So today I met up with KathyT, her sister, and her youngest daughter for Huey Burgers (except Melissa had the Huey’s Club, the rest of us had the original Huey Burgers) and just had a fabulous time visiting with them. It’s always great to see Kathy, and her sister Karen is just delightful and funny as well. Melissa’s a really cool kid and is going home with a huge trophy - and is also getting her braces off soon, I hear. (Man, I remember that was one of the best days of my life, getting those things off for good after three long years.)

They had thought about going to Graceland but had decided not to, but they wanted to go to Mississippi since Karen and Melissa had never been, so that was a sort of easily solved two birds killed with one stone. I hopped into the van with them after lunch and we took off down Bellevue, which becomes Elvis Presley Blvd. and then becomes just plain old Highway 51 at the Tennessee-Mississippi state line. (Well, I guess it’s always Highway 51 anyway, but you know what I mean.)

So yeah, we went to Southaven and then even on down into Horn Lake, where Kathy bought a new headlight and the cute guy at Advance Auto Parts installed it for her even though he really didn’t want to.

Then we came back to Memphis, having driven past Graceland on the way down, but since it’s on that side of the road coming back - yeah, we pulled into the pull-off and got out and walked around the wall and gates a bit. Karen took a picture of me and Kathy and Melissa under the National Register of Historic Places sign that I hope will be so bad (because it no doubt will be of me, they always are) that Kathy won’t put it up on her blog. (Haha, just kidding… I think.) And Kathy took a bunch of pics of some of the graffiti on the wall.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun hanging out with them and thanks once again to Kathy for lunch & the company, I had a great time. And my dogs thank her profusely since virtually none of us finished our entire burger/sandwich or fries (I almost ate my whole Huey Burger but not quite), so Kathy sent me home with a literal doggie bag LOADED with french fries and what probably amounted to almost one entire Huey Burger or almost. It was a feeding frenzy the likes of which you usually only see in the wild on the Discovery Channel, Dobie almost took one or two of my fingers off.

What was really funny, though, was Daisy was the only one smart enough to figure out what I’d brought home in the box I was holding when I walked in the door. The boys were completely clueless (*rolls eyes*).

It was a gorgeous day in Memphis today, and since I was in the neighborhood I drove by my buddy Joey’s house thinking if they were outside I’d stop and say hey. But they weren’t, so I just headed on home after a stop off for needed Krogering.

By the way, I actually have a piece of Graceland in my possession - a piece of rock/stone that I think came from a walkway, I don’t think it came from the wall. My mom wound up with it when she was down here in college, I think a friend of hers actually did the actual deed, but yeah, it’s a piece of Graceland circa around 1961-63. Heh.

So I got one of the new Fruitista Freezes at Taco Hell today because it’s like a million degrees outside in Memphis today. I got the just Strawberry instead of the Strawberry Mango, ‘cos sometimes mango doesn’t taste too good to me.

I give it a pretty enthusiastic thumbs up, even with the half dozen ice cream headaches that came with it.

The Squirrel Queen claims that one can relieve brain freeze by pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth, adding that it warms the nerve endings there that cause the ache. And Rachel agreed with her. But I dunno about that, that sounds awfully weird to me. I’ll try it next time tho.

You can have your home baked bread and other foodie fineries. In MY version of heaven, there is always the smell of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls baking.

And West Tennessee BBQ cooking. And my dad’s hamburgers on the grill.

There is also a never-empty casserole dish of my mom’s asparagus casserole. And billions of my grandmother’s pecan pies, and it’s perfectly okay if I eat all the pecans off the top if I want to.

There’s just really no time to be spared, so pardon me for this hit & run update.

1. A little while ago, I ate a cheese Krystal - because I was badly in need of food that I could get quick and didn’t have to cook and it was 3 in the morning - and it was unbelievably, horribly, terribly, awfully & ungodly bad. I have never had a Krystal that tasted that disgustingly, putridly bad in my life. Yes, I realize that Krystals are not haute cuisine, but come on - it’s a Krystal. How can you screw up a Krystal that bad?? If I die in my sleep here in a little bit, you’ll know what happened. Blech. A shoe sole would have tasted better I think.

2. I’ve been eating entirely too much fast food lately anyway, which is kind of okay because I never eat anyway and all I ever get is, like, one little McDonald’s cheeseburger, and they’re all of a dollar and I DO NOT HAVE TIME to cook. But let’s not talk about the fact that in the past two weeks I’ve been served (A) a cheeseburger that was between two top buns, and (B) got home one day and opened the bag to discover I had a top & bottom bun with cheese in the middle - and no burger. Wake up, people! I know it’s just an unimportant $1.00 cheeseburger, but it might just be someone’s only meal of the day that you totally screw up.

