Deep Fried Kudzu

This was our first time back to the showroom at Shearwater Pottery since it reopened (it's been open back since March):


I've forgotten a lot about what the showroom looked like before Katrina, but they have a nice section of the building now for their 'museum'. I looked around at all the new pieces and picked out this piece:


I asked, and this glaze doesn't have a name, but I have one other piece that's this color too. The woman that I talked to said it's similar to the Spring Green glaze.


I don't think they have a website, but I know they will ship if you tell them what you're looking for (228.875.7320).

On our way back from New Orleans, we drove along the coast back to Mobile. In Pass Christian, we went to see the Middlegate Japanese Garden, which used to be open to the public (my WPA book says the admission was $.50) - all the plants there are Japanese - including flowering plum, quince, and peach trees, giant bamboos, and Japanese magnolias. It looks *really* grown over now...I guess that nothing really has been done to maintain it since the hurricane:




You can just barely make out the pagoda:


Here's a close-up. I would love to see what it really looks like:


Next, we went to see Friendship Oak at USM Gulf.

The sign above reads:
"Friendship Oak"
1487-
I am called the Friendship Oak
Those who enter my shadow will
remain friends through
all their lifetime

Sophomore Class 1969

...and here is the historical marker:


Isn't it huge!? The circumference of the trunk is 18 feet, 7 inches.




The limbs dip down to the ground:


We passed this wood sculpture that's in the median of Hwy 98 at Woodward Avenue.


I don't know who the artist is, though. I saw one or two others in Biloxi.


This is the Katrina memorial in Biloxi. The monument is about twelve feet high, about the same height as the storm surge here:


Inside the display box are found objects from the storm:


There's more about the memorial here.


My WPA book mentions something different about the Biloxi cemetery - it says, "probably unique among cemeteries of the world is the custom frequently used here of shading the graves with canopies of Spanish moss draped on bars a few feet above the headstones." I didn't see any areas that were covered with Spanish moss, but several that had shed covers - like miniature carports:





It's not something that's common, but I've seen it before other places. Either way, there are a lot of them here.

I made (this is long) Orange Roughy Saute Meuniere Amandine for supper on Monday and it was *fantastic* - much better than what I experimented with last night (which was turkey tetrazzini, which Av says they served at his high school and they called it 'turkey tetrachloride' - he wasn't comparing, just being funny. I hope! It wasn't tetrachloride bad, but it sure wasn't great!).

Anyway...this orange roughy was delish. Delish.

Usually I would use trout or pompano to do this with, but I like orange roughy and we haven't had it in forever. If you try it, experiment and let me know what fish you liked it with. This is my recipe, but I based it on a couple of recipes in the Galatoire's cookbook.

Ingredients (serves two):
2 orange roughy filets
olive oil and butter to saute with
salt and pepper to taste
flour for dredging
two handfuls of almonds, toasted or sauteed

---for the meuniere sauce:
1/8 c. butter
good squeeze of fresh lemon juice
two dashes Worcestershire
four dashes red wine vinegar
(...but taste it and see if you need a little more of any one thing before serving)

Directions:
First, saute or toast the almonds, and set aside.

Make the meuniere sauce by melting the butter over a low heat until it browns, then add the lemon juice, Worcestershire, and vinegar, whisking continually. Let simmer for five minutes, then turn off heat.

In the meantime, start the fish cooking. Dredge the filets in flour, dust off excess. Saute the fish on both sides in an olive oil/butter mixture until golden brown and cooked through, and season with salt and pepper.

Plate the cooked filets, top with a couple of spoonfuls (okay...more than a couple) of the meuniere sauce, and top with as many almonds as you like.

Those pics I took of the Miller Steam Plant - my friend Darlene's mother's friend's son (did all that make sense!?) took this pic of it at night and it is just *gorgeous*!

I ran across some pictures of David Ayo's house on Flickr - there are some really great pics of it here.

It's a monument to his life (there's more about him in the comments section here)...his mother lives here and it's beautiful:

After Jackson, we went to New Orleans for Av to attend a big meeting, so we stayed at the Ritz-Carlton again. What's funny is that one of the clubs we belong to at home is part of ClubCorp, and they have special arrangements with different hotels, so when the club made reservations for us at the R-C, it wound up being less expensive than what one of the Hampton Inns' rate was in Jackson!

Here's Shug in the lobby:

...and our room:




the view of the courtyard:


We had a *wonderful* time and Shug slept great...and didn't make a peep the whole time other than to coo happy little sounds! Yay!

We've driven by the Gingerbread house in McComb MS (601 West Georgia Avenue) before, but this time we stopped so I could visit for a minute - they were having a garage sale so I figured this was the perfect opportunity to chat!

