May 2013
1 post
April 2013
6 posts
Birthday Pie
When we were very little, my mama would tell my bobbleheaded brother and me that we would know when our birthdays were approaching by the explosion of butter-yellow daffodils (my brother’s) and the emergence of scarlet-striped pink tulips (mine) in our front yard.
Here in Savannah, I know, not by the tulips, but by the sudden scattering of neon green lizards from my tomato bush and the...
Seasonal Snacking
Since it’s radish season here in Savannah, I’ve been bringing home beautiful bunches of the French Breakfast variety that students grow on the farm at Bethesda Academy. When it seems like a “treat yo’ self” moment, I break out a Ziploc baggie for some DIY butter piping and sprinkle with sea salt and chives that I’ve grown in a repurposed beverage bucket.
...
My Asheville adventure in Instagrams
I have come down from the North Carolina mountains, a land of craft beer, stunning panoramas and trout for breakfast. And if I learned one thing while I was staring at nature’s purple, er, blue, mountains majesty while sipping killer IPAs, it was that two days is not nearly enough time to take advantage of all Asheville has to offer.
A Southern-Fried Chicken BLT with Salsa Verde...
A return to real dinners
It’s spring time in Savannah, which means two things.
One, I will be spending tonight and every weekend till October falling asleep to the sounds of the “Cha Cha Slide” and “Play That Funky Music” courtesy of the wedding receptions held at the historic, uninsulated venue behind my house.
And two, I just finished my second year with the Savannah Music Festival,...
March 2013
1 post
Instagram(s) of the Day
I can’t believe I forgot to share these Instragrams I took a few weeks ago when I visited my grandfather who lives outside of Orlando, Florida.
It’s definitely not the first time I’ve been to his modest, buttercream-colored house in a particularly sandy subdivision of Sanford, a jumble of orange groves, wildflower-dotted toll road onramps, trailer parks, gated tile-roofed...
February 2013
7 posts
17 tags
Farmers' market finds
In addition to readily-available pimento cheese sandwiches, real-deal BBQ and proper iced tea, one of the many perks of living in the South is having a farmer’s market in February.
While others are crossing off the days until their market’s opening in April or even May, I’m gleefully throwing brussels sprouts and pecans into my basket like it’s an endcap clearance sale...
17 tags
4 tags
Instagram of the Day
I really hate to admit it, but I am an Instagram addict. I have said things to the extent of “that’s so Valencia” when referring to color schemes. I am not proud of this, but, henceforth, I am changing the Instagram of the Week segment to Instagram of the Day since I eat too many awesome things to limit it to once a week.
Anyhoo, pictured above is my lunch at Back in the Day...
Instagram of the Week
I bought this kumquat tree for $15 from the sad plants section at Home Depot last summer.
The first time I had a kumquat, I sneaked one from a tree in a huge ceramic pot on the sidewalk amongst a jungle of crinums, ferns, palms, crepe myrtles and agaves on Hall and Howard by Forsyth Park. The owner didn’t seem interested in picking its fruit, so every now and then I would come back and...
Salsa crisis
I’d love to tell you all is well since I arrived back home in Savannah from my New York adventure, but it isn’t. The moss-draped oaks are still beautiful, Parker’s iced tea is still refreshing as ever and my street still smells like fried chicken and jasmine blossoms, but Sol, one of my favorite restaurants, is gone.
It was roughly last Friday I started to realize I would...
Instagram of the Week
Over the weekend, I was crazy fortunate to find an open barstool at The Ordinary in Charleston, SC.
Pictured: Baked Otter Island Oysters with Bottarga Butter, BBQ White Shrimp with Charred Bread and a Zissou cocktail (Smith & Cross Rum, Elderflower, Maraschino Liqueur, Lime).
Not pictured: The equally fantastic Beeliner Snapper with Pickled Mushrooms and Cape Beans, Carolina Gold Rice...
December 2012
1 post
Momofuku and mo' Intsagrams
A few days ago I could feel another subway-borne cold coming on, so I decided to retire to my mattress-sized bedroom with a feel-good double feature of Superbad and Julie and Julia.
Don’t hate.
While Superbad’s tomfoolery made me forget about my super bad aches and chills for roughly 90 minutes, Julie and Julia just made me super depressed. Oh, what I would give to fry up a chicken...
