The Good, the Bad, and the pretty damn Yummy

About 3 weeks ago, I watched The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly ...yeah, I'd seen it before, but this time, I feel like I really watched it for the first time.  It was the first time I paid attention to how the movie was put together--that iconic theme song and the amazing score are just as much stars of the movie as the actual actors.  There's not a lot of dialogue either, which made me remember that I had forgotten that ol' Clint was a damn fine specimen in his day.

Seeing this movie was sort of a preparation to my latest customer visit, which was to Marina, CA...right outside of Monterey and Carmel, where Clint was mayor and still lives in the area.  Yeah, I know he's old and craggy, but for sheer star power, could you really beat Clint?  Not that I expect to actually see him walking down the streets of Carmel by the Sea, but a girl can always hope, can't she?

This trip should officially be dubbed "A Fistful of Short Ribs," because that was essentially what I ate for 3 days.

I flew into San Francisco on Saturday afternoon and then drove to Marina, which is about 2 hours away.  I was hoping that it would still be daylight when I flew in, so I could at least enjoy the surroundings as I drove down, but it was dark.  I had opted to go a day early, so I could spend Sunday wandering around Monterey,  see Cannery Row and the Aquarium, and stalk sight see in Carmel.

I arrived in Marina at about 7:30 pm, which meant it was 9:30 my real time, and I was tired and hungry...and a little cranky that I wasn't racking up any Hampton Inn points this trip, because there wasn't a Hampton Inn as one of my lodging choices.  (Although, if you are ever in the Marina/Monterey area, you could do worse to stay at the Marina Holiday Inn Express--the shower pressure is freaking amazing. It's the little things...)

After asking at the desk for dining options, the desk clerk sent me off with a coupon to the Kula Ranch Island Steakhouse.  Since I've been homesick for Hawaii since I visited last year, this sounded sort of promising.  Plus, the coupon options included "buy one, get one Mai Tais," so how bad could it really be?

(What?  You don't think it's possible to fall instantly in love with a place and consider it home?  Hmmph...am just one winning lottery ticket away of reuniting myself and my island homeland.  In the meantime, I make do with the new Hawaii Five-0 eye candy.)

Kula Ranch seems to be a local joint, even though it feels like a franchise...am betting that franchising is in the works somewhere, and specializes in Polynesian-style food.  It's kitschy, and I start to get a bad feeling about this, especially when some fresh-faced young man, looking like he walked off the set of Beach Blanket Bingo, walked up to my table with his ukelele and asked if I had any requests.  I sort of fixed him with my best gimlet eye and asked for "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," and he got style points for starting to pluck it out.  He's probably dealt with lots of old farts like me before.  Anyway, I was just afraid that everything would just have a grilled pineapple ring and a couple of maraschino cherries to make it "Island style."  Especially, when one of the coupon offerings is also "Hawaiian Nachos."  I'm not exactly sure what the hell says "nacho" about Hawaii, or if there is even a word in Hawaiian for nacho, so I wisely opt for the 2-for-1 Mai Tais.

I've about decided to go with the Mauka Skirt Steak, which is marinated in soy and citrus, when I spot the "Pork, Chicken, and other Specialties" side o' the menu.  There is Kalua Pork, but there's also St. Louis-style ribs and some Cajun-spiced, which is disturbing to me for the above grilled pineapple and maraschino cherry reasons, and a beef short ribs dish.  Y'all know the love that I have for the short rib, and I hope that these short ribs are like the kalbi-style ones that I had at L&L Hawaiian Barbecue last year.

Alas, they are not.  They are not bad, but they are not fabulous...I should have gone with the skirt steak...I didn't have any preconceived notions about it, like I had for the ribs.  I think the big problem I had with the dish was the presentation.  There was a mount of rice in the middle of the plate, with a scoop of macaroni salad on top of the rice, with the ribs arranged around the plate like spokes--that wasn't the part I found problematic; it was the dumping of the macaroni salad on the rice. It did not work for me, because it made my rice all mayonnaisey. I'm not usually freaked out about my food touching or mixing on the plate, but this did not work for me in the slightest. The Mai Tais were strong and fruity though, and it was a good thing that I was only a half a mile away from the hotel.

