What do I do with this?

As a life long Southerner, I have long heard of chitterlings, or 'chitlins' as most of us know them.  But during a visit to Harvey's Supermarket in Springfield, Georgia today, I saw this just above the smoked ham hocks and next to the fat back.  It is the first time I have ever laid eyes on it, and now, I am Jonesing to gross out the rest of my family and most of my friends and give it a try.  The problem is I don't know how I am supposed to cook it.

Shaped like a typical sausage tube, it would appear that I would slice up the loafy goodness and fry me some chitlin patties.  It sounds as if it would match perfectly with my Alton Brown Biscuit Nazi biscuits and my wife's gravy, though I'm not sure she would volunteer to make chitlin gravy for me.  Again, being unfamiliar with the loaf (and with chitterlings, period - I have never had the courage to taste them), I wouldn't want to pull a pork faux pas.

Also, my guess is that the ingredients (pork shoulder, pork snouts, and presumably a plethora of other pork parts) are premium - it says so on the package - because a roll of chitterling loaf costs $4.99 at Harvey's.  That's $3.33 more than I paid for a package of Lee's pork sausage at the same store.  So either the chitterling loaf comes from princely porcine or there is massive demand for the loaf in Effingham County (boy, they sure stepped up the catering for the county commission meetings).

This is no joke.  I am honestly trying to find the proper way to cook this, because I plan on buying some and indulging one Saturday morning.  Or maybe a Wednesday morning while the wife is at work and the eight-year-old is at school so as to reduce the number of disgusted faces in the house.  If anyone has any tips on how to cook the loaf or incorporate it into a dish (mac-n-chitlins?), please pass them along.

My little girl, The Biscuit Nazi

Whenever I think I have it bad, I am brought back to reality by a number of things. I have the most wonderful, most beautiful, most talented wife in the world who, for some reason, puts up with me. I have a house in the less-than-half completed Housing Bubble Burst Acres subdivision. And I have two gorgeous daughters, the two-year-old ham sammich and the seven-year-old Biscuit Nazi.

Making biscuits this morning reminded me you can't take the Biscuit Nazi out of the Biscuit Nazi, even as she gets older. When she was two, we first began making biscuits together based on a recipe from Alton Brown, just about the only person worth watching on Food Network any more. Given that she is mildly autistic, this means that Mr. Brown's biscuit recipe might as well have been etched in stone by the Lord long before He gave the Ten Commandments to Charlton Heston. Hell hath no fury like the Biscuit Nazi if you are out of baking powder and try to substitute some cream of tartar.

It took almost two years to convince BN that, if you happened to be out of buttermilk, you could use regular milk. No, BN said, Mr. Alton said BUTTERMILK, you MORON. The biscuits will get up and run out of the oven, out the door, shake their flaky booties at the neighbor's dog, then explode on contact with the asphalt of the street. It's a good thing that, when we first began making biscuits together, we didn't tell her that Mr. Alton did not use only shortening in his biscuits. He cuts both butter and shortening into his dry ingredients, which does taste better, but we were trying to avoid having to buy butter every other day during that time a few years ago when dairy was more expensive than beer. We might have brought about the return the Four Horsemen by now, which would really have pissed off Ric Flair and Knute Rockne.

We don't make biscuits quite as much anymore, but when we do, the Biscuit Nazi returns, albeit in a somewhat milder form. She isn't as anal about ingredients anymore. Instead, BN has to do everything by herself, measuring the ingredients, mixing them, kneading and rolling - everything except put them in the oven, which she still understands she can't do. It makes me wonder what she'd be like if I had been a fish monger; "you can't use that fillet knife on a MONK FISH. The Monk fish Mafia are gonna GET YOU!"

If this sounds like a pain, it isn't. I wouldn't change anything about BN, and not just because her anal retentiveness helps her make a damn good biscuit. Besides, she is now forever the Biscuit Nazi as christened by Mr. Alton himself in an autographed picture he sent to BN after I got the chance to tell him the story. I think Mr. Alton understands completely, being somewhat of a food Nazi himself. Now, off to the store. We're need baking powder and buttermilk, and I don't want to be eaten by the giant invisible cow monsters who attack the owners of inadequate ingredients.

Does Anyone Have A Shot at John Barrow? Part 2, Republican Bugaloo

The answer is identical to the answer to this question:

Is Tom Jones secretly in the closet with Tom Cruise?

