WV Gourmet

http://www.amazon.com/SWEET-SUE-WHOLE-CHICKEN-CAN/dp/B0002QEYYK

http://thegazz.com/gblogs/beerstoyou/2009/04/25/bty-tastes-three-organic-fruit-beers-from-samuel-smith%e2%80%99s/

““If you like drinking Cheerwine or Big Red with you pork bbq, the Sam Smith Raspberry might be for you.” With regard to all of them: “Keep a few of these beers in your fridge for when you have a lady friend over.  Chicks should really dig these beers.” – Chris Workman  “

Last Friday, the lovely and talented Megan and the lovely and talented me loaded up and headed off to Athens, Ohio to see the greatest band in the world.  Such a trip would not be complete without eating copious amounts of tasty food. 

We started off with a pre-concert trip to Della Zona, a little pizza place which seems to be run and staffed by hippies.  This place has a great deck area (which did not overlook the ghetto) which is where we sat to enjoy the sunshine.  Della Zona serves pizzas made from local ingredients, many organic and/or ethically treated. 

Our server promptly came out and took our orders.  For appetizers we had the marinated olives and the crostini.  The olives were divine, unless you don’t like olives (if you don’t care for olives, you aren’t my kind of people).  There was an assortment of green and black olives (kalamatas, manzanilla, picholine, and aragon), marinated in a somewhat spicy olive oil, served up with a couple slices of toasted french bread from the bakery next door (also owned by the same folks).  The crostini were four slices of that french bread smeared with a delicious olive “pesto” - two were black olive “pesto”, and two were green olive “pesto”.  I use quotes around pesto, because to me this wasn’t so much a pesto, as a tapenade, but whatever you want to call it, it tasted like something handed down by the angels. 

Moving on to our pizzas.  Megan decided to create her own pizza, which included rosemary, artichokes, greens (tasted like kale, perhaps), and smoked gouda pizza.  I went with one of the signature pizzas - the Athena, which had many greek type things - olives, onions, other such goodies.  Both pies were excellent.  The crust was beautiful, crispy, thin (but not too thin) and even a little bit chewy.  In other words, perfect.  One more thing about these pizzas: this place makes their own mozzarella.  In summary, these pizzas made the pies at Lola’s taste like dog poop (and I really like Lola’s pizza, these are just that much better). 

Although our servers dressed rather hippie-ish and worked in a place that sells pizzas made of locally grown, largely organic, ethically treated, etc. pizzas, I’m not so sure they were really hippies.  They may have looked like hippies, but they did not stink of patchouli and body odor. 

After the concert we grabbed burritos from the late night burrito cart, so that we could more fully experience the culinary scene in Athens, Ohio.  This was a damn good late night giant ass burrito.

Don’t ever change, West Virginia.

Dinner includes roasted pig, deer, deep-fried turkey, squirrel, bear, alligator, antelope, side dishes, desserts and drinks. Bluegrass music performed plus additional activities.

What do you think the side dishes will be?

Take that hippies!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/opinion/10mcwilliams.html

http://www.legis.state.wv.us/bill_status/bills_history.cfm?year=2009&sessiontype=rs&btype=bill

I had to explain to the Brit that in America, when a bill passes, that’s a good thing.  The big question now is will the distributors actually start carrying some of the beers I like?

Where are the spices for unspiced foods?