I headed back to the hotel and tried to get some sleep.  Predictably, I wake up at about 3:30 a.m. and wonder why it's still dark.  Ha...I hate changing time zones.  I finally give up and get up at about 7:30 to take a shower and start my day.  I figure I'll head to Monterey, do the Aquarium, and wander about Cannery Row.  As I peer out the window of my room, which overlooks a little marshy area with water birds and walking paths, I notice people walking along the paths.  These folks are bundled up like it's nuclear winter out there, and that makes me a little worried, because all I brought was a windbreaker and a light dressy jacket for the office.  I turn on the news, and it's 53 degrees F outside...seriously?  The walkers had on puffy jackets, ski caps, gloves, and scarves...like it was 53 degrees below zero!

There's nothing so fun as a power outage in a hotel when you are in the shower.  I immediately wonder if there's been an earthquake, and this is the time that California breaks off into the sea...blame it on a late-night showing on 2012 on Starz.  That has got to be the worst CGI-ed disaster movie of all time.  I didn't even make all the way through the movie, because it was so bad.

The power finally returns, and I head out to Monterey to start my day.  The aquarium is cool, and I think that the up close and personal viewing of the otters is worth the price of admission.  The penguins were pretty cool, too.


I wander through the shops of Cannery Row, and then head over to Carmel-by-the Sea to check out the area and stalk Clint.  I had read an interview with him that took place in the dining room of a restaurant/inn that he owns, called the Mission Ranch Hotel and Restaurant.  I gathered from the interview that he might actually hang out there on occasion, so I resolve to have dinner there on Monday night.

I headed back to Marina and realize that I am STARVING!  I drive around a little bit and spy a Korean barbecue restaurant...kalbi ribs, here I come!!

Normally, I check with folks at the customer site to find out about the local places and get the skinny on what's good, but I decided to just wing it and strike out on my own at Nak Won Korean BBQ, and I am glad I did.  I got a heaping portion of the short ribs, along with some Romaine lettuce leaves to wrap it in, and about a dozen small side dishes of kimchi and other delights.  There were these awesome marinated large black beans that I could have eaten whole lot more of, along with a tasty potato salad, and some sweet-hot cucumbers and daikon radish slices. (Update:  I finally got off my lazy bum and actually typed "Korean Barbecue side dishes black beans" into Google, and found this site, which gives a recipe for Kong Jang, along with other recipes and a sort of how-to for a Korean BBQ party.  If I ever work up the nerve and the energy to do a Korean BBQ party, I will definitely make these beans!)

(We could also call this trip "For a Few Woks More," because I ate a lot of Asian food this week, too.)  (Did you like that Clint-ism?  I am on a roll...a California roll..bwhaaahaaa!)

The next day, I went to lunch with the client at a local Thai place, D'Anna Thai Kitchen, and had the basic Thai Basil noodles with squid, which was very tasty.  Across the street from D'Anna's is the U.S. headquarters of the Ginger People.  (Not, not a world headquarters for red heads, but the root!)  For dinner, I went back to Carmel and had dinner at the Mission Ranch.

The restaurant is very cozy, and looks out over the fields where sheep graze and you can see the Pacific Ocean...if it's not dark by the time you get there.  (Luckily, I had scoped this out the day before and saw the view and the sheep then).  I had a wedge salad with bacon and blue cheese, along with the Short Rib (Osso bucco style), which was served with grilled asparagus and the most divine mashed potatoes.  These potatoes weren't anything fancy--no smashing, no garlic, no cheese, just potatoes, cream, and butter.  They were fluffy and light and just so potatoey good.  Ossobuco is a braised dish, usually with a veal or pork shank...some slow-cooked goodness.  The short rib was very tender and pretty much melted in my mouth like butter.  I cleaned my plate and really struggled to keep from actually licking it.  Yum!  I decided to forgo dessert at the beginning of the meal in favor of a nice local California cabernet...after all, I am on a limited expense account.

Lunch on Tuesday was at a local Japanese place that had a very nice teriyaki chicken bento box...the name of the place escapes me now, but it was good...not truly memorable, but good.

Tuesday evening finds me driving back to San Francisco to spend the night and catch an early flight out.  As I wind my way around the city to a Hampton Inn near the airport, I am trying to decide where/what to look for dinner.  After getting lost twice...sometimes those overlapping overpasses are very confusing on the GPS!...I get on the right road, and lo, behold, as I pull into the hotel parking lot, about 2 blocks down from the hotel is (drum roll please) a glowing yellow arrow beacon marking the spot of an In & Out Burger .

