Deep Fried Kudzu

(this is a quilt Bettye did with the other Mt. Olive quilters, from a gallery show we went to in Montgomery earlier this year)

I just found out that Bettye Kimbrell, who grew up in Fayette County and lives in Mt. Olive, was one of eleven recipients of a $20,000 Heritage Fellowship grant that the National Endowment of the Arts gave out this year. In her bio from the NEA site, it reads that:

Bettye learned to quilt from her grandmother who, as she says, "believed your stitches reflected your character." For quilt backing she used feed and fertilizer sacks, while the fabric was dyed with walnut hulls and yellow root, and cotton from the fields was used for batting.

The other ten recipients of the NEA grant are:
Horace P. Axtell (Nez Perce drum maker, singer, tradition-bearer) from Lewiston, Idaho
Dale Harwood (Saddlemaker) from Shelley, Idaho
Jeronimo E. Lozano (Peruvian retablo (portable altar boxes) maker) from Salt Lake City
Oneida Singers of Wisconsin (Oneida hymn singers) from Oneida, Wisconsin
Sue Yeon Park (Korean dancer and musician) from New York
Moges Seyoum (Ethiopian liturgical musician/scholar) from Alexandria, Virginia
Jelon Vieira (Capoeira (Afro-Brazilian art form) master) from New York
Dr. Michael White (Traditional jazz musician/bandleader) from New Orleans
and Mac Wiseman (Bluegrass musician) from Nashville

Shug turned 11 months old this week! He has just the happiest, most fun little personality. We are so in love with him!

When we were in Phenix City last weekend, we realized that it was getting late and we wanted to get Shug home in time for his regular bedtime. We had just enough time to cross the bridge into Columbus, Georgia and have supper.

Columbus is so pretty! Their downtown area has been very well kept-up, and it leads right into a pretty residential historic district.

This house is Dr. Pemberton's country home - he is the person who developed the formula for Coca-Cola (Columbus is also where RC Cola got started):

There were three restaurants in Columbus that were recommended over and over on Chowhound: Dinglewood Pharmacy (home of the scramble dog (mustard, ketchup, onions, pickles, chili and oyster crackers)) but they were closed, and I think that all that on a hotdog might give me a tummy ache; Macon Road Barbecue, which we probably should have tried; and Rose Hill Seafood.

We got to Rose Hill early - about 5pm or so - and they were already swamped, which is usually a very good sign. Thing is, we noticed that we were the youngest people there by about 30 years, not counting the waitstaff. Um, not that there's anything wrong with that, it was just strange. Well, it was super-early to be having supper after all...anyway...

I wasn't too wild about what I got - clams - but Av said his catfish was alright:

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BTW, Columbus is where RC got started, but in Bell Buckle, Tennessee (hi Cotton!!) they hold an annual RC and Moon Pie Festival! They finish the day by cutting into the world's largest moon pie. I think Goo Goo Cluster needs its own festival now!

I got the Screen Doors and Sweet Tea cookbook a couple of weeks ago and have enjoyed reading the introductions to each recipe just as much as looking over the recipes themselves. The author, Martha Hall Foose, is (or was, I'm not sure if she is still there) the executive chef at the Viking Cooking School in Mississippi, where Viking is based.

The book has seven different sections: mailbox happy hour and pick-up party food; luncheons, salads, and dressings; gumbos, soups, dumplings, and a bisque; dishes from the backyard and kitchen; field peas, greens, sides, and the like; hot from the oven; and the sweetest things.

It's loaded with lots of traditional Southern dishes (she's based in the Delta, so...) that most of us Southerners already have our 'own' way with, like deviled eggs, pimiento cheese, chicken salad, cheese straws, gumbo, etc. but also things that sound interesting to try - like green chile rice, crumb cauliflower, and her gorgeous lady pea salad (on the cover).

I wish there were more pictures, just because I like to see what something's going to look like when it's finished, but really the lovely introductions for each dish make up for it. For instance, at her recipe for "Mother of the Church Ambrosia" she says:

Charlotte Miles came to work for our family one day right after we got home from my father's medical residency in Ohio, the summer I learned to write cursive. She walked up the driveway in a white nurse's uniform, and she informed by mother she had taken care of Doc when he was a baby and was here to take care of us now. She lived in a red house on Cherry Street. She was a Mother of the Church. When asked exactly what that meant, she said it meant you were "not compelled".