3. I know I shouldn’t have laughed because they’re both elderly and one’s a little sickly and might be a bit senile, but watching not just one but two of my cats fall off the desk a few minutes ago, within a few minutes of each other, with an empty chip bag (the small 99-cent Big Grab size) on their heads was almost as funny as a few years ago when my elderly then-16-year old cat got his head stuck inside an empty Krystal Chik box.

4. On a not-as-amusing note, Maggie’s (same Maggie as in the pic above) new favorite place to nap is with her head on the edge of my keyboard, which usually eventually occurs to me at some point after being puzzled as to why I’m typing in all caps or ““““` is appearing on the screen again.

5. I am apparently now completely and totally assimilated into the electronic communications world at this point, because now that my fax AND my printer are both borked, and a fax that I needed to get where it needed to go so I could start getting some commission payments didn’t go through because that dinosaur of a mid-’90s era fax that I inherited from my old office is totally dead now… it took about a month for it to finally occur to me that I could just put a stamp on an envelope and MAIL it.

6. Besides the petered out fax and printer, now my desktop is apparently on its last legs too - I’ve known it was coming, was hoping to hold it off a little longer, seeing as how that’s pretty distressing since I do 100% of my work on this computer these days - but it spit out a frightening serious error at me the other day and threatened to not start (but it eventually did). In the course of seeing what I could afford to ditch in an effort to get it speeded up a little and prepare to defragment the drive for the first time in I dunno how long, after going through some other directories, I took note of the millions of Notepad files I’ve got saved to the desktop - and had a bit of a chuckle over the title of some of those files, such as: CLC Links Widget, WP Tutorial, Moved Blogs, kathyt, kathyt Links Widget, More Moved Blogs, B Blogger Template, one simply titled B, B Tutorial (yes, I don’t remember why I felt I needed to make her her own instead of giving her the one I gave everyone else), and Sarcastro Stuff (which reminds me yet again that I STILL need to repost all his old photos one of these days, ugh). Anyway, giggle - yeah, I’m a blog geek.

7. There are angels in the blogosphere and in my MySpacesphere too. Angels, I tell you.

8. I’m so tired I don’t have time to BREATHE, and I don’t have time anyway because I have way too much work and projects to do. This staying up for a day and a half at a time, sleeping a few hours and starting all over again is getting a little old. I’ve been up again for about 38 or 39 hours now and worked straight through for about 22 well, really about 29 or 30, of those, so yeah - ’scuse me if I’m a little loopy right now.

That is all. But seriously, if I don’t at least show up for a minute on Twitter by tonight? Food poisoning. Ugh, a nasty, dirty, filthy shoe sole would have no doubt tasted better. Yuck.

9. (Yes, Lesley and Brittney, I know I shouldn’t eat meat anyway.)

10. (But still - it’s a Krystal! How can anyone screw up a Krystal??)

11. Zzzzzz…

Yum, that was good. Needed more onion, though. I was a little too conservative with the chopped onion (that almost killed me while chopping it, and normally I don’t get weepy when chopping onions but that sucker was superstrong). I thought I had already put too much in and it turned out not to be enough, will just toss every bit of onion I have left in tomorrow probably.

And note to self about just going ahead and biting the bullet and buying real Fritos corn chips next time. The Kroger version, they were way too salty, and I like salty, so if I think it’s too salty then there’s way too much salt.

Other than that, perfect. Maybe even BETTER than Sonic’s chili pie if I get the above noted changes right in the future.

Sometime in the near future when I can afford to splurge a little bit at the grocery again, I have every intention of trying this recipe out. Every time I read it, it makes my mouth water, yummmmm.

The dogs are having 98 cents a big box saltine crackers for treats instead of their usual generic Milk Bone treats right now, but like they care. You know people food is WAY better than dog food anyway, and considering some of the stuff I’ve seen several of them eat (except Daisy, who is perfect) that I didn’t intend for them to eat, crackers are an improvement over, say, paper towels or cardboard.

Fast food joint Sonic’s expansion has been far and wide in the last 20-25 years, but those of you who have always lived in the cities and never lived out in or grew up in the more rural boonies of West and Middle Tennessee like ‘Coma, Lindsey, a few others and myself have likely don’t know, and that would be:

(A) What a good Frito chili pie tastes like, or -

(B) What Pickle-Os are, and if you do, you’ve likely never had them the way they’re supposed to be.