No trip to California would be complete for me without a stop at In & Out, and I had despaired of finding one in the northern climes, since In & Out is more of a Southern California delicacy.  One double-double animal style later, along with skinny fries and a chocolate shake, I fall into a food-induced coma until the alarm goes off at 4 am, and I begin the mad scramble for the airport and my flight home.

Aloha and mahalo for all the mochi!

Yikes!!! I realized when I looked at the last post that it had been waaaay over a month since I last posted. Sort of hard to have a blog if you don't post, isn't it?

Stuff happens, as we all know, so I hope you forgive me when I tell you all about the much needed vacation that I took over Thanksgiving. As you may have figured out from the title and the photo accompanying this post, I had an exotic tropical vacation in Hawai'i...Honolulu to be specific. ( I just love saying "Honolulu"... it's such a fun word!)

During the summer, a friend invited me to spend the holiday with her and her extended family, who live on Oahu, and after emptying my frequent flier mile account, I was on my way to paradise.

I had a direct flight from Atlanta to Honolulu, and let me tell you, 9+ hours is too freaking long to spend on a plane and not be in first class...why, oh, why Delta, do you not let people who redeem their frequent flyer miles have a shot at the upgrade lottery? (That's all the whining I'll do, because it was so worth the ride!)

Hawai'i has always been a source of fascination for me...and not just for the whole Magnum, PI thing, either. It's always seemed so exotic and unattainable, and the closer it got to checkin time, the more I was bouncing off the walls in anticipation.

This trip was not the usual tourist trip--I saw and did some touristy things, but this was more of a "hang out with the locals" kind of trip...sort of doing a Bourdain and heading off the beaten (and expensive!) paths. For Hawai'i is nothing if not expensive...except for food. I found the food to be very reasonably priced, especially since we ate at a lot of local Honolulu spots.

I didn't do a luau--gotta save something for the next trip--but I did have a great Thanksgiving dinner with a decided Asian twist. And, since this blog is about food and the cooking and eating of it, let's get to it!

Day 1 in Paradise included a sojourn into Chinatown and a tour of the downtown area--gotta have your picture made with King Kamehameha, you know. Honolulu Chinatown is a wild market place, full of amazing little markets, exotic produce, and street food. My friend's dad, henceforth known as "Granpa," took us on a winding little tour through a market and down several streets. He would pop into a shop and come out with some little delicacy for us to sample. We had a giant rice noodle tube stuffed with pork and onions, drizzled with shoyu (soy sauce), and cut up into pieces that we ate with our hands. He passed around a bag of "dragon eyes," which turned out to be a fruit, longan to be exact When you took the outer shell off, it looks like the inside of a grape and has about the same texture. It was sort of sweet and tangy.

We traveled to the downtown area and saw the state capitol, which tells the story of Hawai'i by it's very structure. The building has a little reflecting pool around it, which represents the water surrounding the islands. There are two pillars visible underneath each side, which represent volcanoes and support each side of the legislature. Each of the legislative chambers is decorated in colors that reflect the island--one side is reds and oranges (sun and lava) and the other is greens and blues (for the sky and rainforests). Grammy walked us around the area and told us many interesting things about the downtown buildings, and having a local tour guide really made the day even more special.

We finished up with lunch in the food court of the Ala Moana Center, a very large, high-end shopping center/mall. Yeah, yeah, food court is not exactly what one has in mind when visiting a tropical paradise, but there was a lot of local places in the food court that were just screaming to be tried. Al Moana Poi Bowl was the place of choice for lunch, and I got the Local Boy special plate lunch, which was pretty much a tour of local Hawai'ian food--kalua pig, lau lau, lomi salmon, and poi.

Ah, poi...that's some mystical stuff...mystical icky stuff. Light purplish-gray, with a thick, pasty consistency, and it's got a wang to it. Evidently, it works better if you dip some food into it, sort of using it as rice. Let just say that I probably wouldn't order it again. I like taro for the most part--taro fries, taro chips are good, but poi is has no "joi" for me.

Laulau is interesting...the one I had was roast pork and a piece of butter fish wrapped in taro leaves and steamed. The taro leaves were like a bitter spinach, which I dunked in the poi to see if that made the poi edible (sort of). The pork was tender, and the fish was a little surprise, because I wasn't expecting it. The kaula pork was like salty barbecue--lightly smoked and very tender; I ate every scrap of that, of course.

