Deep Fried Kudzu

We were in Macon, Georgia this past week and went to the Nu-Way, which is right downtown. Isn't their sign the greatest!?

They've been in business since 1916 and you can still sit at the counter if you like:

I had a scrambled dog. It is a hotdog bun with a crazy-bright-red Nu-Way hotdog on top, and covering that is some oyster crackers and chili:

I don't know what got into me! I don't even like hotdogs really. I think the last one I had was maybe three years ago at Papa's in Tuscaloosa, which is closed now, but they had those Vienna beef hotdogs that are so good. And they had frozen custard, which was even better.

Maybe it was some weird pregnant craving, but that scrambled dog really was good! Oh - and that crazy red color goes all the way through the hotdog!:

Shug ate his own food, although I did let him have a couple of bites of chili. One of the nice ladies that worked there just loved on him and gave him a hat to wear too!
He has got just the funniest look in this pic! Hilarious!!

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I wonder if Vienna beef hotdogs like what was served at Papa's are pronounced "vee-in-uh" or "v-eye-in-uh". I'm guessing "vee-in-uh" since they're from Chicago. If you're in Vienna, Georgia, though, you say that "v-eye-in-uh" like the sausages.

I will say I was in Vienna, Austria once and it was beautiful. Of course, that's the original Vienna. "Vee-in-uh" I mean.

Ohmystars I just looked up the website for Vienna sausages (those are most definitely "v-eye-in-uh") and not only are there regular Vienna sausages, but there are also:

Lite, BBQ, Hot ’n Spicy, Smoked, Jalapeno, Honey Mustard, Cajun, Regular - Bilingual, and Bilingual Chicken

First of all, Cajun Vienna sausages? Honey mustard? BBQ? Lite!!?? And I'm not even going to spend the time thinking about how crazy it is that they list "regular-bilingual" and "bilingual chicken" as varieties.

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One summer in college I worked in a factory in my hometown. They had a special program for college students where you worked and made almost 3x what minimum wage was back then. I guess the summer was busy season for them and they needed the extra help...and the company wouldn't have to worry about laying people off at the end of the busy stretch since we'd all be returning to college.

Oh *gosh* that was a hard summer.

I mean, it was nice because I got to meet a bunch of other people and the other college-kids especially were a lot of fun too.

But...

The factory didn't have air conditioning. Oh it was miserable-hot. Like most everyone else, I operated a giant punch machine, and my wrists were tethered to this safety device so that when the big punch came down to stamp out some metal, there was no way that my hands could get in the way. It was terrible-terrible. I felt like a little monkey, just sitting there all day, changing out metal pieces and pushing a button and hearing that terrible "clang" every few seconds. There was nothing to think about. And we weren't allowed to talk, even to the person next to us.

Of course, every two weeks when I saw how much more my paycheck was than if I had kept a "regular" summer job, I was only one thing: grateful.

ANYway, the bright spot of each day -- before leaving of course, was lunch because all of us college-kids sat together in the air-conditioned cafeteria to visit and eat.

I don't remember who it was, but there was one kid who brought potted meat along with the rest of his otherwise boring-food-like-the-rest-of-us lunch. Do you know what potted meat is? Some kids joked that it was cat food for humans (okay it honestly does look that way) but it's...um...hahaha...pate for the proletariat. And it doesn't even have to be refrigerated. It was just amazing to me what each person brought for lunch. It was anything from their Momma's chicken casserole to...well...potted meat.

All that makes me think about the other mystery meat - Spam. Did you know that Spam is *huge* in Hawaii? Even the big paper there, the Honolulu Advertiser, included a piece about it in a special section they called 'Living in Paradise' - the feature is here. And I had no idea until I read that article that there is such a thing as a SpamMobile, though. Seriously. They have a gift shop at the Spam site too...wouldn't you love to have a set of these 'conversation starters'?! So funny!!!

