Poke Salad Podcast: Episode 43 (August 10, 2016)

Mississippi News

• We lost Pete Fountain this week.
• Happy 15th birthday to The Shed.
• Southern Miss has announced their Seats for Soldiers Campaign.
• Alex Eaton, executive chef of Manship Wood Fired Kitchen in Jackson, won the crown Saturday at the 13th annual Great American Seafood Cook-Off.
• David Raines, most recently chef de cuisine at Ridgeland’s Seafood R’evolution, is dove-tailing his fine dining restaurant career with his dad’s Louisiana cattle production to bring Wagyu beef and more to Mississippi tables.
• Sombra Mexican Kitchen will open its second metro Jackson location in Flowood in November in the old Cheddar’s location.
• Music icon Bob Dylan will perform at Thalia Mara Hall in Jackson on Oct. 27.
• Mississippi native Stuart Stevens will be at the Mississippi Book Festival on Aug. 20. See the complete lineup at www.msbookfestival.com.
• The Mississippi Museum of Art’s Mapping a Modern Mississippi is a video and photo project casting a spotlight on the people who stand apart from the norm in the state’s business and creative economies.
• The City of Clinton has launched a new fundraising campaign called Back the Badge that aims to support law enforcement and equip police officers with body cameras. You purchase a sign for a donation of $10, and the donations of the dollars will go to help fund body cameras or Clinton policemen. If you would like to buy a sign, call the Clinton Chamber of Commerce at (601) 924–5912.
• The Golden Triangle Comic and Toy Expo will take place this Saturday, Aug. 13, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the lower level of Trotter Convention Center in downtown Columbus.
• Mississippi State supporters can meet the 2016 Bulldog football and volleyball teams at the annual Fan Day celebration on Saturday, Aug. 20, inside the Palmer Center. Doors open at 3 p.m. with autograph availability running from 3:30–5:30 p.m.
• Ed Croom Jr.’s The Land of Rowan Oak, published by the University Press of Mississippi, will be in stores on August 25.
• Garden and Gun magazine featured a writer’s ode to a storied little Mississippi bookstore. The writer is Rick Bass and the bookstore is Square Books in Oxford.

The South

• Media training is a part of the University of Alabama football team’s fall camp every year.
• The inaugural Beignet Fest will be held October 8 in Lafayette Square in downtown New Orleans.<
• Two weeks prior, on Sept. 25, the inaugural Fried Chicken Festival will be held in Lafayette Square. And the Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival returns to the same spot Oct. 14–16.
• Talk about a dream job. New Orleans food writer Scott Gold has been sent on a three-month mission to find our country’s best bacon.
• Several New Orleans restaurants, Josephine Estelle, N7, and Willa Jean, made Bon Appétit magazine’s list of 50 nominees for its annual top 10 new restaurants in the United States. The magazine’s “Hot 10: America’s Best New Restaurants 2016” will be published online and in the print edition on Aug. 16. (Also nominated was Pop’s Poboys in Lafayette.)
• A new building rising on the corner of Poydras Street and Loyola Avenue will bring New Orleans a Dave & Buster’s.

Etc. Etc.

• General Mills hopes to capitalize on a trend that drove consumers crazy with delight last year. The company is rolling out pumpkin spice-flavored Cheerios around Labor Day.
• Recently, the Wall Street Journal ran an article on the surge in popularity of audiobooks.
• Reading books is tied to a longer life.
• We have all of these dating apps and dating shows just to couple folks up — but new research shows that single folks are likely to experience more psychological growth and development than married people.
• The Washington Post has a big team of journalists covering the Rio Olympics. Also covering the games for the paper: Robots.
• Do you curse a lot, stay up late, and tend to be messy? Then you may be highly intelligent.