Category: food and drink

A big haul at Costco

October 21, 2026 • 12:50 pm

Since I had my first disastrous cataract operation on Sept. 22 (not the doctor’s fault!), I haven’t been able to read a book on paper.  I can read the computer if I close my right eye because the right and left have different middle-distance prescriptions. But not reading a real book is depressing, and I’ve basically been walking around with my right eye shut for a month.

This situation is of course intolerable, so I asked the ophthalmologist to give me a prescription for interim glasses until I get the left eye done. (Believe me, after my ocular trauma, I’m not in a rush!).  Although he cautioned me that it may not work well, I was willing to take the chance rather than walk around like Popeye, unable to read anything but a can of spinach.  Today I went to Costco to get those glasses, which should be ready in a week or ten days. Costco is, I’ve found, the best and most reasonable place to get specs, and the service is fantastic.

But Costco also has other great stuff, and while I was there I picked up, besides their hot dog special (footlong dog and endless fountain drink for $1.50), the Big Three items I always get there (the pie is seasonal).

From left to right: The famous Costco rotisserie chicken.  Three pounds of delectable pullet, and about five bucks. This will last me at least four meals.

Extra virgin olive oil, single origin, harvested this spring. About $16. Costco’s “extra virgin” is reliable, not so with the oil you get from other places, which often fails laboratory tests for virginity.

And, since it’s the season, the 58-ounce Costco Pumpkin Pie, which will last about a week and a half kept in the fridge. I also have some vanilla ice cream to go with it–the making of a perfect breakfast. It’s huge, better than any commercial pumpkin pie I’ve had, and, for nearly four pounds of pie, it’s less than six bucks.

You can’t go into a Costco without getting a chicken and a pie at the very least. If I can’t read a book for a week, at least I can eat.

Some English beers

September 28, 2026 • 3:48 pm

by Greg Mayer

In honor of Drink Beer Day, and following up on the offerings by Jerry and Andrew Berry, here are some beers I had on a trip to England in January. We of course must begin with Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, Jerry’s favorite.

This of course is the bottled variety, which was all they had at the aptly named Leopard Bar in Bloomsbury.

The lovely Radnor Arms in Coleshill, Oxfordshire, is a classic country pub.

But, unfortunately, I don’t recall what beers we had there; that’s them there, at the front of the bar.

At the Anchor, in Polstead Road in Oxford,

I had beers with both evolutionary

and naval connections (my father and daughter were/are in the US Navy, and our host was a former Royal Navy officer).

Swordfish is “very good“, fide Beer Advocate, but, as Jerry would appreciate, Timothy Taylor’s Landlord is “outstanding“! Just down the Road from the Anchor is the childhood home of T.E. Lawrence. Jerry and I are both Lawrence aficionados, and Jerry has shared his photos of Lawrence’s last home, Clouds Hill, so here’s where he lived from 1896-1921. (Note the Blue Plaque.)

In London, Punch and Judy in Covent Garden has a fine bar,

and fine food–beef & raclette cheese shortcrust pie–with accompanying pint, but, alas, I did not note what beer it was. (Note the HP Sauce.)

Besides traditional English pubs, London has many fine ethnic restaurants, and, at Oorja Indian Dining, the Indian beer Kingfisher was available. (It’s not great, fide Beer Advocate.)

Both the British Museum and the Natural History Museum have nearby pubs. In Kensington, near the latter, we found Timothy Taylor’s Landlord on tap.

Note the real pull handle.

Across the street from the British Museum, the Museum Tavern, adorned by an image of the Museum’s founder, Sir Hans Sloane,

had a fine bar (note the American style taps for Peroni and other beers at the near end of the bar, and the pull handles for English beers down by the gent who’s about to order),

where I had, of course, the house ale.

Finally, on the way out of England, I tried Aspall Cyder, made in Suffolk, at a hotel at Heathrow Airport.

 

Is this the world’s best beer?