Oh, and it turns out that there really are different flavors of Spam like the Honolulu Advertiser mentioned, including:

Bacon, Honey, Hickory Smoked, Cheese, Garlic, and Hot & Spicy

Honey??!!

...but no bilingual chicken. Huh.

There's some property at 1905 Russell Avenue in Springfield, Ohio that's for sale for $57,900. Thing is, on the Realtor.com website they don't even mention that the reason someone is going to buy this property is not for the sunny yellow 1300 sq ft house at all - it'll probably be just for the yard.

The yard is Hartman's Rock Garden - it was started back in the '30s by an out-of-work man named Ben Hartman. He started with building a little fish pond, but he got so taken by the process of creating that he just kept going. Over the years, he built replicas of Independence Hall, Lincoln's Log Cabin, Custer's Last Stand, Noah's Ark, the White House, Mount Vernon, the Oregon Trail, a Nativity scene, and countless others. There are many pics of it here on Flickr.

Every week I listen to Felder Rushing's gardening podcast (it's available here). A couple of weeks ago he mentioned that it's not too late to plant tomatoes - and one way that Felder plants them this late in the season is just to put them in big buckets - actually some people do that all year long.

It's not the best-looking-idea-ever, but you know what? We went to Home Depot, bought some ugly orange buckets, Av drilled holes in the bottom of each for drainage, and planted two varieties of tomatoes and a bell pepper. These are in the backyard just behind the kitchen, and I almost feel like I can see the plants growing while I fix supper. Really, they have just taken off, and we're going to be getting some beautiful tomatoes and peppers by early October, when it is still hot as anything here:

I also figured out by listening to one of Felder's podcasts that we have a little patch of chinch bugs in the St. Augustine sod in our front yard (would have never figured that out without him - I actually thought that maybe our lawn service had accidentally spilled some Roundup). Really, I learn something new every time I listen to him. This week, he had an idea to plant crimson clover seed over the garden to overwinter, then in the Spring when they have those pretty tops, you till them over and they fertilize the soil. Smart.

On his website, he's got pictures of something the University of Tennessee in Jackson is doing in their research garden - they've got small dead trees in the garden, painted vibrant colors. It doesn't sound good, but take a look.

Another thing that is so wild is that he has pics of how one man roots muscadine vines - I would have never in a million years thought of this but I guess it makes sense - the pics are on this page.

He talked about fairy rings this week too - you know, how mushrooms grow in big circles? One of my neighbors has one!:


The spider lilies are blooming right now too!

This is one of my other neighbors' yard with a whole line of them:

This coming November 7-9, DisneyWorld is hosting their annual Festival of the Masters at Downtown Disney. They're inviting over 100 artists to show, and they're having other features, too: 6000 sq ft of chalk art sidewalk displays, a children's activity center, and performers from the Cirque du Soleil La Nouba show will appear (plus painting and balloons outside their theater).

Disney said they did not yet have a complete roster of all the artists ready for release, but I do know that Alvin Batiste from Donaldsonville, Louisiana will be showing. The Houma paper did an article about him exhibiting there, here.

The 10th annual "Where the Art Meets the Soul" House of Blues Folk Art Festival will also be taking place there too - and in the past, they've brought in artists like Purvis Young, Missionary Mary Proctor, Ab the Flagman...

The AP just reported that the lawsuits brought by three Gee's Bend quilters, Annie Mae Young, Lucinda Pettway Franklin, and Loretta Pettway have been dropped.

The lawsuits were aimed at Tinwood Ventures, William Arnett and his sons Matt and Paul (Tinwood was founded by the Arnetts). Paul was dismissed from any lawsuits last year.





A small portion of the article reads:
An attorney representing the quilters, Peter Burke of Birmingham, said the lawsuits "have been resolved." He would not elaborate.

An attorney for the defendants, Greg Hawley of Birmingham, would only say that his clients "are pleased the cases have been dismissed."

