Yesterday morning, Brent made a stop at a bakery as he was transporting Sara and Coleson to school. He knows how much I like maple bars, but the baker said they don’t make them, because people around here don’t want them. But they would bake some for him today. He went this morning and came home with three “still warm” maple bars. Yum, yum!
After taking Willie for his morning walk, Brent and I drove into Jackson. He had heard of a place that sells pig ear sandwiches. Yes, that’s right...pig ear sandwiches! Of course, it was a MUST on our list.
To get there, we drove past the capital building and many big office buildings. Just a few blocks further on it looked like a war zone. All that remained of most of the buildings was walls or rubble on empty lots. Most of the businesses around the Big Apple Inn were boarded up
The tiny cafe looked like it was closed, but when we went through the door there were about 15 people in line in this skinny little building. It wasn’t much more than a wide hallway with a cooking area behind a glass window (broken and taped), a counter for ordering, and a few tables in the back. The paint was peeling off the walls. I don’t think any upgrading had been done since it opened more than 60 years ago. It is still owned by the same family who started it, with the third generation in charge now.
The man in back of us said he was born five blocks away. He could remember the place from when he was a little kid. He always goes there to eat when he comes back to visit his mother. He now lives in Washington, DC and is a consultant of some kind. We talked about DC and a lot of other things until our order...pig ear sandwiches, sausage sandwiches, and tamales...was ready.
We went back to the car and drove around until we found a park. We sat on a bench, eating our gourmet meal and looking across the street at the Governor’s mansion. The capital was a couple of blocks away.
And now for a report on the food. Beside a piece of pig’s ear there was some kind of mustard sauce and cole slaw on the sandwich. I tasted the mustard the most and Brent tasted the cole slaw. As for the pig ear, it wasn’t so much a matter of taste as texture. The skin was rather thick and white, and under that was the flesh, kind of pink and slimy. We each ate about half of our sandwiches and decided it was time to move on to the sausage sandwiches. We didn’t want to be too full from the pig ear delicacies (and maybe somewhat green around the gills) to eat our second sandwiches. The sausage was ground up and served with the same condiments. The sausage ones were only marginally tastier than the pig ears. Our final course consisted of the tamales. They were really good!
While Brent took our leftovers to the car, I went in search of a geocache in the park. The walkways were rough and the ground around the cache site was bumpy. With my propensity for falling, I only searched for about 10 minutes, gave up, and headed back toward the car, wondering why Brent hadn’t joined me.
He was talking to a man, who got into his car and left before I got back there. Brent said, “I’ve just been “you’d,” meaning that this guy came up and started talking, like I “sometimes” do. He had seen Brent’s retired Air Force license plate. He was retired AF, also.
All in all, it was an interesting day. And to think, Bill chose to stay home and eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!
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