Southern Food Night

First off, I apologize for being so slow to put up all of these pictures and information.  Second, I realize that my writing is not as funny, witty or charismatic as I would like, so if anyone else wants to guest blog that's totally fine by me.  On a similar note, if anyone wants to redo this layout into something more stylish, I won't take it as some type of disparagement on my creative styling skills, which so far extend to picking a premade template. Anyway, onto our first meeting...

The first meeting was held at my (Liz's) tiny one bedroom apartment.  In an attempt to push my own cooking skills, I picked a theme for a type of food I was utterly unfamiliar with -- Southern food.  Having never been to a Bojangles, Waffle House or ever tried sweet tea, I decided to try my hand at fried chicken.  While I hoped to hedge my bets that something would be edible by making two different recipes, the real ace up my sleeve was the strong belief that people would even love eating shoe laces as long as they were deep fried.   In the end, I settled on Buttermilk Fried Chicken with Ancho Honey by Bobby Flay and Lemon Brined Chicken by Thomas Keller.







As for everyone else's dishes, it has  been awhile, so excuse me if my memory is just a wee bit fuzzy.  Or maybe it was Mark's drink that's interfering with my memory.  The night started off with a Dip from Meghan and some type of Cheese Stick from Erin. The other main dishes were Egg/Sausage/Ham and Veggie Casserole from Jen, Shrimp and Grits from Mike and Stef, and Jambalaya from Dave. Yes, Dave, Jambalaya is a MAIN dish, not side dish... but props to you for getting it made despite a power outage.  As for the actual sides, Dani brought both Biscuits and Cornbread, and gets presentation points for serving the cornbread in her brand new cast iron skillet.  There was also Mac and Cheese from Greg (though he also gets thanks for helping me clean and fry the chicken). Jeremy, probably also following the fried shoe lace theory, made Fried Okra.  Christine brought a Cabbage Salad and also dessert, TWO Pecan Pies.  And Mark brought us some Alcoholic "Frozen" Drink with dirt, which was good enough that I kept going despite the interesting addition. And finally, Angie brought ice.  Kind of.  Sadly, Ben couldn't make it so we didn't get to sample his Green Beans and Butter and Backfat, but I don't know if my heart could have handled it by this point.

All in all, the night seemed like a big success.  The food was great, and there was even leftovers for Erin to bring home.