Blue Moon Inn

Apt, for a week in which the full moon (Worm) gave me such weird dreams that I was afraid to write them down and have anyone find them after my demise. But… Blue Moon Inn! That’s such a good name, there’s got to be at least one in every state, but this one, that the random chooser selected in the 1950 guidebook was famous and well-loved, and I saw a “Once In A Blue Moon Cookbook,” featuring recipes from the Inn, for sale, online, and it costs a fortune! Kind of surprising, since you can’t sell cookbooks anymore. Or maybe they’re making a comeback, which they should, since online recipes are always annoying. The restaurant was in Montgomery, Alabama, and is long gone—it might have had several locations, even, but it’s no more. The address from the guidebook shows a kind of amazing-looking small house—but who knows how accurate that is. The street it was on (Goode) had since been renamed Edgar D. Nixon Avenue, in honor of civil rights leader, E. D. Nixon. Another address shows a vacant lot. There was a Blue Moon Café (probably not related, except for the Southern cooking) that is also gone. I’ve never been to Montgomery—and I’m not even sure if I’ve been to Alabama—the times I’ve traveled south, I passed through Mississippi and Georgia, so probably not. It’s 70 degrees and sunny, there, right now—which I think most people would agree is beautiful weather. This morning I woke up to snow, here, which delighted me—though I can get hardly anyone to agree about that. While snow in May is a bit much, I certainly love the weirdness of the April snow, and snow in March always used to be expected, but anymore, it feels like a winter bonus. The Blue Moon Inn, which had been open for over 30 years in 1950, was closed on Sundays (well, it’s the South) and also closed for the month of August. I’m guessing that kitchen got pretty hot.

That cookbook looks intriguing—someone is selling it for $115! (there are cheaper ones). A lot of these recipes in the old guidebooks, I want nothing to do with, but this one fascinates me—it’s called “Chicken Country Captain.” I might be the only one who took over 60 years to come upon Country Captain (it’s big in the South), but this is the first I’ve heard of it! Country Captain could be an oddball character, somewhere, or maybe it would make a good band name, though I’m sure it already is one. It looks like a labor-intensive curry chicken in a tomato sauce with green peppers and onions and a lot of spices. It looks like it’ll take a couple of hours to cook—I mean, if you like chicken—it’s cut, rolled, fried (in deep fat), browned, soaked, simmered, poured-over, and added to—pretty much everything but stuck in a corner with a miniature hat and made to orate by way of the ventriloquist’s “thrown voice.” Not that anyone would do that, but when you give your meat a character name, then spend such quality time with it, why not. What I’m wondering is, if there’s a “quick country captain” recipe out there—and of course there is—but it’s on an annoying website—to get to the recipe, you have to first “like” their band, Country Captain, then read a story, watch a video, sign up for a newsletter, and dodge about 15 popping up ads.

So… all that made me hungry, so I attempted my own version of (quick) “Country Captain”—altering the recipe, of course, in order to adjust for certain conditions (gluten-free, not having the called-for ingredients, price, time). What I’ve come up with, naturally, is quite a bit different—and is more like… potato soup. But very delicious! I’m a terrible cook because I break too many rules. At the same time, I just massively broke the rules for filling out my “March Madness” brackets (so that I can participate in the office pool and be a “regular guy”). I did this by making my picks before, even, the teams have been announced! It’s 4:45 pm CST. I’m sure that I will prevail.

I put a new soap review on my website this week (rspeen.com/soap) and so that calls for a soap review from deep in the archives, which I’ll offer here. This is from 26 June 2017, and I wrote it while “cat sitting”—so it was not my soap—and I didn’t know what it was, so I just called it “Brown Cube.” I prefer to respect the privacy of the owner of this soap, so I’ll present the review here exactly as written.

Brown Cube

“The Mars”

This soap has the exact shape and weight of a square brick, which is like the old bricks that were more square and less rectangular, for some reason. It occurred to me that maybe it is an actual brick—are some old bricks usable as soap? (I wouldn't think so, because wouldn't they melt in the rain?) When wet, it does get soapy, but has a very subtle (or no) smell. The interesting thing, though, is when wet some words form on it—it looks like: “SAVON DE MARS”—and then some more letters, I think, but it's obscure. Could it be from Mars? (I am thinking the time is not far off when we will bring some minerals back from Mars, some of which will indeed be used as very expensive soap.) Most likely, though, I think, is that this soap is totally haunted—and this is some dead, French trapper's name.

Soap Review No. 2

I appreciate your infinite patience,

Country Captain Randy