The Sonics down here in Mempho actually do have chili pies (at least they did last time I looked, which has been a while), but they’re not right. They’re just not made right, and they’re just not very good. I have often thought that the Sonics here need to send their cooks to rural Northwest Tennessee to learn how to cook some of this stuff correctly (not just the chili pies).

Sonic here (or at least the one nearest me) tried to do Pickle-Os for a little bit too, but evidently they didn’t go over so well and soon got removed from the menu. And no wonder, because they weren’t making them right either - for one thing, not near enough batter on the things, and they just weren’t good. (In case you’re wondering, Pickle-Os are fried dill pickles, but you probably guessed that already.)

I also got into an argument with the employee manning the order system one day when they did offer Pickle-Os, who insisted that they could not possibly be made with cheese on top of them. She insisted they would be too soggy.

Well, not if they were cooked RIGHT to begin with. I know this for a fact because I’ve been eating Pickle-Os with cheese (and correctly made Frito chili pies) for well over 30 years now. The Sonic in Paris opened somewhere around 1976, 1977 or thereabouts, when I was still in elementary school. My friends and I pretty much lived at the one in Camden when I was in high school - probably much to the managers’ and cooks’ dismay, since we would do things like order Regular Cheese Coneys without the hot dog, Dr. Peppers with a lid (because otherwise you got no lid on your cup), and write checks for 54 cents for a soda. And at one time or another, I probably ordered something at every other Sonic in West Tennessee outside of Memphis over the last 30 years.

One of my best friends since school days swears by the power of Pickle-Os with cheese to cover up any smell of alcohol on one’s breath, which was always one of those good and important things when you’re 16, 17, 18-ish and especially if one’s parents were hypervigilant about such things. Mine weren’t, so it didn’t matter to me, but his were and he swore by that fact.

Anyway, I KNOW my Frito chili pies and Pickle-Os with cheese, the latter you can’t get down here in the city anymore anyway. And I’ve come to terms with the fact that no Sonic down here will ever learn how to make a decent and proper chili pie. So sometimes I get a craving and think, “Oh, man, that would be soooo good right now,” and just have to fight it because the nearest Sonic that can probably make a chili pie correctly or even has Pickle-Os is probably at least an hour’s drive away.

So I tell you all that to now bring up the fact that today, I am about to make what still won’t be right, but will be close enough, to what a real chili pie should be, and I’m very happy and excited about it.

Even in my presently sorry financial state (and thanks to the recently discovered Kroger gift card that had never been out of my luggage since Christmas), I’d say this is not too bad. I’ve got enough stuffies to make two, maybe three, chili pies (three days’ worth of meals for moi who hardly eats anyway). Probably the biggest score of all this is (since I don’t really cook anyway), I FINALLY found some storebought chili I can stand - most of it’s either just too salty or too gross for my tastes - so that’s basically what led to all this chili pie planning.

So I got two or three days’ worth of fixins, at about $2.50 for the chili, $2 on sale for Kroger sharp cheddar cheese (which honestly, I’ve gotten to where I prefer it to the name brands anyway), $1.19 for the Kroger version of Fritos - which will probably be fine - and 24 cents for a little onion. So around six bucks for two or three days’ worth of food that will hopefully staunch my craving for a decent and proper chili pie for a while, but should at the very least be plenty tasty enough.

I’m maybe a little more excited about all this than I should be, but I don’t care. And off I must go now, there’s a chili pie to be made!

So I’m here to tell you that yesterday, April 12th, was National Licorice Day.

WTF???

You know, it’s been my experience that most people don’t even like licorice. I like cherry and strawberry Twizzlers okay, but that’s about it.

No offense to the licorice industry, but wow, I just don’t know what to think about National Licorice Day.

By the way, today (April 13th) is International Plant Appreciation Day. Even though I have a black thumb, I think I can appreciate a plant a little easier than I can licorice. So go appreciate your plants, people! No charge.

(1) Skittles Chocolate Mix - Well, I’m a big fan of Skittles in general (especially the Sour and Tropical), but as many know, I’m not a big fan of chocolate. (It’s “okay”.) So I wasn’t really expecting to like Skittles’ new Chocolate Mix that much, but I sure did expect to like it more than I do. With flavors like S’mores, Vanilla, Chocolate Caramel, Chocolate Pudding, and Brownie Batter, you would just think they’d be better than they are. The Brownie Batter ones make me cough. Real chocolate fans will probably love them though.