There was also lomi-lomi salmon, diced salted raw salmon mixed with tomatoes and onions, along with rice and macaroni salad. It was finished off with haupia (a coconut pudding-style dessert), which was wonderful. This lunch was a version of the Hawaiian culinary staple, the plate lunch. Plate lunch, Hawaiian style, is usually 2 scoops of rice, a scoop of macaroni salad, and then a protein/entree; I subbed the poi for the rice, because I had to try it. Plate Lunch is a lot like the Southern "meat and 3" plate lunch.

I'm a big fan of plate lunches...a big fan, and we had another one at L&L Barbecue, a local chain that is slowly franchising on the Mainland. I can only hope that it comes this way soon. Plate lunch at L&L consisted of rice, mac salad, and some yummy Korean-style barbecue ribs. Forget the haute cuisine--I can eat Asian street food at every meal.

We went to L&L after a day of flying kites and hanging out at the beach, and then we followed up the meal with fresh hot malasadas from Leonard's next door. Malasadas are the Portuguese version of beignets, but better, because they're covered in regular granulated sugar rather than powdered sugar.

And, I did have a fine dining experience of sorts...we went back to the Ala Moana Center for shopping on Saturday after Thanksgiving, and we ate lunch at Alan Wong's Pineapple Room located on the top floor of Macy's.
Remember this post about the disasterous project in Regional Cooking? The Chiclet and I had Pacific Rim cookery, and I pulled together a great PowerPoint that included the 3 big names in Hawaiian cuisine--Roy Yamaguchi, Alan Wong, and Sam Choy. So when D's sister suggested this Alan Wong outpost for lunch, I was all over that!

Chef Wong is into local and sustainable products and features them on his menus. I had the Pineapple Room Burger, because I was just craving a burger for some reason, and I truly think it was one of the best burgers I have ever eaten. From the menu description: Kiawe-Grilled Kuahiwi Ranch Natural Beef Burger, Onion Rings, Bacon, Cheddar Cheese, and Avocado Salsa. There were two onion rings on the burger, one of which I had to remove to even pick the thing up. Those onion rings were made from Maui onions, and I have never had a more tasty onion ring than those. Those onion rings were just works of taste art.

The burger was served with Wasabi Potato Salad, which was good, but not bowl you over good. The wasabi imparted a nice little bite and cleared the ol' sinuses for a moment. D had the “Mac Garlic” Chicken Sandwich, which was chunks of a garlicky teriyaki type of chicken and topped with Furikake Macaroni Salad. Furikake is a salty Japanese condiment with seaweed, sesame seeds, and fish flakes, plus some other seasonings. If I ever made it back to the Pineapple Room, I'd have that next!

Hawaiians are big on snack food, and the one thing that I discovered that I really like is mochi. Japanese in origin, mochi is made from pounded steamed glutinous rice. It becomes a dough-like substance that is usually wrapped around a variety of fillings--peanut butter mochi was a particular favorite of mine. We also had mochi ice cream, which consists of balls of ice cream encased in the mochi--most tasty. Of course, I want more and am trying to figure out how to get it here. I may need to pay a visit to the Asian markets here in town and see if I can find some, or better yet, the Buford Highway Farmer's Market in Atlanta.

Monday after Thanksgiving was our military history day and my last day in paradise. We got up really early and went to get tickets for the USS Arizona Memorial tour. There's a lot of construction happening at the site, progress on a new visitor's center, and unfortunately, the Missouri was in drydock, so we didn't get to tour it.

When you go into the visitor's center, you file into a little theater to watch a film about the attack on Pearl Harbor. The park rangers are very clear that this is NOT a tourist attraction, that it is a grave site, and respect is the order of the day. After the film, a very solemn crowd filed out and onto an open-sided boat for the 20-minute ride out to the sunken ship. On our boat, we had a veteran...he wasn't a Pearl Harbor survivor, rather someone who w

as stationed there right after the attack. It was his first time back to Pearl Harbor since that time, and the staff gave him a special pin and allowed him to get off the boat first when we arrived at the memorial.

When you first see the marble wall at the opposite end of the memorial, listing the names of everyone who perished in the attack, it clutches at your heart to see how many are chiseled into the wall. War sucks, no matter what side you are on.