Upon further inquiry, it became aparent that it meant you were not compelled to do anything. Not compelled to feed the preacher, not compelled to have folks over after a funeral, not compelled to do pretty much anything you didn't feel like doing anymore, as you had done enough through the years. And you get to sit in the back row, so you can leave early without everybody seeing, or right up front in the first row. I hope to live long enough and do enough good works to be "not compelled".

Making proper ambrosia requires a good deal of labor and is offered lovingly by many mothers of the church. This dish gives you a lot of time to think while cutting the oranges and grating the coconut. i think about Miss Charlotte and her little red house on Cherry Street, and her years of kind works.

Now, I have my own banana pudding ('nana puddin) recipe, but Martha shows hers dished out in Mason jars. I think I've seen that in Southern Living too, but I decided after seeing her picture that it's exactly how I'm going to serve mine this week when everyone comes over for supper - we're dining al fresco so that will be even more fun. Love that idea!

Ever since I read one of the Cath Kidston books on vintage linens, I have really had a better appreciation for them. Every Friday night that we have all our family over for supper, I dress the dining room table with some of Av's grandmother's linens. I can't help but think of all the elegant suppers and wonderful conversations and beautiful memories that have been made over those linens the past few decades.

One of my newest friends, Mary Abigail, lives in California and found this apron at a shop there. She got it for me - look at the vintage goodness!

It's got "Shabbat Shalom" on one side and holidays on the other!! I have never seen anything like it, anywhere!
In love with it. It's so great I'm trying to figure out how to display it somehow. I am showing it off to everyone that comes by!

Mary Abigail is from Alabama and is moving back soon. Her little girl and Shug are just almost the same age so they are going to be having the best time playing together!

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BTW, when I was looking up other vintage linens, I found this blog that shows how one mom embellished a little girl dress with a doily! Precious!

When Av drives around parts of the state we're not super-familiar with, he brings a topographic map because it shows a lot of backroads that other atlases don't. It also shows the locations of covered bridges, and when we were looking at the area around Auburn to Phenix City, it showed that there was one called the Salem Shotwell covered bridge in Salem, Alabama. We decided we would drive out to see it.

On the way, in Opelika, we saw a sign for a covered bridge that wasn't on the map, so we turned into the Opelika Municipal Park, and there it was!

It turns out that the bridge fell into a creek in 2005 during a storm, and just last year, the city of Opelika was able to unveil the bridge rebuilt at the city park. It looks a little different, and is shorter than the original, but they were able to use the old bridge's materials to make this one.

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In Phenix City, there's a sign for the Horace King Friendship Bridge:

Horace King was a famous bridge builder who built/supervised the first public bridge between Alabama and Georgia. At first (this was in the 1800s) he worked as a slave for John Godwin, who was a contractor, and together they built bridges all over, from the Oconee in Georgia, to the Tombigbee in Mississippi at Columbus.

John Godwin had Horace freed so they would no longer be master and slave. I've read some things that Horace King was able to purchase his freedom and others that John Godwin released him so that his creditors couldn't take him as debt payment, but whatever the arrangement was, the two were such close friends that Horace and John stayed in the bridge-building business together and even lived close-by to one another.

(and Horace wasn't just a genius at bridge building, either - he designed those gorgeous double floating staircases at the capitol building in Montgomery, a factory and mill in Georgia...he went on to be an Alabama state representative during Reconstruction too...)

When John Godwin died in 1859, Horace King purchased a monument to be put at his place in the cemetery in Phenix City:
It reads: John Godwin, born October 17, 1798, died February 26, 1859. This stone was placed here by Horace King in lasting remembrance and the love and gratitude he felt for his lost friend and former master

This weekend, we thought it would be nice to spend some time over in Eufaula, but we only made it as far as Phenix City (that's really how it's spelled) and Columbus, Georgia. We had such a great time!

For some reason, I didn't realize that we were going to go through Auburn on our way. I haven't spent much time there since I was in college at Troy, but we saw some of the campus and also drove through the historic residential district in Opelika. Beautiful.

For lunch, we stopped at Toomer's Drugstore in Auburn. It is right on the corner where Auburn fans paper the trees after a victory (actually, papering the trees is actually hurting them after all this time!). The Auburn Forestry Club sells seedlings from these trees' acorns for $55/ea.

Toomer's is a old drugstore but really it's a lunch spot and a place to buy t-shirts:

They sell paper here too, for decorating:

Our lunch was pretty good, and of course we had one of their famous lemonades:

Shug had a great time!

(these two images are from the IFC website, used with permission)

I read that Jennifer Marsh, who is graduating with a master of fine arts degree from Syracuse, is moving to Huntsville to teach at UAH. Her group, the International Fiber Collaborative, and this project called WRAP for World Reclamation Art Project, has been written about by the AP. The story appeared everywhere from the Washington Post to USA Today and CBS.