Franklin claimed in her lawsuit that the Arnett family stole from her two quilts that she said were more than 100 years old (me: pics of those quilts are above). Pettway claimed she was tricked into signing a copyright document, even though she could not read.

Attorneys for the Arnetts had called the lawsuits frivolous.

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Ah, at least it's over.

I don't like to to defrost anything. Anything-anything. But there are some things that are worth mixing up ahead of time and keeping in the freezer until the next big get-together or just a visit.

This past week, I made up some cheddar mix - and the smart thing about it is that with this in the freezer, you can make either cheese straws or pecan party biscuits. I made just one baking sheet of pecan biscuits to enjoy now and the rest of the mix is in the freezer for whenever they're needed.

This recipe makes about...oh, probably 50 small cheese straws or pecan biscuits. It's very similar to my regular cheese straw recipe too, so either way is fine.

Ingredients:
1 stick butter, softened
4 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1-1/4 cup flour
...pecan halves, if you're making pecan biscuits - one per biscuit
couple of dashes of salt
Tabasco - I use eight big splashes but you can leave that out if you want

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350*

Grate the cheese, then add to the Kitchenaid along with the butter, flour, salt, and Tabasco. Mix on low-medium until it comes together:

For cheese straws, form them using the technique at this post. For pecan biscuits, roll the mixture into rounds just a bit bigger than a really large grape. A parchment-covered baking sheet is perfect. Also, you can crowd them more than I have here since they really don't spread:

Take the prettiest pecan halves you have and press them onto each round - push them in good so they will set. This will flatten out the rounds so they look like this:

At about 18 minutes in the oven, they will just start to brown on the bottom - perfect.
These will disappear in no time so make many more than you think you need!

In Steel Magnolias, Truvy (Dolly Parton's character) called sweet tea the 'house wine of the South' - which of course it is.

My favorite memory of sweet tea comes from my Aunt Helen. She was my PawPaw's sister, and she was a real character. I remember one time in college, I brought one of my boyfriends over to visit and she started talking about how she had "very cold veins" (you know, varicose veins) and she had no more than finished her sentence than she was standing up with her skirt over her head to show them off.

Oh yes.

Those were some very cold veins alright.

She was just that way. It wasn't done to make anyone uncomfortable or even to be funny. It was just her. I could tell a million Aunt Helen stories.

Now this is my same Aunt Helen that had her good furniture encased in clear plastic - but I grew up thinking she was the pinnacle of good taste. One bathroom had long red plastic beads hanging in the doorway rather than having a real door there (which I read as: "wow she is so sophisticated she doesn't even have doors to the bathroom!"). They had a formal dining room that was so formal that no one ever ate in there (me: "wow she's so rich she has a room with furniture that goes unused!"). Aunt Helen's kitchen had orange formica countertops too (me: "so Brady Bunch! She's so with-it."). Even her refrigerator was different from ours - the freezer was on the bottom (me: "fancy-fancy-fancy!").

Well, getting back to tea, Aunt Helen even served tea differently than everyone else - rather than serving it with sugar, she sweetened it with Tang (so worldly!)!

And it even had a final touch. Aunt Helen wouldn't serve a glass of tea until she had wrapped a paper towel around the glass.

Fancy-fancy-fancy.

Anyway, the house wine of the South is now flavoring a vodka. I think I found out about this at Chowhound. Av's dad was in Nashville a couple of weeks ago and after Av told him that I had heard about the new Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka being released in a few states (Alabama not being one of them), he brought some home. Av says it is really good.

The Charolotte Observer suggests, "we vote for 2 ounces of Firefly over ice in a double rocks glass, topped with lemonade and a drizzle of mint-infused simple syrup."

I guess that's another variation on an Arnold Palmer...

The Friday issue of USA Today had a feature on the best desserts in Chicago, New York, and the South.

From the South, the writer recommended:.