After the visit to the memorial, we had breakfast at McDonald's. And, yes, I really wanted to go to McDonald's, because I hadn't had that one staple of Hawaiian cuisine...drum roll, please!...SPAM!

At Hawaiian McDonald's, you have some choices that aren't available stateside. There's taro pies, haupia pies, both of which were not available, McTeri burgers with teriyaki sauce, and McSaimen, a noodle dish. And, for breakfast, there's the Local Deluxe Breakfast platter. The Local Deluxe consists of 2 scoops of rice, omelet-style scrambled eggs, 2 slices of grilled Spam, and 3 slices of Portuguese sausage. Best fast food breakfast ever, hands down.

(And, the coolest thing was that the trash cans said "mahalo," which is Hawaiian for "thank you")

After breakfast, we hiked around Punchbowl, the National Cemetery of the Pacific, where some of the Pearl Harbor casualties are buried. The view from the top of Punchbowl crater encompasses a large part of the Honolulu shoreline and is amazing. The 30-foot tall statue of Lady Columbia looking out over the grave sites is awe-inspiring as well. If you are of a certain age or watched Nick at Night, you may remember her from the opening credits of Hawaii 5-0.

For my last meal in Hawaii...and yes, I think all I did was eat and gawk at how amazing it is there...we went to Nico's at Pier 38 at the Honolulu Harbor, near where the daily fish auction happens. I had the Furikake Pan Seared Ahi w/ Ginger Garlic Cilantro Sauce and rice, and it was so very very good. I'm usually not a big tuna fan--hate the canned stuff with passion--but like it as sushi or sashimi. We had ahi poke one night at a family dinner, and I fell in love with it, so I ordered my Ahi rare to try and replicate that experience. It was a great meal to end my stay, and I really wanted it to never end. I'm going back one day, and hopefully sooner rather than later...heck, I'm just a winning lottery ticket away from retiring there, as one of my Facebook friends commented.

I mean, how can you not love a place where you see rainbows every single day?

(If you look closely, you'll see it's actually a double rainbow.)

BBQ and Out!

As I lie here in my current Hampton Inn home away from home, I feel distinctly like one of those snakes on an old Wild Kingdom episode…you know, the one that ate something as big or bigger than it (the snake) was around. Just shy of miserable…but in a good way.
This past week culminates a 2-week barbecue odyssey that has me thinking that, yeah, I might actually be barbecued out for awhile. I know—call CNN. It’s a long post, and I apologize, because I should have written it in two posts, but I was in a barbecue coma for part of that time. Hickory smoke can make you a wee bit lazy and hungry...not unlike some other kinds of smoke. : )

Week before last, I rolled into Owensboro, KY—the barbecue capital of Kentucky to spend 3 days in hickory-smoked heaven. I hit the Moonlite again, then on to Old Hickory, which is supposed to be the locals’ favorite. The smell outside of Old Hickory was almost enough to bring me to my knees, faint with hunger and desire…whew! Gotta get a grip, because this is not a bodice ripper that I’m writing…unless my bodice happens to rip open because I ate too much barbecue. It’s hard to describe the smell, but if you’ve ever been to a really good, honest-to-swine wood-burning barbecue joint, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And, I swear that I could have just eaten a 40-course meal, be as full as the proverbial tick, and get a whiff of barbecue smoke, and my mouth will start to water. Sometimes, I think barbecue might smell better than it tastes, because the aroma is soooo heavenly, and maybe I should gnaw on a piece of hickory wood and save some calories.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, Owensboro and that general area of western Kentucky is famous for mutton barbecue. I wasn’t too sure about actually ordering mutton as an entree, and from what I remembered from my last trip to the Moonlite, it wasn’t something I was likely to order. Best laid plans and all that…when I went to the 3^rd local joint, George’s, I decided to go out on a limb and order the sampler platter, which has sliced pork, sliced beef, and sliced mutton. (Sliced is usually how they roll in KY, although I did see pulled available. The most interesting thing is that you can order your meat “off the pit,” which seems to mean that it won’t be soaked in “dip,” and you can get that on the side. More on dip in a moment…)

