Bovina does Kosciusko

Say it with me now- kos-see-es-co. I’m not even sure I can get away with the title. My grandparents’ horse farm is actually located in Hesterville, a community 10 miles northwest of Kosciusko composed of only a church, a cemetery, and an old schoolhouse.

Either way, it’s definitely a change of pace from our urban setting here in New Orleans. Home-brewed refers to sweet tea, which takes the place of Stone Ruination at the dinner table. Buildings and dirty sidewalks are replaced with undeveloped land dotted with hay fields and sprawling pastures. Wi-Fi is some alien movie, and the only Internet connection is the mythical dial-up. It’s a place where Slow Food isn’t some hip movement; it’s a way of life. Instead of running across the street to the Tuesday Farmer’s Market, you walk out your back door and pick you own squash and corn.

Like every other visit to their house, actually any of my grandparents’ houses, the trip always seems to be centered around a meal. We show up, talk football and weather (I’m pretty sure that’s all old men know), and then gluttonously leap into a buffet that could outshine any overpriced “organic” meal from Whole Foods. Buffet? Hey, when your family exceeds two tables, family style serving becomes obsolete. On the menu this weekend- baked beans and green beans from the garden less than 400 feet away from the table, and grilled pork tenderloin from a neighbor’s pig given to my grandparents in a trade involving hauling off fallen trees- old-school bartering at its best. A true “farm fresh” meal without the farmer’s market.

In a restaurant setting, the chef would be declared a genius and the menu would be proclaimed as “ever-changing”, “local”, or “fresh”. If the pork loin was stuffed with pine nuts and the bacon in the baked beans was labeled “pork belly” on the menu, it would fly out of a New Orleans kitchen to the tune of $25.00 - $30.00 a plate. This same food, using fresher ingredients, can be cooked just as well, or even better, in a humble kitchen by an old lady from Mississippi who doesn’t how to use an immersion circulator and thinks sweetbreads are made at Krispy Kreme.

Although lengthy and monotonous, making the drive to see these kinfolks is certainly worthwhile, not to mention I usually come back home with enough squash, corn, tomatoes, fresh sausage, fig preserves, and gallon zip lock bags of hand-picked blueberries to sell to a local tattoo shop and subsequently force Jim Tressell to retire.

Bicycle Pub Crawl

Hard to comprehend. Funny to watch. Easy to do. Just insert Queen and the rapture into your generic pub crawl and you have the 2011 Bayou Boogaloo Bicycle Pub Crawl.

When I first saw this hilariously themed pub crawl on Bayou Boogaloo’s website while checking out the weekend’s music lineup, I envisioned the ride as a muddled mix of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, The ButterCream Gang, and the scene in Sandlot when Phillips and the opposing team roll up on their bikes. As I rode up to Buttermilk Drop Café and Bakery at 7:00 on Saturday MORNING, I realized that this was no 1990's movie. Outside, there were around 100 bikes lining the adjacent sidewalks with a few riders chugging cheap beers. Inside, bikers, ranging from young hipsters to old tourists, were enjoying the Café’s warm donuts and cool Hennessey sno balls (I can’t make this kind of stuff up).

I knew we were destined for trouble when the coordinator of the crawl showed up a few minutes late on a bike with a radio in tow and wearing a plush beer hat he apparently won from the 1999 Mississippi State Fair.

The guy actually knew what he was doing. As we made our way clear across Mid-City along historic portage routes, our leader, known simply as Peter, occasionally stopped to point out archaic canals, historic homes, and even the oldest fire hydrant in New Orleans (some Mid-City bar should go ahead and make the fire hydrant their new drink). Our pedaling parade arrived at our first destination, Mid City Yacht Club, and I immediately cracked open the first High Life of the day. Even though it was American Craft Beer Week, anything other than carbonated, piss-colored water at 8:00 am would probably have had disastrous results. Not that it really mattered. As soon as we bellied up to the bar at Finn McCool’s at our next stop, I couldn’t not order a Guinness. After all, a few jersey wearing soccer fans had beaten us to the bar and were taking pregame Irish Car Bombs for the Scottish Cup Final. I had never been to Finn’s so seeing soccer fans at a bar before 9:00 am was pretty astonishing . Even more remarkable- free shots for proper spelling at Drunken Spelling Bee.