Allen & Son Bar-B-Que in Chapel Hill, NC; Magnolia Grill in Durham, NC; Jestine's Kitchen in Charleston, SC; Peninsula Grill in Charleston, SC; Village Bakery Cafe in Mt. Pleasant, SC

Wilson's Soul Food in Athens, GA; The Yesterday Cafe in Rutledge, GA; Mary Mac's Tea Room in Atlanta; Helen's Place in Clanton, AL; The Smokehouse in Greenville, AL

Cochon in New Orleans; Commander's Palace in New Orleans; Emeril's Gulf Coast Fish House in Gulfport, MS; and The Carriage House in Natchez, MS

We've been to three of the places he listed, although we skipped dessert at The Carriage House when we were there. We have had both things that the writer listed for Mary Mac's, though - peach cobbler and peanut butter pie:

He's right about those.

...and the bread pudding souffle with whiskey sauce at Commander's:

...and their Creole cream cheese cheesecake:
...he's right about those too.

If I had to put together a short list of the one or two best desserts in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, I'd have to say:

Just about anything off the dessert table at Mammy's Cupboard in Natchez:

A slice of coconut meringue pie from the Twix 'n Tween in Centreville, Alabama:

A slice of coconut meringue (or any other flavor really) from The Crystal Grill in Greenwood, MS:

and the cheesecake and bread pudding at Joe's Dreyfus Store in Livonia, Louisiana:
Yum.

The website This Goodly Land: Alabama's Literary Landscape has a blog and this week mentioned the Southern Literary Trail - it stretches from Natchez to Savannah including 18 different towns. In March of next year, "every Trail community will present plays, movies, tours and discussion panels that explore the masterworks of Southern literature and honor their authors."





In Mississippi the cities participating are:
Clarksdale, Columbus, Greenville, Jackson, Natchez, and Oxford
for authors:
Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, Richard Wright, Margaret W. Alexander, and William Faulkner

In Alabama the cities are:
Demopolis, Hartselle, Mobile, Monroeville, Montgomery, and Tuskegee
for authors:
Lillian Hellman, William Bradford Huie, Eugene Walter, William March, Albert Murray, Truman Capote, Nell Harper Lee, Zelda Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ralph Ellison

In Georgia the cities are:
Atlanta, Clayton, Columbus, Milledgeville, Moreland, and Savannah
for authors:
Margaret Mitchell, Joel Chandler Harris, Lillian Smith, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Alice Walker, and Erskine Caldwell

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I am ashamed to say that I was in Creative Writing and Advanced English all through high school (which was good for me because all we did was read literature and write rather than do things like diagram sentences which I never-ever could do), and I took at least two classes in college on Southern authors and literature and still did not have the faintest idea who William Bradford Huie was. How can that be?

Not that it's anyone's fault but my own. But still.

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What I am really tickled about is that during March of 2009 when all the big events are taking place, Mobile will show "Last of the Bohemians" which is a new documentary about one of my ***favorite*** people of all time, Eugene Walter. This is the trailer:



...and one night they will also be doing "Dinner at the Pillars: Menu by Eugene. A dinner at the famed Pillars Restaurant of Mobile will feature a menu from the recipes of Eugene Walter and anecdotes about his remarkable life. This will be a happy affair presented by a restaurant renowned for hospitality and service. Eugene told his biographer Katherine Clark in Milking the Moon: "After all, fun is worth any amount of preparation." (Reservations required for this ticketed event.)"

Av and I have been to The Pillars before and it is *excellent* - plus with Eugene's recipes I can only imagine. Oh if there is any way we can get to it, we will be there for the film and the supper and anything else in between!!

Although -- you know, it's been rumored that at one dinner party that Eugene gave, he actually served canned cat food as pate. No one was supposed to know. I think no one knows for sure. But Eugene was something else altogether.

I'm pretty sure The Pillars will not be serving Fancy Feast.

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The events that are planned for each state are here: AL events, GA events, MS events. This is going to be wonderful.