My waitress comes back with a large oval platter piled high with meat. She informs me that they are out of beef, so the kitchen gave me more mutton. In the back of my mind, I’m thinking, why not more pork?, but I decide to go native and give the mutton a whirl. Along with the beans and fries, there is a little pitcher of “dip.” Dip is sauce, but it’s not thick like KC Masterpiece, and it’s not as thin as the vinegary pepper stuff usually served with Alabama ‘cue. It’s got a little more body, and evidently everyone has their own recipe. The mutton is not bad…I think the smoking helps it, because I manage to eat most of it. Another thing that distinguishes KY barbecue, or at least at George’s and Old Hickory, is they throw a little sassafras wood on the fire. The sassafras adds a little “something’-somethin’” to the flavor, maybe a little sweetness? Definitely in a good way. And, the coolest thing about George's is that there was impromptu bluegrass jam session going on in the back dining room. Guys would occasionally step outside to their trucks and come back through carrying instrument cases.

This past week, I was staying in Memphis, yes during the barbecue cooking contest part of Memphis in May, which sounds like heaven on earth, but alas, it was raining most of the time and I didn’t make it to the park…oh, and I had to work, too. Imagine that—gotta fund these barbecue expeditions somehow.

Never fear, I continue to partaking of a pantheon of pork. Lucky for me, a couple of fine joints were near my hotel. First up was Leonard’s, a Memphis staple since 1922. Leonard’s has some interesting items on its menu—some kind of hybrid Italian dishes, including barbecue and spaghetti, ribs and spaghetti, and my favorite description: ravioli and ribs served with slaw.

Wisely, I think, passing on the spaghetti options, I go for the pork and ribs plate. I’m not usually a rib eater, but someone walked by with a plate and they looked too good to pass up. The pork was good, and the ribs were mighty fine. Crisp on the outside and meaty on the inside, with not too much sauce, because I don’t want to look like a refugee from the emergency ward after I finish dinner.

Next day, for lunch, we went to a West Memphis joint, which was just okay. West Memphis is not actually in Memphis, but across the river in Arkansas. (We decided to opt for a local meat-and-three for the next day’s lunch, where I had some amazing fried okra. Not that pre-breaded crap from the freezer section, although that will do if you actually fry it up in a skillet and not a deep fryer.)

Dinner that night was at Neely’s, whose name you might find familiar from The Food Network’s “Down Home with the Neelys.” Pat Neely and his 3 brothers all got together and opened a barbecue place on Mt. Moriah Road, and they now have 3-4 locations in Memphis and 1 in Nashville. By far, dining at Neely’s was my best Memphis experience. I know there are dozens of must-eat places there, but I had 2 days people, 2 days! And, there was no way in hell to get remotely near Beale Street during the barbecue cook-off. I like to watch Down Home, because the Neelys look like they are having a ball while they cook, and most of the time, they make food that I want to eat.

Walking in the door of Neely’s, I get that knee-weakening feeling from the aroma of burning wood and charring meat. I stick with the pork, ordering the pork plate with beans and slaw. Memphis slaw is a whole ‘nother animal in itself. It’s chopped, it may have a little vinegar, mayo, and or mustard, or all 3 or some other combination. It’s definitely different. My waitress assures me that it’s good, with a little kick, and she’s right. I also order the sauce on the side, because—well, you know why. The pork is tender, with little bits of the outside meat (with succulent crispy bits of fat), and the sauce is very good. It’s reminds me a little of the Kentucky “dip” in consistency, but a just a little thicker; still not as thick as a KC Masterpiece-type of sauce.

And, she talked me into peach cobbler, which was good, and the reason why I started this post feeling like I’d swallowed a mongoose.

The last bit of Tennessee barbecue was at a special place…it’s not exactly the most famous and may not be the best, but it was a place I stopped in with my friend Johns and some other co-workers while on our way back from a business trip to Memphis about 13 years ago. Our company had a contract with the naval base in Memphis, and we all drove over for a meeting. Why there is a naval base in Memphis, I have no idea…probably the same reason there’s one in Cobb Co. in Georgia.

Anyway, the guys that we met with sent us down a back road to avoid some nasty construction on the perpetual Memphis-to-Atlanta highway pipe dream, which grows a little more each year, to Somerville, TN, to a place called The Hut. The thing I remember most about that trip was Johns teaching me the words to the Mr. Ed theme song on our way home, while the whole vanload of us sang old TV theme songs to keep awake. (Yeah, we’re nerds.) I did a little detour on my way home and had a sandwich there and then sang the theme to Mr. Ed as I drove away.

