…and everything goes to hell. Lots of phone calls and meetings to catch up on, which is why posting’s been thin. More coming!

World Famous Kentucky Horse Race Whose Name Rhymes with “Herbie” Pie dates back to 1950. That was the year it was invented by the owners of the Melrose Inn in Prospect, Kentucky: the Kerns. It was shortly named and, in 1968, trademarked. Ever since then World Famous Kentucky Horse Race Whose Name Rhymes with “Herbie” Pie has been synonymous with two things: the Kentucky Derby and lawsuits. Indeed the company which now goes by the name “Kern’s Kitchen” has sued at least 25 times to protect its rights under the law.

I’ve been ranging rather far of field lately, so I thought I’d try something that’s literally close to home. No, I know, the spring horse racing season is about six weeks in the rearview mirror. Even so I get no end of requests for it. Add to that the fact that I only recently came […]

I spent my 4th of July in Mayberry, basically. It was fantastic. We traveled about 25 miles to drop in on the small town of Rutherfordton, North Carolina. This place must have been inhabited by Brits at one point in its history, because instead of pronouncing it “ruther-ford-tun”, locals just call it “rolf-tun.” Brits are the only people who can look at a word like “Leicestershire” (by all rights “lye-kester-shire”) and pronounce it “lester.”

Reader Lee clues me in to a book that seems right up my alley: The Localvore’s Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-mile diet by University of Toronto faculty member, Pierre Desrochers. It appears to be in the same spirit as my my anti-Michael Pollan screeds but with a lot more real data. Some key quotes about it are on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, check them out. The farm-rapping is fun, too. I know what I’ll be reading tonight!

I’m a yankee born and raised, but I only relax in the South…the deeper the better. The people are genial, the fish eager and the bread is made from corn, corn, corn. North Carolina was precisely what the doctor ordered last week, though I arrived for some of the worst trout weather in memory. The extreme heat was only interrupted by intense rain, so even the mountain streams were running warm and muddy. It takes an extremely skillful fisherman to coax a trout — which hunts primarily by sight — to bite down on a fly in conditions like that.

That’s not me, so, I switched to bass. Lake Lure, in the mountains of North Carolina near Asheville, is the most picturesque manmade lake I’ve ever seen. Fishing it at dawn fills up whatever reserve it is that gets depleted by trips to the mall and Payless Shoes. Bobbing gently in a bass boat in a shady cove, and sneaking a lure under a stand of trees where you just know the fish are hungry, you’re perfectly, pristinely aware, yet thinking of nothing. Only the taughtness of the line across your fingers as you wait for the telltale twitch.

July is vacation time for the Pastry family. We’re headed to the North Carolina mountains to do a little recreating and hopefully catch some trout. Back soon! – Joe