Why did I name this "judge not lest ye be judged peach cobbler"? Because I don't want you to judge me because of how easy it is! It's summer, it's hot, and we both have peaches and white bread right now, right?!
When you serve this, just call it "peach cobbler"...the real name is just between us and whoever you share the recipe with...
Ingredients:
8-10 large peaches, peeled and cut into nice-size pieces
4 slices white bread, cut into five or six long pieces
1-1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup melted butter
1 tsp salt
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350*.
Butter an 8x8 baking pan and place peach slices inside:
On top of the peaches, place the bread slices:
...and on top of that, pour the mixture of the sugar, egg, melted butter, and salt (making sure to coat all the pieces of bread evenly):
Bake for about 45 minutes (start checking at 35 or 40) -- it will get to a nice brown cobbler-looking top -- all done!
When it's 100* outside, I believe in shortcuts.
Yum.
Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged Peach Cobbler
Memorial Day
Since we were already in Mississippi, we figured we couldn't do any better for the boys than to take them to the Vicksburg National Military Park for Memorial Day weekend. We've been here a half-dozen times, but this was the first time the boys were old enough to really enjoy it (the ride is about an hour long to see all the memorials). This is the one for Illinois:
Inside, this mural on the floor:
Stand on the mural and look straight up:
This monument is a great place for people to get out and walk around, and kids to run around. Shug and Shugie enjoyed being in the spotlight:
Not all the monuments are this big and stately (Illinois' is the best in this sense) -- in general, though, the ones that the northern states had built here are more grandiose than the Southern states' ones. This is the one for Alabama:
...and Tennessee:
Retro Goodness
We were in Jackson this weekend for a couple of different reasons, but one of the main ones was to see a speaker at Beth Israel: Rabbi Philip Posner, who was a Freedom Rider that spent 39 days at Parchman. He was a *wonderful* speaker. Wonderful-wonderful. The sanctuary before services on Friday evening:
We had a great time, the boys had a great time, and we finally stayed at the 1923 King Edward Hotel in downtown which has been completely renovated into a Hilton Garden Inn (the room seemed much smaller than all the other HGIs we've stayed at, but it was okay).
One morning, we had breakfast at Brent's Drugs (since 1946) in Fondren, which is such a great neighborhood. This mural between Brent's and McDade's was put up last year when filming for The Help
This sign welcomes yankees into Brent's:
Inside, oh the retro goodness:
Aqua boomerang laminate? Oh yes:
I've been here before but this was the first time for the boys who are now big fans of their pancakes (and of course the lemonade):
Their website: "One of Jackson's Original Drug Dealers" and "Brent's Drugs, Where All of the Employees are Jerks".
Forks Of Cypress Plantation, Near Florence AL
Last month we went out to see the ruins of the Forks of Cypress plantation near Florence. It burned down in 1966 after being struck by lightning; these are pics of it from the Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress, by Alex Bush in 1934:
') ancestors, including his grandmother, were slaves here at Forks of Cypress. His book, Queen
, named after his grandmother, was based here. This is a pic of one of the slave cabins:
Okra And Tomatoes, Meet Cast Iron
Beginning in 1882, Sloss Furnace produced iron. It hasn't been making iron commercially in that same way for years, but it is open for artists to come and do their work -- and over the last week or two, my friend Suzanne and I have been there to make our own cast iron art.
They gave us each a sand mold for a platter, and onto that mold, we carved our designs. Suzanne did a nice hand motif, and I decided to draw tomatoes and okra. Of all the implements we could use, I drew most of mine with a large nail.
Oh, and I can't draw, really, but you don't need an incredible amount of technical talent to do this kind of thing. Some simple tomato shapes, okra pods, and a tomato slice:
The deeper you draw the outlines, the deeper the cast iron will sink in so that when it's cast, the lines pop out even more on the finished piece.
My favorite part of the surroundings was this safety sign:
It was pretty dark when we left, which made looking back at where we had been even prettier:
Early the next week, they did the pour and out came our cast iron platters.
Suzanne's taking this further and is even attending a class on sculpture. There's a listing of all the classes at the Sloss calendar.
The Modern Phillis Wheatley, And Brand New Ancient Things
Phillis Wheatley was a poet -- the first slave and the third woman in the US to publish a book of poems. She was kidnapped in West Africa, and brought to Boston in 1761 to be a servant for a woman. Phillis did not enjoy good health but she learned English, Latin, and Greek classics.
In 1767, she published 'Poems on Various Subjects' and that same year the man who had 'purchased' her had her emancipated. She even did a book tour that took her to London. She met George Washington, and Voltaire complimented her on her poetry.
