Cooking And Eating....“Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es”

  In the mid 1950's, my father made a cream gravy to which he added a glass jar of 'chipped beef',  then spread the resultant onto toaster-ovened Merita white bread......Over the decades, I am still a devotee of 'Creamed CHipped Beef On Toast'; although, my current version requires only a package of microwaved frozen Stouffer's Creamed Chip over pop-up toastered Kroger's 'Artisan Style Thick Cut White Bread'....and lots of ground black pepper.....

So many seem disgusted by the bottom-feeding talapia fish......what can I say, since so many Southerners like myself have eaten so many kettle-fried, cornmeal crusted river catfish! .....I purchased some frozen tilapia, "cane toads of our waterways"....with pinkish flesh.....dipped them in egg yolk, tempura crumbs, dry parmesan cheese, red and black ground peppers, and Mediterranean herbs....thyme, rosemary basil and cilantro....fried them in olive oil until crunchy-crusted and chowed down with a cabbage cole slaw made with the addition of some chili sauce added to the old-style slaw made with mayo, ground mustard seeds, dill, celery seed and grated, spicy jalapeños, So much tastier than stinky, oily Tennessee River bottom feeders! I figure.....since these ugly little fish are considered 'nuisance fish'.....why not eat as many as possible....reducing their breeding population.....Before tilapia's 'status' was lowered, years after the then totally ...

even better.......the next day......with a spicy-dressed cole slaw and a dribbling of Hoisan sauce & Worcestershire.....and a sprinkling of dried chervil......

  kitchen mix-up......potato pasta 'eggs' with South Indian curried eggplant, grilled mushrooms, carmelized Vidalia onions and 'i don't remember what', topped with dry, aged grated roquefort cheese; pickled salad of okra, white onions and hot red peppers over cold spicy yam noodles; and mashed yams with garlic, mango/currant/ginger chutney and curried goat.....completed with leftover 'nutty', whiskeyed mincemeat in a whole wheat/walnut crust.....

  lobster, cheddar cheese, tumeric, smoked paprika, ground peppercorns,  Valentina hot sauce, green chile sauce, chopped garlic 'shoots'...cilantro..cherry tomatoes..parsley & chervil; cooked over fresh spinach, lightly sauteed in avocado oil....and served over a fork-tender paratha, smeared with cinnamon-apple butter......

This New Year's CHILI........in the spirit of Brazilian, Dona Flore; Ratatouille; Like Water For Chocolate, Babette's Feast...... and other FIlms about imaginative cooking.......Fava bean and beef tenderloin chili with Sicilian tomato sauce with Sriracha sauce to fire up metabolic activity on this frigid weekend, pickled mangos, shaved dark chocolate, garlic, grated onions, cilantro, parsley, yellow sea salt and ...well.....Chili powder and dried chilis...; sprinkled, after cooking, with shredded or grated extra-sharp cheddar cheese...to be served over a bed of cabbage cole slaw....and, maybe, crunchy, feather-light, white corn sticks, baked in the old Martin Stamping Iron 'corn stick mold'......

Spinach (quosta), collard greens (gomen), cabbage (tikle gomen), red lentils (misir wot), yellow lentils (kik alicha), sambussas (some spinach, some lentils). Don't forget the mitmita (spicy powder) to dip with!