The article says she "was sick of paying high gas prices and bothered by the abandoned gas station that was an eyesore on the drive to her studio each day" and that she decided to cover the station in a giant blanket, encouraging people to consider their own thoughts about energy dependence.

Each panel - there are more than 3000 of them - are crocheted, knitted, stitched, or quilted together. She did the project with the help of students and artists from 15 countries and 29 states.

We've been talking (she's so nice!), and she should have the location for the Huntsville WRAP decided by the end of August. She'll be needing donations of fiber and finished panels, so as we get closer I'll update about how to participate, etc. Can't wait!

We were driving along 20/59 the other day when we came up behind this. When we were further than this picture, at first, I thought ohmygoodness what poor soul is being taken down the road this way?! What kind of last wish is this!?:

...when I realized when we got closer that it's a racecar! Okay, I don't know anything about racecars, but is this a...what do you call cars that race on dragways? Racecars? Dragsters? Anyway, I guess this is a racecoffin!!

Is that not the craziest thing ever!?

I admit, after I figured it out, I thought it was pretty funny. The driver and I waved and smiled at each other:
Isn't it fun when you meet people with a healthy sense of humor?! Love it.

The Huntsville Times did a story this morning about Mr. Wharton (post 1, 2, 3, 4) and his art environment.

Portions of it:

Wade Wharton knows where he'll be on July 23. That's the day the artist will return to city court to show the progress that's been made cleaning up his Nassau Drive yard.

Wharton appeared in Municipal Court Wednesday, after five months of inspections by the City of Huntsville's Department of Community Development, citations for "junk" and an outpouring of support from people helping him clean up.

He was joined in court by Bill Haynes, Anna Blair, Dale Rhoades, Lynn Jones and others, who have seen his yard and want to make sure his art stays put.

For more than seven years, Wharton, 70, has been transforming discarded materials into pieces of art and displaying them in his yard.

In January, Community Development cited Wharton for what it called "junk." Wharton received a summons to appear in court for "unlawful storage of junk."

Jerry Galloway, Community Development director, has insisted that Wharton has never been cited for the art. Wharton disputes that claim.

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"I think we'll be able to work things through," Callaway told Wharton. "I would anticipate this (case) would be dismissed. Hopefully, we'll be able to reach an agreement with Community Development."

Callaway told Wharton he will have to clean up the "raw materials" such as scrap metal. But, Callaway said, the "creative work" can stay, adding it could become a "constitutional issue" if Wharton is forced to get rid of his art.

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Jean Mann from New Hope also left a really great comment yesterday on the H'ville Times breaking news piece that they did after the court appearance. It is here.

On our way home from Cuba, we drove into Gainesville, Alabama which is home to only a few more than 200 people. There are several antebellum homes and buildings:

This monument is at the spot where General Forrest was paroled - it reads: "On this spot, General Nathan Beford Forrest and his daring followers were paroled by General Canby of U.S.A., May 15, 1865. General Armstead and his brave men were paroled here the same day. Nor shall their glory be forgot while fame her record keeps."


This is the coffin shop, est. 1830:


An old Coca-Cola mural:

This is the Presbyterian Church est. 1837 that has a slave gallery that runs along three of the walls, and has six lamps hanging from the ceiling that once burned whale oil:

Mr. Wharton (post 1, 2, 3) appeared in court today about his art environment. The Huntsville Times reported in a 'breaking news' piece online that:

Wade Wharton, the southwest Huntsville man who transformed discarded materials into art, has received 60 more days to clean up his property.

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For more than seven years, Wharton has been displaying his art on his property. Back in January, the City of Huntsville's Department of Community Development cited Wharton for "junk."

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After a story about Wharton appeared in The Times on April 13, several people volunteered to help Wharton clean his property.

Wharton's case is postponed until July 23.

Last week the Huntsville Times did a story about all the scrap material that Mr. Wharton was getting rid of. Mr. Wharton conceded that the city was right that he didn't need as much as he had.

All kinds of things were listed as being thrown out. It's easy to read about crutches and window frames being thrown out and wondering "what exactly was he going to do with that?" --- but then remember, gosh, all the *junk* that Brother Zoettl used (bathroom floats, empty cosmetics jars, etc etc etc) in making Ave Maria Grotto:


...and Lonnie Holley who has been in exhibited in museums all over the country:

(This is called "The Pointer Pointing The Way Of Life On Earth")

I guess the city would have cited Lonnie for a lawn jockey, chain, scrap wood, and various other 'junk'. Until he put it together and it became a museum piece.

