Ladies and gentlemen, this marks the first time that we at Haute Plates Industries and Light Mechanical Crop Dusting have composed a "blog" by dictation. Dispel from your minds any image of a human with a notepad and the ability to write in shorthand, however, as I am dictating this to my iPad. Why? Because my laptop died on Sunday, and so did the already-near-death-laptop it replaced.
This process is not without hiccups. For example, while my iPad is a marvel of technology, it does not speak French, and thus "Haute Plates" comes out as "hog place" or "hoot pace." We are not entirely opposed to the former, but the latter sounds more like a small town in West Virginia than a New Orleans food blog, and while Haute Plates does have certain holdings in the Mountaineer state, we are not a town.
In all events, the keyboard on my iPad is at least sufficient to correct spelling and grammatical errors interposed by the iPad interface and my own specious diction.
As fascinating as all this must be to you, it is not the reason that most of you read this work. You're here to read about food, not my technical issues. So what's new in the dining world? I don't know, I don't have a computer.
Just kidding. Hogs for the Cause is this weekend, and had I not been there at the start, I don't think I would appreciate how much the event has grown in the last five years. When it started, there was a single roast suckling pig and some raw oysters to be shucked. The cooking competition started the second year, but it was still small enough that I managed to get through the day as a team of one, effectively, after my two team-mates abandoned me due to "family issues." I guess the birth of children and parental health issues are important to some people.
There are no records of the winners and losers that day as far as I know, so I tell people I won. I do not tell people what I cooked, because unfortunately I do not recall what I cooked. I think it was pork.
From that humble beginning and despite my peripheral involvement the event is now one of the biggest of the year in the city as far as food and music go. Things start with a party on Friday night, when the teams start cooking for the barbecue competition the next day. Music and drinks and lots of food that isn't smoked pork is the order of the evening. Saturday things start at 11 and run through 10 that night. That includes more music, drinks and a lot of pork. It's not Jazz Fest, but it ain't all that far away at this point, and who knows where it goes from here? You can find more out about Hogs for the Cause here.
You can also donate to the "buy Robert a new computer" fund by sending me bitcoin or whatever the kids are using for currency these days.
