I mean, it doesn’t really [...]]]> I wasn’t aware that beer cheese was a Kentucky thing until I was living in North Carolina and tried to find some. There were things called “pub cheese” that appeared to be pale imitations, but it was hard to find anyone who had ever even heard of the real thing.

I mean, it doesn’t really have any flavors or ingredients that tie it to the state, and the spicyness is something you rarely see in Kentucky cuisine. John Allman, who supposedly introduced it to the world at his Clark County restaurant in the 1940s, credited the recipe to his brother Joe who was a chef in Phoenix, which may explain the unfamiliar flavor profile.

There are plenty of good brands available if you’re here in KY, but it’s so easy to make that even if you can nip over to Liquor Barn and buy it you might as well do it yourself. The beauty is that you can make this start to finish in about ten minutes, so if you’ve been lazy all day before the Derby Party you can still show up with a KY-inspired show-stopper.

Some musings on the software:

The Cheese: Cheddar. It really can’t be anything else. You want the sharpest cheddar you can find, but the subtleties of the fancy stuff are probably going to get lost, so stay away from the import case. My suggestion would be Cabot Seriously Sharp, the kind in the red flannel wrapper; this is our “house cheese” for everything from eggs to sandwiches to salads, and it’s perfect in this application.

The Beer: You definitely want to use a beer with some flavor; this is no place for your Natty Light or Milwaukee’s Best. (Not that there is a place for such things, except possibly the frat house.) That said, most flavorful beers will make a tasty beer cheese, and it’s probably up to personal preference. I use Guinness, because the late and lamented Slone’s Markets in Lexington and Jackson had a delicious Guinness beer cheese, but a hoppier pale ale like Sierra Nevada would be terrific as well.

The Flavor: I’ve seen beer cheese recipes without horseradish, and I really don’t get it. It’s an essential part of the flavor profile, and I say that as someone who is not the world’s biggest fan of horseradish. (That would be my wife.) Other classic flavors are dry mustard, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, garlic, and onion; you probably don’t have to use all of those, but I don’t think I’d leave out more than one of them. From there it’s easily screwed with, so you can take it wherever you want.

I like to add just a touch of lemon juice to wake all of the flavors up a little.

The Dippers: Saltines are traditional, if it’s the sort of party that wouldn’t scoff at such a thing. Fancier crackers are not exactly unwelcome, but you probably want something with some substance like a Ritz or a Triscuit rather than one of those wimpy little Water Crackers. I like pretzels a lot. Baby carrots and celery sticks are delicious and provide the fiber that one might need after too much beer cheese.

Moreso than probably any recipe I’ve posted, it’s vital to taste and adjust as you make this, so you can find the balance that suits you. The recipe is a good place to start. Remember that the flavors will intensify and deepen as it sits, but will blunt if you plan to serve it cold, so plan accordingly.

Beer Cheese

1 pound sharp cheddar, grated (I recommend Cabot Seriously Sharp)
2 cloves garlic
1/4 onion (white or yellow–red would look weird)
1/2 tsp prepared horseradish
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/2-1 tsp Worcestershire sauce (from Bourbon Barrel Foods if can get it, but Lea and Perrins would be fine)
Pinch salt
A few grinds black pepper
Cayenne pepper to taste
Juice of about 1/4 lemon
1 flavorful beer, left out for 30 minutes or so to get a little bit flat (if you have time)

Dippers of choice (crackers, pretzels, carrots, celery)

Grind up the onion and the garlic cloves in the food processor. Add all the ingredients except the beer and process until it forms a paste. Scrape the sides, and with the processor running add beer through the tube until you get a soft but still scoopable dip. (You’ll probably have to scrape the sides again once or twice.) Taste and adjust.

This is good immediately, but the more classic texture I associate with beer cheese happens after it sits in the fridge overnight and solidifies a little bit. There’s no reason why you can’t make this several days in advance, except that it might not make it to the party.

When we last left our porcine hero, he was 14 hours into a planned 16-17-hour slow roast.  I had just increased the heat to crisp up the skin and make sure everything got up to temperature; after some twiddling, I had the heat around 260. The camp was starting to [...]]]>

How ya livin', Piggie Smalls?

(Continued from Part 1)

When we last left our porcine hero, he was 14 hours into a planned 16-17-hour slow roast.  I had just increased the heat to crisp up the skin and make sure everything got up to temperature; after some twiddling, I had the heat around 260. The camp was starting to smell like pure pork bliss.

