Deep Fried Kudzu

This weekend, we took Shug to see the Anniston Museum of Natural History. It's so much bigger than it looks from the outside!

Inside we saw this replica of a stegosaurus. His head seems so much smaller than it should be:

They had lots of fossils to look at:

These are two mummies that the museum has had on display since 1980. They are described as middle-class Egyptians who died between 332-330BC(BCE) and were buried in tombs at the valley at Thebes where they were undisturbed until the early 20th century.

I don't mean to sound weird, but sometimes I think that although mummies are incredibly interesting, it's disrespectful to have them out on display. It just bothers me a little that although these people - the Egyptian culture - went to all the trouble they did to preserve themselves and bury their people just so, so that everything would be perfect for them in the afterlife - that it somehow gets discounted today when we remove the people/mummies and their objects from the places that they intended to be for...maybe forever.
Does anybody else feel that way?

All the rest of the museum, except for one area for rotating artist exhibits, is dedicated to showcasing animals in displays depicting their natural environment.


One of the most interesting things we saw was this ivory-billed woodpecker on display:

I don't know exactly how many animals they showcase, but gosh that is a lot of taxidermy.

One area of the museum is showcasing the art of Allison McElroy in an exhibit called "It Is In The Nature Of Things". There were displays of leaves that had been eaten on by Japanese beetles, displays of spider eggs, wasp nests that the artist had filled with strips from phone book pages (see bottom pic), and other things. This one is called "arboreal bust" and it is made from a plaster cast covered with hornet nest paper.

Shug is nine months old now!

Ohmygosh he is just *the* most fun!!

Making pizza at home is just fun - it's done, or almost done, by the time it would take a delivery place to drop by anyway, and you can play around, and know *exactly* what is going into it. This recipe makes six small pizzas...so they're individual size but usually also big enough so around half can be enjoyed the next day (yummy cold pizza right out of the refrigerator!).

This recipe is inspired by the one in the Barefoot Contessa Parties cookbook. I love to play around with her recipes because they always work.

Ingredients for the dough:
1-1/4 c. warm water (100*-110*)
2 packages yeast
2 tbsp honey
3 tbsp olive oil
4 c. all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
couple tablespoons fresh chopped herbs like rosemary or thyme

Toppings:
anything that sounds good!

The dough is pareve so I can make fleishig pizzas for Av with beef kielbasa pieces with barbecue sauce and red onions, or beef bacon and barbecue sauce, or go fajita-style with chicken, bell peppers, and onions.

If I make them milchig, I love roma tomatoes with fresh mozzarella and basil, or bagel-style with red onions & lox & capers & a little cream cheese.

(and if you don't have to worry with things being pareve, fleishig, or milchig, then use any ingredients together that you like!!)

Directions:
In the Kitchenaid with the dough hook attached, I add together the warm water, yeast, olive oil, and honey, and mix well. Once that's mixed, I put it on 'low' and add three cups of flour and salt. Once that gets going, I add the last cup of flour and some fresh herbs. Keeping the Kitchenaid on low, I let that knead for about ten minutes. At first it looks like a bit of a mess:

...but then it all comes together beautifully. After it's kneaded for 10 minutes, I take the dough out of the bowl (and take the bowl out of the Kitchenaid), pour a little olive oil in the bowl, add the dough back to the bowl, and turn the dough around so it's well-oiled:
...put a towel over the bowl, and let it rise for 30 minutes.

It will look like this:

Preheat the oven to 500*.
Separate the dough into six pieces, shape each into a circle shape - or whatever shape you're feeling - and two will fit on a regular-size cookie sheet. Cover the cookie sheet(s) with a towel, and let the dough rest for 10 minutes:

Now they're ready for toppings! This one has no sauce - doesn't need it - it's just two small sliced roma tomatoes, some fresh mozzarella, and a few fresh basil leaves. A little salt and pepper and a splash of olive oil, and it's ready for the oven:
Start watching these at about 10 minutes - mine are usually ready between 12-15 minutes.

Ooooh these always turn out so great!

