My New Blog

It's really fun to discover that little hamburger joint run by old hippies out in the country and miles from civilization.  The one where you go get your beer out of the cooler and chill while you listen to great music that you enjoyed while you were in college, and that your kids still enjoy today.  Where nobody is in a hurry and the sign says "if you want fast food, you can find it 15 miles down the road."  And the burger comes and you enjoy it as much as any meal you have ever had, even as much as the ones you have had at Commander's Palace in New Orleans.

I enjoy discovering new foods and their recipes, and learning how to make them at home.  Whether it is a Cuban Filete Salteado, Thai Chang Mai noodles, the world's best Tiramisu, or just a simply marinated grilled pork tenderloin served with stone ground grits, you can eat very well, even in Kerrville, Texas.

Booze is good, too.  Not what you get at most bars - the watery, overly sweet Margarita made with cheap headache-producing tequila or the Old Fashioned with too much sugar and barely a trace of bad bourbon. I am talking about a simply made Manhattan made with good good quality bourbon or rye, the kind where a single drink can satisfy.  The subject of the Friday cocktail of the week.

Kathy and I enjoy the discovery and the food and the drink, but our greatest pleasure comes from sharing. We don't get to see most of our family and very best friends as often as we like, though, so our sharing has been inconsistent - a mix of emails, calls, Facebook postings, photos and texts from cell phones to supplement our too infrequent visits.  Credit goes to my cousin's wife Dolly for reminding us that we needed to be more consistent with our sharing. (In particular, those Friday night cocktail experiments.)

Jim's Place for Food and Booze is my attempt to focus our sharing effort a bit.  As we make new discoveries, I will share them here, and over time I'll repeat some of the recipes (as links to PDF files you can easily print or save) and places I have previously mentioned to some of you.