This is a pic we took of the house back in February of last year:




Bette Mott, who owns the house, wasn't outside, but I talked to her husband (I think he had a different last name) and he talked about how she has decorated the house for years and years now, and how she collects gingerbread and dolls . There was lots of both in the yard sale. I bought two gingerbread placemats for $.50/ea...how could you go to that house and not leave with something gingerbread, right?! I don't know what in the world I will ever do with them, but it only seemed right...









Her husband said lots of people stop to take a picture of this decorated doghouse!


McComb is also where Loy Bowlin lived - he was known as 'The Original Rhinestone Cowboy'. There's a really good article about him here from Raw Magazine. His home has been packed up and moved to exhibit at the Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin....and since this *is* Kohler after all, they also do this. Wow!

The senior curator at the arts center is the editor for a new book called Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds: Built Environments of Vernacular Artists that's coming out on September 27th - Loy Bowlin's house is among the work that will be featured.

While we were in Jackson, we drove over to Ridgeland to the Mississippi Craft Center, which is run by the Mississippi Craftsmen's Guild.

Loved it. L-o-v-e-d it.


Here's the interior space, where they can also host functions:


This information desk has panels done by different artists:


...and here's a pic of the gorgeous shop - it reminded me a lot of the Southern Highland Craft Guild Gallery in Asheville NC that we visited. There were several artists from Mississippi on display, but several from neighboring states as well.


There was so much that I wanted to buy, but we left with just four small things. This one's just for fun - it's a catfish - a wire sculpture by Anne Campbell called "I've Got A Right To Sing The Blues" - that Av's going to put in his office:


This little birdie is by Bonnie Renfrow from Ackerman, MS. I just liked how simple and peaceful he looks. Her birds have rattles inside:


This one has a gorgeous glaze - it's by Mark Rigsby in Hattiesburg, who is also the director of the museum of art at the University of South Mississippi:


The last thing we got is this, by Kent Follette / Follette Pottery in Ruston, Louisiana:


It's what they call "Flambeaux" and it's a special process that they do - see the crystals that have formed?


Just a tiny fraction of the other items the Craftsmen's Guild has is in their online store. From now on, when we go to Jackson, Av has promised that we will stop by the Craft Center...when Shug gets a little older, I want him to pick out some toys there too - there's one artist that makes old-fashioned toys that are just beautiful.

Oh! And one more thing...one of the other things they have is a metal bottle tree - very sculptural...and it's already loaded up with blue bottles. I like my homemade bottle trees but theirs is very nice too...

One day this week, Av was working in Jackson, so we stayed at the Hampton Inn in Clinton (it was fine - an average Hampton). Some big convention or something must have been going on, because the Hilton and Marriott were booked, so we decided to stay at the Hampton Inn in Clinton, which is just eight or so miles from downtown, and use our Hilton points so the stay didn't cost us anything at all.

This was our room:


We brought what Shug sleeps in and he did perfect! He's sleeping seven or eight hours straight through every night now so we are all doing great. What was really nice was that we got up the next morning and visited a *bunch* of friends - he got loved on lots & lots!

We started on Alabama 269 and went through the part of the state that's mined for coal - places like Powhatan, Praco, Snowtown, Birmingport... Neither of us really have spent that much time in that area, and we wanted to take Shug for a drive - he loves looking out the windows at everything!

This is a terminal on the Warrior River:


There were just mountains of coal everywhere around the terminal (which is huge):


I don't know the first thing about mines, but I think this is one. This part of the state is *so* beautiful, but in some areas the landscape has just been torn apart, and I guess that's part of the mining operation:


One of the things we turned off to see was a huge power plant. At first, I thought it was a nuclear plant because of those giant...um...pots, I guess.


In a weird way, they're beautiful, because they look like pottery with these gorgeous clouds of steam just flowing out the top (I hope I'm not sounding corny, but that's really how they look to me):


I wasn't going to post the pictures, because I thought maybe it was a nuclear plant (not that crazy/bad people are reading this, but you know...), but I looked it up once we got home, and - this makes so much sense - it is the Miller Steam Plant and it runs on coal. I would have thought that anything making energy from coal would have been spewing nasty black clouds, but instead, it was those plumes of steam...which made me feel better about it, sort-of, until I read this.

Southern Company/Alabama Power does tours of the plant for school groups. When I was in sixth grade, our class went to the Wheeler Dam hydro plant that TVA operates (there's a nice nighttime pic of it here). TVA's website has a section now about how you can sign up to switch to 'Green Power' if you use their system. We have Alabama Power, but I don't see anything on their site about doing that...I'm going to email them right now and see if they have that kind of program where we can sign up.