November 2012
2 posts
What I did on my hurricane hiatus in Instagrams
Even though Hurricane Sandy ruined everything two weeks ago, this past Monday was my first day back at my internship since the Martha Stewart offices were at one point in the middle of the Hudson River and subsequently without power or heat.
Since my time left in New York City is ending soon, I decided to venture out on the newly functioning F train, and see what all the fuss is about.
Here is...
Sandy and Southern souvenirs
Last week, I was standing in the hallway leading up to the clerestory at the MSLO offices. I was waiting for my first tag-sale — a miniature Black Friday where employees rush into a room and frantically buy leftover props, kitchenware, furniture and craft supplies that they probably don’t need instead of flatscreen TVs and faux cashmere sweaters that they probably don’t need.
...
October 2012
1 post
The gritty city in instagrams
If you had asked me back in June what I would be doing now, living in Brooklyn and interning at Martha Stewart’s magic kingdom in Chelsea probably wouldn’t have been my first guess. But, here I sit with a complementary coffee mug from Human Resources and a Metrocard in my wallet.
Working at the MSLO offices is unendingly fascinating; however, living in New York is somewhat like...
September 2012
3 posts
Green Truck Pub and Bell's Brewery combine forces
If you read last month’s issue of Bon Appetit, you know that it is the new dawn of the neighborhood joint. The starched table cloths, gleaming bone china and leather-bound wine lists as thick as Vogue’s September Issue that were once prerequisites for restaurant greatness are no more. Nowadays the no-reservations pizza place or the seafood shack down the street from your house has...
Childhood chicken wings
Even though my mama carted in wheelbarrow loads of glorious multi-colored produce from our backyard garden and made sure my brother, dad and I had a home-cooked meal almost every night, I would be remiss if I didn’t list chicken wings as one of my favorite childhood meals.
Not just any chicken wings —- the frozen honey-BBQ wings that came in frosty orange Tyson bags, which were...
The Bachelor Farmer or: how I learned to stop...
Lutefisk does not warm the cockles of my heart. Nor does Nordic skiing.
Five years ago, I spent a semester at a particularly Norwegian-influenced university in Northfield, Minnesota, after my parents moved to Minneapolis from Kansas, where I knew nothing of egg coffee or lingonberries. Let me tell you, St. Olaf College ain’t no kind of place for a Scots-Irish girl who still stares...
August 2012
2 posts
Dinner at warp speed, Captain.
After eating exclusively fried chicken, mac ‘n’ cheese and all things smothered while doing research for my soul food article, I’ve been trying to clean up my act before I inevitably go hog wild in the Minneapolis’ food scene at the end of the month.
So far, that’s mainly entailed having Cassey Ho yell at me to suck my belly button into my spine while I do double...
Pig ears and whiskey, Charleston style
As promised fair readers, here is an Instagramlicious post of my dinner at Husk in Charleston, South Carolina.
Sean Brock’s magnum opus Husk, which has more hype surrounding it than Missy Franklin and Cloud Atlas put together, has been on my restaurant bucket list for almost a year now. It’s tagline is “a celebration of Southern ingredients,” but it’s more like the...
July 2012
1 post
What I've done on my summer blogcation
Hi Kitchen Oddity friends,
Sorry for my longer than usual absence, but while I’ve been recombobulating my brain synapses, reorganizing my kitchen to maximize my four square feet of counter space and fighting the spider mites on my pepper plants, you’ll be happy to know I’ve also been productive both in writing and eating.
So here’s what I’ve done on my summer...
June 2012
2 posts
PSA: It's National Bourbon Day
My celebratory mint julep and obscenely good summer salad featuring my mama’s poppyseed dressing.
There’s still time, friends!
A moving tribute to the spirit of the season (a...
It’s summer in Savannah. The temperatures are rising.
The humidity makes drying off after a shower futile. The art students have left town and in their wake dumpsters filled with soiled area rugs, Target lamps and general college-stained detritus. The remaining tourists are sweaty — their visors tightly bound around their frizzy hair. The daily arguments that take place between my...
May 2012
1 post
It's a Cinco de Mayo miracle
After years of peeling ginger and chopping cilantro in vain, the recipe for the cilantro-lime sauce at Brasa in Minneapolis has finally been published.