This is what happens when I have an 8:15am appointment and I'm all excited about talking about the new baby with my doctor...and the doctor is thirty minutes late coming in to the office. And there are no magazines. And I've texted everyone already. And I've spent too much time thinking about the strange objects that companies use to advertise on (example: Boniva ad above).

Anyway, the doctor came in and the new baby is measuring right on track - maybe just almost a week ahead but still right-on, just like last time. The heartbeat sounds excellent and everything is going really well. I feel terrific too! Our next appointment is in two weeks.

Yay!!

I love it when you get interested about something, and all of a sudden you see it everywhere.

Just today, the AP came out with a story on the population increase of the Amish community nationwide. It has nearly doubled in about 16 years, and in that time they have established new communities in seven states, one being Mississippi (our visit to it here). The total Amish population is now around 227,000.

Business Week did a story this month about how people contract with the Amish to build homes since their workmanship is legendary.

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Okay, and this doesn't have anything to do with anything, but...

I found out this week about Keds Studio where you can upload your own pictures to be printed on Keds shoes! They even do children's sizes. I can't wait for Shug (and little brother!) to be big enough to start making art so that we can upload it to the Keds site and a few days later get it back on shoes!

The Museum of Modern Art catalog came in the mail last week with their new holiday cards. They also have new styles of Robert Sabuda pop-up notecards - loooove these.
--Speaking of which, the blog Paper Crave always features the best designs (and last year they did a great series on holiday cards). Are you thinking about those already too?

Last year, Southern Living ran a recipe for Collard Green Pesto. I put it in my notebook to try, and last night I made a version of it to go along with wild-caught salmon that we had for supper.

It was so easy to make. My version is a little bit different, but the original anchovy-less one is here. Just now when I was looking for the original online, I found a recipe for collard green olive pesto from Gourmet magazine, and that sounds wonderful too.

Ingredients:
3 giant leaves fresh collard greens - washed, ribs removed, and torn into pieces
2 tbsp anchovy paste
1/4 cup pecans
olive oil - start with 1/4 cup and add to taste
1/3 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated
dash of salt

Directions:
Put collards in boiling water for about four minutes, remove with a slotted spoon to drain:

Place collards and all other ingredients in Cuisinart and pulse to reach pesto consistency. Start with the 1/4 cup olive oil and add as necessary:
The pesto turned out to be really terrific. Thankfully Shug loves vegetables like I do (Av is a meat-and-potatoes person whereas I could live on greens and rutabagas from now on) and liked this pesto a lot.

I think the article that went along with the Southern Living pesto mentioned that it would be nice at a grits bar. We'll probably be hosting a big brunch in the next two or three months and that sounds like a good idea for a feature...offer grits with different flavored butters and cream cheeses, different cheeses like cheddar and parmesan, pestos, roasted corn and maybe other roasted vegetables, and so on. Mmmm that does sound good...

Sara Roahen, who wrote Gumbo Tales, is working with the Southern Foodways Alliance right now doing oral histories. They're working on creating a website for the stories as well as doing a map with just a few different boudin markets here:

Boudin (if you're from another part of the country, it's pronounced "boo-dan") is pork, rice, spices, sausage, liver (or not), um...some other things I guess, in a natural casing. This is boudin we got from Boudin King in Jennings, Louisiana:

If you take the boudin mix and fry it instead, you make "boudin balls" which are sooo good:
Gosh, they even sell boudin balls at a gas station near Winfield, Alabama that we were at the other day.

Our favorite boudin comes from Rabideaux's II in Iowa, Louisiana (and that Iowa is pronounced "I-O-Way"). Yum:

In South Louisiana, boudin is available everywhere - this was from a Chevron station in Opelousas:
Probably the best site about boudin - whose is best, etc. is at Boudin Link.

