Front-paging comments from Stinger on Tuesday and DAW/Iowa Old Lady this morning:
NE Iowa BJ meetup at noon on Saturday at the Cherry Creek Grill in Waterloo. Stinger and I will be there with green balloons.
Friends, significant others & lurkers welcome, as at all Balloon Juice events. Y’all have fun!
Baud
Please remember to tip your cows.
debbie
And take pictures!
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
Thanks for the post.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I love you, Baud. What would we do without you?
FlyingToaster
@Baud: You bastard! Do you know what it takes for the teenagers who belong to that farm to stand the cows back up?
True story: I lockered next to one of the [redacted] kids in junior high, and a different [redacted] in high school. They had 9 kids, 1 year apart, and we drove past their farm en route to JHS, HS, and the local shopping mall. And drunken louts from our HS would go out and tip cows every fucking weekend, and their dad would wake a brace of them up to go stand the cows back up in the middle of the night.
bk
From a Yelp review: “Some of the better menu choices went away (muscles)”. I can understand why they took it off the menu.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: WE HAVE A WINNER! Where would you like your internets sent?
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
You all are just jealous because you can’t chow down on Iowa food this weekend.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
Seconded.
Mike J
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Loose meat sandwiches? I think I can do better.
MomSense
@Baud:
Dog damn but I needed that laugh.
patrick II
If you need an event planner I am available for less than the standard fee of $26,000,000.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Mike J: When we moved here, what astounded me most were these pork tenderloin sandwiches with pieces of pork beaten thin until they were the size of a dinner plate and placed in a standard size hamburger bun. I’ve never actually eaten one.
MomSense
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
The food item that cracks me up is the corn dog. They should teach politicians how to eat one at the state fair without looking like pronographic.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@MomSense: The pics of Michele Bachmann eating a corn dog were priceless.
Yutsano
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Her husband’s were…on the nose.
NOTTHATTHERESANYTHINGWRONGWITTHTHAT…
efgoldman
We interrupt this jollity to take notice of the latest probable guilty plea in Orange World
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
So Iowa cuisine (outside of corn) requires beating your meat?
;)
Only thing I remember about the local food from when I was there (Des Moines, sometime in the mid 1970s) is tagging along on late night runs to the convenience store to get what were called Wonder Dogs . Basically 4 foot long Slim Jims.
Zippity
What time is the meetup?
Mike J
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): The foods you grew up with always sound delicious and those from other parts of the country usually sound iffy, at least at first. My ancestors left Iowa (one got brought back after he died and is buried at the capitol (he donated the land)) and I never spent enough time there to learn to appreciate the cuisine.
Alain the site fixer
@NotMax: I’ve had a few fantastic meals in Des Moines, one involving walleye and the other fresh elk. Wait, three meals. Had trout another time and all were exceptional.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Zippity: Noon. Are you coming?
MomSense
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
The pics of her husband were even funnier.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@NotMax: And corn dogs!
efgoldman
@MomSense:
I ate a ton of hot dogs, especially when I was a bachelor. (don’t judge me!) Pigs in blankets were a regular, but I never had a corn dog, living on the East coast and all.
Zippity
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I’m in the Quad Cities, but plan to go up to Iowa City on Saturday. If it was later, I may have driven up. Probably not going to make it by noon. Have fun!
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Zippity: I wondered if we had anyone else in the area. Sorry you won’t be there.
Origuy
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Pork tenderloin sandwiches are an Indiana staple as well. I’ll have one once in a while when I go back. I wouldn’t make a regular thing of it though.
MomSense
@efgoldman:
I love hot dogs. Growing up we weren’t allowed to eat them so I too went through a wicked hot dog phase. I especially liked the steamed ones from a hot dog cart.
No more for me though. ?
frosty fred
@Origuy: I saw those on the menu in a little Illinois diner once, and had one just to see. It was . . . totally unmemorable, now I try to describe it.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
Told the anecdote before, but what the hey.
Friend who I was visiting had an apartment in Des Moines which he shared with other college students, right across the street from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s building, All the empty beer and liquor containers they generated were saved up and found their way (in the dead of the night before pick-up day was scheduled) into the WCTU’s trash cans sitting at the curb.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@NotMax: Nothing like needling the neighbors.
NotMax
@MomSense
Colloquially known in NYC as “dirty water hot dogs.”
Gravenstone
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): A properly prepared tenderloin sandwich is a wonder. They’re a thing in Indiana as well. Wonder if they just skipped Illinois?
Gravenstone
@Alain the site fixer: Ah walleye. A staple of midwest fish fries great and small.
efgoldman
@MomSense:
Grilled or otherwise browned. No steamed or broiled.
My mom used to buy NEPCO knockwurst (fat all beef hot dogs, kosher style but not actually kosher). She was an awful cook, HER mother was an awful cook. She boiled them; turned me off them forever. Apparently long since absorbed into the Pearl brand.
Steeplejack (phone)
@efgoldman:
Surely that’s a typo and you meant “boiled.” I broil my kosher Hebrew National dogs and they come out browned and great.
KS in MA
Have fun–sorry I can’t be there! (Hawkeye, but I’m in Massachusetts now)
stinger
@Baud: Cows? In Iowa??? We grow potatoes.
SectionH
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I hope you have a fun meet-up, even if it’s small.
Because that can be really nice too. Mr S and I got into meet-ups (not the same words but same thing) 10 or 12 years ago via a very different blog, but the principle is the same. We had one meet up with just one “friend” – he was supposed to have backup, but the other guy never showed. We all had a good time anyway, enough that the next time we were passing through his town, he took us to a restaurant near his place (it was great, and has been a favorite of ours ever since).
So yeah, a few BJers, should be great.
Miss Bianca
@efgoldman: Even among those of us who grew up in the corn-fed Midwest, there are some (petite moi, par example) who have never ingested a corn dog.
Honestly, I just can’t. Even looking at them grosses me out. And looking at Michele Bachmann eating one, well….that’s just cruel and unusual punishment.