Southern Sliders

I wanted to tell you about these small hamburgers we have been grilling lately. I guess they are sliders. We have had the small burger a few times in different restaurant and I guess that’s where we got the idea. We had them a couple times at First on 1st street in NYC. I don’t remember them as being great, just small.

So I went to start writing and thought about slug burgers. I looked them up and that’s another story. Two different things. A slug burger has cereal or some other filler mixed with the meat, I think they were a poor mans hamburger. Sliders are small, all beef burgers. I also found this site when searching slug/slider.

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2007/04/sliders_at_bouchon_bakery.php

It’s a neat site, check it out. I love this short little story this guys has written about finding sliders on the the menu at the Bouchon Bakery. Left over meat from Per Se. Those must have sucked.

Anyway here is our condiment tray.

For me there are two reasons to eat sliders. Size, they don’t fill ya up as much as a full burger on a huge hunk of bread. Variety, you can eat two or three so you can try different condiment mixtures.

Southern Hospitality part II

So you thought this was bad?

Well check this out

I got a new wife. Hooray, can I keep the other one? Can I have two wives at one time? Some people think it’s okay to do so. Will she be as good as the first one? Can I keep her? Please, can I keep her? What? Whats that you say, new car, not new wife? Oh, okay, never mind. Car looks good, doesn’t it?

Yes, it’s true we have a “like new” jeep. The frame of the car and the engine were not hurt when Ms. Hit and Run did her thing. We got lucky. Her? Not so much. I think she was arrested and has a court date May 10th. I plan on going just to see what happens. I ain’t gonna say nothing, I don’t want her to go to jail. Like I said when it happened, it could have been me in her shoes.

Southern Junk

For as long as I can remember I have been a thrift shopper. When I got my drivers licenses it was one of the first things I did on my own. I love to shop flea markets, yard sales, thrift stores, anywhere a deal on something unusual might be found. I practice this hobby to this day, and I don’t ever plan on stopping. As a matter of fact I can’t wait til life slows down and I can get back to it.

I had to back off a little ya see. For years I would buy all kinds of things at markets and thrift stores that I thought I could either use or sell for profit. Some of my best purchases have made me hundreds of dollars quickly. You have to know what something is worth when you see it, but most important you got to know where you can sell it for a profit. Buying it is one thing, find someone to buy it at a profit is the trick. One of the best deals I have found was a ten piece Le Creuset set of pots and pans for $18.00. They probably retailed for around $300.00. That was ten or so years ago and we still use them today.

I basically had a “store” that I could transport to the nearest flea market and set up business for the day or weekend. I quickly learned it was no fun packing and unpacking all the little items. Sure I could buy all kinds of cool stuff for three, four or five dollars and sell them for double or more, but how many transactions of this size did I need to do per day to really make decent money? The answer was a lot. So I started building furniture and slowly got rid of all the small items that were a pain to handle. But I miss getting in the car and spending the day going from junk store to thrift shop looking for that next big deal. Now days I go looking for something in particular like clothes or something I need. I can really save money on things I need and sometimes I find something I just gotta have, like this chair.

Ain’t it great. I was at the Value Village the other day and I had picked up two stainless steel bowls for the dogs, $2 for the pair. I found two pairs of shorts I could work in this summer, $3 each. I found a large rusty metal star that will look great on the headboard of a bed and a few other things. I was checking out when I saw this chair, right off I loved the design. The lines were great, the colors were great, it was in great condition and probably dated to the 1960’s. It also was priced $2.50! I had to have it. That’s why now days I don’t go to these shops nearly as much as I used to, sometimes I just can’t help myself. Hell a good deals a good deal.

Southern Festivals

Last weekend Stacey and I had a booth at the Inman Park Festival and Tour of Homes. We have been doing this market for the last seven or eight years. It’s a lot of fun and we always see old friends who we don’t see much otherwise. We also see lot’s of friends we get together with often. We take an ice chest full of beer and food and have a little party. It’s a large festival, they tell me about 30,000 people attend through out weekend. It was a little rainy this year and I think the crowd was smaller than usual.

