(Editor's note: Sometimes this stuff just writes itself.)
The Honorable Larry Craig - United States Senator, Idaho Specialty Recipe Favorite Breakfast "Super Tuber"
"Super Tuber is a great snack that uses one of my favorite vegetables: The Idaho Potato. Of course, I suppose any type of potato could be used, but I cannot guarantee that a Super Tuber made with anything but a true Idaho potato would taste as good. Sincerely, Larry E. Craig, United States Senator"
"Wash and dry potato. Rub with shortening or butter. With an apple corer or small knife, core out the potato center (end to end). Push hot dog through the center. Bake until potato is cooked through."
(Editor's note: The odd thing about my life these days is that this is the second brains & eggs recipe I've run across today -- and I wasn't even searching for one.)
The Honorable Howard Coble - United States Congressman North Carolina Specialty Recipe Favorite Breakfast "Brains N' Eggs"
"When I was a youngster, my mom used to prepare Brains N' Eggs for breakfast. It was a fairly regular breakfast, not at all unusual. So that's when I started eating them. I've enjoyed them ever since, but I can't find any on Capitol Hill. I'll admit the name of the dish is not the most appetizing, but try 'em, you might like 'em!"
When tallying the symbolic and metaphoric content found in the produce aisle, the apple ranks high, perhaps second only to the cherry. The garden of Eden, an apple for the teacher, an apple a day. Apple records. The Apple iPhone.
But for me, when I think "apple" the first thing that comes to mind is the unmistakable taste of a ripe Macoun. Cut one and notice how its purple-red skin contrasts beautifully with its snow white flesh. Bite one and discover a crisp, toothsome snap followed by a juicy rush of deep, almost wine-like sweetness.
Part of the magic of Macouns is that your opportunity to eat one is constrained geographically and temporally. They're only grown in the Northeast U.S., and they're only in season through October and November. Unlike some of its better-known kin, the Macoun is not bred to be a sturdy traveler; they bruise easily and don't last long on the shelf. Thus, you'll seldom come across one more than few hundred miles from where it's been picked.
If you find yourself in the Northeast in the next few weeks, make a beeline to the nearest greengrocer or farmers' market and taste what I and many other devotees consider to be the pinnacle of apple-snacking. Then mark your calendar for October 2008, and treasure the memory until then.
Editor's note: Mr. Redlitz lives in Los Angeles, where Macouns are hard to come by. I bought 12 Macouns at a farmer's market in Manhattan today and threatened to let them rot on my desk unless he wrote this piece. He'll be receiving an express mail package at his office within the next few days.
Every October, my family used to make annual trips from Oklahoma to Dallas the weekend of the big OU/Texas game. I hate football, so while my dad and brother cheered Big Red, the game provided ample opportunity for mom and me to sample the culinary delight that is the Texas State Fair.
This is the birthplace of the corny dog. That's a not a typo. Its proper name is corny dog and Fletcher's is the original and the best. It's the quintessential fair food and used to be my favorite thing until I became a vegetarian. Fortunately, here you can get anything fried on a stick, like the cheese dog. It's a bit of a misnomer because there's no dog. It's just mounds of cheese that are rolled in cornmeal and fried. It tastes best when dipped in honey mustard and washed down with an extra-sweet lemonade.
Next on my must-have list is Frito Pie at The Dock. If you're not familiar, it's chili, cheese and sour cream on a bed of Fritos. It's crunchy, salty, spicy and downright delicious. And of course, you can also find it fried.
The fair isn't complete without a little slice of heaven in the form of a mini sweet potato pie from Vern's. Some pie places use sweet potato filling, but this is the real deal – not overly smooth and with hints of cinnamon and cardamom. It's the perfect way to end a gastronomic tour of the fair. And yes, they serve it fried.
"Mehepyew?"If you need to have that translated, you're not from the South.
Technically, I'm not either.I grew up in Arkansas, at the hands of defectors from the glittering lights of Tulsa, which means we were as much boots and saddles as we were hoop skirts and string ties.My folks were refugees from (counting backwards) young adulthood in the fabulous fifties, teenage-hood during the second world war, and childhood during the Great Depression.I'm not kidding – in photographs from the era that look like stills from a William Wyler film, my father wore a buzz cut and a letterman's sweater, my mother was a genuine bobbysoxer.And my grandmother, my blessed saint of a grandmother, was half Caucasian and half Osage Indian, a situation that informed her entire existence, as she did everything by halves and wholes: she was half-sophisticated and half-raunchy, half a genteel southern lady and half a rambunctious rodeo queen, half charming and half cantankerous.And we were half rich and half poor.And that's how, in a moment, we will get back to "Mehepyew."
