GOBAG Catfish Fry

Monty cooked a batch of delicious filet catfish and also delicious hushpuppies. The hushpuppies were made from a recipe he has been perfecting.

By the way, did you know how hushpuppies got their name? Once a group of hunters were spending the night at their hunting camp. The assigned cook was trying to fry biscuits. The hunting dogs were wailing and barking, probably smelling the cooking aroma. To get them to shut up the cook tossed them some fried biscuits and said, "Hush Puppies!"

I mentioned the catfish were filet. I didn't say how they were filet. Monty, when fishing for them, when he got one on his line he just jerked so hard on the pole it jerked the fish skeleton out of the body.


One of the above is a fish story.

Threatened?

The picture above - why do some people, when they see something praising the working class they scream "Communists!!" ?

I have some good news for David Poe, Sam Huff, Williamson Brothers, Slopes family, Old South BBQ family, Smoking J’s, Smokey Bones, and Eat Good BBQ Here. The good news for these fine folks is that I am no longer a threat to them when it comes to cooking baby back ribs.

Of course, they may ask, “Was he ever a threat?” Well, that is immaterial now isn’t it?

I cooked a rack of ribs about twenty years ago and made a mess. I waited and tried again this past weekend. I made another mess. The ribs were hard and burned to a crisp.

I researched how to cook baby back ribs looking at Google and the Food Channel website. There were many variations but all agreed to cook them long and slow at a low heat, which I did. They also all agreed that when you can easily pull a bone out, then the ribs are ready.

I kept my grill between 225 and 275 as they all said. I waited and waited, checking every fifteen minutes. Hours went by and it never got to the point that I could easily pull out a bone. It was dried and crusty black before I finished with it.

I guess I’ll stick to turkey dogs, turkey burgers, and steaks.

Murphy's Monday

Last Monday morning I woke up hearing rain gushing outside. I decided not to take my dog Willow on a walk.

I went into the kitchen to pour my morning coffee. I noticed the floor was wet. I turned on the overhead light for a better look. Water sprinkled all over me.

The ceiling was leaking. Water was seeping down through the base of the fan and settled on top of the fan blades. When I turned on the light the fan also came on and gave me a little surprise.

Or a big surprise. We just had new roof put on in June.

We called the roofing company and they sent two people out within a reasonable time. It was pouring down rain. The leader went on top of the roof, climbing a ladder using one hand to hold and the other hand holding an umbrella. Which I thought would make a good picture – I should learn to always have my camera close by.

The helper climbed up in the attic. The helper knocked on top of the inside of the top of the house while the boss-man would look around for a problem in the vicinity he was knocking and then shot the problem with a chalk gun.

I guess it worked. The leaked stopped. When the helper climbed out of the attic I noticed for the time his arms had a lot of tattoos on them and he had a Cub Scout or Weebolo cap on – the little blue kind with yellow lines, leaving from the top center button… where was my camera?

The leader said he THOUGHT he fixed the problem, but we won’t know for sure until the next time it rains. He said if it still leaks during the next rain call them. At least he was honest.

After they left it occurred to us that I didn’t ask him about the damaged ceiling. The next day there were two big discolored splotches caused by the rain. Oh me.

We also bought a new mattress over the weekend which was to be delivered the next day on Tuesday. Anna removed the dust ruffle thing off the old mattress complex and took it down to the basement and washed it in the washing machine so it would be clean for the new mattress.

After she washed it she tossed it wet into a basket to wait for the dryer to finish up with the load it had in it at present.

In the mean time, Willow was digging for chipmunks in our backyard and got muddy. I wiped her down with a towel. Then I tossed the towel into the basket of what I thought were dirty clothes, without looking closely.

Later Anna told me to put the wet dust ruffle into the dryer. I saw the dust ruffle underneath a wet towel and thought the towel was also freshly washed. So, I put both into the dryer and started to walk away.

Then BOING!! I remember the dirty towel. I took the towel out, then took the dust ruffle out and examined it. Somebody must be watching out for me. The ruffle had no mud or dirt on it.

