Despite lifelong Tennessee residence, I’d never visited the Great Smoky Mountains, unless you count an overnight in Gatlinburg with a youth group. It’s the most-visited national park, but I never had the opportunity to go.

That changed last year, when I was included in an annual hike with a great group up Mount Leconte to spend a night at the lodge. The company, the scenery, the whole experience all left a deep impression. This year, I remembered to bring a camera.The wooden cabins and lodges and the alpine climate are like nothing else in Tennessee, and it feels like a Swiss mountain town. It’s quiet and peaceful and the air is sweet.

There’s very little plumbing — you fill a wash basin from a pump — and no electricity. Cabins are lit by oil lamp, heated with propane and the staff cooks with propane, working by lamps and headlamps. There’s aggressive bear activity in the area, according to the park service. (And since I slept on the floor by the door, bear thoughts were never far from my mind.)

In March, when the season begins, a helicopter brings a massive load of canned and other packaged food to the site. (If you’re willing to spend a week unloading, the lodge offers a week of free room and board.) During the season, llamas trek up the mountain to resupply the lodge, bringing fresh eggs and (just a guess) more wine.

Bears, propane, canned food: Seems like a challenge to cook in those conditions for 40 people twice a day. So it’s a pleasant surprise that the food is good, and it’s even better this year than it was last year.

The meal starts with soup, which was a really good creamy chicken and wild rice this year (vegetable last year).

You can see the glass of wine, refilled frequently by the extraordinarily efficient, patient and physically fit staff, and the thermos of butter lugged up the mountain by one intrepid hiker, who declared that the sensation of cold margarine squishing through her teeth at last year’s meals was something she simply couldn’t repeat.

Main course: beef with gravy, green beans straight outta the can, skillet apples.

For the meatless, black beans. There was chocolate birthday cake this year and last year, freshly baked by the staff.

I didn’t know what to expect from the food. Probably basic hiking food, maybe glorified Rice-A-Roni and oatmeal, rather than flowing wine and chocolate cake. And if there’s just nothing else you can eat on the table, there’s a basket of cookies.

But honestly, here’s the real dessert.

Vacation with the 21 closest members of the immediate family in a mountain house called a “cottage” that holds all of us. Lots of white porches and dirty bare feet and sweaty kids. The moms take the opportunity to drink instead of eat, and the kids scarf junk all day and all night until they collapse in their tracks.

There’s a dining hall on the grounds, run by Nashville’s renowned Emily Frith, offering fresh, small-batch, handmade, knock-your-socks-off food each day.

It’s impossible to gather/convince all 21 people to go, but we make a point of eating at least one lunch, and it never disappoints. Every day there’s freshly handmade gazpacho, black beans and yellow rice, and a great salad bar. The hot entree for the day was beefy mac-n-cheese, and the grills were fired up for grilled chicken and burgers.

Sweet Cheeks ate vegetables without being asked, so she earned a Ghirardelli brownie. Every table was full, and since we eat slowly, the brownies were gone by the time we got there. Once we told Emily how disappointed we were, she herself brought us one from the back. She’s got the heart of a servant, and the whisk of Martha Stewart. If you loved her sesame vinaigrette from back in the day, or you’ve heard of its deliciosity, you can buy it at the Chevron at the corner of Page Road and Harding.

Last week Claudia of cookeatFRET held a a great gathering of fun people for Cupcake-palooza. She had a beautiful spread of about 25 types of cupcakes from 4 local bakeries and a home-baked batch from the Cake Doctor (baked by Nashville foodie Mindy Merrill). You could practically feel your insulin level surging after a couple of rounds. As we ate, we rated them on a wildly complex sheet that had to be explained to me — twice, because I’m thick that way. As As you’d expect, there were some great cakes on that table and some, eh. Lesleyeats wrote up a pretty comprehensive posting of it here.

Cupcakes are a trend I don’t have an opinion about — I thought. But I do have opinions on cake: There are dozens of kinds of cake out there, but for some reason, the one that is sold in America’s bakeries and in cake mix form is a sponge-type cake that’s the worst of the lot.It’s too tender and it’s flavorless, really just a vehicle for frosting. And since that’s usually made with shortening, it hardly seems worth the calories, even to a sugar hound like me. This was the fate of our last bakery cake.

So it was heartening that three of the contenders — Cuppycakes, Sweet 16th and Dulce Desserts — are using other recipes. I loved the cupcakes from Dulce Desserts, run by my old running buddy Juanita. We spent a portion of our misspent youths together. I didn’t see or hear from her in years — we were both having kids — then she reappeared as a phenom in the medium of cake. I think this photo below is her dulce de leche cupcake. The cake was delicious, but the buttercream frosting was a little higher in butterfat than I like. Still, using the high butterfat specialty butter is generally a good development that raises the bar. In the end, the calculus of the rating sheet showed that that winning cupcake for me was the mocha cupcake from Cuppycake with their chocolate cupcake running a close second, and heartily endorsed by Sweet Cheeks, too.

