Month: August 2006

Folk Fest has started – and there’s a short article about it on the AJC website.

The article mentions artists Mose T, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Woodie Long, ‘Cornbread’, and Michael Crocker, as well as Gilley’s Gallery of Baton Rouge – who will be bringing items artwork from the late Clementine Hunter. Over the years, Clementine made over 4000 works of art, and her quilts have sold for as much as $35,000. There’s a good article about her at Raw Vision here.

In today’s Clarion-Ledger, Felder Rushing writes about a garden ornament he received from his cousin – he calls it a “witch ball” (but they’ve got lots of other names) and they’ve been popular in American gardens since the 1800s. The folklore is that, like the bottle tree, they keep evil spirits away.

 

When I did a search for local art glass, I found Cal Breed, from Fort Payne: optic tear ornaments

Pretty!

We went to the Argo Drive In (there are some pics of it here, but I couldn’t find a website – their phone # is 205.467.3434) Sunday night. The movie started at 8:15pm, and the cost was $10 per car. When we first got a space, we actually had to move because there were so many big pickup trucks (the ones where they are customized to be really tall for off-roading) that we couldn’t see the screen too well in my Volvo! We moved the car, and when we rolled the windows down, we smelled cherry scent. Like…fake cherries. The person in the pickup truck next to us had his windows rolled down and hanging from his rearview mirror were those cherry car deodorizers! It was yucky and funny at the same time. We smelled our clothes afterwards to see if we smelled like fake cherries (we did!)!

About halfway through the movie, we heard something really loud getting closer and closer. At first I couldn’t tell what it was, and then about 50 yards behind us, a train (!) went through!!! It was so funny – we and everybody else just turned up the volume until it passed.

Earlier this summer Av and I decided we’d like to try to go to every drive-in in Alabama (there are eleven) and Mississippi (there are three), so this is another one off our list. The movie was great and we had a lot of fun. Yay!

I’m trying to streamline some of my collections, and I’m starting with books and magazines. There are certain books that I like the idea of keeping, but I know I’ll never look at them again (those I’m selling on Amazon). Same idea with magazines – I like the idea of subscribing to certain ones, but there are some that I only flip through and don’t even really read.

I have lots of cookbooks, and I’m going to try to streamline those as well. I’ve decided that if I don’t use a certain cookbook, I’m going to put it on Amazon for someone else to hopefully enjoy. I’ve had Fine Dining Mississippi Style for about three years now and I’ve never made a single thing from it. It’s really a nice cookbook – it’s one of those books where the author has contacted chefs from all over the state for recipes they use in their own restaurants.

Yesterday, when I was making my menu and shopping list for the week, I took that book down and decided to try making “Vanelli’s Grecian Spaghetti” for tonight’s supper – it’s a recipe from a restaurant called Vanelli’s in Tupelo (update: they’ve since closed), and the restaurant has gotten some really good reviews on Yahoo travel.

What I made is based on, but isn’t exactly, the recipe in the book.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup mushrooms (garden-variety)
1/4 cup cauliflower
1/4 cup broccoli
1 scallion
1 bell pepper
8 oz. spaghetti noodles, cooked
splash olive oil
1 clove chopped garlic
beef sausage (like a beef kielbasa)

First, I prepared all my ingredients. I chopped the mushrooms, cauliflower, broccoli, scallion, and bell pepper and set them in one bowl, then the garlic in another.

Next, I started the spaghetti cooking and then began on the beef sausage, which I cut into bite-size pieces. I heated a skillet to medium-high with a splash of olive oil inside, then added the meat. Once the beef sausage was cooked, I transferred it to a bowl. In the hot skillet, I added all the garlic, then the cut vegetables. They soaked up all the yummy flavor of the meat:

…and once they were cooked through, I added the cooked spaghetti and the sausage back to the pan (and seasoned with salt and pepper). I cooked this for another couple of minutes to get everything hot and mixed together:

…and served.

It was a different in a really good way. Av and I rate dishes “once a week,” “once a month,” “once a year,” and “once a lifetime and this was it” (ha!) and this was a “once a month” dish.

I think we might try Vanelli’s the next time we’re in Tupelo. I love Greek food, and from the reviews, it’s supposed to be really casual and easygoing. Nice!

Today I got to make a craft I’ve been meaning to try – nightlights. Well, the nightlight is already made (!) – what I wanted to try was to make was a picture for the light to shine through. I got the idea of printing pictures of mine on Shrinky Dinks, and it came out really, really well!

What you’ll need:
nightlights with the bulb and clamp included (you can find them on eBay)
Shrinky Dink inkjet paper
computer, software like Photoshop, printer
scissors
oven preheated to 300*
cookie sheet
paper sack cut to fit cookie sheet
a heavy book to insurance-smush the shrinky-dinks flat
hot glue gun, glue

Ifyou know Photoshop, do this: make the image the size you want, then go to levels and wash it out – between 50%-75% of how it started.

