Houston, TX

Phew. Texas is HOT.

And I saw my first dead armadillo by the side of the road. Perhaps those two things are related.

I drove to Houston from Gulfport early yesterday morning, and let me tell you, Texas has some crappy roads. I-10 was under construction starting at the state line, extending all the way into Houston. And Houston, P.S., has more of a sprawl problem than Atlanta, although they've managed to make their tangle of interstates look prettier against a setting sun. Just past Beaumont, I passed the clean-up of what must have been a fairly major accident; there were cops, ambulances, and fire engines on the service road beside the interstate, and a Medi-vac was helicoptering in. The chopper was landing just as I passed by, which was pretty cool, except for the fact that my little rental P.O.S. car got nearly blown off the road. As it was I think I drifted suddenly about eight feet to the left.

I had lunch at Feast, a paean to all things pork. I had the pork rillettes and the pork cheek and dandelion green salad, which blessedly was more pork than salad. I came away experiencing what I'm convinced must be the greatest feeling in the world, short of orgasm--being stuffed full of pork. I went to the art museums, wandered around a bit, went into some shops, and then--THEN--I discovered Central Market.

I am in love with Central Market. It's like Trader Joe's, Fairway, and Whole Foods all rolled into one, only better, because Central Market sells wine, and Abita beer, and okra chips, and it's cheaper. AND it offers cooking classes, one of which I took. It almost makes me want to move to Texas, just so I can shop there. I know you're thinking, "Why are you so excited over a big box grocery store, Jenny?" Let's just remember I've been shopping in New York for the past ten years. The average grocery store in New York would fit into the cheese section in Central Market. You can find pretty much everything you want in NYC, but it's never all in one place. I buy wine at the wine store, and meat at the butcher store, and produce at the farmer's market, and...well, you get the idea. And everything's expensive. Where large, varied grocery stores do exist (Trader Joe's, Fairway, Whole Foods), shopping at them is invariably a clusterfuck.

So I wandered through Central Market in a daze, purchasing such heretofore unobtainable (in NYC) products as okra chips, liquid smoke, blue grits, and dried guajillo peppers. The class featured a sort of postmodern chuckwagon cuisine. It wasn't as interesting or informative as the class I took in Charleston, but the instructors were both wearing cowboy hats, and one had a handlebar moustache. Unfortunately they did not allow me to take pictures. Boo. But I learned how to make goat cheese-buttermilk ranch dressing, ribs with a black coffee-guajillo pepper barbecue sauce, dried apple and guajillo pepper grits, and a dutch oven strawberry cobbler.