Like I mentioned earlier, temperature regulation on this grill was difficult at best.  It had one big long burner across the bottom under the grease pan, and about half of it seemed to come in and out randomly. So the heat would be cruising at around 230 and suddenly it would shoot up to 350, and then you’d have to turn it just about off to get it back down, and after a while it would just go out completely.  Up until then it really wasn’t a huge deal–it just meant keeping a close eye on the temperature, which I was paranoid enough to do anyway (with three different thermometers, in fact).

I was enjoying some shade when my friend Colleen said, “You should probably go check on Piggie. He seemed to be sizzling more than he has been.” Oh, Colleen, ever the worry wart. I assured her that I was running him a little hotter so everything was probably OK, but I went to check anyway.

My first clue that things were not OK was that the temperature went up about 15 degrees as I approached the grill. The second was that a glance at the grill’s thermometer showed the needle buried well past the 500 degrees that the dial registered. The remote probe thermometer I was using to monitor the temp at the front end had its display reduced to black soot.  OK, I thought, that’s bad, but we’ll just open the lid and let it cool back down, no big deal.

Except for the giant column of flame I got when I opened the lid.

Blowin' up like you thought I would

It seems that the jumpy temperature had jumped again, this time causing a massive release of grease from Piggie and then rising enough again to catch said grease on fire. My beautifully and lovingly roasted pig was now turning black in the flames. My mouth opened, but my brain was just unable to piece together a string of profanity that really captured the situation.

“Uh, help,” finally came out, and the cavalry assembled and quickly reviewed the options.  The design of the grill made it essentially impossible to choke off the oxygen flow, and of course we didn’t have a fire extinguisher (because I’m an idiot, OK? Let’s drop it), so it was pretty clear that we were going to have to let it burn. Which left the small matter of Piggie.

I can take no credit whatsoever for saving Piggie.  I was sleep-deprived and completely panicked, so it was several of our friends, notably David, who made the plan for getting his remains from the grill–we would briefly open the lid while David would flip off sections with a shovel onto a table.  Much of Piggie’s middle skin had burned off, which more or less split him into four pieces, a happenstance of anatomy that made the process way easier than it would have been otherwise.  We covered the charred pieces with foil and guarded them from the farm’s many obnoxious dogs as we took the propane tank off the grill and moved it far away, then closed the lid and hoped for the best.

I’m really not proud of my reaction to this whole thing. Once the very initial panic wore off, I was overtaken by complete and inconsolable devastation.  I wanted to burn up with the grill. I seriously wanted to get in my car and go home, if packing my campsite and stuff up hadn’t been such a chore and if Tamara hadn’t just arrived. I was a complete blubbering mess. “Use your words,” Tricia said in one of her very sweet attempts to bring me back; at the time I just didn’t have any, but I’ll try now.

(Note: This gets a little personal and introspective (that is, emo) at this point. If you just want to know how the damn pig turned out, scroll down to the picture and start reading after that. Believe me, I understand.)

I started cooking seriously in med school and residency, not only because it allowed me to eat well on a student stipend but also because it was a chance to do something inconsequential at a time when everything else I did seemed ridiculously consequential. If things went well it was a triumph, and if they went badly it really wasn’t that big a deal. Like I say on the show all the time, who cares if it’s a complete disaster when Subway is just down the street?

Except I don’t mean that. It’s complete BS. I think I used to mean it, but now I don’t. Somewhere along the way cooking went from being a pastime to being a passion–something I pour my whole heart and soul into, and something that defines a big part of who I am. That makes it much, much harder to brush off failure.

The thing is, I can handle disappointing myself. If I’m cooking just for me, I really am happy to just to toss it out if it’s bad. But when I’m cooking for the people I love–even if it’s just a weeknight supper for Tamara and me–that fear of failure looms over me like a dark cloud, even though I know Tamara would be just as content to go to Subway as I would be. Cooking is not really stress relief for me anymore; instead, it’s one of the more stressful things I do.

And that’s the double-edged sword of being passionate about something. I’m not sure I can have the dizzying highs without the terrifying lows (to say nothing of the creamy middles). I have a passion like that for medicine as well, but the successes and failures there are rarely as immediate or personal as they are in the kitchen, which makes it a little easier to be rational about them. When you’re cooking it’s all you, and the results are right there in front of you, so the wins and failures are amplified and reason doesn’t always find its way in.