Oh - and I should have mentioned that the SFA has uploaded Sara's boudin pics to their Flickr account, here. Although I have to say that the making of boudin isn't necessarily very photogenic.

Another of my malaprops happened last week when I asked Av something about those boudin people in Israel. You know, the Bedouins. Ohmystars what must he think, being married to a girl that mixes up sausage with a tribe of people?


Probably the same thing he thinks when I forget and call the Jordan River the "Jerden" River (where we live, lots of people with the last name of Jordan pronounce it "Jerden"). He's heard me call Michael Jordan "Michael Jerden" so many times it probably doesn't even register!!

There are two catalogs that I shop and get instant inspiration from. One is Anthropologie (plus I love that they get that things like doorknobs and cabinet pulls are like jewelry for your house) and the other is the Texas-based Wisteria catalog. The couple that owns it was featured in the March 2008 issue of Veranda. (thanks for letting me know which issue Mimi!). I have loved Wisteria forever, and every single catalog gives me all kinds of ideas.

In the latest catalog, Wisteria has this really clever dalmatian dog covered with a deck of cards - a pic of it is here. They have a great sense of humor. It got me thinking about what else could be covered with cards, or decoupaged, or etc that would turn into something really smart. Then last week the latest issue of Raw Vision came and when they mentioned the upcoming Kentuck Festival, they featured a picture of John Petrey's card dress - here's a pic of his site since my screenshot function isn't working:

He is based out of Chattanooga and represented at Lois Lambert Gallery and Cohen Rese Gallery - both in California, and I've found other pics of his work here, here, and here. I can't wait to meet him this year at Kentuck.

Oh, and I haven't seen it yet but Sara Anne Gibson, the exec. director of the Kentuck Museum says that there is a nice article about John Petrey in the latest issue of American Style Magazine.

John Petrey's dress series reminded me of B'ham's Julia Peerson Carpenter and the Metalwear dress forms she makes. Pics of her work are here and here.

Leigh Pennebaker is based in NYC now, but she's from Star, Mississippi and makes *the* most amazing wire dress forms too...

I think I've mentioned before that each day of the week, Shug and I go out for a trip to one of five different places: the zoo, the botanical gardens, another garden, the museum, and one day for shopping all over town. We do playdates too!

Here are some pics from this week with our fun little boy:

At the botanical gardens:

At the zoo, making friends with a tiger:

...at the other garden we like:

...he really knows how to relax:

...and at a new friend's house, playing with some other babies:
Shug really doesn't like the playpen we have for him but he *loved* playing with the other children in this - so this afternoon we came home and ordered two playzones (they join together to make a huge space) and two foam puzzle mats so we can give him a great-big place in the den for him and his friends to enjoy playtime! Yay!

I just found out from the Gee's Bend quilters' PR agency that five Gee's Bend quilters are going to the Democratic National Convention in Denver as official representatives of Alabama - and what else is fantastic is that Irene Williams' "Vote" quilt is the official logo of the Alabama Democratic Committee:

The quilters will be singing and speaking at the breakfast that Thursday morning too!

This past week - and up to the 17th - is "Elvis Week", I guess because people used to and still do make a point of visiting Graceland around the anniversary of Elvis' death, August 16th. Tomorrow afternoon there is a Mass at St. Paul's and then a candlelight vigil. The Memphis Symphony Orchestra is performing Elvis' music this weekend too.

The last time we were in Israel, in 2006, Av took these pics at the Elvis Inn outside Jerusalem (for me, when you see something like this outside the US you sort of have to stop). It's run by a couple of Israeli guys and has been open for over 30 years now. People come from all over to have their pictures taken with the two Elvis statues:

We've been to Graceland and Elvis' birthplace in Tupelo, but I'd love to visit Graceland Too in Holly Springs. And my favorite-of-all-time Elvis artwork is the Trinity by Clyde Broadway (he's an art teacher in Scottsboro) at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

There are over 250 pics of Elvis shrines on Flickr!