No wonder that a school in Treme (in New Orleans), or anywhere really, would want to be named after someone who accomplished so much in so little time, under such circumstances.
In 1955, the Phillis Wheatley school was built. The architect was Charles Colbert, who designed it with 22 classrooms for 770 students. The structure was raised, giving children additional space to play underneath, in the shade of the building. It's cantilevered, has open corridors for accessibility to rooms, and enjoys bilateral lighting and cross ventilation. It's a steel and glass Modernist beauty.
And it didn't get water from Katrina: the three feet or so did not reach the first floor by virtue of the building being built raised. Afterwards, though, the school was not reopened and it sits now slated for demolition late this summer.
The Louisiana Landmarks Society named the school to the 2008 New Orleans Nine Most Endangered Sites.
This is the huge part: it is considered so important that the World Monuments Fund (!!) added the Phillis Wheatley school in Treme to its 2010 watch list.
This new (wonderful) video discusses the Phillis Wheatley school -- its meaning to the community, and its significance architecturally:
A Plea For Modernism from Evan Mather on Vimeo.
While looking up what other sites the World Monuments Fund seeks to bring attention to, I found its annual lists for several years. Inside are photographs and descriptions of the most incredible, dream-like places around the world...
Queen Kelly
Last month on the way back from Jackson, I stopped in Meridian at Rose Hill Cemetery where the Royal Roma Mitchell family is (they're seriously Roma royalty).
Queen Kelly Mitchell died in 1915 while giving birth at a camp in Coatopa, Alabama (which is west of Demopolis). Her family brought her to Rose Hill Cemetery in Meridian to be buried. A recollection of that event can be found at this very good site that also refers to the rest of the family of Emil Mitchell, who was Kelly's husband, the "King of the Gypsies".
Along with Kelly Mitchell are buried her husband, Emil, who died in 1942 close to Attalla (AL), Flora Mitchell (Emil's sister), Joe "Sharkie" Mitchell and Princess Diana Sharkey Mitchell, Slatcho Mitchell, Helen and Frank Mitchell, Mehil Mitchell, Lawrence Mitchell, Nicholas Gulumba, Costa George Bimbo, and Ovdoikia George Bimbo.
People leave things there -- Mardi Gras beads, coins, fruit, jewelry, dolls, liquor, you name it:
I've been photographing this same site three or four times a year since 2004 or 2005. This is the way Kelly's picture looks today:
...and this is how it looked when I photographed it in 2005:
Among the collection this day include a superhero doll, a tin of gum, and a lighter:
A set of the pics is on Flickr here.
Week Of 5.23 Various
(All the pics here are from my Flickr photostream. If you click on any of them, it will take you to that image's page.)
At Kennesaw State University in Georgia, their class ARH 4490 is 'Howard Finster/Outsider Art'. They also have a nice collection of art at their gallery.
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Last week I took a class about raising backyard chickens (we're only interested in four or five tiny little quiet bantam hens for eggs, and feathered pets for the boys). We are looking forward to one day building our own "coop deville" or "poulet chalet" one day -- while looking at coops I found this model for $3500 (!!) which made me wonder why Ikea hasn't issued their flatpacked design yet.
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Anthony and Gail Uglesich will be cooking with Joel Miller, the Chef/Owner of Oxford's Ravine restaurant to benefit the Oxford charity, More Than a Meal, on Thursday June 2nd.
Tickets are $75 pp available by contacting Ravine.
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Some people try to make art with duct tape. And you can make your prom outfits with it too.
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How sweet that I was invited to the opening of the newest 20k house by the Rural Studio (I need to send them a thank you note) but the pictures of it are now on their website. Nice!
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In my family, we believe birthdays deserve a doberge -- either picking it up in person in Metairie at Gambino's, or having FedEx bring it to the front door. There's a newer company called Debbie Does Doberge which does mini doberge -- so cute. But they don't ship yet.
This Week's Various
Here it is!
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Artnet Magazine just ran a piece entitled 'Art & the Apocalypse' -- since that Judgment Day ad ran in USA Today and other billboards, etc recently -- in which they mentioned several artists (including Howard Finster, Keith Haring, Henry Darger) and the work they had done depicting that sort of event. One artist they mentioned was:
Chicago Imagist Roger Brown, who was raised in Alabama in the Church of Christ, referred to Biblical imagery in his art often enough. His An Actual Dream of the Second Coming (1976), for instance, transports Revelations’ doomsday vision to an urban setting not unlike Brown’s adopted city, filled with sinners lost in fiery despair while the faithful ascend to heaven.I had no idea about the whole May 21st thing until we were eating breakfast on vacation last week (more about that soon) and I open up USA Today to a full-page ad about everything ending. Wha?