There’s a reason Tricia and Jim asked me to do this for them–they knew I’d put everything I had into it. And I did, because that’s what I do. And then I got to see it all (quite literally) go up in smoke. I was staring at the absolute biggest failure of my cooking life. I was disappointing them on an almost incomprehensible level. The pig wasn’t cheap. We’d have to go buy a crapload of chicken or something for the guests. I had probably jacked up the grill, which they’d have to pay for. All these people expecting this beautiful roasted pig would have been greeted with buckets of KFC and someone would tell them the whole story, and they’d make pained faces. And because they’re all wonderful people, they’d bring me beers and tell me it was all OK and that shit happens. But I’d be reliving it in my head all night. Who wouldn’t fall apart under all that? I just don’t understand how that would even work.

Now I'm in the limelight 'cause I rhyme tight

But what my utter collapse kept me from acknowledging was that Piggie was actually not in such horrible shape. Yeah, we had lost some middle pieces, and there was a nice coating of soot, but the money sections–particularly the hams and shoulders–were pretty much intact. Most of the mass that was lost was the fat that melted in the unholy heat, but there was still plenty of fat left to moisten up the dry parts. The skin that was left was nice and crispy. And while I had lost the beautiful presentation of the intact pig halves I had hoped to lay out, there was a beautifully browned half-head that could sit alongside the pulled meat to show everybody what we were dealing with.

And it's still all good

It was the WCN! crew–Jenny, Tamara, and me–who set about pulling the pig for eating. We were happy to see some of the kids join us, eager to get in on such a messy enterprise. Ironically, given that our problems all afternoon were due to excessive heat, the hams and shoulders didn’t quite get up to the 190-195 where they pull apart easily, so a lot of it had to be torn off in big chunks and chopped up. Pulling an entire pig is a huge job, but it’s worth it if you know the good pieces to go for; by the time we were done we felt like we had gorged on the crispiest bits of skin and chunks of jowl and face meat.

What we didn’t eat we put out for the guests, and they lined up and made sandwiches and doused them with sauces (to be covered in another post), and they ate, and they smiled. Everyone said it was great; I was still a little too far gone to not just think they were being nice, but considering that there were two gallon Ziplocs of meat left out of the entire beast I eventually convinced myself that it couldn’t have been that bad. I pronounced it “not bad for my first pig”.

Sold out seats to hear Piggie Smalls speak

So what have we learned?

• Don’t try to roast a 175-pound pig. Just don’t. And don’t rely on the farmer’s judgement to guess how big it is–get him to weigh the beast while it’s still on the hoof.
• If you’re renting apparatus, inspect it closely. Make sure the grease has a place to go. Make sure it has vents that close. If you’re doing propane figure out how to get the tank off before things get hot.
• Watch the temperature like a hawk–even if it’s been cruising for a while at a steady temp, there’s no guarantee it’s going to keep it up.
• Fire extinguisher. Seriously.
• Have a shovel nearby. If we hadn’t had one I don’t know how we would have gotten Piggie off the grill.
• Face meat is tasty.
• Remember that while people will sometimes just tell you things are OK to make you feel better, sometimes they tell you that because things are actually OK.
• Surround yourself with wonderful people every chance you get.

Coming soon: an appendix about the sauces we made to go with Piggie. If you have any questions about the pig roasting process, leave ‘em in comments.

Tricia: Have you ever roasted a whole pig?
Me: No, but I’ve always wanted to.
Tricia: How about May 19?

This is how she let me know she was getting married. The ceremony would be a private one on [...]]]>

Believe me, sweetie, I got enough to feed the needy.

Sometime last year I got a Facebook message from Tricia, WCN! host emeritus:

Tricia: Have you ever roasted a whole pig?
Me: No, but I’ve always wanted to.
Tricia: How about May 19?

This is how she let me know she was getting married. The ceremony would be a private one on the beach in Florida, but two weeks afterward they wanted to have a big campout at Terrapin Hill Farm complete with bands and a roasted pig. And according to her, when they first decided they wanted a whole pig my name was the first thing that came to mind.

I’ve done plenty of barbecue, but never a whole pig. I was completely honored that they asked, and not a little scared about whether I could pull it off. But I’m always up for a challenge, so I said yes and plans went into effect.

First of all we decided to rent a giant grill and do it butterflied on that. We couldn’t find a proper spit roaster, and while the propane grill felt like cheating in some ways, for my first pig it seemed awfully ambitious to try to do it over coals or wood.

