Saturday, July 18, 2009

What are you doing for lunch today?

Click on image to enlarge.
If you are not familiar with the location, it is on Winding Road between Colerain Rd. and Spur 40 - closer to Spur 40. From Colerain, it's on your right; on your left coming from Spur 40. Oops! The donation amount got blacked out when I scanned the ad. It is $8.00. And while you're out, why not drop off a few cans of food for the needy?
Update at 1443 HRS: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! If you bought the fish and shrimp dinner as the result of my posting it, I do apologize. I thought long and hard about doing this "after" report, but someone really should.
Dear Methodist Home for Children and Youth fish fry volunteers,
Thank you for your generous efforts. I arrived a 1320 HRS, just as it was starting to rain. The young man who graciously took my $10.00 and got my food told me that y'all had had a good turnout. I believe. When I arrived, the somewhat limited parking at eh facility was full and more were parked on the grass on the property and along Winding Road. In the interest of seeing this a successful, annual fundraiser, let me be brutally honest: not only was it the worst take out, charity fish fry food I've ever had, it was without a doubt the worst prepared fried seafood I've ever had, anywhere on Earth, in my 61 years living on the coast of Georgia. Let's go over it, item-by-item. The fish was something on the order of Mrs. Paul's heavily pre-breaded fish fillets - cod, I think. When I broke the veritable pastry shell in which the fish was encased, after the fish fell out, the fried breading retained its shape. You could have stuffed something else into it. The breading was way too thick, way too bland, way too greasy, and way too dark, as it it had been fried in some donated used oil.
The shrimp was even more atrociously disgusting. Thick, dark, greasy, doughy breading. Ate one and trashed the rest. The cole slaw was obviously store bought. It was fair. The baked beans. Most local folks make baked beans as follows: to canned pork-n-beans, add at a minimum brown sugar and bacon and bake. Other common added ingredients, on top of the aforementioned, include onions, a bit a mustard, perhaps a bit of cane syrup, and I've even had it with just a hint of oregano that was quite good. Oh and then, you actually bake them. If you guys did anything other than open the can and heat the contents, I may have detected only a hint of, strangely and distastefully enough, vinegar(?). And the hush puppies: weird little hush puppies. They all had just exactly the same odd. machine formed shape. I'm guessing that even they were both pre-made and frozen. Mercifully, the brownie was very good. Folks, please, get some volunteers who grew up locally and have some knowledge of a proper fish fry before next year. And for gosh sakes, bread your own fish and shrimp. You know, I'll bet you that if need be, the owners of Aunt B's would be happy to let your volunteers for next year come down on a Friday and a Saturday and learn how to properly prepare every one of the items you had a disastrous go at today. Oh, and I'll bet you those good hearted ladies would even let you get your fish, shrimp, breading, and oil through them at their wholesale costs. Good luck next year.
Oh, by the way, when I dropped by the Ace hardware on Spur 40 to drop off my food items, I saw a couple of models of those "Green Egg" cookers I was talking about the other day. They look like high quality cookers. The large one was $1,385.00! It should be!

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