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Bill Heavey: Fried Alabama
I've just returned from a hunting trip to Alabama, which has greatly reduced my life expectancy, mostly because of what I ate. At home, I stick to a balanced diet of pizza, cheeseburgers, beer, Doritos, chocolate bars, and one dessert a day: a single serving of ice cream consisting of however much is left in the carton.
Alabama hunters consider this a vegan diet. We rolled out of our bags each morning and immediately nuked two or three Jimmy Dean sausage-egg-cheese-and-more-sausage biscuits apiece. We washed this down with Dr. Thunder, an off-brand carbonated beverage that lives up to its name. As sitting in a shooting house burns untold calories, we loaded our pockets with more Dr. Thunder and peanut butter crackers before heading out.
Lunch began with grilled homemade sausages (plain, jalapeno, or jalapeno-and-cheese) made by Jimmy, who excels at fixing trucks, reloading bullets, and cooking. We ate these hot and dripping fat with our fingers while he deep-fried bass filets, deer medallions, and breaded chicken bits. Halfway through the meal, which we ate standing around a fire in a 55-gallon drum, someone produced a loaf of white bread. The slices served as plates for food too hot to touch, as napkins when you tired of wiping your hands on your pants leg, and had the added benefit that you could eat them.
Dinner was at a restaurant that served fried dill pickle slices as an appetizer. Most of us went for the 17-oz. ribeye with hush puppies and, for the vegetable, french fries. We washed this down with beer. Then, because it is impossible to eat while you are asleep, we had slivers of cheesecake with a molecular density similar to that of uranium to tide us over until dawn.
The guys invited me to come back next year for the annual barbecue on the last weekend of the season. "We get serious about it then," one said. "Damn near stop your heart up like a rusty watch."
If I'm alive, I'll be there.
Ha! Had a few camps like that. By the end, your dern hat doesn't fit.
Posted by: John D | January 28, 2008 at 02:54 PM
Ha! Had a few camps like that. By the end, your dern hat doesn't fit.
Posted by: John D | January 28, 2008 at 02:54 PM
BH: For years we have called those meals: "heart-stoppers." Breakfast of champions, I say. Finger lickin' good, especially outdoors. Instead of Dr. Thunder, the best beverage is some economical, no-name brand of instant coffee.
Posted by: Brian T | January 28, 2008 at 03:54 PM
John D
Hey, does D stand for David? Cause if it does we have the same name
Posted by: JD | January 28, 2008 at 07:12 PM
The food sounds terrific! What were you hunting in Alabama? Any luck?
Posted by: adam | January 28, 2008 at 10:19 PM
well that sounds bout like how we eat down here.. uou should sum right at the end of summer for a huge fish fry(bass, bream, hush puppies, corn bread, homemade french fries<--that is a meal that will make u have a heart attack
Posted by: alex | January 29, 2008 at 08:38 AM
Breakfast for me usually consists of a dozen eggs,(scrambled, with cheese) 2 lbs. of bacon, around 15-20 sausage links, hashbrowns and some flakey biscuits. Wash it all down with a quart of ice-cold milk. It's good fuel for a full day of cold weather wood choppin'.
Posted by: Blue Ox | January 29, 2008 at 09:40 AM
I didn't know how to eat until I moved south of the Mason-Dixon... Southern women can go out in the backyard, pick what appears to be weeds and make a miraculously delicious meal. Poke salad, turnip greens, fried 'maters more kinds of gravy than you can shake a stick at and fry everything baby! My condolences that your breakfast menu lacked the requisite country ham.
Posted by: Dr. Ralph | January 29, 2008 at 09:49 AM
I've been told that when you go to hunt-camp in the South, the big number is not the B&C or Pope...it's the cholesterol.
A cholesterol number in the low 200's won't even show up on the radar. To get into the books, your cholesterol has to be just south of 300.
It's not about the hunt, it's about the meal afterward.
Posted by: jack | January 29, 2008 at 10:22 AM
Don't know what my cholesterol is, and I don't paticularly care.
Do you want to live forever?
P.S.
Corned beef hash with bicuits & gravy sounds real good right about now...
Posted by: Blue Ox | January 29, 2008 at 11:00 AM
The Southern General and the Russian General are bragging about their armies. The Russian says he feeds his troops 2,000 calories a day. The Southerner laughs, "We feed our boys over 5,000 calories a day." The Russian replies: "That's impossible - nobody can eat that many potatoes in one day."
Posted by: jack | January 29, 2008 at 11:30 AM
Balanced meal in AL; Fried bread, fried veg, fried meat, fried dessert, almost forgot fried cheese! Haaaaiiiiilllll yeah, oh crap my arm just went numb. Something fried hurry!!!
