Month: October 2021

Kiss My Grits
Pensacola FL, 2018.

Now that some of the groups I’m in are back into thinking about programming, it’s time to think venues. Leslie and I took a girls’ weekend to the Mountain Brook Grand Bohemian, a Kessler Collection hotel in Marriott’s Autograph Collection a couple of years ago.

I love these Kessler Collection hotels. I’ve stayed at the Bohemian Hotel Savannah Riverfront, and the Mansion on Forsyth Park in Savannah a couple of times now. I saw a video with Richard Kessler once and knew he was a fellow Southerner — turns out he was born in Savannah and grew up in Effingham County. In his 20s, he helped found the much more humble Days Inn chain (and #funfact, it isn’t Days Inn because they thought the name was somehow clever — the other founder was Cecil Day, who was also raised in Georgia and taught at Georgia Tech).

Richard Kessler lives at the Armstrong Kessler Mansion in Savannah and occasionally opens it to groups as a venue.

One of my groups looked into booking a class here — they have several, from how to grill, to hors d’ oeuvres and pasta.

One class, called The Southern Table, has as a sample, students making:

• Pickled Shrimp with Celery and Mustard
• Fried Green Tomatoes with Avocado Ranch
• Johnny Cakes with Blackberry BBQ and Alabama Hot Slaw
• Skillet Berry Cobbler with Thyme and Vanilla Ice Cream

This is where the wine blending class takes place.

On our stay, Leslie and I had breakfast at the hotel restaurant, Habitat Feed & Social, but I haven’t yet been back for lunch or supper.

This is the space, really, though, that we enjoyed most — the rooftop. There’s a VIP Package that’s really just a reservation placeholder deposit that I think one of my smallest groups would get the best use. Av’s been to an event here at night; some venue pics from then here. The art gallery is fun, and there’s what looks to be a small little jewelry box of a spa.

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I’d really like to go back to Asheville during the holidays, especially to see the gingerbread competition at the Grove Park Inn — if we don’t stay there, the Grand Bohemian looks fun too.

Rose Pork Brains with Milk Gravy
Warehouse Discount Groceries
Hanceville AL, 2018.

The NYT published a recipe for butter mochi this summer that sounded so good, I was determined to make it even though then I didn’t yet have a subscription to the Food section. It was only last month, when an annual subscription went on half-price, that I finally succumbed. It’s actually even better than I’d hoped.

Turns out that at the time, I found the perfect free recipe here at Bigger, Bolder Baking. And as this is something I’ve never eaten before or even knew of the concept before the Times’ feature, I decided to go straight with the recipe instead of trying anything new. It turned out *fantastic*.

Not much of a hurdle, but I found out pretty quickly that the required sweet rice flour wasn’t available at my large local grocery stores (Publix, Winn-Dixie, and Piggly Wiggly). I went to an Asian grocery, though, and they had a nice stock of this Koda Farms Mochiko.

Ingredients needed: whole milk // coconut milk // eggs // sweet rice flour // sugar // butter // baking powder // vanilla extract

I’m not going to repost the recipe here in text, as I did follow it exactly, but again, it can be found here. The steps were easy enough. Preheat the oven to 350*, mix all ingredients:

Pour into a 9×13 — here, I made things easy on myself and lined the pan with parchment paper

Lovely:

Inverted into a larger pan

Absolutely delicious

Wishing I’d taken a more glam picture, but we really dove in. The texture here is different — not jello but somewhat wiggly, dense but not brick-like. Huge plus: okay for Passover if rice is a food your family includes. Really just terrific — buttery and sweet, not at all cakey and interesting enough taste and texture-wise. We all loved it, including the grandparents. 10/10 would make again.

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BTW, I put tons of my own recipes here at the Recipe page, and I’m going to be adding a section: OPRIMATTOOTR (other people’s recipes I make all the time or otherwise totally recommend), haha!

No longer needed, apparently.
Sam’s
Birmingham AL, 2018.

Q. Lee Laundry Cleaners
New Orleans LA, 2019.