Or came up with something totally different and had it sell in a gallery for thousands of dollars.

Mr. Wharton's problem is that his materials aren't all in covered sheds so that they can't be seen. Of course, if he thinks he has too much, it's been a good exercise to pare down the excess. I've been thinking about how good it is that the city has been moving away from making comments about his art (remember the whole thing about how if Wharton's junk is art then the landfill is a museum?) and instead focusing on a scrap material issue.

Although...in the article from last week, the Times writes:

At some point, Galloway said his department may have to go out to Wharton's property and say what can stay (the art) and what must go (the piles of scrap metal).

Galloway said his department is going to be "very liberal" about what's art.

But when will Wharton know if he's in the clear with the Department of Community Development?

"We'll tell him," Galloway said.

The Department of Community Development is deciding that they are going to be "very liberal" about what is art. Maybe someone from the museum can go along and make sure.

For the last few days during one of Shug's naps, I've been reading Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place At The New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen. It's been a really fun book, and what's so nice about it (oddly) is that Sara isn't writing as someone who grew up there and is just preaching to the choir, which I enjoy anyway. She's from Wisconsin. She didn't know anything about sazeracs or sno-balls (I just heard Hansen's has opened for the season, btw!) or turducken.

I've always had this love affair with New Orleans, and I have to admit that being married to Av has only made it stronger. When his family left Russia, they stepped off the boat in New Orleans. They're buried in the Jewish cemetery on Canal. He still has family there and of course he does business there. And when your family is from New Orleans, your culture is New Orleans. So when I make chicken clemenceau or gumbo or pompano meuniere amandine, it's this beautiful string that connects us.

The author talks about the difference between creole and cajun (a subject that could be discussed forever), St. Joseph's Day altars, boiling crawfish, ya-ka-mein, and a hundred other parts of eating in New Orleans. It's just a really fun book that made me want to get on realtor.com and find a colorful shotgun house uptown to move into right now. Really. Right now, so I can have my charbroiled oysters from Drago's for lunch. And blackened redfish from Dick & Jenny's for supper.

And tomorrow I'll stand in line for my sno-ball at Hansen's.

Update: You know, I wasn't really satisfied with what I wrote before (above) because I had really wanted to write more about how really nice Sara's book is and not so much about my own cravings to be in New Orleans. But I couldn't help myself.

Since I can't put words together the way I want to today, I decided to look up what other people had written about Gumbo Tales. I found Susan Larson's review in the Times-Picayune. It's what I wanted to say:

If you're sad not to be in New Orleans, "Gumbo Tales" is a fine book to soothe your cravings. It's filled with the tastes of the city, from Sazeracs to king cakes, gumbo to St. Joseph's Day cookies. Roahen, for five years the restaurant critic for Gambit Weekly, ate her way through the city, discovering its delights.

If you're happy to be in New Orleans, this is the book to lead you, rejoicing, to your favorite restaurant, or fire up that kitchen stove to make a batch of gumbo for your mama 'n' dem.

This book is a joy to read, a pleasure to pass along, a book to treasure. It leaves you hungry in your body, satisfied in your soul.

Just before we got to Cuba, we went through York to see all the new things the city has been been doing. The Coleman Center for the Arts there is transforming the town into a little artist magnet! Really, for a few years now they have been bringing in artists from outside, putting on exhibits, and encouraging local artists. Their mission is, "...art is relevant to everybody’s life and that everybody’s life is relevant to art. By nurturing and facilitating partnerships between artists and community we strive to create the vision and the means for a creative and sustainable society. Our mission is to enrich lives by integrating art into education, civic life, and community development throughout the Black Belt. "

This mural below was done by Tierney Malone. Southern Sound: Hear My Train A Comin':

All over town there are things to see. Looking for asbestos siding?

Here's some Woco-Pep 'motor fuel' with the flapper-girl on the mural. This is one of the forerunners to Pure brand gasoline.

This rooster was created by Jim Bird of Forkland - we visited his art environment at this post:

Downtown mosaic:




This is Tee's Lounge that Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. does so many letterpress designs for:

Here are two outside the front door. "Tee's Lounge: 21st Century Juke Joint":


This sign is above a downtown storefront:

Once we left York, it was a short trip to Cuba, where we visited Tammy and her very sweet family (hi y'all!) at Cuba Day. Tammy had been telling me about how pretty Cuba is, and she is right!