Posted by: GREG | January 29, 2008 at 01:35 PM
You haven't lived until you've eaten food served by a deer club in Southern New Jersey. It not only sticks to your bones the smell stays in your clothes two weeks after the season is over. Combine that with cigarette and cigar smoke and you have an amora that would give Rachel Ray an orgasm.
Posted by: Ed Cuneo | January 30, 2008 at 12:10 PM
Speaking of Rachel Ray in deer camp (now there's a sustainable fantasy; thanks Ed C.):
The boys in deer camp want to celebrate the 80th birthday of the widowed camp cook, so they arrange to have an escort service send a young woman to camp while everyone else is out hunting. "He hasn't been with a woman in years," they tell the service. "Send someone who'll really clean his plumbing."
So on the scheduled day, the old man is puttering around camp while everyone else is out on stand. There's a knock on the door. He opens it and there stands a beautiful young girl wearing a coat down to her ankles. She opens the coat to reveal an absolutely beautiful body. "I'm here to give you super sex!" she tells him.
The old man looks her up and down and up again. Then he waves his hand at her. "Aah," he snorts. "I'll take the soup."
Posted by: Bucker | January 30, 2008 at 01:36 PM
Rachel Ray is welcome at my deer camp anytime. Wow am I glad I read this... sustainable or not it will at least be in my thoughts for the next few hours.
Posted by: Dr. Ralph | January 30, 2008 at 08:08 PM
HA ya'll northerners call that a country meal.Shoot when we say we eat everything we kill by god we mean it gator tail and frog legs are about the best food their is down here by the way gater tail taste just like cat fish and frog logs taste just like (not kidding) chicken.
oh yea MR. Heavey im sendin you your book to get it signed tomorrow.
Posted by: Trae B. | January 30, 2008 at 08:45 PM
The fried 'taters gots ta have onions and garlic.
The butterflied venison loin must be double battered with a milk/egg batter with garlic salt and pepper in the flour.
If'n ya cain't make proper biskits, Pilsbury Grands will suffice. No Country Crock, only salted sweet cream butter. The gravy must be near the consistency of the mushed spuds! AND, contain mushrooms!
Breakfast: hashbrowns, fried eggs, biskits, venison sausage and gravy with black coffee!
Any meal can be topped off with either coconut creme pie or peach cobbler!
Bubba (could that be, Blubba?)
Posted by: Bubba | January 30, 2008 at 09:23 PM
In deer season here in Vermont,I chug a slimfast in the Am. Pack a dry turkey sandwich with cheese(smashed flat)for lunch and a litre of water. that will keep you light and alive for the day of tracking.
Posted by: matt stedina | January 31, 2008 at 10:02 AM
Sucks for you matt!LOL
Posted by: GREG | January 31, 2008 at 11:02 AM
How bout fried biskits in acast iron skillet half full of bacon grease,yum yum.! That'll but some dill in your pickle and quite likely a heart attack. Worth the chance!
Posted by: GREG | January 31, 2008 at 11:04 AM
Being from the great state of ALABAMA I am disappointed that someone calling themselves Bubba would even mention a caned biscuit of any kind! Are you sure your name's Bubba? When I moved away to go to college I came home a few weekends later and got up in time to learn to cook biscuits from my mother. Most education I got out of going to college.
Posted by: Lamar | January 31, 2008 at 01:57 PM
Read again Lamar!
If'n ya cain't make PROPER biskits, Pillsbury Grands will SUFFICE!
My return home wasn't from college or the military, but I too got up in time to make REAL biskits. And it weren't with a box of Bis-Quik!
Bubba
P.S. Bacon grease fried biscuits, Holy moly GERG, I most nigh slobbered myself to death!
Posted by: Bubba | January 31, 2008 at 04:33 PM
Enybody out there ever make a molasses sammich?
Bubba
Posted by: Bubba | January 31, 2008 at 04:35 PM
You betcha Bubba!
Posted by: GREG | January 31, 2008 at 06:03 PM
My first Thanksgiving in Tennessee there was this thing called dressing which could not possibly be related to stuffing which I had always eaten up north... it is the finest part of my Thanksgiving dinner now and forevermore... Besides her southern belle charm, accent and beauty the main reason I married my spouse of over twenty years was that southern fried chicken. Chicken has always been my favorite food and this woman could put Colonel Sanders to shame. Southern women know how to treat a man. Better food, better sex, and they dress up every time they leave the house even if it's only to hit the local Winn Dixie.
Posted by: Dr. Ralph | January 31, 2008 at 07:54 PM