BBQ time is here

Catching up with .....

So as I sit in a hotel in Little Rock Arkansas I find a little spare time to add a few comments that I have really need to post. First of all I never did go back and talk about the great meal I had a while back at Table Mesa in Bentonville.it was quite refreshing to get something different in my new adopted home town. It gives me hope that other forward thinking restaurateurs will see the opportunity and look to Bentonville as a great allocation for a new restaurant. Most of the surrounding areas are either so saturated with food options or they are buried up with chains there is now hope for new businesses. Come to Bentonville and bring your new ideas. If you go to Table Mesa be sure to try the “cheap dates” while not very cheap at $7.00 for four stuffed dates the flavor makes up for the cost. We liked them so much we asked for two orders.
The big news is that we finally got around to eating at Bordinos in Fayetteville. All I can say is that chef Chrissy is a goddess of food. We had a goat cheese gnocchi dish with smoked duck, dried cranberries, asparagus and a white cream sauce. It was amazing. I threw myself down on the floor confessing mny unworthiness to be her chefs presence. No joke this dish is one of the top five meals I have ever eaten. I’m proud to say we drove back down three days later under the pretense of a second official birthday meal so we could justify it to our food budget. Add in Crabbies in Rogers and we are starting to build up quite the little “worth eating” food community.
Tonight we went to a place called the faded Rose in Little Rock. I have only been here a few times and have not found much food I actually liked. Tonight’s fare was pretty much along the same path but I do have to say my dish of whole shrimp in a tangy Cajun bbq sauce was quite unique and I continue to catch the faint aroma from my shrimp shell prying fingers that I am just not ready to completely wash off. Basically it’s a dish of whole shrimp from head to tail cooked in a broth of herbs, garlic, butter, olive oil and Worcestershire sauce.
You know it late when the infomercial for the SlapChop food chopper start to make sense as a Christmas gift. And if you call now you get the Graty cheese grater absolutely free. I miss Ron Popil at times like this.
Coming soon… I have recently gotten a copy of the nutritional analysis for the menu of a way too famous national faux Italian chain that is unbelievable. If you want an entire days worth of fat, carbs and sodium in one fresh from the freezer meal then stay tuned.

And now for somethng completely different

I keep getting chastised for not writing more. It seems odd that when I had to write for the paper for all of those years it seemed sort of fun. Now that I write for more for pleasure than money I cant seem to get on the stick.

I have had a great week. I just finished a week of workforce development training for NWACC with a group of employees from a new concept assisted living community. I have to say it was one of the best teaching weeks of my life. I actually had a small tear in my eye as one of the students was happily explaining how she made one of the desserts for a special graduation luncheon. She had tried to make homemade brownies but technical difficulties rendered them less than edible. But a little ice cream, coconut and chocolate sauce and viola you have vanilla brownie snowballs. She could not have been prouder. God I love to teach. On top of that the group and their trustees bought 18 cookbooks which cash was promptly turned into an all out dinner at Table Mesa on the square in Bentonville. More on that next week.

Tomorrow I take over as president of the local American Culinary Federation chapter. Its not a job I originally wanted but good things can come of this. Hard to believe that I was nearly run out of the old town but the antiquated, small minded, talent impaired group that called themselves chefs and made up the local chapter. Honestly there were a few good ones in the group later on but the early guys like the idiot Frenchman whose name will not be mumbled here needed to get a life.

I have made two belated new years promises that I can mention here. The first is to eat what I want when I want. I think it’s good to have do-able goals.

Second I will work very hard in between lots of work, the dogs, Stacy and the beloved xbox to find the time to write weekly. I need to find my old Ernest Hemingway florida writing hat to put me in the mood.