The pig came from a nearby farm. We were expecting something between 50 and 100 people (that’s as good as we can do–people will never learn to RSVP), and everything I read says you want a pig that’s between 1 and 1 1/2 pounds per person, so we were hoping for a 100-125 lb. pig dressed out–a fairly large pig for roasting, but again, always up for a challenge. Then I got a call from Pete at Terrapin Hill:

Pete: “Yeah, we took that pig to be processed. We said it was going to end up at 125 pounds or so, right?”
Me: “Yeah….”
Pete: “It’s actually 175 pounds. It was 203 on the hoof.”
Me: “Oh. Um, crap.”

So, yeah. Giant pig. My first roasted pig, and it’s a monster. Deep breath. We were planning to put him on early on Saturday morning for a 6PM done time, but if we were dealing with Hogzilla we figured we had better start Friday night.

He was a terror since the public school era.

He was in the farm’s walk-in cooler, cleaned up beautifully and split straight in half. “Butterflied” often means just split up to the back skin but still held together, but I’m actually glad they went ahead and split it–we never would have been able to turn it over otherwise.

First we laid him out on the grill and gave the meat a good spritz with Goya Mojo Criollo, keeping him cool with strategically placed bags of ice.

PIggie piggie piggie, can't you see? Sometimes your oinks just hypnotize me.

It was about then that we decided his name would be Piggie Smalls, aka The Notorious P.I.G.  We had no idea how true that would be….

Honeys wanna chat. But all he wanna know is where the party at?

The prep continued by turning him skin side up and covering the skin with kosher salt to pull out moisture. (This is especially important since we were cooking over propane, which is a much wetter heat source than wood or charcoal.) We gave him about three coatings of salt, wiping him off in between.

Piggy been smooth since days of Underoos.

Finally we rinsed off the remaining salt, dried the skin as well as we could, and at midnight we ceremonially lit the fire, shoving some hickory chunks next to the burner. I wanted him to cruise at about 220, which was tough with our grill since turning the knob one degree could change your temp 30 degrees, but several beers later we finally got it just right.  I couldn’t sleep very well anyway, so I ended up checking on him every couple of hours, but the temp held steady.

Throw your trotters in the ay-a, if you a true playa.

Late Saturday morning we flipped him over, and I started regularly hitting him with my spray bottle of Mojo.  Certain spots in the camp–particularly just inside the window of the general store right next to the grill–began to smell like pure porky, hickory heaven. Viewings became big events, as everyone wanted to see Piggie in his roasted glory.

We were aiming to pull him off the grill around 4 or 5, so around 2:00 I turned the heat up a little to get the skin nice and crispy and make sure everything got up to temp. It was cruising nicely at around 260.

And that’s when things took a bit of a turn.

The Notorious P.I.G. was riding high, until one day when it all came crashing down. When Behind the Music continues.

Head over to the WMMT blog, where they’ve got the audio from the May show posted!  I say it every time, but I really think this is one of the best shows we’ve done.

And thanks to everyone who donated during our Spring Fund Drive–we’ll be drawing soon for the contest winners, [...]]]>

Head over to the WMMT blog, where they’ve got the audio from the May show posted!  I say it every time, but I really think this is one of the best shows we’ve done.

And thanks to everyone who donated during our Spring Fund Drive–we’ll be drawing soon for the contest winners, so check back soon!

It’s no surprise that lunch options are limited in the bustling megalopolis of [...]]]>

An ethical minefield

I like to eat vegetables at lunchtime. Ideally I like to go as healthy as possible for breakfast and lunch to leave more leeway for dinner, but laziness and lack of preparation often leave me grabbing what I can at those times.

It’s no surprise that lunch options are limited in the bustling megalopolis of Hazard, KY. Aside from some sad salads and a few side dishes that could possibly be assembled into a meal, finding a good plant-based lunch can be difficult if not impossible. But I have found an option that can be both tasty and relatively healthy right in the middle of one of the unhealthiest places you can eat–the Chinese buffet.

China King, a buffet that opened last year not far from my office, is actually pretty good overall. They have great gyoza and even some sushi that isn’t Sugano but satisfies the craving. And for my veggie-seeking purposes, they often have green beans stir-fried with garlic, and they always have a simple chicken and broccoli stir-fry.

