Fire Pit Chicken Wings

I don't know why it seems so much hipper to cook over the big copper fire pit than on a grill, but it does. Lawson built a fire, and when it had burned down to coals he cooked wings. We ate them with spoon bread and a salad of lettuce and avocado.

You can see our ugly makeshift tables in this photo -- our outdoor table shattered during a windstorm and we haven't replaced it yet.

I'd never tasted spoon bread before. I like it. I used the 2000 Joy of Cooking recipe for Custard Topped Spoon Bread, with my usual substitutions of yogurt for buttermilk. It was delicious.

I've been busy: I took over Chew On This!, the Free Times food news column, for one thing. And in two weeks I'm off to the beach. But I can get back to updating more regularly now that I have quit my corporate job. Plus, it's getting to be garden vegetable season, so there'll be plenty to write about.