Amtrak to New Orleans for a meticulously planned, precision-timed history-and-eating trip. Things may be dire in New Orleans’ neighborhoods, but the food is back to where it was, loads of new restaurants have opened, the Quarter was crowded and the tourists came to partay. . First stop, Mr. B’s Bistro. For freeform crawfish ravioli. Then to Central Grocery for a muffuletta, Zapp’s chips, and a Barq’s root beer. Righteous. As good as the one I had in ‘96. And the one in 1991. We bought decaffeinated Cafe du Monde at the best price we found in town.

Next day, to the Palace Cafe for Redfish with Andouille Crust in Crystal Hot Sauce Beurre Blanc, the most fantastical discovery. Mellow and hot and savory. Big Fella had pork “potpie,” a vertical creation of cochon au lait and mashed potatoes. We were beginning to bloat by this time, but we persisted. On to Antoine’s, where it was too dark (and we were a wee bit too oiled) for photography. Feelings Cafe in the Faubourg Marigny — what a great neighborhood. And a bargain of a restaurant. Coop’s Place at the back of the Quarter for smoked duck quesadilla and the best fried chicken — yes, better than Prince’s — and a revelatory rabbit and sausage jambalaya. No pictures, because Coop’s ain’t much to look at. And our fingers were greasy.

Dinner with friends at Luke, the John Besh property on the ground floor of the Hilton on St. Charles. House-made pickles, pate and sausages. Moules frites. Pork debris sandwich. Good wines by the glass. A real find.

We felt lucky to eat so many good meals in so many good place. But we probably missed some good ones — where should we go next time?

What we ate in Florida, speakable and unspeakable.

Want to start with the unspeakable?feh and double feh

Enough of the bad and the ugly — no offense to people who love offal — I love ya, you nutbuckets. But for me, I love me a grouper sammich, especially waterside.

With a pickle.

And on our way out of town, a quick meal of Spanish Bean Soup, chicken croquettes and a Cuban sandwich at the flagship of Ibero-Cuban Food.

I love fun people of all kinds, but food people are fun and delicious.

Today for lunch I met up with other food bloggers at Prince’s Hot Chicken.

The hand-painted sign just tells you you’re gonna need a bunch of napkins.

They sell water in extra-big bottles cuz you  need it, that’s why.

Everything about it is delicious, from the crisp coating to the just-enough dose of cayenne. There really are never enough napkins. If someone asks you to bring lunch, better take along a plastic bag — this stuff is juicy, sho nuff.

My pals Claudia, CeeElCee and ElZorro were there, and we had this running joke… well, you had to be there. Next time, you should come along. We had cake for dessert and everything!

Look what I found! I love abandoned shopping lists –they save me the trouble of openly ogling people’s grocery carts.

I have several techniques for cart ogling. There’s the Pretend to Rearrange My Items, which lets me walk around the cart and lean over for a better look at what’s in your cart — all that lunch meat and just one bag of carrots? You call that a balanced diet? There’s the Very Interesting Edition of the Enquirer This Week while I’m eyeing those two large boxes of prunes in your cart — constipated, poor dear.

Here are my two latest finds. I love the color coding of this one: grocery items in blue ink, produce in green ink, action steps in red ink. Pure organizational poetry.

Notice that the shopper is buying two of everything: napkins, cups, plates, two (Big) boxes of Cheer, cereals, milks and creams. Possibly for Mary. Mary doesn’t get any grapes, bananas or berries. Or cheese. Hard cheese, for you, Mary.

And the yellow list. Plug covers, stair locks, vitamins, daycare, key for me, potty seat(?). Get out the garter belt and lube martinis and rock music – it’s a weekend away while grandma’s got the kids. Listen, Grammy, between a potty training child and some off-leash dogs, you’ll have your hands full. I hope that “dead bolt entry” goes smoothly at least. And I got my fingers crossed on that potty seat decision — it’s a tough one!

If you’re addicted to shopping lists, there are more at Shopping List compendium, a collection of annotated lists from somewhere in southern England.

 UPDATE, 8 Jan. 2007: TA plays its part in the great national conversation about cart-ogling. Or is that oogling?

Cornbread is supposed to be hot, salty and greasy. That’s why it’s good with barbecue. This specimen, obtained at a barbecue place that you may be able to identify, is sweet, soft, and muffin-shaped. Read the menu really really carefully and you discover it’s not even cornbread — it’s called “cheese biscuits.” It’s not a biscuit, either. It’s a muffin. Eaters, take a stand on this dangerous, sinister trend!