If you only knew how this sauce has haunted me since I first ate there four years ago, you would understand how momentous this is for me.
Is it crema? Sour cream? Coud it actually be an aioli? Am I imaging the garlic part? They couldn’t...
April 2012
2 posts
The mint and the whiskey
There’s lots of talk going ‘round about mint juleps mostly due to an upcoming horse race. But when I think of mint juleps, I think of a silver cup I saw inside a glass box at an old house in the woods of Oxford, Mississippi.
This year, it will have been fifty years since William Faulkner died, and even longer since my redheaded grandmother Loree watched him watch others in...
Taking care of business and turnips
If you’ve been wondering where I wandered off to lately, I’ve been wrangling high school jazz bands, bluegrass prodigies and stage equipment the past few weeks for the Savannah Music Festival.
And let me tell you, it takes more than a couple Luna Bars to herd a hundred teenagers carrying trombones, saxophones and upright basses through the hallways, streets and cramped backstage...
March 2012
3 posts
4 tags
Pie 'n' pork chops: Part 2
I love grocery stores. The giddiness some reserve for Tahitian vacations, first dates or March Madness is nearly the same emotion I feel for an afternoon trip to the Publix on Wilmington Island or a new neighborhood market. In fact (pathetically?), I’ve been known to call friends from my neighborhood Kroger to tell them what amazingly corny song is playing over the store intercom. If you...
Pie 'n' pork chops: Part 1
From pecans still in their shells to Butter Crunch lettuce, collard greens to strawberries, even sugar cane and crowder peas, I’m still stunned at the variety I see every week at the Forsyth Farmers Market.
While some farmers markets nowadays have become flooded with one-sided ideology and seem like temples of hipster worship at times, Savannah’s market is primarily made up of good...
Thursday nights at Charlie Teeple's
If you’re going to have an oyster for the first time, Charlie Teeple’s in Savannah, Georgia is a good place to do it.
At least that’s what I told my friend Amy as we stood in the parking lot after she had said “Confession: I’ve never had any oyster.” (Something I was near shocked to hear since Amy is one of the best Southern cooks I know. Seriously, her...
February 2012
3 posts
Valentine's Day at one of the happiest...
One of Back in the Day Bakery’s famous Baby Cakes.
Back in the Day is a special place for myriad reasons. When I first moved to Savannah and didn’t know a soul, I messaged my friend Despina and asked her what a lonely, bewildered girl in Savannah should do. She said to go have a banana pudding at Back in the Day and everything would be okay. She was so right, and I still maintain...
Have y'all been to MaRandy's?
Because until you do, I won’t be hearing any of this…
“Oh, the best fried chicken is unequivocally at Prince’s Hot Chicken.”
or
“No, I had the most amazing fried chicken in Brooklyn. No, seriously I did. It had this Asian fusion thing going on.”
or
“You have to go to this Sunoco station down the street from my house. It has good...
Crank up your chicken dinner
Based on general perception, if the meat counter is the ice cream parlor, the flank steak would be chocolate raspberry; the pork belly, salted carmel; the ahi tuna steak is watermelon sorbet; and chicken would most likely be vanilla…maybe cookie dough.
But there are things you can do to make chicken just as thrilling as Jeni’s Reisling Poached Pear or Sparky’s Pineapple Upside...
January 2012
3 posts
Happy National Pie Day!
Now if you’ll kindly excuse me, I have half a lemon chess pie* that needs celebrating.
*Pie was originally covered with plastic wrap. Settle down.
4 tags
Eat pimento cheese and pie like nobody's watching:...
If you’ve ever read my blog, even if it was accidentally one time for 3 minutes 7 months ago, you are likely aware of my obsession with NBC’s 30Rock.
In my opinion, this show has revived the scripted television comedy, my favorite genre of programming, all the while solidifying that women are indeed funny and white wine with sprite and ice cubes is a legitimate beverage.
So it was...
I'm back Savannah. Pass the biscuits.
The sun in shining, old ladies are rattling through my alley with Kroger shopping carts, the camelias are blooming, the sounds of Junior Kimbrough, The Black Keys and Loretta Lynn are floating through my open windows, booming 80s-era Cadillacs are passing by, tiny empty malt liquor bottles bought at gas stations are glistening in the grass, the spanish moss still hangs in the old oak tress and...