(2) Dogs with Little Dreadlocks - Enough said about that, but if it would just (A) stop turning cold or (B) stop raining…

(3) No No No No NO Tornadoes! - Speaking of the above, it’s a gorgeous day out right now and feels REALLY nice outside even though it’s about 100 degrees in my house, and I am so sick of rain. So the news from Channel 2 Weather this morning regarding potential tornado activity here in the west is a bummer, and I don’t deal well with the sirens nowadays. Go away, tornadoes, shoo!

(4) The Beanie Army - Tojo, my cat who terrorizes the rest of the house and lives in the guest bedroom otherwise (but he’s such a sweetie when it’s just me and him), has a new project going too, I noticed. As I’ve mentioned before, since no other animals in the house want to be friends with him, he has made all of my old Beanie Baby and Teenie Beanie cats and dogs that were back in the bedroom his only friends. (As Churlita called him, he’s “resourceful” like that.) Yesterday I noticed he’s got them all lined up, almost in single file, down one entire side of the bed back there. I wonder what this means?

(5) In Hiding - Also, wonder where I put my W-2 and 1099? Hmm.

(1) Somebody (Jag? Aunt B.? I can’t find it now) wrote about these a while back and I was covetous and waiting for them to appear on Memphis grocery store shelves. Finally they have, and now I can NOT stop eating them because they are the best thing EVER:

(2) I just got back from a 24-hourish trip to Birmingham. I drove through a monsoon in Mississippi to get there. Got there and Alabama was, like, sunny and warm and had been all day. Today it was like 78 degrees and felt as humid as any June day in Tennessee. I get back to Memphis and not only am in rain again but immediately have to change into a sweatshirt because I’m freezing. Grrr.

(3) Trying to decide if I should be worried about Dobie having eaten a few Nair wax strips, but considering all the other dangerous, ridiculous, and just plain gross things he has ingested in his 13 years on the planet, I think probably not.

Right this moment, I’m torn between jonesing for some Krystal Chiks, and the possibility of going and hugging the porcelain god due to some weird wave of nausea that suddenly hit me a little while ago.*

Yeah, I don’t understand it either.

* (No, I am NOT pregnant.  No way no how.)

RE:  New Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash

What it is:  Lemon-Lime Soda “with a splash of cranberry” (and caffeine free)

Verdict:  Not impressed.  I am thinking this is one of those things that might only be good with some alcohol added to it.  But I say “might” because…

Helpful Hint:  Whatever you do, do NOT add coconut rum to it.  Ick.

Dear Wendy’s,

I am relatively certain that if one goes to France and orders Chicken Cordon Bleu, one will not find a slice of American cheese anywhere on the plate.

In a word - YUCK.

Lunchless and unhappily yours,

Lynnster

I wanted to hurry up and get this food meme done because I was tagged by Merrie Olde England’s most ardent Big Orange supporter, The Vol Abroad, who is likely going to be going into labor just about any minute now, so I wanted to finish this before she winds up knee-deep in nappies and such and still has time to read.

This one’s all about your five fave places to go out to eat in your own general locale. I find myself kind of grasping here because most unfortunately, nearly all of my very favorite locally owned, non-chain places in the metro Memphis area have closed - some long closed now, some relatively recently. Cafe Roux, The Fish Market, vegetarian joint Babylon Cafe, and five legendary Memphis haunts - Gallina’s (Italian spinach to die for), the Buntyn Restaurant (Southern home cooking and the best yeast rolls ever), and Captain Bilbo’s, Pappy & Jimmie’s, and Anderton’s (all seafood) - all gone.

So here are my five still alive & well in Memphis:

