This year, I give you a cat (from a reindeer cookie cutter), the Polynesian Princess, and the Cabaret Snowman:

Due to extreme busyness with work, I’ve been avoiding the old blog. But leave it to a work function to inspire me to post again.

Today, my employer hosted a holiday luncheon for its Nashville and Franklin offices at the Union Station Hotel. In my 20 years (!!!) living in Nashville, I have never had occasion to visit this landmark (I visit the Flying Saucer often enough but never its neighbor). We had a really quite good meal catered by the hotel.

There were two salads–one mixed greens, the other Bibb lettuce with figs, goat cheese, roasted red peppers, marcona almonds, and olives (and may a stray marinated artichoke heart). I went for the latter, thinking the cheese to be feta. But I nibbled around the musty old goat and found the flavor combo a little odd but mostly tasty.

The entrees were standard choices of beef, chicken, or fish. They were served on the buffet with the line stopping several times whenever the beef pan ran out. Is beef really that good? Seriously people, blackened snapper was available!

And, dessert, that was the biggest hit! Choices were cheesecake, a chocolate fudge cake, carrot cake, or praline tartlet. I went with the praline and downed two delightful cups of coffee with it.

So whoever cooks for Union Station, props, you are recommended. And props to my company for such a fancy affair!

The basic idea is to boil a large (very large) pot of water (preferably over a propane flame) and add seasonings, crustaceans, and starchy vegetables (and, frequently, sausage) and boil until cooked. The water takes a very long time to boil as there is so much of it, and this affords the cooks and guests (because the guests have arrived) a long time to drink. The most appropriate beverage is beer, preferably an Abita brew, though wine is acceptable. Some of our guests even found Scotch and water to pass the time acceptably. Some others found tequila/Coronas and even margaritas worked well.

My mom and step-dad, God bless ‘em, actually minded the pot, adding the potatoes, corn, sausage, and shrimp in a timely manner. While waiting for our water to boil the “kids,” as it were, also joy-rode in our rental home’s surrey bicycle and ate most of the cheese and crackers we could find in the house. A lot of lawn chair-sitting and yarn spinning and gossiping also took place during the waiting. All in all, the long boiling pot afforded us a good time.

And by the time the food arrived and was ceremoniously dumped on the newspaper-lined table, we were excited but not that hungry. But we charged on and dug in. See pics below.

It seems that retailers, distributors, wholesalers, etc, have always been well aware of the origins of their goods for sale, they’ve just never been required to post up the information for the American consumer. Keep in mind that there are some loopholes: processed foods are not included in the requirement. This seems like an awfully big loophole, actually. Roasted peanuts: no label. Cooked chicken: no label. Bacon: no label. But still, this is an interesting development in the way we shop for groceries in America. A law that actually gives consumers what they want (as opposed to Tennessee’s liquor laws).

So far on this vacation I’ve consumed: Golden Oreos; Jalapeno Smokehouse almonds; Cinnamon Toast Crunch; Cap’n Crunch; a half bottle of red wine; some Gruyere and crackers; some Port Salut and crackers; a couple of turkey sandwiches; dill pickles; a little bruschetta; homemade potato salad; an orange; a Hardees bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit; Hardees hash browns; some peanut butter M&Ms; a vodka tonic; hot dogs; Spree candy; and a tequila-Corona.

On the tequila-Corona: This is a delightful, if improbable, beverage that a friend recommended to me and my husband. Simply pop open a Corona, take a few sips, and top off with tequila and a sliver of lime. You have to trust me–no one thinks they’ll like it, but every does.

More food news after tomorrow night’s shrimp boil!

A week out, my experience at The Acorn is a little hazy, but I thought I’d try to get something posted up anyway…

After a rollicking good time at Wine on the River, my drinking companion and I cabbed it over to The Acorn for a 7:00 reservation for the Restaurant Week menu. My experience with The Acorn was tip top from beginning to end. Even making the reservation was a pleasure as the hostess chatted with me about Wine on the River and, apparently, made a note of it in the ledger. The dude calling to confirm the reservation on Saturday afternoon let me know how jealous he was that I was going to the downtown tasting.

My friend and I both enjoyed the opening dish of salad greens with a sweetly deviled egg and chunk of crunchy fried salty bacon. Almost as delicious was the trout with butternut squash. The meal ended with a gooey butter cake with some sort of jam-like topping. The cake was by far better than the bread pudding offered by The Yellow Porch for restaurant week. I may be a little biased though, as I’m starting to think that butter is my favorite food (not risotto as recently professed).

And I have to commend The Acorn for it’s excellent service. Our waitress, Candace, I think, was so kind and accomodating to a couple of drunk gals rolling in from Wine on the River. Unlike some diner’s experiences with Restaurant Week, we were treated like first-class patrons, not shoppers who were sort of “browsing” the menu at a restaurant we might not normally choose to afford.

