Yes, I really did. Mother got some free tickets, and asked if I wanted to go see him at a casino in Mount Pleasant, only about 30 miles from Mother, and about 60 miles from me. The seats weren't great, but I managed to get a couple of pictures:

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OK, OK, I'll get the zoom working on the camera:

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REcognize him now? It's

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He was making food from his new cookbook, said it had a lot of his Grandmother's recipes, and that he was from South Carolina, and so he was going to make sweet potatoes, green beans with bacon, black eyed peas with a ham hock, chicken fried steak and banana pudding.

He may have been a bit optimistic, LOL, because they gave him a brand new Kitchen Aid induction cooktop and he had some trouble, locked it up a couple of times, and the show that was supposed to be and hour and a half became almost two and a half hours and he did a LOT of talking.

The sweet potatoes went into the oven, covered with butter/brown sugar/orange/cinnamon sticks. The green beans got onions sliced on top, a couple of slices of bacon, some chicken stock and into the oven. So far so good. He got a dozen egg whites and into the mixer to whip to soft peaks for meringue for the banana pudding. He started pounding rib eye steaks for the chicken fried steak and said that he believed the reason so many people don't like them is because they use cheap steak, and he had a big pot of peanut oil, he deep fries the steak. Or he would if he could work the stove, the oil was cold. He started some custard for the banana pudding and then got distracted with the meringue and scorched the custard. The oil still wasn't hot and he sent a backstage assistant for buttermilk to dip the steak in. Also some flour and some Tabasco sauce. The ham hock was so big that the lid wouldn't fit on his pan and just teetered, balanced on top of the ham hock.

He told stories about how he did an externship in Traversse City and rememberred just a few things. First, that first mouthful ever of fresh Lake Michigan wild caught salmon and he still hasn't eaten anything better. Second that Michigan has the best cherries in the world. Three, that he walked a mile and a half to work every day in snow up to his knees, and four, that it was cold. Really, really cold, LOL.

he strained the scorched bits out of the custard and checked the egg whites. Still not whipped and he had to call for help on the stove:

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OK, Tyler, stop pushing buttons and you'll be OK, but nope, he had to "adjust". Turned the stove off again. Got rescued but by that time the custard burned again. Really badly and the egg whites never did come to peaks. He "bagged the pudding" and took questions from the audience. We got to see the sweet potatoes and the green beans, and the oil finally got hot enough to fry the steak. The ham hock could feed a family, but he said he'd have sliced it up like a ham and eaten for a week.

In the end he said he thought we'd made lemonade out of some lemons and that he hadn't had a show that went that badly that he could remember, LOL. He mentioned that there were 1700 people in the theater watching, that's when people always mess up. They didn't sell books, but he autographed books for people who had brought them. I didn't, so Mother and I decided to head home.

It was fun, but I'll never worry about burning supper again. Plus, it was the second time I've been to a casino and not been to the casino! (grin)

Annie