Monday, January 21, 2013

Moving, Church Food, and Horizons



Just some random stuff and a note about expanding horizons at the end..

Moving

I may be last to the parade here, but just to pass along….  Word (reliably) has it that Monterrey (or Monterey depending on where you look) will be pulling out of San Souci and relocate into the Damon’s building down south by gate one.  Seems a bit odd, San Souci was a pretty good location one would think.  Lot of lunchtime synergy there.  But, as I have grown to learn following the restaurant circuses, sometimes these things get driven more by leases and contracts rather than any food related reasons.  Damon’s was pretty much as I recall set up in a “sports bar” arrangement with flat screens and such..  Be interesting to see how they do it.

Driving through Calloway the other day on Rte. 5, we noticed a sign on the door of Bear Creek Barbecue that they also were moving to be down on Route 249 which heads down to Piney Point.  Locals will remember that about two or three miles down that road was what I remembered as some sort of “Chicken Shack” on the east side of the road.  Had a peaky roof with bric-a-brac as I recall.  Anyway, that is the new home of Bear Creek!!  Pretty drastic reduction in square feet I think, so maybe that "dollars per" drove them out.  Remember they had a fire that shut them down for quite a time.  A restaurateur friend commented that you never recover (monetarily) from an event like that no matter how much insurance you have.  Anyway, will have to stop and see.

Also heard some buzz that Di Giovanni’s on the Solomons has undergone a management change or reversion..

Church Ladies

Saturday MFO and I attended the annual brunch at St. Georges Episcopal Chruch for the Friends of the Library.  One of the highlights at the brunch is the presentation of checks to the various branches of funds raised in the annual book sale.  It’s amazing how much money gets accrued a buck or two at a time (or maybe a book or two)!   Anyway, another highlight for me is always the food.   I usually refer to it as “church lady food” in that it is really made from scratch in one of those kitchens found in church halls.  In this case there were also males involved, but church ladies has a better ring to it.

It is always served on a buffet

With an array of stuff (meats above) in classic church buffet aluminum chafing dishes with lids that fall to the floor with great clatter (one did this year as well).  The complete “menu" consisted of a Green Chile Torte (egg dish); stewed apples; sliced pork; sausage; scrapple; french toast; steamed vegetables; green beans with hunks; Kugel; and intended quiche.  I noticed that the introductions kind of dragged on, and our director of libraries can talk for hours about what wonderful things they have accomplished, but finally the church man came out and fessed up that the quiche was taking longer to cook than he hoped, hence the delay.  After a few more minutes, he came out and said the darn thing(s) still were not done and we would start.  Real stuff.  You don’t get that in chains!!
As I mentioned above the meats consisted of the sliced pork, and also sausage and scrapple:


You might notice that the sausage patties have obviously (I checked) been formed by hand and are not those processed perfectly round discs, and the scrapple was sliced unevenly.  I was not sure of the origin of either, but they were definitely not unfrozen Sysco products.  Due to our somewhat late arrival we were sitting in the back nearer the food.  I kept track and was very much surprised how many people took the scrapple.  I think scrapple is one of those foods that require some time to develop a taste for if you didn’t grow up with it.  Having recently been in Scotland (the one across the pond, not the Southern Maryland version), I kind of compared it to Haggis.  And truth to tell, I liked the Haggis better than the scrapple offered at the brunch.  I also suspect that, like stuffed ham, there is a lot of local variation in the recipe.  This one wasn't overly spicy.
Anyway, it’s these kinds of events and local foods that makes one glad we live here..

Horizons

I am about to embark on a new adventure for me.  The people in our Tourism organization have offered me the chance to post a piece on their site once in a while when something moves me to words.  My first attempt is kind of a “who the heck is this guy?” for those few people in the county that don’t know the Bottom Feeder.  I will not appear under that nom de plume.  The subject matter will be different than what goes into the bottom feeder blog.   There are a lot of neat things in our county and I hope to seek out some of the more interesting ones for them.  But, dear readers, despite that venture, please BE ASSURED that there will be no change in the bottom feeder.  Rants, criticism of chains, calling out bad service, drivers, and manners will remain.. we’ll see how it goes.  Take a look and suggestions are, as always, welcome.  

Here’s the link – by the way, the site is pretty neat and has a lot of good county stuff (Besides me of course).

DFD

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