September 28, 2026 • 11:59 am

At last I’m back from the eye doctor and I’m okay so far, having had a suprachoroidal hemorrhage during cataract surgery, a rare complication whose frequency is between 0.03% and 0.1%. (Mine was the first one my experienced ophthalmologist had ever seen.) Fortunately it was a small one, is contained, and while the clot will slow the healing process while it gets resorbed, so far it looks like eye #1 will be okay. For the time being I’ve canceled surgery on eye #2. But I looked up what I had, and here’s an object lesson—one I have not learned—never to look up symptoms on the Internet:

FEARED COMPLICATION!  That put my kishkes in knots, and it was with a heavy heart that I dragged my butt to the ophthomologist. Fortunately, a retinal specialist had already told me that my hemorrhage did not turn out not to be so fearful, as it was small and contained. Today the symptom I developed yesterday—stabbing eye pain—was diagnosed as “part of the normal healing process.” One of Coyne’s Rules for Life is this:

Never look up your symptoms on the Internet, for everything eventually devolves to cancer.

But in this case it devolved to a guide dog and a white cane. Warning: do not discuss my hemorrhage or prognosis as it will make me grumpy. You can tender well wishes if you want!

On top of this, I was way late for my appointment because there was a deadly crash that shut down inbound Lake Shore drive. Some joker, probably drunk, drove his car south into the northbound lane, killing a poor woman in a head-on crash that also involved another car. Not a good start to the day.

But eye digress. The point of this post was to be that this is Drink Beer Day and my friend Andrew Berry has a British Ale to recommend. You’ll remember from this morning that he sent me a photo of an empty pint of my favorite session beer, Timothy Taylor Landlord. But he claims (wrongly, I think) that there’s a better beer. I got this photo in an email titled “The best pint IN THE WORLD.”

I emailed back saying, “What is the beer?”

He responded, “Harvey’s Sussex Bitter. The best beer in the world, according to A Berry. Brewed in Lewes, Sussex.  You probably had some when you came to Down House with me and my summer school students.  Harveys is served in both pubs in the village of Downe.”

That was a great trip, as the tour of Down House, Darwin’s home, was led by none other than Janet Browne, who wrote the definitive biography of Darwin (now in one volume, condensed from the original two).

I then wrote Andrew this, “You haven’t tried all the beers!!! Plus you must mean session pint.”

His response?: “And, yes, I’ve tried ‘em all.  Every beer ever brewed anywhere ever.  And Harvey’s Sussex Bitter is indubitably the Best of them All.”

When I asked if he was in Downe (the village where Down House resides, he answered, “Downe?  Nope, this is Harveys pub in Sevenoaks, where my mother lives.  The Bricklayer’s Arms.”

And he sent a photo (below). Look at that place! The genuine pubs of England—the ones with real ales cellared well and without music—are one of that country’s great contributions to the planet. Let us hope they endure.

What’s your favorite beer? Answers below, please. And I abhor IPAs as they’re too hoppy, so I can’t entertain suggestions in that genre.

 

Savannah: Day 6

April 24, 2026 • 8:30 am

It was a lazy day today, with one visit to an architectural/history site and then one big and delicious meal.  After we had a leisurely breakfast and did our ablutions, it was nearly 11 a.m.  We then walked the ten blocks to the Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarters:

The Owens–Thomas House & Slave Quarters (originally known as the Richardson House) is a historic home in Savannah, Georgia, that is operated as a historic house museum by Telfair Museums. It is located at 124 Abercorn Street, on the northeast corner of Oglethorpe Square. The Owens–Thomas House was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976, as one of the nation’s finest examples of English Regency architecture.

Renovations in the 1990s uncovered and restored one of the oldest and best preserved urban slave quarters in the American South.

. . . The house is notable for its early cast iron side veranda with elaborate acanthus scroll supports on which the Marquis de Lafayette addressed the citizens of Savannah on his visit in 1825.

The house was built between 1816 and 1819, designed by the architect William Jay of Bath and financed and occupied by Richard Richardson. It was then purchased by attorney and politician George Welshman Owens, who was briefly mayor of Savannah and later a U.S. Representative.

The Owens family lived in the house for a while, but after some decades turned it into a boarding house, which is when Lafayette stayed there on his final visit to America on the 50th anniversary of the American Revolution—in which Lafayette played a huge role.

In 1951 the family turned the house over to the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences , which still owns it (I visited the other two parts of the Museum on my first day here).

The sign below gives pretty much the same information above.