1. Paulette’s on Overton Square in Midtown - Best Sunday brunch ever, with the world’s most delicious crepes of all kinds, strawberry butter for your croissants, and what would Sunday brunch be in the South without a Mimosa? (Well, unless you’re doing the Bloody Mary thing.) Brunch is awesome, though I pretty much have crepes of some sort there no matter what time of day it is.
2. Cafe Ole’ in Cooper-Young - The ex and I dined there the first week it was open (now quite a long time ago) and for a few years after probably ate there once a week at least. It’s still a fave place to go and fave meet-up place for me, having met up there with Hutchmo, and ‘Coma & Squirrelly on a couple of different occasions last winter. One of the reasons we used to go so often in the early years was because it is very vegetarian-friendly and was a fave of a vegetarian friend of ours, and my mom and I used to go pretty much anytime she was in town (for the shrimp, see next sentence). Decent Mexican Tex-Mex type fare, and the bacon-wrapped stuffed shrimp are to die for.
3. Huey’s (all over but the original is in Midtown) - Legendary in all its dive-y goodness, anyone who lives in or visits Memphis regularly will likely regale you with the virtues of the Huey Burger if asked. It’s one of those things that people just tend to crave. Whether the original or one of the many variations, it’s dependable - you can always count on it to be exactly the same every time. The potato soup is also excellent, and they had stuffed jalapenos before everyone and their brother and the grocery started carrying them, and these are done RIGHT (though the East End Grill’s are pretty great too).
4. Brother Juniper’s College Inn off the Highland Strip - I actually haven’t been here in quite some time, but that’s mainly because I am rarely up in time for breakfast, which is what anyone should go for. It opens at 6:30 a.m. now, but I think back in the days when the ex and I used to hit it for breakfast it was open even earlier; it was a frequent stop before long road trips for us, including when we drove to Kansas City to see the Hoodoo Gurus in ‘91. The breakfast fare is just so indescribably good, I couldn’t even begin to tell you. The biscuits - you would not believe.
5. The Rendezvous, Downtown, and Corky’s (several locations, but the original on Poplar in East Memphis) - I’m cheating here by putting two restaurants here but (A) surely I couldn’t do this without mentioning BBQ, and (B) I am partial to both. And lots of you outside of Memphis are familiar with Corky’s since it has branched out to many other locations statewide and nationally and therefore it’s actually a chain now, but since it’s a Memphis original, I’m keeping it here. It’s my meme and I can do what I want! So anyway, yeah. I love both for different reasons - for dry ribs made with dry rub, I prefer the Rendezvous; wet ribs with lotsa sauce, Corky’s. And the Rendezvous is a Memphis legend and has been there forever and the atmosphere is pure Memphis, you just can’t beat it. I love to take first-time visitors to Memphis to both when possible.

Now here’s where I make up two more of my own categories, because I can:

Honorable mention of places I’ve been to: Zinnie’s East in Midtown - for the spinach nachos, which I haven’t had in a very long time but now my mouth is watering just thinking about them. If you’re a spinach lover, you won’t be disappointed. Yum.

Honorable mention of places I’ve not yet been to: Memphis Pizza Cafe on Overton Square, Midtown (other locations too) - Practically everyone I know, including Lesley, loves it and I’ve been thinking for years I’d get down there eventually, but just never have. Maybe sometime when Lesley is in town again I’ll break my missing streak on this one and we’ll meet up there for lunch.

OK, so now that we’re basically done, here are the actual rules and regulations for this particular meme:

1. Add a direct link to your post below the name of the person who tagged you (if you get tagged for it, you can probably copy and paste it to make things easier - I did). Include the state/city and country you’re in:

Nicole Tan (Sydney, Australia)
velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)
Olivia (London, England)
ML (Utah, USA)
Lotus (Toronto, Canada)
Yianna (Athens, Greece)
Melusina (Thessaloniki, Greece)
Vol Abroad (London, England)
Lynnster (Memphis, Tennessee, USA)

2. List your top 5 favorite places to eat at your location with as much or as little info as you’d like to share. (See above.)

3. Tag five other people (preferably from other countries/states) and let them know they’ve been tagged.

Since I’m interested in places I might wanna check out someday (who knows!) or already hit on occasion, I’m gonna tag five people I know stop by here fairly often and are from different places, and going to just choose one Nashville/Middle Tennesseean. Most of my Nashville area friends seem to be hot spicy food fans (which I wish I could but cannot do) so I’m just going to select somebody else at random, and skip East Tennessee altogether (no offense but I already am familiar enough up there). Take your time if you get tagged, no hurry. Here goes:

1. Megan can probably tip me off to some good Nashville/Middle Tennessee spots.
2. Churlita (I might need to know where’s good to go in Iowa, you never know)
3. Margaret (seeing as how I am in Birmingham rather frequently tho not as much lately, good info to have on hand tho)
4. Kathy P. (traveling to St. Louis is always a possibility when you live down here)
5. And Sara to cover the Wild Wild West.

… dogs is ecstatic that a piece of the Domino’s Philly Cheesesteak pizza slipped off the plate and fell on the floor.