And in that dish lies my quandary. The broccoli in said stir-fry is delicious and perfectly cooked, but the chicken is painfully dull. If I’m going to add a tiny bit of meat to my veggies for flavor (as I usually do), I want to go with something far more flavorful than that (which they have). But that means I’m going through that dish and picking out the broccoli. And since this is the primary component of my meal, I’m often picking out a lot of it–sometimes all of it.

And thus, my dilemma: is this cool, according to the canon of buffet ethics?

On the one hand, I’d be perfectly justified in taking the equivalent amount of chicken along with the broccoli. I certainly don’t think I’m wronging the restaurant here, especially since I’m getting this to go and paying by the pound, and taking the cheaper broccoli rather than the more expensive chicken. But on the other hand, this is a dish that they composed, and I’m messing with the ratio that’s being presented. Unless they want to offer the chicken without the broccoli (or with much less), they’re going to have to cook up separate broccoli and add it back to the dish, or that chicken will end up as waste. And if a buffet-goer behind me is also attempting to up his veggie intake, I may be shutting him out, and it may be a while before that dish gets replaced since its primary component (the chicken) is still there.

I could ask them to prepare some broccoli for me without the chicken, and they probably would. (They’re nice people.) But that seems to defeat the whole idea of the buffet, and may represent a more significant ethical lapse.

So I pose it to our readers: is it OK to cherry-pick a single component from a buffet dish? Does taking some vs. all of that component make a difference? Does it matter if you’re paying the single price for dine-in vs. paying by the pound to go?

(Note: I will pose this question via email to two of our nation’s pre-eminent scholars of buffet ethics and technique: Mark and Dan from The Sporkful. Hopefully they’ll weigh in in the comments.)

Kentucky! Home of beautiful horses and fast women, or maybe it’s the other way around. People from other places think we all get up on the first Saturday in May and go to Churchill Downs, but in the WCN! crew’s collective 80-odd years we’ve never been there in person on Derby Day. Like [...]]]>

Kentucky! Home of beautiful horses and fast women, or maybe it’s the other way around. People from other places think we all get up on the first Saturday in May and go to Churchill Downs, but in the WCN! crew’s collective 80-odd years we’ve never been there in person on Derby Day. Like most Kentuckians, we try to find our way to a Derby party, where we are probably statistically more likely to see a horse.

So join us on The World’s Only LIVE Radio Cooking Show (That We Know Of) as we dish up some Kentucky favorites for your Derby bash! We’ll have Kentucky-inspired dips and spreads, a Derby dessert that takes advantage of its fortuitous date, and completely unsurprisingly, Jonathan has a few opinions on the subject of the mint julep. (Don’t worry: he’s fer it.)

And this is our Pledge Drive Show, so we’re hoping you’ll call in and make your pledge to support Mountain Community Radio! Pledge $25 and you’ll be entered to win fabulous prizes!

That’s Wednesday, May 2, 6-7PM, on 88.7 WMMT-FM in Whitesburg, KY, or stream it online. Don’t miss it!

UPDATE: We have extended the deadline to make your pledge and get entered for the drawing to Thursday 5/3 at 9PM! Pledge your support for Mountain Community Radio and win!

WCN! is a public radio production, which means that we must, as it has been since the dawn of time, come to you twice [...]]]>

UPDATE: We have extended the deadline to make your pledge and get entered for the drawing to Thursday 5/3 at 9PM! Pledge your support for Mountain Community Radio and win!

WCN! is a public radio production, which means that we must, as it has been since the dawn of time, come to you twice a year to ask for support.

WMMT-FM is a true community radio station, broadcasting real people who want to share what they love with everybody who wants to listen. There aren’t many stations in the world that would take a chance on putting a bunch of chatty and irreverent foodies in the kitchen for an hour every month and turning on the microphones, but WMMT is just that insane, and we like to think the world is a little better for their insanity.

So why not support the insane and make a pledge to WMMT and WCN! today?

If you need another reason, everyone who pledges $25 or more before the end of Wednesday’s show (and lists WCN! as a favorite) will be entered for one of four fabulous prizes!

• Two winners will receive a Fourth of July picnic for four! Jenny and I will be doing the show on that day and we’ll be preparing your lunch on the air. You’re welcome to come watch us do the show and see it being prepared, or you can pick it up at the Appalshop afterwards. (We will attempt to deliver within a reasonable distance.)
• Two winners will receive fabulous cookbooks! We have a copy of My New Orleans by John Besh, a beautiful volume of absolutely delicious NOLA cuisine written by one of its masters. 
• We also have a copy of Good Eats: The Early Years by WCN! patron saint Alton Brown, the first in a three-volume set compiling all the recipes and wisdom from the essential TV show. The books can also be picked up at the Appalshop, or will be shipped to the winners wherever they are.

