Deep Fried Kudzu

Posh Tots is one company that I have been looking at a lot for our nursery furniture, so one day this past week I just typed in "Posh Tots" in eBay to see if anything that had been bought from them would appear - and did it ever - just look at this nursery!

Parts of it can also be seen at the Posh Tots website here. It is *so* beautiful - it's all custom made and ships 10 weeks after the company gets the order.

Well, sure enough, I was the high bidder...but the auction didn't meet the seller's reserve (don't know what amount that was), and after emailing the seller I'm beginning to think that they've either changed their mind about selling it or just aren't interested in negotiating (which is okay either way). I let them know that after Tuesday I'm going to go ahead and put the other furniture I have picked out on order, so we'll know soon...

The really nice part about all this is that Av's mom and dad want to buy the nursery furniture so all we have to do is pick it out! How great is that!?

I love the set from Posh Tots that's on eBay, but there is another set we found that is more the style we were thinking of originally (it's also pictured at Posh Tots here):



What do you think?!

Av and I went to the Magic City Art Connection this weekend - we didn't buy anything but had a really good time looking.

We go every year, so several of the artists we were already familiar with, but this year my favorites were Martha Beadle's needleworks (who we first met at the Jerry Brown Festival, I think), Chandra Stubbs / Flynn Pottery (love this), and Jennifer Wallace (very simple and neat).

Today we had tickets for "Corks & Chefs" - and this is the first year we've gone to this part of the festival. It's a tented section ($25 admission) that each day has wine tastings and food served from eight different restaurants. Av tried out some new wines, and we both sampled from the different restaurants. The three best things were the black-eyed pea risotto with shiitake mushrooms from caterer Chef Clayton, the wild King Salmon cake from Standard Bistro, and the Gulf shrimp ceviche from Little Savannah.

Since the restaurants featured are different each weekend day, maybe we'll go both days next year. It was really fun and I think we've found a new restaurant or two to try!

I went to Michael's today, and right at the entrance was a huge, aisle-long display of the new Martha Stewart Crafts line! I really wish I had taken a picture, but there was some of everything - I got just a couple of what they call "goodie bag kits".

I went to the EK Success site (they partnered with MS on the crafts line) and they don't have anything on their website about it that I could find, the Michael's site just says "coming soon", and the Martha Stewart site doesn't really have anything other than a page saying "coming in May". Hmmm....anyway, I can't wait to make some things to give to friends so I can use my new bags! Cute!

Last week, I got Katie Brown's new book, Outdoor Entertaining: Taking the Party Outside from Amazon. It is so good!

Ah, I like it *so* much - and the best part is that it seems like Katie's projects are more realistic this time and less...far-fetched than some of the projects in her previous books.

The book has six different chapters - Backyard Reunion, Down by the Sea, Garden Party, Herbal Delight, Here Comes the Sun, and Rustic Woods - and in each of the chapters there are three subsections: Cook (recipes), Nest (projects), and Grow (projects with plants).

There are already some ideas that I want to try - tin planters (where you take tin ceiling tiles and tack them to wood crates to pretty-up), beach reflections (frame sand from different places in frames with spray adhesive - sooo pretty!), and backyard butterflies (plant labels made into shapes like butterflies using something called "rubberize-it"). I'm going to visit Home Depot or Lowe's this weekend to see if they carry any tin ceiling tiles so I can decorate a couple of long wood planters I have...I went to the website that Katie recommended for the tin squares, and the squares I wanted cost $16 and shipping was going to be more than my order - $25! Ack!

I'll post these projects as I do them...hopefully at least one of them in the next few days!

We only spent a little while in Asheville before leaving to go home, but we managed to do a little shopping - we went to two independent toy shops, Purls Yarn Emporium (which I enjoyed while Av found and bought some things he loved from the Bibby-approved (thanks Bibby!) chocolate shop just up the street), a book shop, and the *best* gallery ever - the Southern Highland Craft Guild Gallery, which is right on the Blue Ridge Parkway.



Inside the gallery are museum spaces and a large shopping area:




We got three things there - one is this tiny little cotton wreath that I plan to put in the nursery, made by Carolina Conecrafts:


This is a small wood spirit carving by Johnny A. Hembree that Av plans to hollow out the back of to make it into a mezuzah:


...and this is a cup that's made by Karen Newgard:

I am really in love with this cup - I saw Karen on an episode of HGTV's "That's Clever" when she made a 'carved clothesline teapot' - a little about that episode, and instructions, are here.