Anyway, Roger was born in Hamilton and raised in Opelika. He moved to Chicago for college and became a founder of the Chicago Imagist movement. That's how he's best known. His Kissin' Cousins (that he produced after he found out about being related to Elvis (he was also related to Tallulah Bankhead)) is at the Ogden.
Does anyone know if the Roger Brown Rock House Museum in Beulah, AL is open now? I know he was working on it when he passed away in 1997 and it was open for some time, but what's its status currently? Please contact me if you know -- thanks!
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Thanks to my friend Nancy for letting me know about the 'mystery house' on Wichita Street in Houston that's on the market now.
(Used courtesy Mr. Kimberly under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Thank you!)
Swamplot says: "After the Orange Show, the Beer Can House, and the Third Ward home of the Flower Man, probably no Houston home has accumulated more outsider-art street cred than Charles Fondow’s decades-long transformation of a former Riverside Terrace daycare center into a bubbling stew of half-timbered gables, turrets, and towering rooftop decks."
So you might think that the interior would be full of happy, boundless excess, but not really. It's absolutely very nice but not creative overload. And it's only $325k.
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The old Hopkins House boardinghouse / restaurant in Pensacola, which is a residence now, is also for sale (even the Sterns wrote about the restaurant in Gourmet, in 2000):
For almost 50 years, the Hopkins boardinghouse in the North Hill district of Pensacola, Florida, offered the best deal in town. The price for a room was always right—but what made this address so extraordinary was that the rent included meals. Spectacular meals. Platters of fried chicken, hot biscuits, sweet-potato soufflé, and other Dixie specialties fairly flew from hand to hand at the crowded communal tables. Extra helpings were never discouraged; when the serving bowls got low, full ones replaced them. Best of all, boarders weren’t the only ones privy to this amazing bounty. Outside diners with good manners and enough change in their pockets were also welcome at Ma Hopkins’s tables. And they still are.
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For those of us from, shall we say, less sociable areas of the country, the friendliness at these tables can come as a shock. Instantly, you are dining with folks who feel like cousins, aunts, or uncles, chatting about where you’re headed and where you’ve been, and how about more chicken and who took the last corn muffin? The family feel is enhanced by the maternal propriety of the dining areas. The walls are decorated with souvenir plates; white lace curtains hang at the windows; and in the vestibule, where people wait for a seat to open up, signs advise, “NO HATS WORN AT THE TABLE…TANK TOPS, UNDERSHIRTS, AND MUSCLE SHIRTS ARE NOT PERMISSIBLE.”
After the restaurant closed, it was purchased for $340k in 2005 and is now on the market for $689k.
I think there are some recipes from the old Hopkins House in the Pensacola Junior League cookbook, Some Like it South
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The Washington Post likes Fairhope. The best set of quotes from the article:
...I stopped by Page and Palette, a bookstore around since 1968. The store displays a full case of Fairhope authors, many recognizable from the bestseller list or airport newstands: Jimmy Buffett, Fannie Flagg, Rick Bragg, Andy Andrews, Winston “Forrest Gump” Groom.
“The amount of literary people here just blows your mind,” said Mac Pulitzer, great-grandson of the legendary newspaper publisher. “Per capita, this is probably the highest in the country.”
Pulitzer hopes to contribute to the town’s literary prominence with the Pulitizer Hotel and the first-ever Pulitzer Library, both scheduled to open next spring. He plans to fill the repository with more than 2,000 books, including every Pulitzer prize winner from nearly a century plus the classics. He will also reserve shelf space for local authors. He might need to build an additional wing.
“I think Sonny Brewer was right when he said, ‘We have more published authors and writers than we do readers,’ ” said Karin Wilson, president of Page and Palette.
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The AP ran a story verifying that Ave Maria Grotto in Cullman is undamaged after the tornadoes.
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The beloved GooGoo Cluster has gotten some attention: "Its makers, Standard Candy Company, have upgraded the candy bar’s ingredients, changed the way it’s manufactured and redesigned the packaging." I love GooGoos. I love getting them at the Opry and even the cheesy part when everyone yells during the broadcast "gotta getta GooGoo". The price of a GooGoo has almost doubled but the amount I want to have one has also doubled now. And I'm loving the retro goodness of the redesigned website too.
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A family in Tuscaloosa filmed the tornado coming right at them. Pretty amazing, especially beginning at the one minute mark. It really would have been more important to be hiding in your "safe place" - in the bathroom or closet in the middle of your home, though, right?
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Tom Fitzmorris has ranked the 300 most essential New Orleans restaurants. But I can't believe Port of Call is all the way down to #290.
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The Freedom Rides Museum opened today in Montgomery.
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