Hi!
A million thanks to Ali at This is Alabama (and Alabama News Center, who also picked it up) for the interview with me and mention of DeepFriedKudzu! xoxo!
Indie Book Stores: An Alabama Map
I’ve worked on this project a bit — hasn’t really taken much time — but it wasn’t the easiest thing to find a good list of all the indie bookshops in Alabama. So let’s fix that.
Of course sprinkling in some good bookshops from elsewhere. Pretty Good Books, LaGrange GA (2022)
I wanted to incorporate all the ones where you could go in and order a new book, but then felt bad about leaving out some of those really great used book and collectible places that are so much fun. Maybe include both and just have a legend to demarcate each type? Let me know what you think.
Hidden Lantern Books, Rosemary Beach FL (2018)
What really got me going was this article at The Nosher:
The Lower East Side Shop Where Every Book Comes With a Pickle
This independent bookshop keeps the legacy of the Lower East Side’s pickling district alive.
Now, two years out, Sweet Pickle Books is a quirky literary destination for locals and tourists alike — and browsing through the store, it’s easy to see why. The railroad-style aisles are lined with love-worn paperbacks that tend to hover below the $10 mark, a disco ball swings in the corner, and the smooth stylings of the Vince Guardali Trio softly murmur from speakers throughout the store. There’s a pickle costume that young customers frequently take photos in…
The stairs at Square Books, Oxford MS (2017)
Here it is:
Little Professor at Pepper Place, Birmingham AL (2022)
And here’s the map link. Please let me know if you have any new-book indie additions and your thoughts about another category for the used/collectible spaces too. xoxo!
Commandment Number One
Ain’t Notin Come Before the L-rd
Sylvania AL, 2012.
MLK and Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy and Harriet Tubman
GSA Grocery
Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy, and Harriet Tubman
“Remember the Dream”
Vicksburg MS, 2007
This Week’s Various
As always, all images unless otherwise noted copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Like to use one elsewhere? Kindly contact me here.
Affiliate links are sometimes used. That means that if you purchase something via one of the links, it costs you nothing extra, but may generate a commission, offsetting the cost of DFK… e.g. as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Also: remember that Bookshop is fab because they’re giving orders to indie booksellers. Grateful for your support. xoxo!
“Every Friday Nite is Kiddies Nite,” a previously unpublished short story by Tennessee Williams (well, before it was included in last April’s The Caterpillar Dogs and Other Early Stories — here at Amazon) is available to read free, here.
Was reading Guest of a Guest for their take on FX’s new FEUD: Capote Vs. The Swans, and they mistakenly have him as a Mississippi native (he could claim New Orleans as that’s where he was born, but we all know he’s an Alabama boy who played with Nelle Lee in Monroeville and continued their relationship into adulthood, and Eugene Walter knew him from his visits to Mobile, and Truman didn’t move from Alabama to NY until the early ’30s). Will be watching this for the incredible, incredible casting and knowing it’s going to be just beyond in ALL ways (but found his Answered Prayers miserable).
On InsideHook’s list of 27 Best Luxury Hotel Openings in 2024, Quercus in Georgia
Roasted Mushroom Soup recipe at Blackberry Magazine (from The Barn at Blackberry Farm)
At the NYT:
The World Hasn’t Seen Cicadas Like This Since 1803: Brood XIX and Brood XIII will both emerge this spring. The last time these bugs showed up at the same time in the United States, Thomas Jefferson was president.
In other words, it’s going to be loud outside.
The last time the Northern Illinois Brood’s 17-year cycle aligned with the Great Southern Brood’s 13-year period, Thomas Jefferson was president. After this spring, it’ll be another 221 years before the broods, which are geographically adjacent, appear together again.
“Nobody alive today will see it happen again,” said Floyd W. Shockley, an entomologist and collections manager at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. “That’s really rather humbling.”
Going through the line at Arnold’s, 2017
Arnold’s Country Kitchen in Nashville has temporarily reopened — just until their building sells. OMG LET’S GO.
BTW, in this same article, it mentions a restauranteur asking Ella Brennan before she passed away the secret to how they do so well in the business:
She told him in every Brennan restaurant, on every shift, there’s a Brennan on duty. And they didn’t open a location unless there was a Brennan — a family member or someone who married into the family, “who has skin in the game.”
Johnson Square, from a 2020 visit
At Garden & Gun: Thirty Years of Savannah’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: The bestseller’s author, John Berendt, on what he’d do differently and what it’s like as the book’s sole surviving character
(about Savannah changing:) I just hope they keep the Oglethorpe Plan intact. The design with the squares is the gem that makes Savannah special.
Andy Warhol/Friends and Frenemies: Prints from the Cochran Collection opened last week at the LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge, with 36 original prints by Andy Warhol along with 60 works by other boundary-pushing 20th C artists.
Starting March 21, they’ll have One Stitch at a Time: Vernacular Southern Quilts
An eclectic collection of handmade quilts crafted by Southern vernacular artists including Yvonne Wells, Sarah Taylor, Chris Clark, Otesia Harper, and ladies from the renowned Gee’s Bend, Alabama community.
That top one in the article is this Chinese restaurant with the distinctive sign in Selma, Alabama — took this pic in 2020
Rewind: The 2018 feature, Dine In / Take Out by Julian Castronovo, at Oxford American
Photographer Julian Castronovo’s project, All You Can Eat, traverses the visually distinct subject of Chinese restaurants as they appear throughout the South. Inspired by his family’s history as grocers in Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta, Castronovo made this series of images in the summer of 2018
The June Carter Cash documentary is out on Paramount+
and guess what else is new-ish on Paramount
Cast iron cornbread made at home, 2022
On the latest Tennessee Farm Table, one of my fave podcasts, Iva Spoon Wilde (“she could dress a chicken at the age of six”) with cast iron cornbread, make your own butter, and fried peach pies. here. Oh, it’s so winter right now. Let’s dream fresh fried peach pies a little.