By the time we had worked our way through Finn’s and then Pal’s Lounge, the path of our bikes was more like the second level of Paperboy.

As our chaotic and meandering bike brigade got within a few blocks of our next stop, I instantly knew this would probably be the destroyer of our crawl. Surrounded by the muffled sounds of a brass band, each rider was greeted with free beer, red beans (some of the best I’ve had), and fudgesicles. Had the rapture happened? Was that the sound of angels striking up a band and singing “Power in the Blood”? Was I standing at the gates of heaven? No. Even better, we were just standing at the entrance of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club- the “frat house” of the Zulu Parade. Zulu had graciously opened up the doors to their club and ushered us into the main room of their Broad Street building. Once inside, the cause of the muffled heavenly chorus we once heard was now revealed. The Pin Stripe Brass Band had already starting playing, and remember, this is still before 11 am.

After finishing our free beer (hey, it was already 85◦ and we were thirsty), we found a spot next to the full size bar located within the main room. Our choices were limited to Budweiser, Remy Martin, and possibly the greatest way to sell liquor- by the ½ pint, without a mixer.

By this point, our pub crawl had completely unraveled and had transformed from a paperboy route into a dysfunctional episode of G-Games, the X-Games spinoff my brothers and I filmed when we were kids. Since we knew the climactic Zulu portion of the crawl couldn’t be topped by the remaining 2 bars, we decided to go ahead and get a jump start on the festivities at Bayou Boogaloo on the banks of Bayou St. John.

American Craft Beer Week

For those who can separate beer into more than 2 categories (light and dark), last week’s American Craft Beer Week (ACBW) served as a celebration of the national craft beer movement.

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Celebrating artisanal beers and the breweries that artfully create them, this week also acted as a catalyst to convert the Budweiser, Miller, and Coors drinkers of the world.

These big three make up 78% of the market share and are extremely influential in reducing the availability and marketability of better tasting craft beers via lobbyists and campaign fund donations in Washington, and their local control over distributors, wholesalers, and category captains. With FREE tastings spanning out over the crowded beer bars and stores of New Orleans and covering beers from Brooklyn, NY to Broussard, LA, the celebratory week seemed to be effective in emphasizing the enjoyability and availability of craft beer in the Louisiana market.

Our personal journey across the American craft beer map began at Breaux Mart on Tuesday with tastings of summer seasonals. Beer tasting at a grocery store? Yep. This is New Orleans after all, the only place in the South where you can walk in for Gushers and Capri Suns and stumble out with an Abita Party Pack doing the Wal-Mart Bounce and drunk off the pint of vodka and bottle of wine you just sampled next to the produce section. After sampling a few crisp and refreshing summer seasonals, Abita Wheat , Sam Adams Summer Ale, and Harpoon Summer, and smoking the chickens we received as a gift earlier in the week (pretty random), we made the 6 block walk to our next ACBW stop.

At the Bulldog, a bar that prides itself on its wall of endless taps as well as its gut wrenching chili cheese fries, we got to sample a rarity, even if it was brewed only 30 miles away. Normally a little overwhelming with its strong alcohol content, the cask conditioned version of the Abita Abbey Ale was mellower with a sweet dark caramel finish. Although this Belgian Dubbel was much more drinkable and mellow than the bottled version, we decided to grab a few of Erin’s newfound favorite craft brew, Magic Hat #9, before closing out Day 1 of our ACBW.

Like Day 1 of ACBW, Day 2 began at a locale other than a bar. This time we began at Cork and Bottle in the American Can Company building, where The Beer Buddha guided us through the lineup of brews produced by Wasatch Brewery in Utah. We started with the aptly named Little Slammers- 7 ounce bottles of Golden Ale. After this mainstream-ish beer, we then continued through a flight of the brewery’s Double Bock, Polygamy Porter, and White Ale. While running through the land of the Sister Wives beer selection, we converted a former Miller Lite only drinker into somewhat of a craft beer drinker before we made it to Wednesday at the Square.

Since I’ve written about The Square before and since this part of our beer journey was just a temporary stop, I won’t bore you with the details of the Square. Just know Abita’s sponsorship of the weekly festival allowed us to observe ACBW uninterrupted.