Never have I been or ever wanted to attend Nashville’s Steeplechase event. I know very little about it, but it seems like a lot of the kind of people I didn’t want to hang out with in college doing the kinds of things that are, ostensibly, fun but are really sort of show-offy and catty just below the surface. For example, women wearing large hats, men non-ironically wearing pastels and shoes without socks, and free-range binge drinking in order gain a free pass for other bad behavior. I heard a story about two neighboring picnic tents at the Steeplechase engaging in a  fist fight (complete with lawn chair throwing) over a mis-thrown football that ended with a broken nose. This is what makes me never want to attend the Steeplehcase, and yet, I have gone to Wine on the River every year except the inaugural.

Admittedly, I go to Wine on the River for three reasons:

1. Because it’s a tradition with one of my best and oldest friends.

2. To get blitzed in the afternoon on what is typically a beautiful September day.

3. To be really catty about the other people in attendance. (A fact that probably makes me as bad as the Steeplechase-ers.)

Allow me to qualify number 3. I am all (I mean all) about people doing their on thang however they want to do it without any input from me, the government, their pastor, or whoever, as long as it is true to who they are and doesn’t hurt anyone. But, Lord, there are some T-rashy girls that show up at Wine on the River. But the expensive kind of trashy, with fake tans, Gucci bags, etc. And the cougars, oh do you see some cougars at WOTR. What a sight. Great for a laugh. Though I’m sure they’re laughing right back at me for some equally shallow reason.

Really and truly, we do go and attempt to find some new wines to enjoy. Last year our tact was simple: if it “sparkled” we drank it. There was Asti and Champagne, sparkling Pinot Grigio and bubbly Rose. This year, we somewhat randomly decided to concentrate our focus on Sauvignon Blanc. But after a few OK samplings, we got pretty random again. I remember enjoying Arrington Vineyard’s raspberry wine as well as the Il Rose that I think I’ve tried every year. And a winery from New Zealand called Craggy Range had quite a few samplings I enjoyed (especially a red blend called Te Kahu).

Every year we run into old friends and acquaintances that suprise and delight, and this year was no different. All in all it was a very good time right down to our very friendly and eccentric cab drivers. Upon asking our Lebanese cabbie where the best Mediterranean food was in Nashville, he turned fully away from the road, looked back at us, and declared, with a wink and absolutley no irony, “At my house.”

Well!

The meal started off with a baby greens salad which we both topped with a garlic blue cheese dressing that lacked the umph I had expected. But I peppered my salad up (though not with freshly cracked pepper as I saw one waiter providing) and was happy. In addition, we were delivered a basket of bread with a saucer of oil and vinegar and chunks of fresh mozzarella. Delicious!

For our entrees, we argued over who would order the paella, and Aaron won. At the last minute, I thought the pork loin sounded better. And, ultimately, I thought it was a little better. The pork loin was stuffed with house-made sausage and served with poblano skillet corn, green beans, and mole sauce. Now, this dish was a bit overly “composed” for my taste, looking too fancy for me to enjoy, but I dug on in and made a mess of it. At least there was ample plate for sorting it all out, unlike my experience in some other restaurants. It wasn’t too spicy, though I hit a spot or two with a little more power (a rogue poblano chunk not equally distributed among the corn, I suppose). I was a little surprised at the ratio of sausage to pork (more sausage than I expected) though the flavors had melded enough that it didn’t really matter.

For dessert, there was no question or discussion: two Bananas Foster White Chocolate Bread Puddings, please. I was a little tipsy when dessert came, and I liked it pretty well, though I sort of wolfed it down. I have a great dislike for whipped cream on most desserts, so I scraped that off and ate it separately. I didn’t really note anything very white chocolatey about the pudding or anything like a banana flavor, though the sauce was definitely a bananas foster sauce. All in all, I think the bread pudding had been made a couple days prior and reheated and that the bread pudding on the Whole Foods dessert bar is on par if not better.

Like a few other folks have mentioned on Nashville Bites, the service was a little slow to start, but we never really lacked for what we needed. And a non-rushed dinner was pretty nice after a busy, busy week.

My experiences tonight at The Acorn will, hopefully, be posted up tomorrow!

But a funny thing’s been happening for a couple of years now: high-end restaurants have been picking up on the slider concept, creating endless (and sometimes tedious) variations on the theme. The best I’ve had were at Cabana: country ham on sweet potato biscuits with peach preserves (an assault of sugar and salt).

And even middle of the road chain restaurants are picking up on the tiny burger/sandwich concept. For undisclosed reasons, I was required to eat at an O’Charley’s this past Sunday, and their menu now features a plate of four small hamburgers (cooked to a CRISP with no input from the diner on doneness).

All this thinking about tiny sandwiches brought to mind a dish that I loved finding at church potlucks when I was a kid. From the ages of about 8 to 15, these were what I always went for at the potluck and woe unto him who got there before me and gobbled them all up. There are a few variations on the recipe here and here. I propose we bring these guys into the mainstream–or at least back for Thanksgiving dinner. Mom? Please? The ham sandwiches with the poppy seeds?