a trillion bazillion.

a trillion years? a bazillion? i have not uploaded a breakfast in so damn long.

so, here we go with sunday brunch: cantaloupe slices, sauteed mushooms + okra +green beans, buttery yukon gold potato halves, an absolutely perfect fried egg, and half of an everything bagel. and coffee.

back to school means never going to a restaurant. not like i was regularly eating outside the apartment anyhow, but still.

not at all like in shag.

did you ever see shag? i have been thinking about this movie. the girls (with awesome southern names like carson and melaina) throw their mama's jam out of the car and skip fort sumter and go to myrtle beach. and dance and have sex (one with a guy named buzz) and drink beer.  well, they were a little crazy. but it was 1963. and a movie.

and a million years (well, 21 years) after i saw that movie in the theater, i can remember it all. and finally set foot in charleston. after months of rambling about it to casey, whose age at the time of shag's release i will not calculate. 

CHARLESTON, south carolina. i just knew i would like this place. it was like the time i read about portland (in like 1995) in the magazine on the airplane and i was like, OH MY GOD I HAVE TO LIVE THERE. and then spent many years trying to get to portland, which i loved absolutely.

and charleston was perfectly old. older than the civil war. old, old cemeteries messily arranged everywhere, but beautiful gardens draping through them. and a jewish cemetery dating to 1762. seriously. 

and fort sumter is right there. in the water. with confederate declarations and statues and history throughout the city in a way that is completely acceptable, with no "stars and bars" flying around. 

you just feel like you are in another country. just like that. 

and oh yes, the eating was good.

within minutes of arrival to our rented apartment from 1840, we were at hominy grill. yeah, it won a james beard some years ago. it was lovely and homey and full of tipsy arnold palmers and buttermilk pie and boiled peanuts snacks and i swear, i don't know what i ate for most of the weekend, but it was all amazing.

we spent our mornings with the dog (also on vacation, sleeping all day in luxury) caffeinating at hope and union. it was seriously incredible single-brewed coffee. each morning i chose coffee (all fair trade, of course) from a different country, based on the descriptions on the chalkboard. and a pastry. 

you can see the remnants of the nutella-banana turnover. there was an almond croissant the next day. and a very relaxed casey.

yes, we continued on to other meals soon after. but how would we get to them without delicious, delicious coffee?

we spent our saturday afternoon on a fancy drinking tour. starting in the husk bar, i had 2 different peach-bourbon cocktails. and after the chef brought in AN ENTIRE LEG OF PIG, proceeded to trim it, and then offer a bite, we could not refuse. it was frightfully exciting and decadent. and i knew it had to be something special when casey put a piece in his mouth.

soon after romantic stories of george washington, we went to mccrady's for another cocktail and deviled eggs, followed by the gin joint for 2 more drinks with homemade pretzels and fancy cheeses. and blissfully asleep before 11.

what else? fried-green tomatoes benedict. belgian fries. a huge pile of thai food, because you can't eat southern all the time. lots of strolls through the college of charleston and surprising parks. with streets of houses that are more than 250 years old. that is old old old for america.

and the tree.

about 10 miles outside of charleston, this tree: the angel oak. on someone's property. just growing like crazy. this photo barely does it any justice, but it is the best one i've got.

you have got to go there. next time, i swear i am staying for a week. and beaching and all. 

oh my holy hot damn.

 

it was only this morning that i remembered that i haven't posted in forever. i was in charleston looking at old things. and confederate things. and eating delicious things. and then thinking about school things and hurricane things.

posts en route.

a peck of pickled peppers.

ok, so it wasn't a whole peck. but i did pickle peppers on saturday, a variation on this recipe.

we aren't supposed to eat them for a week so it's just waiting waiting waiting. eating all the other pickled goodies in the fridge instead--okra, radishes, bread-n-butter pickles.

and then we talked about how much we cried in the movie.

a HUGE bag of green tomatoes this week in the CSA meant i had to fry them. i just had to do it.

alex is staying with me temporarily so we cooked up a meal centered around these fried goodies, which we batter-fried using cornmeal, flour, eggs, milk, cayenne, pepper, salt, and garlic. with a little lemon-yogurt dipping sauce. and some salad and roasted squash, because not every part of the meal can be fried.

the bean.

 

pounds of edamame in the CSA = lots of bean snacks.

greasy bean.

yes, this meal is from july 22nd. yes, that's a long time ago. yes, i love a meal like this one; it has all the components of awesomeness. yes, it is a perfectly fried egg on toast with cheese and lima beans in olive oil with parsley, sea salt, and crushed black pepper.

i love a "greasy bean," as casey calls them: a well-cooked bean with enough olive oil for it to taste somewhat olivey and earthy and doused with coarse salt and pepper (could be red or black, i don't care). seriously, it's the small things.

cobbled.

after i was sick (and unsure of what made me so), i felt i had to be cooking everything in the fridge to kill the pathogens. while not everything (or potentially, anything) in the refrigerator was "tainted," i made a peach cobbler, which was delicious.

there's no recipe. i can't remember how i did it.

the truth is out there.

i've been waiting for this to be true.  amy sapkota, thank you.

from food safety news:

Poultry farms that transition to organic and stop giving their birds antibiotics have significantly lower levels of drug-resistant bacteria, according to new research out of the University of Maryland's School of Public Health.

The authors of the study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives this week, say it's the first to demonstrate lower levels of drug-resistant bacteria on newly organic farms in the United States, adding credence to what environmental and public health advocates have been saying for years: antibiotic usage needs to be curtailed in American agriculture to combat growing antibiotic resistance.

Most experts agree that overusing antibiotics in both human medicine and animal agriculture is contributing to the problem -- more than 100,000 people in the U.S. die from bacterial infections, 70 percent of which are resistant to antibiotics. Recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration data indicate approximately 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are given to food animals.  

 i knew it. thank you to those who study the hard sciences that can make this information a reality. 

an addendum: here's a link to the study if you want to read the whole thing. 

slurpee.

yeah, i did. all i wanted for our road trip to the beach was a slurpee. coke + cherry, just like my hermanito.

casey made the stop just for me. and i got a bag of chex mix, too. road trip food all the way.

to return.

casey and i are at the beach for a couple of days. he's conferencing and there's work happening on my side but there's some beach + pool happening, too. i just returned from the very hot outside (feels like 103F) to work on the gardens document. and watch TELEVISION while i do it. (seriously, i don't know how y'all watch tv. i think i am losing brain cells. this can't be good for anyone.)

rock rockin' it.

ok. so i know it's been slow going here at smashedgoods. too much work and then the foodborne illness and then catching up on all the work just makes for too little blogging. by the time the work slows, i'll have to go back to class. UGH.

but i am eating real foods again.
wednesday's lunch: black-eyed peas with parsley + olive oil + sea salt + pepper, sourdough toast with leftover shakshuka sauce + grilled eggplant + parmesan, and pickled dill okra.

yes. yes.

the dunnies.

 

my two dunnies now live in the best spot on the shelf--in front of the food books. adorableness. 

grossness.

i've been really sick. like ironic foodborne illness sick. don't worry; i'm on the mend and eating solid foods that are mostly white and bland. shira brought bagels back from new york so that's been incredibly helpful in my recovery. and i've got good-looking photographs of food to post.

on another note, i really suck at poaching eggs. and farrell explains how to do it perfectly. and i read the whole section about it in the joy of cooking. and it's still a total fail. i'll get there. farrell will have to walk me through it again. he just doesn't know it yet.