Now that we have established that there is only, at most, one Tom in the closet, there are two qualifiers. First, much can happen between now and November, and I don't mind conceding that point. Secondly, this is not a commentary on any of the Republican candidates in GA 12. All of them, as far as I can tell, are likable people who sincerely believe what they profess to believe. They may be right in that their way is the better way forward. But in this district, even in what will be a bad year for Democrats, the likelihood that John Barrow loses this seat is about the same as the likelihood that Helen Thomas will go skinny dipping with Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a perfect Republican world, John Barrow would be extremely vulnerable. The 12th District is located in a fairly conservative part of the country, and Barrow is not a conservative. There have been plenty of times when Barrow has voted with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership. Some polls say Ms. Pelosi is the most unpopular politician in the country right now, so all you have to do is say "John Barrow = Nancy Pelosi", right? Um, no. The Republican National Committee, currently suffering under one of its most inept chairmanships ever in the form of Michael Steele (no relation), helped blow a winnable special election in Pennsylvania for John Murtha's old seat by trying exactly that. She may not be a threat for the Miss America crown anytime soon, but most of The People simply don't care about Nancy Pelosi. You may win conservative partisans that way, but then again, you had them at "hel...", much less "hello." Talk incessantly about Nancy Pelosi, and The People will mostly ignore you.

So, you hit on John Barrow's "fake good ol' boy" act, right? He isn't a real Southerner. He calls himself "Barra" to hide his Ivy League heritage. I bet he even went to the Earl "Reel Umureecuhn" Pitts Redneck Accent School so he wouldn't be caught telling The People about how he used to pahk the caah in Hahhvahd Yahhd. Sorry, but that argument is already being propagated by many Republicans (and some Democrats) I know, and that sure helped get 'Barra' defeated two years ago, now didn't it?

"But John Barrow isn't a 'moderate', he's a flaming liberal" you say. Look at how many times he has voted with his party. Whether it's TARP, ze Stimuli, or the GM/Chrysler bailout, "Barra never met a bill that spent taxpayer money that he didn't like" you claim. This actually could cause trouble for Barrow. One of the reasons for the tea party's success is the fact that a lot of people finally got tired of Congress thinking that every problem could be solved by writing a big honkin' check that, in the real world, would be rubbery enough to re-open a shuttered Goodyear plant. Yes, that would be a good argument against Barrow, that is if Republicans didn't have just as bad a record on federal spending as Democrats. It doesn't matter that none of the 12th District GOP candidates were part of that spending problem. All Barrow has to do is pick one or two bills he voted against, highlight those, then remind everyone how Republicans, with the exception of Reagan, historically love to spend their dough, too. He may not win over everyone, but he'll keep at least some of The People on his side.

Not a moderate, eh? "Hello, I'm John Barra, and I voted against Obamacare." It isn't quite checkmate on the "not a moderate" argument, but it's pretty close. When you combine that with a no vote on carbon dioxide regulation to combat "global warming", a yes vote to build a fence on the Mexican border, a yes vote to make the Patriot Act permanent, and a few other votes, you might as well try to argue that John Kerry actually didn't say all those ridiculous things he said, or maybe that he said them before he didn't say them. The GOP will say "but Barrow waits until he gets the word from Pelosi as to whether or not his vote is needed." Even if that is true, it is (a) difficult to prove and (b) matters to The People about as much as soccer matters in the U.S., even if our team does manage to walk on water and win the World Cup (but, with apologies to The Icon Alton Brown, that's another show). As for the argument that Barrow should have taken care of his Democratic base by voting for Obamacare? Barrow knows that if he had voted for the bill, this race would be leaning Republican today.

To be sure, this is a unique year, and as the cliche goes, you never know. But not only does John Barrow have the moderate label in his corner, he has a cool million in the bank to spread that moderate message. Will the Republican candidate get that much coin to compete? It's possible, but right now, I doubt it. There is a reason that none of the political gurus who follow the nation's congressional races have the the Georgia 12th District contest on their radar, other than a few who see it remaining safely in the Democrats' corner. Big national Republican money will only go to those races deemed winnable. It is true that African-Americans, who make up a good chunk of the 12th, may stay home in November, costing Barrow some votes. But will all of the district's independents buy the GOP argument that Barrow is a phony? I could be wrong, but I just don't think so. He won't win in a blowout as he did two years ago. It's possible he may only squeak by, but barring a seismic shift, John Barrow will not be among the legion of Democrats losing their Congressional seats this Fall.

