Fist City

Here's a great Loretta Lynn song we listened to on the way from Memphis to Mobile yesterday...

Mem-Phis

We are now in Memphis, staying in and avoiding the St Paddy's day celebration on Beale Street. We had a fun day, though!

First, we drove out of Nashville and ate at the Loveless Cafe,

and then spent a few hours in the car listening to trucking music
and trucking to Memphis. Our hotel is swanky (but we got a good rate), and we've gone out and had barbecue at the Rendezvous restaurant.

We also stopped at the Lansky Bros store in the Peabody Hotel, and Beebo got me a version of this super-cool Elvis jacket from Speedway--a jacket I had long admired in photos. Thanks, Beebo!

Music City - Day Two

The Ernest Tubb Record Shop -- I spent $92 here. A really great selection of classic country music! It's been a while since I've had such a satisfactory Cd shopping experience.

The inside of the E.T.R.S..

Buck Owens' guitar, from the great Country Music Hall of Fame.

Betty Boots--a shop with a name that sounds a lot like the name of a certain someone I know...

We R Music City USA

After a long and arduous journey, we have arrived in Nashville! We were too tired to go anywhere but the Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, where we had a nice meal and a few beers. Smoking is still allowed in bars in Nashville--seems odd to us! They even had a vintage 70s-style cigarette machine in the lobby.

I'm Packin' It!

"Okay, I'm ready to go. When's our flight?"

Gilding the Lily

Some recipes are classic, and should just be recognized and appreciated as classics. But there's always someone out there that wants to make something "better", and then ends up ruining it. One classic that gets ruined more often than not these days is the Caesar salad, which was invented in 1924 by chef Caesar Cardini. Unless you're eating at a good restaurant, you're in peril of getting no anchovies, getting the dressing "on the side", and worst of all, sometimes being offered exclusively the option of getting a "Chicken Caesar Salad".

This attempt to load a bunch of protein on it and make it an adequate office drone's lunch ruins the basic simplicity and appeal of the salad. Hey, if I want chicken, I'll order it--I don't need a clammy, bland chicken breast need to be thrown on everything I eat.

Other cases of overloading classics include:

• Chocolate chocolate-chip cookies--where's the treat of biting into the chip if the whole damn cookie is chocolate?
• Chocolate cheesecake--Isn't part of the appeal of the cheesecake the somewhat sour taste of the cream cheese? (Again) Why drown it in chocolate?
• I also feel this way putting a big blob of whipped cream on pecan and pumpkin pies, though I'm probably in the minority there.

Do you have any similar food pet peeves?