Memphis: Thursday May 12th BBQ Cravings Thrive

The World Champion BBQ Festival begins...... Are you rooting for the home team?!

Central BBQ has the advantage it is located on Central Ave.
I love the Slab for 2- The ribs are meaty and yummy. I like the dry rub style a Memphis tradition. They're big. French fries, onion rings, and slaw all good.The buns not so much. They could get better buns!
The dry rub hot wings are spicy and smokey and one-of-a-kind delicious. When my family comes to town they are a must have. I have to include the Nacho's - cheesy, meaty, and with the right sauce spicy. The Portabella mushroom sandwich is better than it sounds with a good smokey flavor and sauce. The BBQ chicken is good but the turkey is better. A sausage cheese plate makes a great appetizer.

Memphis has a great variety of BBQ places so choose wisely, or just go to Central.

Love the cabbage,
Leaf

Healthy Kid Ambassador visits the King

     Remember last August when I had the chance to go to the White House and meet the President and First Lady, that is when I got the title of Healthy Kid Ambassador. The inspired me to eat healthier than ever It also inspired me to try and help other kids make healthy choices.
      I thought about the area I live in- and we have the 2nd most visited house after the White House- GRACELAND, home of the King. This would be a great place to have a Healthy Heart Kids Picnic and so I asked the nice people at Graceland, and they gave me the opportunity to have a booth at Scout Rock. I am a Scout so that sounded cool.

       One March 22nd I set up my healthy Kid Ambassador booth , showing How to Rethink You Drink. I got about a dozen popular drinks and I measured out the sugar content and put the sugar in bags by each drink. I used a real grahm scale, it was fun and shocking. Have you ever imagined giving your kid a candy bar with dinner?
        Well, it would have less sugar than a Sprite. Or a Blow pop in a kids lunch? That is the amount of sugar in a low sugar capri sun- I can drink FOUR of them!!! That is 44 Grahams of sugar!!!!So many people were shocked.I interviewed Amy about her healthy choice vending machines and had some petitions to sign to get Little Caesars to sell some veggies and Restaurants to serve half portions for half price instead of the bad kids meal food!
   



It was amazing,one lady invited us to do the booth again for her Charity walk! I think Graceland really enjoyed having me in fact they invited me back next year! I would still like them to host a heart healthy Picnic though!

Thank you, Thank you very much,
Leaf

Come SALSA with Me!

Dance your way towards downtown and give this new spot a chance to delight you.
It is so grey outside I decided to try this new Venezuelan restaurant Arepa and Salsa.
What a great splash of color and an interesting new taste to discover right on Madison Ave.

The party vibe prepared me for a treat and they did not disappoint me
First they have really cool glasses and super nice plates. I am interested in plating now so I was really impressed. They have this lively music playing and bright color walls. It is really nice. I loved it.

I tried the UFO empinads which I did not personally like but the topas cups were so yummy I wanted more. The spicy plantain cup- (a type of banana) filled with a spicy meat, diced tomatoes and a cilantro mayo they were just so good.

I tried 2 sandwiches one plantain and one Arpes.

I preferred the Arepa with the roast pork. It was a big cornmeal disc filled with yummy shredded pork and garnished with a garlic mayo. It came with thin homemade chips also nice. The plate looked great and we dived in!
The plantain sandwich was good, it had a beef filling. It had a mustard coleslaw on it. I personally don't love mustard. So the Arpes was just better.

The Flan with cake was our dessert choice. It had a complex taste and was very good. Very velvety. The plate was so lovely too you could just tell it was a treat.


All the details are just perfect and very impressive. Since I originally wrote this I have been back and tried more items. I loved the Mango juice and the big plate of food was nice but the Arpes sandwich is still the best!

OH, Now for the best part.... they have a video game machine with FREE games!!! Who doesn't love Asteroids!!!
Go try it!!!

Love the Cabbage,

Leaf

Bleu , its not just a color it is a Cuisine!

 Blue- cool, fun, vibrant, and relaxing. Bleu, cool, fun, vibrant and its own cuisine! 

If a kid could have a best friend Chef Robbie Cirillo is mine. He is the Chef at Bleu in the Westin Hotel in downtown Memphis. I got to go there for lunch last Saturday and it was phenomenal!

 

    

 

 

I had clam chowder for starters and it was the best I have ever had and I have been to Boston. It was light tasting and the flavors blended together perfectly. I detected hint of bacon and dill as well as some other good stuff. It was not from a can.

They brought some bread knots with a special olive oil with a red wine reduction. It was spicy with an unexpected sweetness. I did like it.

They have a cool small menu that you got to check for B.Y.O.B. or Build your own Burger. I chose a big angus burger well done, chipolte mayo, garlic aloi, a grilled provolone cheese bun (the signature), tomato, lettuce, bacon, pickles, and a side of fruit salad. When I say a grilled cheese bun I mean 2 huge grilled cheese sandwich OMBLEU!
  I did get to try the mushroom topping and the fries too. They were both very good. I am sorry to say I forgot to take a picture of the burger. Wait can I say it was too good to not devour. 
My best friend Chef Robert let me go into the kitchen and see the inner workings of Bleu. He showed me how he makes a fancy sushi lobster roll. That was just the best! He also showed me the grill station-the most expensive station it looked like fun.

Chef Robbie invited us to come back for dinner sometime soon, I would go tonight but my parents probably will not take me. Nooooo Fair! Now I need a car and a passport. 