The front of the house (I forgot to photograph the famous balcony).  When Lafayette, an abolitionist, visited Savannah in 1825, the town kept all the slaves inside, along with the free blacks, so they wouldn’t be incited by Lafayette’s antislavery sentiments.

The back garden of the house, designed to be completely symmetrical. In the rear are the slave quarters.  This is only part of them: the small house held 12 people, and there were a bit more than 20 enslaved people working for the white residents.

This sign was in the slave quarters, explaining why the guides and many of the signs used the terms “enslaved people” instead of “slaves.”

Inside the quarters, which slept at least twelve people, though many of the enslaved, like the cook and those who took care of the chlldren, slept inside the big house.

The dining room.  Food was cooked in the basement, and since there was no dumbwaiter it was carried on trays up two floors from the basement and put in the butler’s pantry before being served.

The butler’s pantry was a small room, with four empty bottles of wine sitting on the sideboard. As the tour moved on, I picked up one of the bottles and saw what’s below: a bottle of Barton and Guestier bordeaux—from 1870! I’d never held a wine bottle that old before.  And this chateau is still going strong; it was founded in 1725.

The structural material of the house was tabby, an equal mixture of sand, burnt oyster shells, water, and ash. It was an early form of concrete, and was quite durable. As you see, the tabby was covered with wood paneling.

This room was presumed to be the library/study, though now they’re unsure what all the rooms were used for.

This is presumed to be the oldest son’s bedroom.

And a mirror, at the bottom of which you can see a selfie of Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus):

The (presumed) master bedroom, now a word that’s out of favor for obvious reasons (I can’t remember what it’s supposed to be called now).

After the tour we walked home and then got in the car to drive to a restaurant I’d scoped out as a likely prospect: great food, not overly expensive and, most important, Southern. Yes, we went to Erica Davis Lowcountry.  It turned out to be all I hoped for, though if you drove by this place you wouldn’t think to go in. But you’d be making a mistake if you didn’t.

We split two appetizers. First, oysters Rockefeller made with local oysters. Wikipedia describes the dish this way:

Oysters Rockefeller is a dish consisting of oysters on the half-shell that have been topped with a rich sauce of butter, parsley and other green herbs, bread crumbs, and then baked or broiled.

There were also collard greens, cream. and Parmesan cheese.  It was scrumptious—the first time I’ve had this dish. With all that garnish you could still taste the oysters, and I love oysters. You’d think the dish would be too busy with all the ingredients, but the flavors mingled perfectly.

Another Southern classic: fried green tomatoes, these with feta cheese and balsamic vinegar reduction.

The menu was so full of good stuff (see the link above) that I asked the waiter what she recommended. Without question she mentioned the shrimp, which are local, fresh, and delicious. So I got a half pound of boiled shrimp. They came with clarified butter, shrimp sauce, and two sides (I chose cheese grits and deep-fried okra).  And oy, were those shrimp good! I ate the shells, of course, as all good shrimp lovers do.

Tim had the Wassaw redfish, described as “pan-seared redfish filet, garlic beurre blanc, heirloom tomato, stone ground grits, fresh green beans.” He pronounced it excellent.

Betsy had two crab cakes along with green beans and cole slaw. As expected, the cakes were almost all lump crabmeat, with just a small amount of filling to hold them together. With a little bit of the sauce on the crab, it was a Platonic version of this dish.

And my Southern dessert: the third helping of banana pudding I’ve had on this trip—this time served in a Mason jar. This was the fanciest version of all I’ve had.  As you can see, it’s topped with whipped cream dusted with vanilla wafer crumbs, with a whole wafer on the side. (Banana pudding sans vanilla wafers is unthinkable.) Then there’s a layer of banana pudding, then a layer of cake, and then a bottom layer of pudding with chunks of banana. This was the best version I had on this trip, and probably the best version I’d ever had. (I’ve eaten it many times, often with BBQ or a meat-and-three plate in the South.)

The meal was terrific, not very expensive, and prepared with great care. I’d recommend this place very highly to anyone who visits Savannah.

