ME AND CRAWDAD de la Cooter jaunted off by car to Idaho to shoot shit and toot tunes and just generally visit a little with Johnny "Jack" Poetry and his grillfriendperson, the Cartoon Character, who has achieved legendary status in those parts for chasing down a coyote and convincing it to cough up one of their guinea hens, whole and kicking and converted to Christianity and everything. So if she doesn't get top trophy (or at least a special mention) at the state's big Friends of Fowl chicken-fry next month, then the whole thing is rigged, I tell you, and I wouldn't be surprised if they find bundles of ballots buried beneath snow drifts come thaw. Hey, stop snickering, cheap eaters, because believe it or not, that kind of lowdown communism goes on out there in bumfuck America.

But I think it's been about, what, four years almost exactly to the day, give or take however many days in whichever direction, since me and Rocco moved Johnny "Jack" from the Western Addition straight up and over to rural Idaho and three feet of snow or so. Since which time it's been a habit of mine to visit him only in the dead of winter, so I still don't know what Idaho looks like, other than: white. And cows. But even the cows tend to get four to six inches of accumulation by morning, so generally you can't see them until the cowboys come around and shovel.

And speaking of cows, we have a tradition, or at least a tendency, to shake off the old Weber once a visit and stoke up a little snow-cue. There's something about barbecuing in boots and mittens that just feels ... I don't know, right. At least righter, to me, than snowboarding or skiing or making snow angels or snowmen or even hitching up a truck-tire inner tube to the dog, Pepper, and hitting him with green onions from the compost pile, saying, "Mush."

Ah, how the memories of my snowbelt Ohio upbringing come sweeping over me like four-foot drifts ... school cancellations ... nothing to do all day but climb out the upstairs bedroom windows onto the roof and slide down and over the edge, free-falling blissfully into soft stuff piled up higher than we were at that age – a mellow marshmallow landing – all sprawled and milking the odd exhilaration a moment before tunneling through pure paradise itself, out and around the house and back in, sloshing back upstairs, and the whole thing over and over again until Mom and Dad got home and beat the crap out of us.

Where was I?

I was in Idaho, but I'm back. Hi. Last night, apropos of none of the above, Crawdad and me and our friend Tinzee found ourselves in Berkeley, of all the wintry places in the world, having a few at the Bison Brewery. And when I say "few," you know what I mean, right? I mean dishes – dry things to sop up our beers with.

Dragonfly Tea House, at the Bison, has found itself some sort of fancy-fangled cooker since any of us had last been there, which was six, seven, and eight years ago, respectively. What a scoop! Now you can sop up their home-brewed beers with Chinese barbecue pork quesadillas ($8), for example. They have big pieces of pig, plus red peppers, tomatoes, mozzarella, and stuff inside, and outside ... you guessed it: ginger guacamole and pineapple salsa, which was actually mango salsa, you ask me.

Either way, delicious! And if eight bucks seems like too much to put up for a quesadilla, even a goofball gourmet one, you can always get red beans and rice for six. It's cooked with ham hocks and homemade sausage, and it comes with some of the best damn cornbread I've ever eaten anywhere.

Then there are these skewers of beef marinated in "African spices" with a tamarind dipping sauce ($7). This was actually the best of everything we ate, but I can't recommend it, because there were just four small skewers. Meaning: appetizer. And we can't afford no seven-dollar appetizers in this column.

Eight-dollar mussels? Sure. Why not? Because mussels are always going to run you, and if you love them, you gotta get them somewhere. Here they come in a Thai-style brew, of coconut milk, lime juice, cilantro, galangal, and lemongrass.