Love the Cabbage,
Bleu Leaf

Osaka to Memphis 6,816 miles or just around the bend

I just watched a great documentary about SUSHI. It was really cool to see someone make the sushi. The star was Jiro, he is 85 years old and a sushi samurai. His restaurant seats only 10 people and his sushi sells for $300 a plate.He earned 3 Michalean stars. This is an honor. The Movie Jiro dreams of Sushi is all in Japanese, I really liked even though I could not understand a single thing they said. Reading subtitles is hard they go b quickly. After the movie was over I was so hungry and not for popcorn. I begged to go for Sushi, well, really to go to Japan but I settled for sushi.

A new restaurant opened close by my house called Osaka (Not in Japan). It is beautiful and the price was not not 35,000 yen either, just $2 a plate on this really awesome conveyer belt. I got to try several great rolls. My favorite was the Dino dynamite I ate it so fast I cant tell you what was in it but it was great. The sushi dude was extremely friendly and he made some rolls just for me. I also really liked the tornado roll which has salmon, cream cheese and avocado fried just a bit. The Sushi Chefs have been making sushi rolls for more than 8 years. My Mamma cant eat too much seafood and he was very careful to make some items just for her.

What I like best about sushi is the seafood is experly cleaned and cut. I like seafood so much but it has to be clean. Huge bites of mushy raw fish not too good but perfect sushi is FABLULOUS. The wasabi, pickled ginger and seaweed just add to the yum factor.

I am getting hungry for some right now....
I am dreaming of Jiro dreaming of Sushi...
Love the cabadge of the sea
Leaf

Ps. I really need a passport....

Round up yer Lil' Corn Dodgers

Once every 365 days a huge festival happens in Grand Junction Tn., Aka, the middle of No-where. This is the gold standard of Festivals for me and every other festival is judged by it. The Ames Plantation Heritage Festival!

First the Food then the Fun.



Every festival has burgers, hot dogs and some kind of Nacho, but I have to find the Good food. Ames has A CHUCK WAGON! They cook like a real chuck wagon , serve food like a real chuck wagon, look like a real chuck wagon, and they are a real chuck wagon! I tried the beef stew which was flavored by Beef. Yum! Huge hunks of carrots and huge chunks of onions and huge chunks of beef.  Also I had a favorite Corn Dodgers!! Fried corn meal, crispy, fried,  hot...yum! Her Pots are Hug! The strangest part is when we went back for a second plate she was almost out. Did I mention she also made hot dogs, chicken and dumplings, pinto beans and ham and cobbler, well she does.

They had a demonstration on hog butchering, not for the faint of heart!  I don't like anatomy and blood, so it was a bit creepy. However, I got to try the fresh sausage they made out of that HOG and it was tasty; very ,very tasty. there was only one problem they were not selling it so I could not take any home. The nice lady did give me a bunch of samples. I now want to try and make my own sausage too.

I had some Amish ice cream that was just so yummy. Made from cream and turned by an old fashion engine. it was worth the rather long line. It was not really the best thing there- that was the sausage but it was a great cool treat right before I had to leave.

The Fun-

They always plant a field of Cotton so you can pick your own bag right from the brush and then take it over to the Cotton gin and catch your seeds and gather your lint. How cool is that!  this year they had heirloom rust color cotton and Green color cotton and some traditional white cotton. I did gather a whole bag of only green and I got myself some really green cotton. You could have a nice lady spin your lint into string! My brown and green looked cool together.

I found the blacksmith shop and he made a skewer and he answered all of my questions. it was cool. He had a huge bellow, and a hot coal fire. At the end of the day he let me back into the smith area and I got to make a horse shoe into a fish. I used the bellows. I had a lot of fun with him doing the blacksmithing. 

They had a group of Alpacas which were very very fuzzy! So cute and soft! they had alpaca balls that you put in the dryer to help it dry faster and dewrinkle your clothes. I did not get any but I sure wanted to. 

Here are some other things we got to do and see











Civil war renacting, flint knapping, goat milking, early farm house cooking, the Stencil house, archeological dig, leaf pounding, story telling, music, vintage engines, horse shoeing, bee keeping, candle making, tobacco harvesting, brick making, and just a bunch more- the gold standard of festivals!

See ya next year!
Love the Cabbage,
Leaf

The Burger Olympics

It was all fun and games Sunday at Minglewood hall. The Best Burger of Memphis Challenge, started by a local food blogger, was all crazy burger hats and burger mania. They even had a truck with a TV in it. I so want one of those.  The event has grown to around 15 to 16 tents all serving Burgers.
 



In one of these tents I met local Chef Robbie Cirillo from downtown's Bleu Restaurant. This courageous young chef let me help him plate the burgers for the judges. His pecan smoked bacon, grilled cheese bun creation looked so delicious, I wanted to just eat it up! I am sure he won- even though I have not heard who really did win. Chef Cirillo invited me to come to the restaurant and get a tour of his kitchen and enjoy his cooking. I cant wait to be Bleu at his restaurant. Know what my favorite color is? Blue!!! I know it is gonna be great.

I did try one burger sample from another tent,but sorry to say this it was way over seasoned and just not my favorite. I hope they did better for the judges. 

I did know some of the judges too. Ms Biggs was there, she did the article on me going to the White House. I also saw Mame Shannon from Local Color, a cool show on local events on PBS. 

All the money they raised went to the Memphis Spay and Neuter clinic. Helping animals that did not unfortunately get to try a single burger!

I hope to enter the Challenge next year. It looked like so much fun! 
Look out Robbie cause here I come....

Love the Cabbage,
Leaf