We saw lots and lots of things at the gallery that were really wonderful and I can't wait to go back! The next time we are in Asheville we really need to have more time so we can visit the American Folk Gallery...

The last night we were in Georgia, we decided at the last minute to drive north to Asheville to stay overnight - it was going to be too late to drive home, anyway, and it had been two or three years since we had been there. We stayed at the Holiday Inn that's closest to the Biltmore Estate.

There's a four-diamond hotel by the Biltmore (called the Inn at Biltmore) but the rooms are pretty expensive and since we were only staying a few hours, we figured we would save the money and stay at the Holiday Inn (it's ranked the #2 hotel in Asheville on Tripadvisor, anyway).

The other four-diamond hotel in Asheville is the Grove Park Inn...I would love to try it and the Biltmore Inn some day to see which one is really nicer!

The Biltmore has licensed all kinds of products - from furniture to cabinets and wood flooring - called Biltmore for Your Home. About a month ago when I was at a local flooring shop, I saw a really big display for Biltmore flooring, and some of it was about 2x-3x most other things in the shop! Of course, it was really pretty...

We had dinner one day at the Dillard House in Dillard, Georgia. The Dillard House is set up so that when you arrive, they automatically serve you everything that's been prepared that day - everything! Here's the menu board for when we went:

...and that's really what we were served!

Isn't that crazy?! It's all really good, too. Of course, if you ate all of it (or even half) you wouldn't need to eat for a week!

Av spent the weekend working in Georgia, so we stayed one night at the Hampton Inn in Cornelia (it was average for a HI).

Now, if we *ever* have occasion to spend another night in Cornelia, Georgia, I want to stay at the Bed & Elvis at Joni Mabe's house! It was mentioned in one of the travel books I have, but it looks like from her website that it's undergoing some renovation. Joni Mabe is a *huge* Elvis fan...I can't imagine what her B&E would be like, but I know it would be strange and wonderful.

We've been wanting to go Graceland Too in Holly Springs, MS for a long time - it's run by Paul McLeod and is this crazy/fantastic museum of Elvis memorabilia. If Paul and Joni haven't met yet, they should. There are lots of great pics of Graceland Too here on Flickr.

Friday, we went to the Loretta Lynn concert at the Alabama Theatre (the theatre is *amazingly beautiful* on the inside - I have pics of it from a different event here).

It was wonderful! Av bought us tickets right in the middle of the third row, and Loretta and I could have practically hugged from where we were sitting. It was a great show...she carried on with the audience and sang some of the requests that people asked her to sing, including one song that a man in the row behind us asked her to do, and she and her band leader thought it was probably the first time in about 25 years that they had performed it. She ended with "Coal Miner's Daughter" and everybody went crazy...it was so great to see a legend like her perform!

We figured it out. We're going to decorate the nursery with home-grown (local artist) pieces!

Over the crib, we're going to put the framed print that we got on our last trip to Black Belt Treasures. It can be seen here. **Love** it.

Then, we're going to move pieces that we have by Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Chris Clark, Myrtice West, Lonnie Holley, Floyd Shaman and others in to decorate. We're going to hang the quilt that we bought from Yvonne Wells at Kentuck on the wall, and then on (really high!) shelves we'll put some folk pottery.

Oh yes! I love that we've got this figured out now!

The other day when I was at the Artists Incorporated gallery, I got this hand mirror - it's by Dale Lewis (who is best-known for his *fantastic* furniture pieces) and is just so fun and different:


...when it's turned over, it has this really whimsical little bowtie:

I plan on keeping it in the nursery and playing with the baby - flipping the mirror - "where's the pretty baby? there he/she is! now where's the baby? there he/she is!". Okay, I am SO getting into this now!

The only really big thing missing is that since the baby is due in July, I need to get a Mose T watermelon! His watermelons were my favorite pieces of his, but I never would get one because, goodness knows, he probably did over a thousand of them. But now, I need one. How can you have a baby due in July and not have a watermelon? Right!?

Now that I'm at seven months, I've got to get serious about picking out things for the nursery. I guess up to this point I have tried to hold myself back because of superstition and just the fun of knowing everything I have to look forward to, but I have also had the hardest time picking out what theme to build everything around!