Inman Park is a neighborhood much like the garden district of other towns. It is instead referred to as a historical neighborhood. You say potato I say tomato. I sold a few paintings, but no furniture. We had a great time and made a few new friends. Except for the lady that thought I was gonna hit her tent with my truck. I was pulling in to the booth area to drop stuff at my booth, backing up my truck. All the sudden I hear someone screaming really loud. Hey, HEY, WHOA, WHOA. I hate being yelled at. So I thought I would tell her so. I got out of my truck and calmly walked up to her and yelled as loud as I could “Don’t yell at me, I see ya, I got two eyes and a big ol’ brain”. She left us alone the rest of the weekend, we did not invite her to the party.

This Sunday we are gonna go down to Serenbe for their May Day Festival. Click on that link and check it out, it’s a really cool place. I have done markets down there a lot over the past two years. I do a lot of sales and custom work for the residents. Last year I built about ten bed/swings for folks there. I have sold lots of art and furniture there as well. It’s a great place for me to pedal my wears, I know tons of people that live there and they refer me to each other often. I’m looking forward to being there as I have made lots of friends over the past two years and haven’t seen most of them for a few months now.

Heading South

There are a lot of big name restaurateurs heading to Atlanta, opening fine dining spots. Check out this list.

Tom Colicchio will bring Craft to Atlanta. Craft Restaurant and Colicchio are huge in NYC, not to mention the success of his television show.

Jeffrey Chodorow has teamed up with Maxim magazine to open what else, but a steak house. Look for Maxim Prime, offering soft porn and meat in downtown Atlanta soon.

Jean George Vongerichten, who has restaurants all over the world, will open Spice Market. He is also slated to open a Spice Market in Dubai, Istanbul, Miami and Barcelona. Good company if ya ask me.

Laurent Tourondel of BLT, that would be Bistro Laurent Tourondel, will open BLT steak at the W Hotel in downtown. This is the second W Hotel to open in Atlanta.

These are really big names and I like it. I have always said I want to be around to watch Atlanta grow into one of the coolest and largest cities in the world and when I can’t take it any longer, sell out and move to the sticks. Well I think Atlanta is well on it’s way, and so am I. You can hardly tell we are in a “recession” the way things are going here in Atlanta. Sure gas is up and home sales are slow and Deltas in limbo, but all in all we haven’t suffered as much as the rest of the country. I think all these big names heading this way is a sign of how well we are doing here and also how much “Southern Culture” is being embraced far and wide, not just here in the south.

The names above are just the folks that will be new to Atlanta, there is also a large list of local restaurant groups that are growing by leaps and bounds. It is amazing the growth that continues here. Everyday there is a new condo/loft development, restaurant or some other business opening here and if they offer a good product they usually succeed.

I said it before, we’re Southern not Stupid

This pie is a s good as it looks!

This is the usual end to a Saturday night at our house.

I took these flowers from my neighbors yard.

Is this considered Southern Hospitality?

Last night around 11 p.m. I had my last sip of moonshine, then the dog and I went off to bed. Stacey had gone to bed about a half hour early, so George and I settled in for a good nights sleep. We had the fan on for a little “white noise”. We had it on the “coma” setting so we didn’t hear the wreck on the highway and we didn’t hear nobody pray. We didn’t hear our neighbor call us the first time and when he did beat on the door it took us a minute. Then he called back and said that wern’t no wreck on the highway, somebody had just crashed into Stacey’s jeep and drove off. It wern’t pretty. Just look at this.

So we called the cops and they gave us a case #. The neighbor gave a description of a truck and of a lady that got out, looked around and then left. We just stood in disbelief. Damn, we said, this really sucks, and here’s why.

#1 Stacey just put a full tank of very expensive gas in her car.

#2 Last week we had new brakes put on the car. $335.00 DAMN

#3 And this is the biggest DAMN, We made the last payment on the car in January 2008. DAMN DAMN DAMN

But no big deal, it was all made better when we woke the next morning and found this note on the crashed car.

I AM VERY SORRY I HIT YOUR CAR, PLEASE CALL ME @ 770 %$# &*^% VERY SORRY signed CAR WRECKER

That makes it all better. She is VERY SORRY. I bet she was VERY DRUNK. I may have done the same thing if I was in her shoes. Wait til I was sober to deal with it. But I bet shes gonna get arrested for hit and run. DAMN