St. Patrick's Day and Other Weekend Stuff

When I was a wee lass of  19 (in 1979), I went on a blind date with my now husband.  Another important marking of this date was in 1988, when my mother told us that she had inoperable lung cancer. Beginnings of a life with my husband, and the beginning of the end of my Mother's life as she courageously battled her lung cancer for eight months.

We celebrated our 'anniversary' by going to Hog Wild in Lanexa.  I was almost too tired to drive the 30 minutes east having worked most of the day cleaning up the FD project and then driving to the SR project to inspect, and doing a little brush cleaning. Hog Wild used to be a biker bar.  The new owners serve Louisiana (cum VA) style cooking.  It is an unassuming place, but the food is as good as any that I've had anywhere. 

I get fried oysters there, and there are none better anywhere:perfectly battered and fried until the oyster is poached, not cook. Now, if you like oysters, you will know that a too-cooked oyster is a tough and shriveled thing (like any protein)--whether in a stew (please put the oysters in LAST) or roasted or fried.  A poached oyster is tender and succulent--and that is exactly how my beautiful fried (should be called poached in crust) oysters were.

Mark ordered the corned beef. The waitress said that he was getting the last plate as it was cooked yesterday.  This did not appear to be a promising start to his meal. Well, his corned beef arrived.  Of course it was cooked an entire day before because it had to cool so that it could be shaved, returned to the braising liquid of the cabbage and infused with so much flavor that it nearly puddled in your mouth. Oh my it was delicious beyond any description.  If I were a hundred times better writer, I STILL could not describe it any better for you. (My eyes are rolling back blissfully in my head as I remember my forkful).

Our meal was accompanied by a pitcher of lovely "hoppy" beer whose name I could not remember if you put a gun to my head and topped off with a Bailey's creme brulee....silky body with a perfectly caramelized sugar crust.  (My eyeballs are going to get stuck!).

We've been together for 33 years...it has not always been easy.  As we were eating our dinner Mark was talking about all of his friends who were married at the time who did not give us good odds for making it.  We made it.  They didn't.  Nanny, nanny, boo-boo to them.

My blog post was getting too long, so I'm going to stop here and do another post so that any who start this point have better odds of not falling asleep to finish it.