I thought that we might just have something to build on when we thought about using Av's mother's childhood furniture set. It is all hand-painted and must have cost a fortune (and it's a full set - dresser, nightstands, chair, everything - we'd only need a new crib). Today it would be considered shabby-chic, I guess...it's really so much prettier in person, too - can't you just see it with a fabulous vintage chandelier in the room?:

Thing is, we did a lead test on it and it came up positive, so we're not going to be able to use it! Ack!

Since we don't know if the baby will be a girl or boy, we're going for a nice neutral look. We have a fantastic mahogany armoire that I think I would like to use, and we'd just need to pick out some mahogany nursery furniture to pair with it - a crib, a dresser/changing table, a little table for a lamp, and a rocker (I'd love to find a big fluffy/comfy chenille rocker that I could nest in!).

So far, I've been spending a lot of time looking at catalogs - I like the Land of Nod catalog especially, and Posh Tots has some amazing round cribs. There are *so* many wonderful catalogs, and this week we're going to start shopping at some of the baby boutiques around so I hope to get even more great furniture ideas in person!

There are some really nice ideas on the HGTV website here, too!

Av had his annual allergy sickness late the past week and this weekend - he is allergic to the type of pollen that is super-tiny and just floats through the air (not the bigger types of pollen that make your car yellow if you let it set outside) so he usually gets sick right about this time each year. Thankfully, it doesn't last too long, but it is hard to see him not feeling good.

If there is one thing that always perks him up, though, it is chocolate! I made him a chocolate chess pie this weekend and...guess what? He was back to being himself Monday morning.

Ingredients:
1 stick unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
6 eggs
3 tbsp flour
pinch salt
1- 5oz. can Pet milk (evaporated milk)
2 tsp vanilla
4 tbsp. cocoa
1 deep-dish unbaked pie shell (or you can make your own)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 325*

Mix together the sugar, flour, and salt - I do this in my Kitchenaid.

Melt the butter in the microwave and then mix in the cocoa (this time, I used some really fantastic hot chocolate that Darlene got me from W-S but you could use Hershey's cocoa too), then add that to the bowl of the Kitchenaid.

Get the wet and the dry ingredients incorporated (and make sure that before you add anything else that the mixture is room temperature since when you add the eggs you don't want the mixture so hot that they even think about cooking!).

Next, add the Pet milk and vanilla, then eggs one at a time. Get everything mixed together really well.

Put the unbaked pie shell on a cookie sheet just in case the filling seeps over a tiny bit, then pour the mixture into the pie shell.

Start checking on it at 45 minutes. It took about 55-60 minutes before mine was ready to take out of the oven:

I like regular chess pie and Av likes anything chocolate so this turned out really nice. Yum!

Well, I still have a few more travel pics, but I'm so ready since we're back home to get back to posting about puttering, cooking, and crafting that I thought I'd post some pics of the amazing flowers that are just bursting here!

These are some of the azaleas in our front yard. I know...they are taking over. I can never bring myself to having them cut back because there would just be fewer beautiful blooms to look at next year! This picture makes me just want to jump in:






On the side yard, we have my & Av's miracle roses. They are miracle roses because neither of us knows the first thing about roses other than that they are pretty (so we don't do any of the things were are supposed to, like prune and fertilize), yet they continue to make the prettiest blooms:

Since we were staying overnight in Tunica, we decided to have supper at John Besh's restaurant there, N'awlins. John won the 2006 James Beard Award (which is like the Oscars for chefs) in the Southeastern chefs category. His other restaurant, Restaurant August, in New Orleans, is considered one of the city's very best so we were looking forward to trying this one.

There are *serious* differences between dining here and in New Orleans, though. For one thing, getting a reservation was no problem at all. The decor wasn't as nice as I had figured it would be, and the patrons were dressed waaaay down - even shorts and blue jeans. We could occasionally hear the slot machines going off outside the door (which was kept open), and our server was really-really bad. I think English was his second language so I tried to think that the reason he was terse with us was because maybe he didn't understand the way he was coming across, or wasn't comfortable making small talk.

We started with the barbecue shrimp, which had almost an Indian-type flavor. They were really good:


Av had the trio of soups - gumbo, crab bisque, and turtle. The bisque was best but they were all good. Sherry was offered with the turtle soup, and rather than the server offering it to Av to add as needed after he tasted it, the server just dumped the whole portion of sherry in...:


Av had the tournedo of beef which was nice:


...and I had the sugar cane-lacquered chicken. The chicken itself was really delicious but I think because there was a sweet sauce all over the plate, it made everything almost sickly-sweet. Not to be all Iron Chef judge-y, but there wasn't anything else savory on the plate so it was all almost like candy.