Our day was nearing the end, but we had to make a not-so-minor stop at Cochon Butcher for sandwiches and charcuterie on our mid-week, multiple-neighborhood beer journey that now included stops in Mid-City, CBD, the Warehouse District and the Lower Garden District.

When we finally arrived at Avenue Pub, the bar, including the upstairs balcony bar, was crawling with beer geeks as well as domestic drinkers. We first went upstairs to try some of the beers being featured as part of their Wednesday Night Tasting (Nano Night). Luckily, well for me at least, I was able to squeeze my way into the front of the line to get the last sample of Parish Brewing’s Canebreak. Brewed in Lafayette, LA and billed as an American wheat, this crisp sweet ale more closely resembled an amber ale than a wheat ale. Being simultaneously poured with the best of Dieu de Ciel, Brooklyn, and Unibroue at the balcony bar, the Americanized, heavily spiced, and fruity Saison Athene from St. Somewhere solidified itself as our consensus top pick of the night.

Life is too short to drink light beer. If Hank Hill can enjoy Alamo Beer at Thanksgiving, I think anyone will find that craft beer, although a little pricey, is much more enjoyable than a six-pack of Natty Light tall boys.

Bovina Does Pensacola Beach

I know, I know. The blog has been shut down for awhile. I should make up for the recent absence and this short blog in the coming week since American Craft Beer Week started yesterday. So be on the lookout for “a new thang” from Avenue Pub and The Bulldog.

Part of the blog’s latest disappearance can be attributed to getting passed over in the home run derby, and finally sneaking in a vacation during our wedding season all-star break. With an extended weekend trip to Pensacola Beach that included a really good ESB from the off-the-beaten-path Pensacola Bay Brewery, and a Gulf-front balcony right on the beach, as well as the best BBQ we have ever eaten at The Shed in Ocean Springs, we were finally able to relax and unwind- minus the 3rd degree sunburns.




Restaurants were limited, and making the trek from Pensacola Beach to Pensacola across the bay was restricted by a ½ gallon of rum, so we inadvertently broke the number one beach dining rule- Don’t eat at restaurants that sell t-shirts from an in-house gift shop. Most of these establishments on Pensacola Beach were more crowded than a post-Sunday School Cracker Barrel and the food was mediocre at best, but we did manage to stumble upon some decent food (parmesan crusted grouper) at a newly opened restaurant overlooking the Santa Rosa Sound, Grand Marlin.

When we did make it back to downtown Pensacola, we found some absurdly good grits topped with bacon, spinach, mushrooms, grilled shrimp, and sweet potato shoe string fries, as well as blackened cobia (there's a reason it's called lemonfish) while dining right next to the bay at Fish House.



The fuller’en hell feeling from endless crab claws and bottomless seafood nachos from Flounder’s only lasted so long, and our luck fishing at the pier was even shorter lived. So, once again, we found ourselves doing our part in financing the Pensacola Beach-Gulf Breeze bridge by running to Joe Patti’s Seafood. With an in-house sushi bar and stocked with more fresh fish, shellfish, and other mysterious seafood than the Santa Rosa Sound, this seafood market doubles as a mini theme park for foodies and, although you have to take a number from a secruity guard when you enter the market, is much easier than going to the DMV. We took a number and immediately had access to an affordable and extensive line of grouper filets, live clams, whole snapper, shrimp, scallops, and octopus (and, yes, that is a sleeveless shirt).

In addition to the fresh seafood, the market furnished us with every other ingredient we could have needed for almost any recipe, including fresh produce, a deli, a butcher, and multiple aisles of specialty oils and spices. Wanting to try something that neither of us had tried before, we decided on two large swordfish steaks. Although random, our North African-crawfish boil-fish camp menu of blackened Moroccan spiced swordfish with roasted corn tartar sauce, grilled asparagus, and lemon, roasted garlic, green onion, and smoked crawfish couscous came together pretty well on our Gulf-front balcony.


You’d think the massive consumption of seafood coupled with the rising temperature and glaring sun would have forced us to go into our customary coma, only to be revived by some girly salad or panty waist panini. And, if you’re thinking that, you definitely don’t know us. Our weekend getaway ended where it should have and very easily could have began, with the meatiest, greasiest, and most blissful of all fast food establishments- Five Guys Burgers and Fries.