Category ArchiveEverywhere Once |

Don’t Judge a Pizzeria by its Drug Culture Cred

by Brian on July 13, 2011 in Food & Drink, North Carolina

We were snookered in Asheville, North Carolina.

After several months of driving through the Deep South, we’d grown accustomed to some of the in-your-face conservatism and religiosity of the region. Obviously, no area is monolithic, but I’d never met so many complete strangers who’d start a conversation by assuming I agreed with their politics than I have in Southern states. And the abundance of scripture verse lawn signs and billboards advertising such pleasantries as “The Devil is Gonna Get You” were certainly things I haven’t seen elsewhere. So when we arrived in Asheville, via Alabama, we found the cultural differences a bit startling. Read More…

Delicious Update: Jambalaya

by Brian on May 25, 2011 in Food & Drink

Shannon twisted my arm and, like always, I broke under the pressure. I had avoided making jambalaya ever since our cooking class in New Orleans for reasons that were a mystery, even to me. Maybe it had been built up too much. Maybe the loosey-goosey directions from our cooking class were a bit intimidating. Maybe it was just sheer laziness. Whatever the reason, the clock was ticking. Read More…

Ice Cream and Beer: Perfect Together

by Brian on April 11, 2011 in Florida, Food & Drink

We’ve experimented with beer floats under the assumption that alcohol makes everything better. But in our trials the bitterness of the beer always overwhelmed the sweetness of the ice cream. We could never get it to work quite right. Now we have proof that our original hypothesis was correct. Read More…

Boondock Bangkok

by Brian on March 8, 2011 in Food & Drink

Living in an RV creates special obstacles for someone who likes to cook eat as much, and as well, as I do. “Boondocking” adds a whole other layer of challenges, mostly relating to concerns about limiting water used for prep and clean-up. It is for that reason that hamburgers, hotdogs, deli salads and meats are so often associated with camping. But that isn’t the kind of diet I’m going to adopt willingly. Fortunately, there are tasty alternatives to the standard campground grub. One of which is Chicken Sates with Spicy Thai Noodles.

What makes this dish campground friendly is that the Thai noodles can be prepared a couple days ahead of time and served at room temperature, or even cold. Take that potato salad! The Sates marinate in a freezer bag before getting thrown on the grill. Add steamed vegetables and some House of Tsang Peanut Sauce (which is surprisingly good right off the grocery store shelf) and you have high-quality Thai take-out served up in the heart of the wilderness. How’s that for “roughing it?”

The following recipes are approximations of what I do. Read More…

Second Time Around

by Brian on February 15, 2011 in Florida, Food & Drink

For two and a half years, since the last time we visited Key West, I had been fantasizing about Santiago’s Bodega, a restaurant that serves tapas-style dishes. We tried completely different items than we had when we first dined there—except for one, my favorite, dates stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped in prosciutto—and thought it was even more divine this time around. Or maybe food just tastes better after biking four-and-a-half miles to get to it. The best part: Brian was inspired to recreate the date dish in the RV kitchen.