I think we must have gone on an off-night because nothing was really "wow" - but really the thing that turned us off the most was the waiter, who besides being very 'short' with us, got into an argument with the host...and the argument went on most of the time we were there.

There are plenty of wonderful places in Memphis to try, though, and since it's only about 30 minutes away that's probably what we'll do the next time we want to have something nicer - like Folk's Folly or Erling Jensen or...

We've stayed at this Sheraton hotel once or twice before - it's actually part of a casino, but the rooms are nice and the very best part is that if you stay here during the week, the room cost is half or less than half than on weekends.

I've never heard of a Sheraton being part of a casino like it is here (it's owned by Harrah's), but we like it because we're still in the Delta and only about 30 minutes from downtown Memphis.



The room is pretty big, and the bathroom is large:


There is a jacuzzi in every room, too:


Some time soon, I'd love to stay at the Shack Up Inn, close to Clarksdale. It's at the Hopson Plantation, and they have sharecropper shacks all fixed up for people to stay in! How much fun would that be, to stay in a little (air conditioned & indoor plumbing installed!) shack? Well...it would at least be different. I've got a couple of pictures from there here. There's also a B&B called Uncle Henry's Place that *used* to be a casino, until the '30s when it was found out that the money was going to the mob in Chicago (there's a nice article in the NY Times that mentions it here). I don't remember where I read about it first, but it sounded *so* interesting...

We stopped at Margaret's Grocery for a couple of minutes to take pictures - we've taken pictures here several times in the past, and a couple of the visits are here on Flickr.

This was all built by Margaret's husband, Rev. H.D. Dennis, who promised her that if she married him that he would transform her little grocery store.

He did.

We did just a little driving around Vicksburg, and one of the things we checked on was how the riverfront murals were going. Here are some pics:













All of the murals can be viewed on their website, here.

We had lunch at Walnut Hills (1214 Adams St, 601/638-4910) in Vicksburg - it's one of our favorite places, especially because it's a revolving table restaurant and we always get to talk and make friends with whoever else is at our table.

This time we got there early and they didn't have the hot food ready to bring out quite yet, so I started with a couple of bites of pineapple and cheese salad, some tomato aspic, and coleslaw...




Then everything else came out - there was fried chicken, plantation chicken, corn pudding, squash, blackeyed peas, sweet potato, green beans, butter beans, creamed potatoes, cornbread and biscuits, and about ten other things (literally) that I can't even remember!

One other revolving table restaurant in MS is The Dinner Bell in McComb, which is really good. I don't know of any revolving table restaurants anywhere in Alabama, but food is served family-style at Mrs. Wilkes' in Savannah and Miss Mary Bobo's in Lynchburg - neither of which we have been to yet but I would *love* to try!

The evening we left Natchez, we decided to go ahead and drive up to Vicksburg rather than staying in town so we could save ourselves an hour of driving the next day. I would have liked to have stayed at one of the B&Bs in Vicksburg but since we were going to be getting in so late, I didn't want to have to bother anyone late at night when we would be getting in, especially since I wasn't sure exactly how late it would be.

This time, we stayed at the Hampton Inn in Vicksburg and used our Hilton Honors points since this particular hotel always seems a little overpriced for a Hampton (I've paid less than the $140 this hotel charges on weekends at the Ritz in New Orleans during the December holiday break!). I guess because we used our Hilton Honors points, they bumped us up to the 'executive level' and there were snacks in the room and three different drinks in the mini-fridge.

This has to be the nicest Hampton ever, though. This is the lobby and breakfast area:


Here is the room:


The room was pretty large...and this is the first Hampton I've seen with a computer at the desk. It was wired in for internet (we brought our laptop so we just used the wireless connection) but for someone who didn't bring theirs, this would have been really-really nice:


I was still really glad we saved money and used our points rather than paying for this room, but I hope the next time we are in Vicksburg we won't be coming in late and can stay at one of the B&Bs. When we were driving around the day we left Vicksburg, I found two of them - one is Belle of the Bends, which is #1 on Tripadvisor:


...and this is Anchuca, which is #3 on Tripadvisor: