Monthly Archives: October 2008

Beer in the Garden

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Miss Annie’s Rustic Park Restaurant and Beer Garden in St. Joseph, Tenn., finally is reopened! It’s been a long four years since the owners had to close and move their restaurant back from the roadway to make room for U.S. 43 widening. They took advantage of the break, though, and remodeled and redid so that Miss Annie’s has returned better than ever. Definitely worth the wait. The renovated building is spacious and gleaming, while the beer-garden courtyard is clean and welcoming. What is Miss Annie’s, you ask? Well, it’s a restaurant, with sandwiches, steaks, chicken, seafood, BBQ and pasta. It’s a bar, with plenty of beer and appetizers such as hush puppies, stuffed mushrooms and spinach/artichoke dip. It’s a landmark —  Miss Annie’s has been welcoming thirsty travelers and locals off and on since 1928. And it’s an unexpected surprise to find such a fun place in what everybody cheerfully admits is close to the middle of nowhere. Miss Annie’s is about 12 miles from Killen, Ala., — 1.5 miles north of the Alabama/Tennessee state line on U.S. 43. This is the sort of place that makes you happy as soon as you walk in. On the recent crisp fall evening my husband and I went, there were families, couples, groups of friends and folks getting off work, all enjoying a place to linger and relax. Now, this isn’t a place to explore new breweries since the beer menu is pretty limited or to worry about your cholesterol level — although the house salad is fresh. Just go and enjoy yourself. Check out the Web site first, at http://www.missanniesbeergarden.com/, and learn the history of the venerable and much-loved Miss Annie’s.

Pirates Can Be Cute, Too

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Arrrggghhhhh ... it's Pirate Baby! Grandson, Nolan Thomas Behel, practices his Jack Sparrow impression.

Arrrr! It's Pirate Baby -- or grandson, Nolan Thomas Behel, practicing his Jack Sparrow impression.

Recycling the Recycling

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You know you lead a sophisticated and exciting life when the arrival of new recycling bins is a highlight of your week.

What can I say? My husband and I live on the edge. Taking our paper/plastic/cardboard recycling to the center in nearby Florence, Ala., is a weekly chore on our to-do list, and the status of the aging and always overflowing bins there is a hot topic of our conversation. So naturally we were overjoyed to see that the city of Florence recently replaced some of the old and creaky bins with larger and shinier ones. The question, of course, is: Did the city of Florence recycle the old bins? Inquiring minds want to know.

Rick and Bubba and Friends

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Yes, this is my friend Bonnie. Standing on a car. It looks as if she’s miraculously balancing on top of a huge Rick and Bubba sign — and if anybody could do that, it would be her — but she’s actually standing on top of her car, which is holding up the huge Rick and Bubba sign with help from assistants Jana, left, and Cheryl. And this was 5:45 a.m. In the morning. I’m there, too, taking this photo. And why were we in this Birmingham, Ala., parking lot at 5:45 a.m. standing on a car holding a huge Rick and Bubba sign? Of course, it was all Bonnie’s idea — and it was a good idea. The whole thing was a surprise birthday party for our other friend, Cathy Layne. Cathy is a huge fan of the Rick and Bubba radio show, which is broadcast from studios in Birmingham, where Bonnie and Cathy live. So Bonnie concocted an elaborate scheme to surprise Cathy with tickets to a broadcast. She couldn’t get tickets for Cathy’s actual birthday — the closest was almost a month later — so of course she was hoping that would really throw the birthday girl off. Then she told Cathy that Jana, Cheryl and I were stopping in Birmingham to spend the night on our way to Florida and we had to get up early the next morning to make it to Pensacola by noon and we wanted to go to Panera Bread (love their Cinnamon Crunch bagels) for breakfast before we hit the road. Cathy was suspicious but went along with it. She met us — along with Angela and Karen, a couple of their other Birmingham friends — and by the time she walked into the parking lot, she said later, she had it figured out. But we all had fun anyway. Who wouldn’t with this crew? And the sign? It had hung at Rick and Bubba’s former restaurant, where Cathy’s son had worked. He rescued the sign when it was thrown out after the restaurant closed and kept it at his mom’s house. Bonnie thought it would be fun to take the sign to the studio and give it back to Rick and Bubba, but she was frantic when she found out Cathy’s son had taken the sign to Auburn for a recent ESPN Game Day, although it didn’t get on camera. So she had to devise some complicated maneuvering to secretly get the sign back so Cathy wouldn’t know — and, of course, she succeeded, because if Bonnie puts her mind to something, she’s going to do it. I’m so glad we’re friends! Actually, she and Jana are long-time friends since they practically grew up together. But Jana is so generous that she even shares her friends, so we northwest Alabama friends of Jana luckily get to be friends with her Birmingham bunch, too.