Then, later that evening I was cooking chicken parts on the grill. It was a recipe I got on the Internet that taste pretty good. I have used it several times already. As far as this narration go the only important part is that you completely bath the chicken in barbecue sauce in direct heat it with the lid down for two minutes.

After the two minutes I collected my chicken up on a platter and went inside carrying the chicken. Somehow – a misstep I think, the platter tilted a little and a thigh, covered thickly in barbecue sauce managed to topple off the platter onto the carpet.

Darn!

Luckily because I jumped right onto cleaning the carpet stain it came right out. And I ate the thigh.

No problem. All's well that ends well.

BBQ Chicken with Bones

Eating chicken with bones is a rarity these days. Boneless chicken is less troublesome. I have eaten so much boneless chicken I forgot how good chicken is with the bone. The bones, I think, hold more flavor in.

I wonder if someplace an enterprising chicken-breeder is trying to figure out how to get chickens to reproduce whole filet’ chickens? It should be fun watching the final products in the chicken yard flipping and flopping around.

Yesterday I thawed out a chicken with bones and I then I let it marinate in buttermilk overnight.

Today I dried the chicken and gave it a dry rub of salt, pepper, and spices. At noon I heated up one side of the grill and put the chicken parts on it for two minutes on each side to sear the meat.

Then I moved them to other side where the flame was not on. I let it cook with indirect heat for 40 minutes.

After 40 minutes I opened the lid and painted the chicken flesh with Big Arn’s Sho ‘Nuff BBQ Sauce. I closed the lid again for a minute. And then picked up the pieces and let them sit for about 10 minutes.

Man!!! It was fingernail licking good!

The Big Arn’s Sho ‘Nuff BBQ Sauce pictured above is a left over from my short-lived campaign for Mayor of Marietta. Zoom in on the label.

Happy Black Friday!!

I remember in the early 60s the price of bologna went up in price. Why? Because a lot of people were buying it. One of the rules of economics is that price is based on demand. If masses of people were buying bologna it surely was in demand – right?

Wrong? It was the cheapest sandwich meat. When the price went up people quit buying it. Duh!

Now, I am wondering if the same will happen with the deep turkey fryer and peanut oil.

Twelve of us gobbled the gobbler yesterday here. I was the chef. As I have done many times before I deep cooked my turkey in peanut oil.

Before price wasn’t a consideration. It think the oil must have been fairly cheap, because as frugal as I am… well, I know me.

A few days ago we priced the peanut oil at Costco and their large container was $48. That was too much. At Walmart the price was $39 for their large container. I am assuming both containers were the size. We bought the Walmart brand.

Yesterday morning when I was preparing to cook I poured the peanut oil into the large container and it was three inches short of coming high enough. The mark I made with the turkey and water was 9 inches and the peanut oil came to 6 inches. Damn!

I hustled to Krogers and the manager told me they sold the last two. Publix was closed.

We took a chance with some old used peanut oil I used twice before for the remaining 3 inches, it worked fine.

I have read that using peanut oil twice is really not recommended because the oil can turn rancid. I guess we were lucky.

But, I could have easily spent $96 at Costo or $78 at Walmart for the cooking oil for a one time meal… $39 is bad enough.

Another thing about deep frying a turkey: After the cooking time was up my son Adam helped me left the bird out of the bubbling oil. It just about takes four hands for this feat (get it, feat? – hands – yuk yuk). When we got it up something went wrong and the turkey fell.

It could have fell on the ground and get dry leaves, bits of earth matter, and dogs’ bathroom stuff all over it and Adam and I would hose it off and keep swear ourselves to secrecy or it could have fell back into the bubbling oil and splash 350◦ peanut oil on both us.

It fell back into the bubbling peanut oil but both Adam and I had quick reflexes and jumped out of the way of the splash.

And everybody enjoyed the turkey – and also the spiraled cut ham and other goodies Anna made and people brought.

Rocky and his fiancé Sabrina brought a DVD-slide show of their trip to South Korea and treated us with what all they saw and the story behind the scenes which included customs, laws, and history of the Koreans. It was very enjoyable and interesting.

We have a lot to be thankful for – just for that morning.

I think my deep-frying turkey days are over. Now watch the price of peanut oil go down.