Oh it has been *so* nice outside! Shug and I have enjoyed our days this week at the Botanical Gardens, the Zoo, and just around town shopping. It's almost time for Av to bring the Troy-Bilt up to the vegetable patch (I have to say, it's kind-of hilarious to watch when it gets a little bogged down tilling up some really compacted earth, and then just takes off really fast with Av trying to hold on behind it when it gets to a smooth part. It's a little hard to look cool while you're getting bucked around and then suddenly zipping down a row.). Fun times! haha!

I'm almost ready to bring home those gorgeous plants at the nursery. We're doing tomatoes and hopefully also okra, carrots, watermelon, cucumber, yellow squash, and some other things. By the end of the summer, Shug will probably be able to walk down those garden rows.

One of the things that's gotten me excited about planting all around the house and not just the garden is the picture in the April issue of Country Living of Robin Brown (Magnolia Pearl) and her garden. There's one pic of an old broken typewriter that looks like it's been planted with some hens & chicks. I *love* unusual plantings. They're not for everybody, or probably most people, but just the originality and using things in unexpected ways is exciting.

My Flickr-friend Natalie has a whole set of pics from her visit with Dr. Dirt in Edwards, Mississippi, who is great at recycling, here. I love this one and this one especially!

Felder Rushing, my favorite gardener of all time has a weekly podcast here (he's just so much fun and doesn't take everything too seriously) and his personal website with pics of his garden are here. Felder will plant anything, in anything. He even shows how to make a tire planter.

In an issue of the Clarion-Ledger from last week, Felder wrote about rethinking gardening vegetables in rows - why not plant them among the other, ornamental plants? He says the French call this potager gardening, and it makes perfect sense. Felder has even planted some corn in his front yard, treated visually as an ornamental grass. Interesting!

On Flickr, there are all kinds of garden groups, but the really different garden pics show up in Weird Yards and Gardens and Avant-Garden. It's fun to see what people find in Folk Art Gardens, Concrete Animal Farm, What's That In My Front Yard, and Extreme Lawns too!

Last week, I tried one of the recipes from the Everyday Food magazine - it's for stuffed poblanos. I halved and also changed the recipe some...the original recipe, though, is right here. It turned out really nice and took very little time to make.

Ingredients:
2 poblano peppers, halved lenghwise, ribs and seeds removed
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes with zesty mild green chiles
1/4 c. cornmeal
1/2 can black beans, drained
1 small chopped onion
1/2 c. shredded pepper jack cheese plus another couple of handfuls for the topping
salt and pepper

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425*

I poured the tomatoes into the bottom of my small Fire King dish, then laid the poblanos on top:

In a small bowl, I mixed together the chopped onions, beans, cornmeal, 1/2 c. cheese, and salt & pepper, then spooned the mixture into the poblanos:

...topped that off with a couple of handfuls of cheese:

...covered with foil and baked in the oven for about 55 minutes:
Usually I'm not that wild about Everyday Cooking recipes because they don't seem terribly 'authentic' in some ways (like, there's a part of me that feels guilty about this because it didn't come from Rick Bayless and it didn't have 15 ingredients and 18 steps, and I used a can of Del Monte tomatoes, etc etc etc, but you know for a Tuesday night supper and the fact that I'd (always) rather be playing with Shug than worrying over a recipe, this was really good!!). Yum!

Oh, and while I am confessing, the fast chicken fajitas were really good too! (haha!)

Kentucky is doing a quilt trail right now in ten eastern counties that feature painted quilt squares hung on barns:

There are pictures from the trails at Flickr here.

In Tennessee, they are doing the Appalachian Quilt Trail. There are pics on Flickr from it here.

I know that there were going to be a set of ten Gee's Bend quilt designs made into murals, but I only know of one being up right now. It will be nice if we can do something similar here in Alabama.

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The International Quilt Study Center and Museum will open March 30th in Lincoln, Nebraska, and one of the nicest things about their website is that you can search to see all the quilts in their collection by style and even by the state in which they were made.

When I was in 6th or 7th grade, my class took a field trip to Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, the home of Helen Keller. I was sooo interested in how she overcame so much, went on to graduate college, and became an inspiration to people around the world.

It all started in a little white wooden house set back from the street, and at the well pump that is also still there today.