If you know anything about Osage history, you know that during the Oklahoma land rush, many of these Native Americans wound up in the area surrounding what would become Tulsa, and that that selfsame land wound up being oil-rich.There are depression-era documentary photos of Osage women cooking on fire pits with Mercedes Benzes parked nearby.My grandmother was not one of the wealthy Osage, but she still felt the effects of being half traditional Indian and half city lady: like many of her contemporaries, being exposed to Tulsa gentility left its mark on her.One thing that she remembered vividly, even nostalgically was the ladies' luncheon room.
While I'm generally icked and irked by the omnipresence of McDonalds' franchises spilling over the globe like love handles on an airplane seat divider, I have always been delighted by their regional offerings. In Baltimore, we'd brave the Howard Street branch with the cracked glass and the permanently-lodged wall bullet to get our limited-time fix of the McCrabcakes. They were pretty darned passable, and at $2.99 or so, infinitely more student budget friendly than those at the Charles St. crabeterias that would have taken one look at our paint-splattered clothes and sent us off with our claws cracked.
I've sampled McLobster Rolls in Maine, have heard tell of McPoi in Hawaii, and know y'all have McSweet Tea in some points South, so I'm assuming that individual franchisees are allowed a small bit of leeway with the local fare. Might y'all be so kind as to share what regional food items you've seen Ronald offer up? Serve it up in the comments section below.
(UPDATE: I just remembered that in the Orly airport as I was leaving Paris, I saw that the McD offered a choice of a sweet or salty breakfast. I call that win-win.)
(Photo snapped by my pal Craig on a train in Japan. It doesn't say what's been done to the pork, or how it's formatted, so I'm gonna go with "Porkburger".)
The Sporting News recently declared Pittsburgh's PNC Park to have some of the finest eats of any ballpark in the US, citing their Primanti Bros. sandwiches. We had never heard of such a thing, and our appetites were whetted. So, we turned a Pittsburgh native for enlightenment. She hit it out outta the park.
Special to AOL Food from Mazie Speakman
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a place with fierce pride and rich local tradition. We brew an eponymous beer, turn gorgeous old churches into dance clubs, bleed black and gold, and we take advantage of industrial spaces turned lofts or music venues. We also put coleslaw and French fries on our sandwiches.
No visit to the Steel City is complete without a visit to an "Almost Famous" Primanti Bros. restaurant.
Open 24 hours and boasting 7 locations around the city (including Heinz Field and PNC Park), Primanti Bros. is something of a finish line to a long night out on the town. Each location basically is a bar. The bartenders and servers themselves are like fixtures; true blue and usually tattooed locals who take the recipe seriously.
A box of Fowler's Milk Chocolate Sponge Candies just landed on my desk, a gift from our now-departed summer intern, Jean. Jean's the Buffalo native who wrote for us about another of her hometown's great contributions to humanity: Buffalo wings. I had never before heard of sponge candy, but I will now never forget these insanely addictive treats. They're sort of like little square malt balls, only not quite as dense as the kind you usually find at the candy store. They really are spongey, though not squishy -- more airy with a wee bit of crunch kinda spongey.
In any case, I can't stop eating them. And I'm finding myself being an uncharacteristically poor sharer (mine, all mine!) ... Get yer own box.
I'm thinking a trip to Buffalo is in order. I'll go for the food while everyone else's at the football game.
And since we like knowing what y'all are eating, tell us about some of your local specialties.
If you haven't already tossed your two cents into the stew pot, take our Delicious Debate Polland then come back and share your thoughts in the comments.
Personally, I go with:
1: Dinner 2: Jimmies 3: Sub 4: Soda 5: Casserole 6: Grocery store 7: Basket (and sometimes shopping cart) 8: Bags 9: Drinking fountain
But I've heard friends and strangers say just about everything else listed in the poll. I've lived in Teaneck, NJ (though I was too young to talk), Ft. Thomas, KY, Baltimore, MD, Philadelphia, PA, New Paltz, NY, and Brooklyn, NY, and I know that moving around has changed a few of the terms I use -- especially for sandwiches and cola.