Of course, everybody wins when you support public radio! You can make your pledge online, or call 606-633-1208 or 888-396-1208. Tell them WCN! sent you to be eligible for the drawing.

Thanks in advance! And as always, thanks for reading and listening.

(Note: to be clear, your pledge will go entirely to WMMT-FM and doesn’t put any money in our pockets, personally. Like all WMMT programmers, we are volunteers.)

(And it’s pledge drive time, so it wouldn’t be [...]]]> Visit the WMMT web site to read Parker’s excellent wrapup of our April episode and stream the audio! I know I say this a lot, but it really is one of my favorite eps we’ve done–good food, good times, and a little learning to boot.

(And it’s pledge drive time, so it wouldn’t be a bad time to drop a few coins in the slot. Stay tuned for next week when we’ll be announcing a very special contest for WCN! fans who pledge!)

Unfortunately, there [...]]]>

Archibald & Woodrow's, Tuscaloosa, AL

One of my favorite quests when I’m on the road is trying to find great barbecue, since it’s one of the few foods that really changes from place to place and it’s always a chance to get a bite of local culture. Fortunately there are terrific barbecue joints just about anywhere you go.

Unfortunately, there are also lousy ones. Bad barbecue is generally still perfectly edible, but the good stuff can be transcendent. Who wants to pass up a chance at transcendence?

Thus, I’d like to propose a scoring system for barbecue joints, combining criteria that are correlated (or anti-correlated) with quality barbecue into a convenient score. This is a collaborative, so please feel free to offer up modifications or additional criteria.

(I’ll add that there are certainly low-scoring joints that have terrific barbecue and high-scorers with crap. But if you’re a betting person, this is the way to bet.)

+2 if the building is made of unadorned concrete blocks. (Paint is OK.)

+3 if you can smell hickory smoke. +2 if there’s a visible pile of wood.

+2 if the name of the place is the possessive form of someone’s name. +1 if that person is on the premises; +2 if that person is dead. (+10 if that person is dead and on the premises.)

Leonard's Pit Barbecue, Memphis, TN. Photo courtesy Southern Foodways Alliance.

+2 if there’s a pig on the sign, +1 for each of the following: the pig is wearing an amusing outfit; the pig is doing a little dance; the pig has eating utensils; the pig is far happier than he should be given his role in the proceedings.

Snead's Bar-B-Q, Kansas City. Photo from roadfood.com.

+1 if there is a vintage Pepsi or Coke logo on the sign.

Miss Myra's Pit Bar-B-Q, Birmingham, AL. Photo courtesy of gas•tron•o•my.

If you’re in the state of Alabama, -4 if there isn’t a picture of Bear Bryant prominently displayed, +2 if there are four or more. (You would think that this would extend to Kentucky and its basketball heroes, but it doesn’t.)

+2 if the restaurant sponsors a local Little League team.

+1 if the restaurant is cooled by a window unit air conditioner, +1 if it isn’t actually situated in a window.

-3 if the place has a full bar. -2 if they serve salads. +1 if they serve catfish.

+1 if the menu is a single sheet of cheaply-laminated paper 8.5×11″ or less. +1 if the menu is on one of those signs with the plastic letters and a Coke or Pepsi logo. +2 if it’s just painted on the wall.

-1 for every barbecue sauce they have available over two. (Two is iffy, but a lot of good places have a regular and a spicy version.)

+1 if they sell mildly offensive t-shirts. (Such as “Get Porked at Billy’s” or “You Can Smell Our Butts for Miles”.)

-1 if they take credit cards. +1 if they have bounced checks taped to the side of the cash register. +1 if there are business cards for unrelated local services available next to the register.

(To be updated as new suggestions pour in….)

If you’re finding your way here from the H-L story, welcome! Here’s the post I mentioned about rotating your vermouth, and [...]]]> The WCN! blog was featured this morning in a story by Sharon Thompson at the Herald-Leader about Kentucky food bloggers. (You should definitely check out the other excellent blogs that were profiled.)

If you’re finding your way here from the H-L story, welcome! Here’s the post I mentioned about rotating your vermouth, and here’s a synopsis of the talk I gave at the blogging conference.

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