The two images above are copyright-free/in the public domain because of their age, but the picture I really want to show is here at a link (it's under a copyright because it has been unpublished and the age of the photographer is unknown). It's the earliest-known picture of Helen and Anne Sullivan together - it's from 1888 and shows Helen holding what is probably the doll that Anne gave her as a gift when Anne came to live at Ivy Green. The New England Historic Genealogical Society came upon it earlier this year when a large collection of family photographs came into their possession - it was a from a family who happened to vacation at the same house Anne and Helen were, in Cape Cod, and happened to take a picture of the two of them together.

NPR did a story about it that can be listened to here. The press release from the NEHGS is here (it's a PDF).

Today, there is an organization called Helen Keller International, and this is their mission:

Founded in 1915, Helen Keller International (HKI) is among the oldest international nonprofit organizations devoted to fighting and treating preventable blindness and malnutrition. HKI is headquartered in New York City, and has programs in 22 countries in Africa and Asia as well as in the United States. HKI builds local capacity by establishing sustainable programs, and provides scientific and technical assistance and data to governments and international, regional, national and local organizations around the world.

HKI programs combat malnutrition, cataract, trachoma, onchocerciasis (river blindness) and refractive error. The goal of all HKI programs is to reduce suffering of those without access to needed health or vision care and ultimately, to help lift people from poverty.

Isn't that great? Here's the link on how to contribute, and they have an "A" rating by the American Institute of Philanthropy and a four-star efficiency rating from Charity Navigator which is good too.

Tonight starts Purim - it's a one-day holiday celebrating...well, it's another one of those holidays celebrating survival! The basic story can be found here.

The most traditional food for Purim is hamantaschen. It's a cookie folded to be triangular, with a filling in the middle. I made some of these today using my favorite recipe, and they turned out great. There are more traditional recipes for this cookie that make a thinner dough that folds better than this one, but this one makes such a yummy cookie, and you can still shape it and fold it so that it makes and holds its shape.

Ingredients (makes 2-3 dozen):
2 sticks butter
1/2 c. sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
2-1/2 c. flour
1 cup pecans, chopped into small bits
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
filling: any flavor jam, jelly, preserve, or meltable candy

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350*.

Cream together the butter and sugar in the Kitchenaid, then add the egg and vanilla. Once all that comes together, put the mixer on low and add the flour, pecans, salt, and baking powder. Put the dough into a ziploc bag and refrigerate at least a couple of hours - overnight is good.

Now, I don't enjoy rolling dough so I just shape these with my hands, but these can be rolled out and cut into circles if you like. I just make a circle shape, make an indentation with my finger in the middle for the filling:

Put some preserves in the middle (I used strawberry for this one), and then fold up the sides so that it takes on a triangle shape that holds in the filling:

After about 20 minutes, they are all done:
The nice thing is that these taste a little like pecan sandies, so if you like you can make some of them into hamantaschen and the rest into just regular drop cookies. Av likes these with Hershey kisses as the filling, or those little mini Reese cups. They are really good no matter what you use!

The latest issue of Mississippi Magazine came last week, and one of the features was on Spring door decorations. They were fantastic! I got 100% of the inspiration for this one that I made from the one called "Spring Garden Pot Wreath" available for $85 from A Daisy A Day in Jackson.

It was so easy, so fresh, and cost only about $10 to make. All it takes is a grapevine wreath (mine's about 2 feet wide or so), some raffia, some small terracotta pots, and little colorful plants:

For my plants, I used two little six-cell packs of annuals:

Planted two plants per pot:

...then tied the pots onto the wreath form with raffia. I did this part by myself, but it would have been a little easier if there had been one person to hold the wreath steady and another to tie the raffia!:
One on, four more to go:

All done!

Now I can either put it on the door, or how it is right now - hung on a wreath stand outside (on a wreath stake out in a corner of the yard would be great too!):

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I saw this recipe for corned beef and cabbage (soooo easy) at Epicurious and might try it tonight if I can find a corned beef at the grocery this afternoon. People who have commented on that recipe site say that it is really good if made in a pressure cooker, but I am a little leery of them *although* there's this one on Amazon which is not only a pressure cooker but a steamer and a slow cooker. And it's digital, which somehow makes me feel more confident about it not blowing up the kitchen. Thing is, though, it's $100 which is an awful lot considering I can only think of one thing (this dish) I could use it for. If any of you regularly use your pressure cooker or slow cooker, can you give me some ideas what you use them for that's good?