Savannah: Day 4 (food orgy)

April 22, 2026 • 10:40 am

Without a doubt, the most famous “restaurant” in Savannah is Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room, formerly known as Mrs. Wilkes’ Boarding House (the apostrophe seems to be optional).  It is a stupendous all-you-can eat Southern homestyle meal, formerly served to the lodgers at a boarding house. A bit from Wikipedia:

Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room was previously the dining hall of the Wilkes House, a downtown boardinghouse. Today the restaurant is housed on the ground floor of the same historic house, built in 1870, at 107 West Jones Street. The restaurant was described by author William Schemmel as “a treasure hidden away in a historic district town-house”.  Its longtime owner, Sema Wilkes, published several cookbooks. As of 2024 her family continued to run the restaurant, serving lunch on weekdays.

We happen to be staying at about 200 Jones Street, so could walk get there in about 7 minutes, though waddling home the obligatory postprandial nap took a while longer!

More:

Mrs. Wilkes’ is noted for its homestyle traditions, in which guests are escorted in shifts of ten into the dining room, where a variety of dishes are freshly laid on one of several long tables. There is no menu; dishes are selected by the restaurant and change daily. Travel Holiday in 1993 recalled that the “tables were set with steaming bowls and platters of tasty Southern food”.

The guests sit at the table and pass the dishes around to one another like a family. There are usually long queues waiting to get in.

Usually?? Try “always”!

We tried to go on Monday, but didn’t make the first seating and so, lest we miss our Monday architecture tour, decided to return yesterday.  The first three pictures are from Monday, but the line was the same (long) yesterday. The difference was that yesterday got there a full hour before it opened at 11 a.m., and so were seated as soon as the doors opened.

I’ve put a lovely YouTube video about the place at the bottom of this post, so be sure to watch it. It perfectly captures the Wilkes Dining Experience.

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The line was longer than this but I wanted to fit in the house as well as the hungry customers.

I wanted Tim to photograph me holding a fried chicken leg (the place is famous for its fried chicken) and, sure enough, my chicken leg was on the sign by the entrance.

The place was about five minutes late in opening—a delay I couldn’t tolerate. Photo by Tim.

They take only case: no credit cards (there’s an ATM nearby).

Our table set up with some (but far from all) of the dishes we got, along with glasses of tea (sweetened, of course) and fresh roses. You can see collard greens, fried okra, macaroni salad, cucumber salad, and, well, I put below of what we were offered.

One of the two dining rooms after it filled up.

Immediately after sitting down, we were served both cornbread and fresh, hot biscuits.

And of course the food and atmosphere were conducive to making friends, and so we chatted with two amiable visitors from the UK, one from Manchester, where Matthew lives. I’m sure this is a particularly unique experience for Brits who aren’t familiar with southern American cuisine (the best in the U.S., in my view, especially if you throw in Texas brisket).

Here are the dishes that were put on the table, but we may have forgotten a few. There were more than two dozen, and you could help yourself to as much as you wanted. Our lunch took about an hour.

Fried chicken
Pulled pork
Macaroni and cheese
Macaroni salad
Sweet potatoes
Mashed potatoes
Biscuits
Cornbread
Stuffing
Rice
Rice with chorizo
Black-eyed peas
Green beans
Okra
Fried okra
Collard greens
Yellow squash
Rutabaga
Cucumber salad
Boiled cabbage
Cole slaw
Creamed corn
Gravy

Dessert:

Banana pudding
Peach cobbler with ice cream

Sweet ice tea

Below: my plate, the first of 2.5 platefuls I ate. Clockwise from 11 o’clock: biscuit, cornbread, collard greens, deep-fried okra, macaroni salad, pulled pork, black-eyed peas, stewed cabbage, rice with chorizo, sweetened yams, and fried chicken. As expected, the fried chicken was fantastic: among the best I’ve ever had. A crunchy, crackly exterior enshrouded juicy chicken.

This was, of course, only my first plate, as I wanted to try nearly all the dishes except stewed okra (okra is edible only when deep-friend, and ;then can be very good).

Me eating chicken–a breast this time, though I also had a thigh. Photo by Tim.

Here are Tim and Betsy digging in:

We were offered a choice of desserts: peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream or banana pudding studded with vanilla wafers. Since part of my stomach is reserved for desserts, I asked for (and got) both.

Cobbler:

Banana pudding:

We waddled home after that, and all of us needed a nap. I did not eat a bit of food until this morning, when I ate only two pieces of toast.