Next, go to “image”, “adjustments”, “levels” and move the black arrow that is all the way to the left to *at least* halfway across. It’s important that the image appear very washed out, because the colors concentrate on the paper when it shrinks in the oven. There were certain pictures that I moved the bar about 75% of the way to the right. With a little practice, you can begin to tell how far washed-out the image will need to be to look good in the end. The darker the pic is to begin with, the more washed-out you will want to start it as.

I saved the file, then printed it. When you print it, select that you want to print in color on the best setting, on transparency film (even though you are using the Shrinky Dink inkjet paper). Depending on the dimensions of your image, you may need to change the setting to print landscape so that the image isn’t cut off. Print the image on the scratchy side of the SD paper. In my printer, I put the paper in shiny-side up because it prints on the underneath when it goes through the rollers.

Here’s my first experiment going in the oven: the oven is preheated at 300* and I’ve cut out the image and put it on a baking sheet with a paper-bag cut out to be the liner.

And here’s what went wrong – terribly wrong! Lesson learned: when Shrinky-Dink paper gets hot and starts shrinking, the edges will curl. This is normal and okay. The only time to step in is when you have a big piece that you’re starting with and the edges curl so much that it curls in and sticks to itself. If that goes unchecked you’ll end with this:

(blush.) Okay, that was bad! hahaha! But what I figured out is to open the oven when that happens, a potholder in one hand and a spatula in the other, and to ‘beat’ the offending edge until it starts to straighten out again. Regular curling is okay. Sticking to itself is definitely not okay.

So…I printed out another picture and started over. This time it turned out a lot better, and I also found out that the SD will shrink faster if the cookie sheet (with the paper sack liner) is preheated in the oven.

This time the scary curling starts, – but I didn’t have to do anything to this one – it just uncurled on its own (total shrink time is about two minutes at 300*. You can go longer than that if you need to.). Resist the need to step in unless you’re sure it’s going to stick to itself. This one is just fine:

When it’s “cooked” longer, it will uncurl itself. I took it out of the oven and my handy assistant, Av, took a book and smushed it. This was our insurance that it would cool completely flat.

There are two more that I did. These started at about 4″x6″ and ended at about…2-1/2″x3-1/2″. The magnolia, especially, had this really neat luminous look to it. The camellia turned out great, too!

Here’s one thing to check before you hot-glue the SD onto the clamp. Where you want to put the night light – they are polarized plugs (one of the legs is smaller than the other) – you want to figure out if you’re going to be plugging the night light in up or down. This is important if you have an image that is obviously one way up (like…if you did a SD of a house, you want to make sure the outlet you plug it into is going to show it right-way up). In my home, some of the outlets have the little leg on the left side and some have the little leg on the right side. Anyway, just to be sure, take your nightlight to where you’re going to use it and see how it is going to plug in.

Here, I’ve taken my hot-glue gun and made a bead of glue on the clamp, then pressed the SD onto it:

…and here it is!

I think they look really nice. I’ve got a little work to do to make them look even neater, but that will come with some more practice. I’m really happy with them!

Ordinarily, Av and I don’t go to chain restaurants – but there is a very small five-restaurant chain based in Louisiana called “Ralph and Kacoo’s” that makes *the* very best hushpuppies!

I made some of what I call “hushpuppy fritters” (because they’re more flat than round) one night this week to go with the grouper we bought at Joe Patti’s.

This recipe is based on (but isn’t exactly) the one in the Ralph and Kacoo’s cookbook, and I made it 1/10 the portion in the book – and there was still plenty left!

Ingredients:
1/2 lb. cornmeal
1/5 lb. flour
1/3 cup sugar
a little salt
tiny sprinkle baking soda
1-1/2 tbsp. baking powder
dash garlic powder
1 bunch green onions
1/3 c. evaporated milk
1/2 c. water
1/2 egg (break egg in bowl, stir, use half for this recipe)
dash fresh parsley, chopped

Directions:
Mix together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt, b/soda, b/powder, and garlic powder. Next, add the milk, water, 1/2 broken egg, green onions, and parsley. Once this was mixed well, I could tell if it needed a touch more evaporated milk (to make it less dry) or cornmeal (to make it hold together better). Let this refrigerate at least thirty minutes.

To make regular round hushpuppies, just shape into a ball and drop into fryer at 350*. Since I wanted to make fritters, I just spooned it out into a skillet with some oil heated to medium-high (make sure the oil is plenty hot before adding the batter). Since it was just me and Av (and our doggies!) for supper that night, I made four fritters. I let them get nice and golden brown on one side,

…then flipped them over to finish.

These were great!