From the Wildlife Karma Department: As I’m barreling down Highway 64, on the part known as Buford Pusser Highway, I pass a large turtle crawling out from the median and into the left lane. Well, I wasn’t exactly speeding, because I’d hit a trap and got tagged on the way to Memphis, so I was being a little more cautious on the backroads. And, when I say “large turtle,” I mean LARGE turtle. Like a “if you hit it and you are driving a small car like mine, you might cause some significant damage, especially if you are moving at a high rate of speed” large turtle. Plus, it looked like it might be an old turtle, since it was so large, and for some reason, I thought maybe it might possibly be an important type of turtle. It really looked more like a tortoise, which may have been what started me thinking that it needed saving. Yes, I know that tortoises live in the desert, but this was all at 65 mph!

This is all going through my mind in a split second as I pass the turtle, and there was a cut-across right past the turtle, so before I can really think about it, I’m whipping around heading back towards the cut-across that I just passed before I passed the turtle. As I turn back to the turtle, I am gratified to see that it is still alive and trying to cross the road.

I pull over and hop out of the car…not a lot of traffic coming, so I cross the road and pick up the turtle from the back of its shell in a confident “I’m doing my part in saving the planet” sort of way. The turtle immediately responds by whipping its head back and hissing at me with its rather large mouth open wide and looking like it might just eat me. I scream and drop the turtle…which, by now, you have all figured was an adult snapping turtle…which I had never seen before, ever. Yes, even though I have lived in the South for ALL my fool life, I have never seen a full-grown snapping turtle until that very moment, in the middle of the highway in the middle of nowhere Tennessee.

When I drop the turtle, it lands on its back in the middle of the right lane. I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do next, and it dawns on me that I am in the middle of a highway and maybe I should look to see if there is oncoming traffic…which there is…an 18-wheeler bearing down on us and getting closer by the second. So, and I’m not particularly proud of this, I scoot the turtle across the highway on its back with my foot, and then sort of drop kick it upright into the gravel at the side of the road.

I lean against the side of the car, because I’m feeling a little weak in the knees from the adrenaline of the turtle and my near brush with death on the highway. Then, I notice that the turtle seems to be flailing around, and I’m afraid it will get discombulated and try to re-cross the highway. Now, when I got out of the car, I notice that there was a creek of some sorts on the side of the highway I was parked on, so I knew that the turtle was headed towards the water. This is why I felt confident that I would be assisting the turtle with its goal, and that the turtle really did have a purpose in crossing the road.

I am not about to pick the turtle up again, nor am I putting my foot in danger, because I’m definitely not wearing steel-toed boots, and since I now know for sure that this is a damn snapping turtle, I know that it can take my finger off, no matter how noble my intentions are towards it and the environment. I had stopped at a discount outlet kind of store on the way over to Memphis and picked up a new telescoping aluminum pole for my pool cleaning stuff.

I get the pole out and feel that it’s a little ironic to be on Buford Pusser’s highway with a big stick. I start nudging the turtle, who, at this point, is mightly pissed off at me and hissing and snapping for all he’s worth, towards the water. As I’m standing there with my pole, a woman in an SUV slows down and yells out the window to me, “are you out saving turtles?” I reply that I am trying, whether he wants me to or not, and she gives me a merry “bless you” and speeds off. I get the feeling that either I’m not the only tree-hugging idiot she’s seen, or she’s been doing the same craziness herself…maybe to make up for the SUV.

I get the turtle off the gravel and into the grass and decide that my work here is done…I’ve been as ecologically and environmentally helpful as I can be today, and I should just get in the car before I get myself pancaked by an 18-wheeler myself. (Note that the picture of the snapping turtle is not one that I took myself...I swiped it off the internets, because I was too freaked out to think about grabbing my own damn camera.)

The rest of my trip passes uneventfully and I arrive home safe and sound, and I really hope that turtle made it to his creek as well. And, this afternoon, when I was unpacking my suitcase, I pulled the shirt I was wearing during my trip to Neelys out of the space bag, and the undeniable aroma of hickory smoke faintly wafted up from it, and you know, my mouth started watering and…what the hell, I could eat barbecue again this week. Wonder if you can barbecue a turtle, and if adding a little sassafras would...nevermind.