Suzanne Calling

If you hadn't already gathered, we're big fans of Food Network. ("No, Suzanne, seriously?") Yeah, I know it is a surprise. I tasked Ed with finding places to eat while we traveled this week and out came our Diners, Drive Ins and Dives cookbooks. You have to understand, we end up watching this show late at night, long past bedtime and the refrain is usually 'Yes, PLEASE' to whatever delight Guy's chef du segment is introducing. So, when Ed came up with the Beacon Drive In and their 'A-Plenty' as featured on Triple D. While we didn't get to see caller JC Strobel, who is featured in the segment, we did get a fantastic experience and some great food. Ed insisted we only get one item 'a plenty' and you know what? He was right. There were enough fries and rings for all of us. These are the rules and you'd best follow them. Then again, we were there after dinner rush, so they went easy on us newbies! Underneath all of this is ...

If there's one thing that we embrace when traveling, it's 'eat where the locals eat'. Several of the travel based cooking shows say this over and over, and it's something that we've done since our California trip in 2006 . Now, the prevalence of smart phones and apps make this proposition way easier. Instead of picking an exit and hoping there's food beyond a mini-mart, we can use the Urban Spoon and I-95 Exit guide app (I've been using their website for years, now it's an iPhone app, too) to determine what is available at each exit. On our travels through South Carolina, we found many exits with barbeque. The south is the land of good 'que, and the exit we decided to take had two listed, B&C Steak and Barbeque and Sweetey's BBQ. Both sound like they are mom and pop places-sign us up. As soon as you get off exit 193, the first place you see on the right is B&Cs. It's lunchtime, there are a ton of construction pickup truck...

When I was a kid, the house I lived in only had two air conditioners: one in the living room and one in Mom's bedroom. You did NOT turn on the air conditioners without permission, and it better be scorching hot to do so. To us, 85 was extremely hot and we had to come up with alternatives to cool off. My trick was to take a washcloth and wet it down with cold water, then wipe my whole body down and stand in front of the fan. (They didn't raise the LILCo bill as much as the A/C, so we could use those.) If we were lucky, a late night thunderstorm came through and cooled things down to 70 degrees or something close. Then, I moved to Maryland, to a valley in which the air did not move. No breezes off the ocean. The heat seemed to turn on the first week of May and it would stay hot until the second week of September. It was hot, it was sticky, but at least I paid the electric bill and I used those air conditioners! When we built the townhouse, we were excited to have central...

My fellow BlogHer members, there's a poll. Where would you like BlogHer '09? Since I'm planning on going next year, I'm partial to a place I've never been. I'm looking over that list and wondering which one to vote for. How about you? Where should it be next year? Time to vote ! Where should BlogHer 09 be held (July 17-19, 2009) Atlanta, GA Austin, TX Denver, CO Las Vegas, NV New York, NY Omaha, NE Philadelphia, PA Portland, OR Seattle, WA San Francisco Bay Area Southern California St. Louis, MO I bolded the places I've been. This leaves 8 of the 12 locations up for grabs.