If you go to Savannah (and do go when it’s not summer), you MUST go to Mrs. Wilkes’.  This is not optional.

Here’s a great video about the place I found on YouTube.

Savannah, Day 2

April 20, 2026 • 10:00 am

Just. a quick update on yesterday’s peramublations, which included sightseeing and food.

We’ve rented an Air BnB equivalent in downtown Savannah, and it’s on this lovely tree-lined street:

Only half a block away is Clary’s Cafe, an eatery made famous because it’s in the novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a semi-true tale of life and a murder in  Savannah in the 1980s.  I read it before I came here, and it was pretty good.

Here’s Clary’s with an old-time sign. When I went to get coffee at 8 a.m. it was empty, but when we returned at 10 a.m. there was a 25-minute wait. The cafe became a lot more popular after it was featured in the novel as well as in the eponymous film directed by Clint Eastwood. From Wikipedia:

The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt, described Clary’s as “a clearinghouse of information, a bourse of gossip,” where he came to know the characters who would animate his narrative.  James Gandolfini made an uncredited appearance as the cook in the two scenes filmed at the cafe.

A photograph of the cast hangs inside the restaurant, featuring Alison Eastwood (who plays Mandy), her father, Clint Eastwood (director), The Lady Chablis, John Cusack (John Kelso), Kevin Spacey (Jim Williams) and Jack Thompson (Sonny Seiler).

The unprepossessing interior, which does serve up good food.

Since one of my goals here is to eat as much Southern food as I can, I had that classic staple for breakfast: biscuits in sausage gravy. Very filling–and good.

And I decided to have dessert as well: bread pudding. (Do not food shame me! I don’t eat like this all the time!)

In the afternoon we spent walking around the Wormsloe Historic Site, From Wikipedia:

The Wormsloe State Historic Site, originally known as Wormsloe Plantation, is a state historic site near Savannah, Georgia, in the southeastern United States. The site consists of 822 acres (3.33 km2), protecting part of what was once the Wormsloe Plantation, a large estate established by one of the founders of colonial Georgia, Noble Jones. The site includes a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) dirt road lined with southern live oaks, the ruins of a small house with fortified walls built of tabby, a museum, and an area with recreations of colonial structures such as a blacksmithing forge and a house similar to those first built in the colony of Georgia (or as housing for enslaved people).

It was atmospheric even though not many of the original structures remain. Here’s part of the long and famous alley of live oaks. I love the Spanish Moss, which for some reason doesn’t seem to hang on the palm trees. Perhaps a botanical reader knows the reason.

I’m visiting with my oldest friends Tim and Betsy, whom I stay with when I go back to Cambridge, MA.  I’ve known Tim since 1967 when we lived in the same dorm at William and Mary; Betsy arrived as a transfer student two years later.

Here are the remains of Noble Jones’s house, a fortified structure built in 1745 not only as a home, but to withstand attacks by the Spanish and to monitor traffic passing through the narrows of the adjacent Skidaway River.  The walls were built of “tabby,” an early form of cement made of equal volumes of water, sand, lime, and ground oyster shells. (The shells were obtained from copious Native American middens.)

And after considerable discussion in the morning, we decided to have dinner at a place of great repute—the Driftaway Cafe, known for its seafood and excellent cooking. And yes, it lived up to its reputation.

As soon as I saw shrimp and grits on the menu, I wanted it. I asked the waiter if the portion was large, as I was famished, and she replied, “Yes, it’s very big.” And it was: a huge bowl of grits made with four types of cheese, loaded with plump fresh shrimp, and studded with bacon bits. I could barely finish it (washed down with sweet tea, of course), and I was glad I didn’t order the fried green tomatoes (another Southern dish) as an appetizer. All evening long I would groan sporadically, “Oy, am I full!”

This was by far the best shrimp and grits I’ve ever had: a Platonic dish!

Savannah, ducks, and turtles

April 19, 2026 • 8:30 am

Well, I got my tuches to Savannah at about noon yesterday, and it was already steaming hot.  Since our Air B&B didn’t open until 4 pm (why so late?), I had to cool my heels somewhere for a few hours, so I decided to visit the Telfair Museum (a trio of museums downtown), buy a pass, check my bags, get some food, and return for some art-gawking before making my way to the apartment (conveniently located in downtown Savannah).

