Food & Drink

Bucking the Trend

Do you have any idea how much weight the average American gains between Halloween and the New Year? Neither does Lunch Lady. But she does know that if you're expected (and expecting) to get fat anyway, you might as well live it up in style between now and the time you make your New Year's resolutions. Fine dining, cocktails and decadent sweet treats ought to do the trick—and you've only got four weeks to squeeze it all in. Put on something slinky while it still fits, and let's get started.

Lamb, With a Side of Shiraz

It's funny that a lamb and full-bodied red wine combination is one of my favorites, considering I didn't appreciate either until working my way through college. I was waiting tables at a local Italian restaurant, and it was there one night, after a Meritage-blending class, that I made my love for the pairing embarrassingly obvious. Having sampled one-too-many extra portions of the Bordeaux varieties, I was not the attentive and inquisitive dinner companion I should have been while eating with a table of wine gurus, including Matt Magoon, of Guenoc, who had instructed the blending. Instead, when the host announced the dinner specials, I perked right up and repeated "Lamb!" a little too loudly.

Bringing In Some Outside Help

Despite her natural disdain of pumpkin, nuts, cinnamon, nutmeg and other flavors of the season—or anything in a neutral color, really—Lunch Lady's favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. That's due in part to the fact that Lunch Lady's birthday is always near Thanksgiving, this year on the actual day, and Lunch Lady loves a birthday, particularly her own.

Pounding Beer (Bread)

I have never been a big beer fan. I prefer a fruity cocktail or a nice glass of Riesling over a cold Bud Light. My husband can go for a couple of cold brews, but we hardly ever buy it. It's usually a Friday-night-at-dinner type of thing, even for him. Despite this, somehow we recently stocked our fridge with three or four cases of various beers: Miller Light, Coors Light, Budweiser and Bud Light. And no, we aren't having a party on Saturday night.

The Meat Mystery

To tell it true, ground meat makes Lunch Lady nervous. Ever since a friend told her that the beef at a certain delicious fast-food place is designated Grade D by the United States Department of Agriculture—which means it can legally consist of up to 4 percent rat meat—she just hasn't felt the same about her tacos and burgers.

Fly: Recipes For The Plug-In Cauldron

Halloween lore has it that witches stirred potions in their cauldrons constantly, breaking rhythm only to wipe dripping saliva from the corners of their mouths with wart-covered hands, or to swat flies—killing a few and sprinkling them into their concoctions as a condiment.

31 Pounds of Cheese

When most people bust out statistics like "the average American eats more than 31 pounds of cheese each year"—give or take a few pounds, depending on your source and the year—they are generally mourning the state of nutrition in this country and hoping to warn consumers of the havoc they are wreaking upon their bodies with their poor diets. Lunch Lady concedes the point, but she is not a pot to call the kettle black, and is therefore not here to do that to you.

You Are What You Eat

Learning how to cook is always such a hit-and-miss experience. It requires patient and tolerant people who are willing to wait long, hungry hours while you figure out just how long to cook lentils or bake a 10-pound roast.

Dining With Mao

When I was preparing to travel to China, people in Mississippi College's international center loaded me and my fellow travelers with stacks of Chinese phrase sheets and English-as-a-Second-Language packets. My boyfriend, JP, and I were signed up to teach English to high school and middle school students in academic summer camps in Tianjin, China, and we were stoked. JP and I decided before we left the States that we would try whatever food was placed in front of us, but the people we knew who had lived in China told us that the one dish that we had to try was ba si ping guo.

Facing the Food

I recently started watching the Food Network—partly for inspiration and partly because I now work at home and need outside stimulation. I don't like most of the female cooking hosts—not because they don't have any good ideas, but because they do. I just can't handle the perkiness and "let's decorate the house to go along with the sandwiches we just made" thing. I'm more a fan of the male hosts, because they are all about getting down and dirty into the food, the history of it and even the scariness of it.

Eating By The Bay

I recently returned from a week in San Francisco visiting my lovely sister, Annie, and her husband, Jess. I planned my trip several weeks in advance so that our first stop when I got off the plane would be Zachary's Chicago-style pizzeria in Oakland. In fact, I coordinated most of the week so that I could be sure to hit up all my favorite culinary treats in between visiting friends and family.

The Sunset in Your Glass

Now that summer is almost over, you might find yourself longing for another hot and lazy afternoon in the hammock, a chilled glass of wine at the ready, instead of your now-harried schedule of before and after-school chauffeuring and parent-teacher meetings. Fret not; there are plenty of warm-weather weekends where you can pretend you're still carefree. But instead of your summer standby chardonnay, be adventurous and try a tasty rosé to usher in a spectacular autumn sunset.

Pardon My French

When I was a kid, my family and I would go on long fishing trips, involving hikes with several pounds of equipment, baiting our hooks with both a wriggly worm and our fingers, and getting our fishing poles stuck in a tree at least three times. My dad would "scout" out the "crick" (as creeks are called in Montana), and find everyone their own fishing hole: a deep, slow moving bend of the crick.

Cooking the Way the 'Ladies' Would

Restaurant-goers and home chefs alike are becoming conscious of the beauty of a good food and wine pairing. A true gourmand should think of wine as an ingredient in the meal rather than just an accompaniment and, in doing so, find magical results. Instead of making random wine selections for your meals, take a few minutes to ask questions to find the perfect match. If that's too much trouble, or you're worried about making mistakes, here's a recipe and wine pairing guaranteed to work its wiles on you.

Out Of The House & Into The Shack

Thirteen years ago, Larry Emmett and Michael Parker were traveling through Mississippi on their way to New Orleans from visiting friends in Nashville. On that fateful day, their car broke down. With little money and a car that could only move 40 mph, the two decided to take up residence in Jackson, and the city hasn't been the same since.

Ellington