It was so much fun to sit in on the Rick and Bubba show. Even if you disagree with their politics, you have to admit that they are master entertainers and so good at what they do. I also admire Rick’s strong faith in light of the accidental death of his young son. They were hospitable hosts, and it was fascinating to watch the behind-the-scenes proceedings of a radio broadcast. Visit their Web site, http://www.rickandbubba.com/, to learn more about their show. I think they were tickled about getting their sign back, although they assured us that we really didn’t have to go to all that trouble!

Fire and Ice

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Fire and Ice is a new restaurant in Birmingham, Ala., and some friends and I checked it out a couple nights ago. It’s in Five Points in the building where a Gap was several years ago — and it sure doesn’t look like the place where we used to buy blue jeans. Fire and Ice is a sort of do-it-yourself stir fry/grill restaurant. You don’t cook it yourself, but you create your own bowl of ingredients from a well-stocked buffet and then take it to a huge round grill where cooks sizzle your creation to perfection. That’s the “Fire” part. The “Ice” part is the bar, which is decorated in cool shades of blue to contrast with the red decor of the food part. Here’s how it works: When the waitress seats you, you get a complimentary bowl of chips and salsa and you order drinks while she explains the process and even takes you on a tour. The buffet has a salad bar with the usual items and then a section with ingredients for your entree, although you can mix and match. The entree bar has a wider variety of vegetables such as bok choy and sweet potatoes — some cooked and some not cooked — along with uncooked meats such as scallops, salmon, shrimp, BBQ chicken and tenderloin plus tofu. You can do your salad first and then go back for your entree, which you build in a bowl as high as you wish. Of course, we five experienced moms sort of cringed at the thought of adding raw meat to a pile of vegetables and letting it set for a few minutes, but our waitress assured us it would be OK, and of course it was. The really fun part, though, is figuring our your sauce. There are about 1o or 12 to choose from, with flavors such as Cajun, Asian and Southwestern. I really liked the Roasted Garlic with Honey and then a pineapple-ginger one. You can stick with one or mix some together. So you put your sauce in little cups and take your bowl of ingredients plus your sauce over to the grill, where the cooks deftly arrange your ingredients in a line, do their magic, add your sauce and in a few minutes you’ve got a hot and yummy personalized stir fry. You can take your drinks to the grill while you watch and go back as often as you like. It was lots of fun, but it can be a little intimidating if you feel pressured by the thought that a good meal is up to your own skill at combining ingredients. After all, relying on somebody else’s expertise is one of the reasons we go out to eat. But there are no bad choices, and the sauce redeems all. If you’re uneasy at first, start out small with only a few ingredients — although if it’s crowded and there’s a line at the grill, this approach might slow down your evening. And if you don’t want a stir fry at all, do a hamburger or veggie burger at the grill and get a big basket of fries to go with. Yum! The salad/entree bar is $15.95 for dinner and $9.9 for lunch. There are also appetizers and a dessert, including a fondue for more do-it-yourself eating, but these are extra. As long as you’ve got folks along who are willing to try something new, this is a great place. It’s also good for families like mine, where everybody likes different things. According to the Web site, http://www.fire-ice.com/, Fire and Ice is a chain that started in 1997 in Cambridge, Mass., and now is all over the world. It’s fun and different, so try it.

Pear Honey

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My daughter’s mother-in-law, Sharlie Behel, of Tuscumbia, Ala., is one of the best cooks I know — she can feed a dozen people without batting an eyelash and frequently does. In the summer, her garden overflows with fresh vegetables that she generously passes along to friends and family … and luckily she considers me both! And then she cans the extras, like these green beans and her “pear honey,” which is a delicious combination of pears and sugar that literally tastes as if she’s dipped pear slices into honey. It’s perfect on toast, biscuits or pancakes, and I could eat the contents of a whole jar with a spoon and bypass the whole bread thing. Not that I’ve ever done that, of course. I can’t even keep a jar of it at the house, because as soon as somebody tastes it, they’re begging to take some home. And I share, because that’s what Sharlie does with me. But I share so much that it gets gone quick. So maybe Sharlie will read this and “share” some more pear honey with me, if she has any extra left!