Coming out January 30: The Survivors of the Clotilda: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the American Slave Trade. Available for pre-order here at Square Books:
The Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on American soil, docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860—more than half a century after the passage of a federal law banning the importation of captive Africans, and nine months before the beginning of the Civil War. The last of its survivors lived well into the twentieth century. They were the last witnesses to the final act of a terrible and significant period in world history.
In this epic work, Dr. Hannah Durkin tells the stories of the Clotilda’s 110 captives, drawing on her intensive archival, historical, and sociological research. The Survivors of the Clotilda follows their lives from their kidnappings in what is modern-day Nigeria through a terrifying 45-day journey across the Middle Passage; from the subsequent sale of the ship’s 103 surviving children and young people into slavery across Alabama to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in Selma; from the foundation of an all-Black African Town (later Africatown) in Northern Mobile—an inspiration for writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Zora Neale Hurston—to the foundation of the quilting community of Gee’s Bend—a Black artistic circle whose cultural influence remains enormous.
Red Paden, who owned Red’s juke joint — one of the last — in Clarksdale, has passed away. Obit in the NYT.
The Parthenon, from a 2017 visit
The Parthenon in Nashville has Duncan McDaniel: Fountain on through March 31 and it looks incredible.
Antiques & Garden Show of Nashville
The Antiques and Garden Show of Nashville this weekend was *incredible* — tons of pics to share and faves here:
12th Night Party
It’s officially king cake season — we were invited to a super sweet 12th Night party a few days ago, and I made a galette de rois, traditional French king cake. It’s been a while since I’ve made one, and this year, used Dorie Greenspan’s recipe from NYT Cooking. As I used Dorie’s recipe to the letter, I won’t publish it here, but I do have a subscription to NYT Cooking and can share this recipe and others each month (so just message me, happy to!).
First, the host has a home in Key West, so she puts up a Key West Christmas tree. We went to Key West for Spring Break last year and loved loved loved it, but even still, I know nothing about this, ha! There were some roosters at the base which makes total sense if you’ve been there.
Terrific guests, amazing food, just everything was fabulous.
And sidenote, Judy Blume has a bookstore in Key West, which she works at some.
And here’s me, tickled to be going to the party, and PS: I actually read my first Judy Blume book last year — because I was not allowed to read her books in school. I know, I know.
The galette de rois turned out great! It *did* leak from one section because I just must have not sealed it perfectly, but that seemed to not affect it overall — just removed the extra filling, put it on a plate, and everyone seemed to really enjoy it.
Another puff pastry I’ve been making over the last month is the incredibly easy Nutella dessert many people are making right now (it’s all over TikTok and Instagram). It’s just two sheets of puff pastry (one on bottom, one on top) with Nutella spread in the middle but not all the way to the edges, then cut into strips, twisted, in the oven at 400* for around :18. Just a little egg wash on top, finished with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar if you wish.
Last night, made a “regular” king cake and used the cinnamon bun spread from Trader Joe’s which was amazingggg
Look for that recipe next week. xoxo!
Seddon Cemetery Graveshelters
At Seddon Cemetery in Pell City, Alabama, there are a couple of distinct, low graveshelters made of composite material. They are for Minerva A. Kirby Spradley (1851-1915) and her husband, Napoleon Bonaparte Spradley (1849-1929):
The structures are built around a more traditional small headstone
These have the interesting almost chimney-like corner points all around
I’ve documented over 75 Alabama cemeteries with a total of more than 100 graveshelters — this project is something I’ve worked on for most of my adulthood. If you know of a graveshelter, please message me so I can do a site visit, research, photograph, etc. Thank you so much!
Retro Meat & 3s
Whatever we’re doing, we need to all work together to keep the meat & threes in business. Pell City Steakhouse is practically preserved in amber. How are the steaks at night? No idea, because I’m a vegetable plate girl and lunch is terrific. And this neon sign is…it’s everything (below, previous visits, for the sign at night)
LB loves this fried chicken. If you keep a scoreboard in your head about the greatest fried chicken of all time and the beloved, shuttered Hotel Talisi fried chicken is right there at the top, same. Um, scroll to the bottom of this post for a way you can still get it — kinda.
My plate — the turnip greens, purple hull peas, the coleslaw…yep. Perfect.
The following pics are all from previous visits. Because I have to show this neon, mostly.
They just don’t make neon steaks anymore.
Certs, Clorets, Rolaids. What year is this!?
and the venerated pie case
oh yes.
Earlier, about the Hotel Talisi (Tallassee, Alabama) fried chicken: this was from there in 2008
Since the hotel burned down, there’s been one place serving it. Called Larry Melvyn’s Food Once Thought Gone (all that is on the sign out front) in Tallassee, even Absolutely Alabama came out to do a piece on it and everybody there used to work at the hotel, so they know the recipes. That’s their Hotel Talisi chicken, fried at 340* so the crust is just-so, in this pic from our visit in 2022.
fabulous.
Biblical Barbery
His Image Barber Shop, Oneonta AL
Scott’s Style Shop, Blessed Hands Salon, downtown Yazoo City MS
Salon 10:42, Boaz AL
and my favorite of all, all, all time
L-rd Make Me Over, Praise Jesus Salon, Decatur AL