November 2011
1 post
Apologies, anxiety and apple pie in a skillet
Contrary to what you’re probably thinking right now, no, I did not lose my fingers in a tragic Cuisinart accident or decide to drop out of graduate school to go on tour with a new-wave banjo quartet.
Nor did I start competitively eating oysters, breeding champion English bulldogs or move into the wilderness to survive on root vegetables and homemade toothpaste.
I’ve mostly been...
October 2011
1 post
Crisco and kayaks, fall and fried chicken
Much like a frightened baby Chipmunk or a haggard coyote, when the weather becomes the least bit chilly, my cravings often redirect toward things that will keep me warm and sleepy. Freshly sliced pineapple and fish tacos sadly just don’t seem right after October 1st.
After burning roughly 6,000 calories paddling up the 8-foot tide drop by Hogan’s Marina on Wilmington Island in a...
September 2011
3 posts
Dear Ice Cream...
Dear Ben and Jerry’s Late Night Snack,
Tonight, I walked home from the grocery store in the rain — droplets beading up on my green onions, trailing down the shrink wrapped plastic covering my ground beef. It was the preverbal pickle on my crap sandwich of a day — the maple syrup on my stack of poopcakes if you will.
After almost being plowed down by an emaciated hipster with...
Obsession moment: field peas
Dear friends, readers, Romans, grandparents and countrymen,
I do recall that in a past post I said that I would not abandon my blog for weeks at a time ever again unless it was due to a family crisis or the reunification of my favorite band, The White Stripes. I’m happy to say that my family is fine; I’m incredibly sad to say that Jack White has decided to cover Mozart with the...
On the road again
The year isn’t through, but already my mama and I have driven as many miles as a Willie Nelson tour minus the pigtails and illegal substances.
Thankfully, on our latest voyage to and from Cleveland to visit my little brother at Case Western Reserve University where he is studying more important things like how to put whoozits and whatzits of the world together, we ate at my...
August 2011
6 posts
Sweet corn o' mine *guitar solo*
As winter, or as it is sometimes known, the sad times, draws closer up here in Minnesota, and Southern states become more appealing, a vegetable appears to remind Minnesotans it is still the warm third of the year and to be grateful they don’t get their corn from a jar, in the words of Dolly Parton.
As one of the more famous Minnesotans Garrison Keilor once wrote:
O that fresh sweet corn...
My name is Hannah Hayes, and I am a dishaholic
It is not dark chocolate that blows my skirt up, nor pictures of Ryan Reynolds, new high heels, the latest episode of Glee or Anne Taintor cards. It is not cake pops, “10 new pony tail ideas!”, cosmopolitans or chiweenies, yorkies and westies that make me giggly.
It is dishes — old and new, shiny or blue, even the ones that are glued back together anew.
Sadly, my latest finds...
I want a cake with a short bake time in a long...
Editor’s note: I honestly did start this post in a timely fashion — then my boyfriend came to visit me for a week in Minneapolis, I had to transform some peaches on the precipice of rot into jam, the stock market collapsed for about 36 hours and the world fell into disarray. I apologize for its complete lack of relevance, but it’s still a damn good cake.
Also, excuse my...
State Fair Test Pie #1
Here is one of my practice pies I made during my training for the Minnesota State Fair. It’s a lemon chess with purple raspberries for the Pillsbury Pie Crust contest. Needless to say, it was about as rockin’ as the drum solo in Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein.”
Hopefully it’s a winner.
What I've eaten lately in poorly lit iPhone photos
Although I miss Green Truck Pub, Sol, Sweet Potatoes, the Gwinnett Street Kroger’s baking and condiment aisle and my kitchen in Savannah like whoa, I have been cooking and eating great food in Minneapolis.
Yellow rice, black beans, cornbread, collards and butterscotch pudding from Brasa; if the president could have this catered in to peace discussions, let me tell you, things would...
Did someone say citrus-chile butter?
Much like Jack White, puppies, The Golden Girls, my boyfriend’s tomato sauce and the numbers 16, 25 and 144, some things are perfect just the way they are.
The greatest of these is butter.
I don’t believe there is anything that you can do to make butter better, but adding citrus zest, jalapeño and herbs as Southern Living’s latest (incredibly useful) issue suggests...