Now for dessert, how about Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's Irish Cream icing? I can't eat them right now because of the alcohol but I bet Av would! Doesn't that sound great!?

Oh, and if you're thinking of last-minute St. Patrick's Day decorations, I found this - seriously I think the tackiest holiday decoration I have ever seen - outside the Waffle House in Attalla!!

After we left Tigers for Tomorrow, we went over to Noccalula Falls in Gadsden.

We had a really nice time! We walked over to the falls:

Isn't it so pretty!? The drop is 90 feet, off a ledge of Lookout Mountain.

This is the statue of Princess Noccalula (the legend is that she threw herself into the falls when her father was going to make her marry a chief he had chosen rather than the brave she was in love with):


We fed Shug at a little bench facing the falls so he could watch all the pretty water. All of the facilities were pretty nice, but parts of the path weren't really graded well, and too close to the train tracks, for people like us with strollers:

The Gilliland-Reese covered bridge is at the park:

It was built in 1899 at Reece City (so maybe it should be the Gilliland-Reece covered bridge) and is 40 feet long:

There's also a botanical gardens and petting zoo at the park, as well as what's called 'Pioneer Village':




We want to take Shug back when he gets a bit older and can enjoy the little choo-choo train ride!

What a happy little thing!

Every night before we go to sleep, we put Shug in our bed, he gets fed one more time, and then he gets some very last songs and tickles for the day. I really can't sing, but he doesn't mind. Av took this little movie of our little "old gray cat" song and Shug always gives us the best giggles at the end when the "little mouse comes creeping"!

This past weekend, we were driving up to Mentone, Alabama (Mentone has a ski resort!) but on the way we stopped in Gadsden for a little while and decided to take Shug to Noccalula Falls. Well, on the way to the Falls, we saw a little sign for something called "Tigers for Tomorrow".

Neither of us had ever heard of it, and nothing on the sign said what it was about, but it was one of those brown state-supplied roadway signs like other attractions and parks use - so we decided to drive out and see what it was, just for fun.

It turns out that Tigers for Tomorrow is a rescue shelter for exotic (and some not-so-exotic) animals. They have a no-breeding policy and simply allow the animals to live out their lives in comfort.

To be honest, zoos aren't one of my favorite places. I mean, we belong to our local zoo, and I like taking Shug to it each week, but we mostly stay in the petting zoo / domesticated animals section because it just feels wrong that the wild animals aren't wherever they really should be - in the wild, not living in cages or some other such enclosure.

The thing is, the people that run TFT are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, and they really seem to be doing a very good job. Of course, if people didn't take in exotic animals that they ultimately would have to give up, this kind of place wouldn't have to exist to begin with!

(...so really I should get over the whole zoo thing since this is a rescue shelter!...)

Y'all, everyone there was *so* nice. One of the ladies brought out a baby goat from the petting zoo section (they had a zebra, camel, emu, turkey, goats, alpacas, and a lot more) for Shug to see. The sweet little goat was just a week-and-a-half old! So sweet!!

This alpaca came up to us. He sure does need braces!

One of the caretakers was in a pen with one of the cats, and they were getting along very well. I guess this one was probably someone's pet previously. The lion was licking the man's arm and playing with his legs. They were both having a really good time:

We'll probably bring Shug back out when he gets older and wants to learn more about lions and tigers. TFT also has a guardian angel program where people can 'adopt' the care of an animal for one year - nice!

If you'd like to go, make sure you wear some good tennis shoes, because it's not paved and a little bit rough. Av carried Shug in his Baby Bjorn - his stroller could have made it, but it would have been pretty bumpy. Also, TFT lists their address as being in Attalla, but they're in Dekalb County, less than 10 miles or so from Collinsville.

If you're coming from Attalla, though, you pass right by Wills Creek Vineyards, where they sell muscadine wines (and they even have a variety that goes to help support TFT).

We were there on Sunday, when the winery was closed, but maybe we'll come back sometime so Av can check them out and maybe pick up a bottle or two...