free-range, grass-fed beef (For the record, I don’t support inhumane treatment to animals…unless, of course, it makes them taste significantly better). But I was cooking my annual southern feast and everything must be authentic. So in the words of Elmer Fudd, “Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit.”

But where could I find a cute and cuddly bunny rabbit that was ready to eat? Actually, I was not opposed to gutting and skinning one myself just to say I did it. In fact, after a little help from the World Wide Web, not only was I prepared to disembowel one of the fuzzy creatures myself, I was ready to try my hand against the best of ‘em. I had visions of catching a rabbit with my bare hands, breaking its tasty little neck and hanging its dried out ears from my rearview mirror as a warning to all other rabbits who dared cross my path. The one problem was that I could not find one. There were a few at the pet store, but I decided that would only be my last resort.

Eventually, I found the above beauty frozen in my favorite butcher shop. And I guess that was for the best. After terrorizing a few pre-schoolers with inappropriate Easter bunny jokes, I made my way home where I chopped up Bugs and threw him in my pot along with my veggies and everyone’s favorite bird, the chicken. Although I was forced to cook my stew on the stovetop, instead of on a small fire outdoors (the same city that frowns on shooting squirrels also frowns on building cooking fires on the sidewalks. I thought CA was supposed to be sooooo liberal?), the end result still looked and smelled similar to the stew I knew and loved as a child. But how would it taste? I was concerned that the rabbit might lend a gamey flavor to my stew. Then what would I do? It’s kind of hard to flush 19 liters of stew down the toilet (not to mention I’m sure CA has some kind of law against it). So I held my breath and tried it. Not too bad. Not gamey at all. In fact, it taste just like…well, we all know what it taste like because every meat seems to taste like this. Yes, friends, my rabbit tasted just like chicken.

Nonetheless, I was proud to help keep alive a dying tradition of using small game meat in Brunswick stew. Even if rabbit did cost me $5 more per pound than chicken, the experience was worth it. But now that I have done it, look for all future stews made by yours truly to contain 100% domesticated meat.

Puppy anyone?