USC vs. USC not the first initial battle

Having never lived in Southern California, I don't know if the folks there have the luxury of taking time out from their pine tar and gila monster droppings mud baths at the spa to care about their university's battle of initials with the University of South Carolina. USC has won the battle so far, but USC isn't giving up just yet on what may turn out to be the most famous of the many battles over initials that have taken place. Frankly there should be a third contender in the battle for the most famous use of SC, one that has nothing to do with athletics.

Earlier this week, a federal appeals court upheld a trademark board's decision that South Carolina could not feature an interlocking "SC" logo on it's baseball team's caps. Normally, any decision involving Gamecock baseball gets the attention of 47-and-a-half people, including members of the baseball team. Sure, the couple thousand fans that typically show up for baseball games at South Carolina pretend they are watching, but about 1,940 of them are usually busy discussing whether the Gamecocks football team will ever return to it's glory days of contending for third-place in the SEC East and getting invited to the Outback Bowl. But the logo decision has ignited a long-simmering anger among a lot of Gamecock fans because it reminded them yet again that, in the eyes of the nation, South Carolina will never be the real USC. That title forever belongs to the University of Southern California.

Indeed it was Southern Cal who challenged South Carolina's logo because it looks too much like the one USC (Southern Cal USC, that is) has used for many years. Southern Cal's attorney, Scott Edelman, then poured salt on the wound by saying the logo fit the Trojans' warrior image more than "a goofy little chicken." Some on South Carolina's side have tried to fight back by pointing out that South Carolina came along before USC (Carolina founded in 1801, USC in 1880), and that the last time the two schools met on the football field in 1983, the Gamecocks won 38-14. Or, as Neil White wrote in "The State" newspaper, "two little words: Lane Kiffin."

There are two problems with those arguments. If it happened before the iPhone came out, you might as well be arguing that South Carolina is better because a T-Rex who lived in what is now Columbia ate those pesky little velociraptors from what is now Los Angeles. The cocaine or frog-licking afflicted memory of So-Cal folk only goes back so far, and not as far as the meth-afflicted memory of an Upstater. For the 18 people in So-Cal who don't use drugs, reminding them of Kiffin's hiring as the Trojans' football coach is not an insult. USC fans take Kiffin as a compliment because he and his family are so purty, which is the number one quality Southern Californians look for in a person.

So the battle for initials appears headed the same way as other famous, or maybe not-so-famous, battles for letter supremacy. The World Wildlife Fund won a Royal Rumble over Vince McMahon for use of the WWF letters and logo, and 97-percent of the world promptly forgot what WWF stood for. The Atlanta Braves thought they would have supremacy over the "AB" logo, but of course lost out to Food Network guru Alton Brown, who won his case by pointing out the Braves were full of lecithin (which, regardless of whether it comes from soybeans or egg yolks has low solubility in water).

Though it appears Southern Cal has beaten South Carolina, don't think for a minute the battle of SC is over. There should be another contender, one that has had more of a positive impact on people's lives than both universities combined. I speak, of course, of the "Sick Call", the greatest radio program in the history of Athens, Alabama. Were it not for the "Sick Call", thousands of folks would never have had their "death and funerals" announced over the radio. The same can be said for thousands more who were patients at Athens-Limestone Hospital, and the rest of us who were fortunate to have lived in Athens would have no idea that Hometown Grocery had turkey necks, lard, and tampons on sale this week. So if there is a lawyer who could represent the "Sick Call" in this ongoing fight, I would bankroll it...if I had any money. Then, after the "Sick Call" got its due, perhaps Athens itself will go after those goobers in Georgia and Greece for the right to call itself the true home of real Athenians.

BBQ Pork Ribs and Pancakes!

God bless Alton Brown and one of the greatest TV series ever produced, "Feasting On Asphalt." This was from the second "Feasting", which took Alton and the crew up the Mississippi River. At Jim's Cafe in Greenville, Mississippi, Alton partook of what should be on some innovative BBQ restaurant's menu 15 minutes ago.

It's simple, too. Just parboil some country-style pork ribs for 40 minutes in some well seasoned water. Well-seasoned means using some beef base, salt, pepper, and the Trinity (no, not that one, the other one. No, not this one either...




the OTHER Trinity.)

Roast the ribs for 45 minutes in a 350 oven in a pan with a cup of the liquid from the boil mixture. Remove the ribs, coat in BBQ sauce, return to oven for 15 minutes, and serve over pancakes.

Guys, if you need Cialis after reading that, see the doc!