I parked my luggage at the Jespson Museum, got a recommendation for lunch, and slowly ambled through the famous squares of downtown Savannah to the Little Duck Diner (!), which looks exactly like the picture at the link. It’s duck-themed and serves duck in various guises, but of course I eschewed the waterfowl dishes. Here’s how it looks from the outside:

A logo from the menu (artist unidentified).

The menu is here, and I asked the waiter for recommendations, which is how I came up with the avocado grilled cheese sandwich, with two types of cheese, bacon, avocado, and tomato.  I ordered iced tea, and was asked “plain or sweet?”. You know you’re in the South when they ask you that, and of course I got the sweet tea, which, as usual, was so sweet it was almost like liquid dessert. That’s how the “table wine of the South” is served. Lunch:

On my walk to the restaurant, I noticed a small hole-in-the-wall store that sold only cobblers and variations on banana pudding—two dessert specialities of the South—and stopped in to plug the dessert-shaped hole in my being.  Again, the place had a duck motif!

The place was The Peach Cobbler Factory, of which there are several branches After ascertaining that the Peach Cobbler was made from canned peaches (fresh fruits are out of season), I had the banana pudding instead. It was a generous portion of that Southern treat, embedded in which were two vanilla wafers (obligatory) and a huge hunk of red velvet cake. It was excellent, and filled the remaining lacuna in my stomach:

I passed this restaurant after lunch, which had a truly Southern seafood menu (click to enlarge). I must get shrimp and grits on this trip. And I would die for some boiled (green) peanuts, which are delicious and which I’ve had only in Georgia

Oy, was it hot! I ambled back to the Jepson Center (one of the trio of museums), where they featured the art of Ossabaw Island, one of the 100 or so Sea Islands near the coast of Georgia (Savannah’s on the ocean). Like most of these, Ossabaw is accessible only by ferry and guided tour.  I’m keen to visit Sapelo Island, the home of the last community of Gullah people, a group of black Southerners with their own language and distinctive culture.  (They were, of course, enslaved before and during the Civil War.) Here’s an example of the Gullah language, also called Geechee, a creole language that mixes English and African words:

The art was local, but I was most interested in two paintings by Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese emigrant whom most of us geezers know as a mystic and author of The Prophet (1923), a collection of quasi-mystical fables that many hippies and New Agers revered as “wisdom”. It was immensely popular and has been translated into many languages, but I wouldn’t recommend reading it.

I was surprised to learn that Gibran actually regarded himself more as an artist than a writer, and two of his paintings were at the museum. The first is a self portrait, which I photographed. The details of the painting are in the second photo below:

And a portrait of Gibran’s mother. The guy was a pretty good painter!

An artist from Ossabaw island painting in the Museum and photographed from above:

I might as well put up some photos from Botany Pond, as the ducklings will have hatched when I return (I timed this trip badly, but had no idea that Vashti would be nesting now).  The eggs should hatch today or tomorrow, and apparently one was rejected from the nest, as it was found below it but some distance from the ledge.

First, turtles. I’ve now seen all five, so they survived the winter, and they love to bask on the rocks. I believe that there is one yellow-bellied slider (Trachemys scripta scripta) and two red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta elegans; they are subspecies) in the photo below.

We call this “turtle yoga”:

Nuzzling:

The pair of wood ducks (Aix sponsa) are there nearly every day, but they really should be mating and nesting. We have no tree holes at the pond (a sine qua non for this species to breed), so I have no idea what they’re doing. They are gorgeous, though.

The male (I haven’t named either one):

And the female:

Finally, Vashti on her nest. I’m worried that when the ducklings hatch, they and Vashti will be assaulted by the undocumented drakes who visit the pond. It’s probably good that I’m gone, as I’d be beside myself with anxiety. I have two very reliable associates who are taking care of the waterfowl in my absence.

Note that the nest is lined with soft feathers that she plucked from her breast.

(Armon is still here, ineffectually trying to drive away interloper drakes.)

A close up. Vashti is immobile when on the nest, so I can get quite close to her, but do so only to ensure that she’s still there (she’s hard to see):

On to more adventures in Savannah. Stay tuned.