Since this is the Food section, in the poll, we stuck with food-related terminology, but since this regional language topic is something so many of us seem to savor, feel free to let us know what you have to say vis-a-vis:
*Tennis shoes vs gym shoes vs sneakers *In line vs on line *Couch vs sofa vs davenport *Kitty-corner vs cater-corner vs diagonal vs catawumpus
Debate away, fellow foodies! Use the comments link below.
"This here ain't chili, son. This here's soup." I don't know if that quote was really delivered, or if it is apocryphal, but some people around Cincinnati say a Texan passing through once uttered this as he tasted a bowlful at one of Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky's hundreds of chili parlors.
To be honest no one will ever confuse the chili Cincinnatians have loved for over 80 years with Texas style chili, or any other style chili for that matter. Cincinnati chili, truly a dish unto itself, first appeared on the scene in the 1920s when Greek and Macedonian immigrants started modifying the stews of their homelands. What they came up with doesn't have big hunks of meat in it and it certainly is not going to take the top of your head off with hot spice; maybe a mild mouth glow depending on where you go and how the chef is feeling that day. To be brutally honest about it, the Texan was sort of right in what he said. Cincinnati chili is used more as a sauce for putting on top of things than eaten straight -- and putting it on top of things is something the citizens of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky do to the tune of over 2 million pounds a year.
To the rest of the world, they may be "Buffalo wings," but to Buffalonians, they're "chicken wings." They are always served with blue cheese dressing on the side, and no one orders just plain old pizza in Buffalo. We go for "pizza and wings." I was born and raised in Buffalo, NY and every Friday night during my childhood, my family ordered just that.
In Buffalo, on a night in 1964, Teressa Bellissimo served the first batch of chicken wings to her son's hungry friends at the now famous Anchor Bar. These days, the Anchor Bar offers five flavors of wings: hot, medium, mild, spicy barbecue and suicidal, slathered in their famous sauce, which gets its zing from cayenne peppers. The Anchor Bar is the best choice for the traditional Buffalo Chicken Wing. Their reddish-brown wings dipped in thick blue cheese dressing are the ultimate Western New York comfort food.
The barbecue chicken wing is another story. For barbecue chicken wings, I always head to LaNova Pizzeria and Wing Company on the West Side of Buffalo. LaNova has perfected the barbecue chicken wing, served dripping with dark brown sauce. They are as messy as they are delicious.
Fans crave the chicken wings from LaNova and the Anchor Bar so badly that both restaurants offer overnight delivery to anywhere in the country. (You can order bottled chicken wing sauce too!) If you are going to splurge for the overnight delivery, there is one occasion for which wings are a necessity -- Sunday football games. When crowded around a television set on a freezing cold Sunday in Buffalo, pizza and wings are a must-have. And, please, go ahead and lick your fingers.
My friend's family business, Will Poultry, bottled and developed the official recipe for the Anchor Bar's Sauce about five years ago. She let me in on a little secret -- until recently, there was no branded recipe for chicken wing sauce. The Anchor Bar, and other restaurants, used their own version of an original, unofficial recipe: Frank's Red Hot Sauce and liquid butter.
To deep fry the wings, remove the tips and cut each wing in half at the joint. Heat oil to 375 degrees. Cook the wings in the oil until they are golden brown, which will take about 8 minutes. Make sure to drain them well.
Mix Frank's Red Hot with the melted butter.Pour the mixture into a big bowl with the chicken wings, and let the sauce soak in for a few minutes.The wings are often served in restaurants nearly submerged in sauce, so don't be shy!
If you like your wings on the spicy side (and I do), then add a little less butter.If you like your wing barbecue style, you can order my favorite LaNova Barbecue Sauce, or use Steven Raichlen's Buffa-Que Wings recipe to make your own.
When tallying the symbolic and metaphoric content found in the produce aisle, the apple ranks high, perhaps second only to the cherry. The garden of Eden, an apple for the teacher, an apple a day. Apple records. The Apple iPhone. 
Every October, my family used to make annual trips from 
Cakes so amazing they'd be hard to cut into
Fruit juice: An invitation to diabetes?
Morbid thoughts? Have a cookie
