Month: November 2006

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving – we sure did!

We always have Thanksgiving at Av’s mom & dad’s house, and I always get to make the desserts. This year, I made the hot fudge pie I made last year, and that was a *huge* hit. I made a pecan pie, and one of my favorite treats – strawberry pretzel salad. I think I’ve been making strawberry pretzel salad since high school, but there are a lot of people who have never heard of it before. Even though it’s called a “salad,” it’s really a dessert. For anybody that likes the combination of salty and sweet, it’s really, really good.

Ingredients:
1 regular bag of pretzels (I think they are 9 ozs)
3/4 c. melted butter
3 tbsp sugar plus 3/4 cup sugar
1 pkg (8 oz) cream cheese
1 container (8 oz) Cool Whip
2 3-oz boxes of strawberry Jell-o
2 cups boiling water
frozen strawberries – you can use one bag or container, or two if you’re wild about them!

First, take the container of pretzels and crush them until they make nice, small pieces (you can hit them with a rolling pin, or just whatever!). Combine the pretzels with the 3 tbsp sugar, and all the melted butter into a large bowl. Mix well, then spread into a 9×13 pan (I love to use my pretty green Fire King pan, and it’s 8×8 I think, so I have a bit of the pretzel mix left over). Place the pan in a 400* oven for 8-9 minutes. Take it out and let the pretzel mixture cool.

While the pretzels are cooling, I add the cream cheese, Cool Whip, and the 3/4 cup sugar to my KitchenAid bowl. I had that mix until it was completely lump-free.

Once the pretzels are room-temperature, take a spatula and cover that layer with the cream cheese layer. The trick here is to get the cream cheese layer to be solid – that is, when you pour the jell-o over this later, you want to make sure there are no tiny spaces in the sides of the pan where the jell-o can seep into the bottom layer (which is disappointing later, because the pretzels get soggy!). Once this layer is spread out well, I put the pan into the refrigerator.

Next, I boil the 2 cups of water in a tea kettle, and add it to the 2 packages of jell-o, in a large bowl. That needs to be stirred for a couple of minutes so that all the jell-o is dissolved. After about 20 minutes of resting time, I add my frozen strawberries. Almost instantly, the jell-o starts looking like it will be setting soon.

I take a soup ladle and spread the strawberry mixture all over the top of the pan.

After just an hour or two in the refrigerator, it’s set (but I always make this the night before just in case…):

So yummy!

I’m not sure what, why, or really exactly when, but Project Alabama has closed. I got an email today that Natalie Chanin, PA’s founder, is starting something new called Alabama Chanin. The email describes the new project as:
“limited edition clothing and jewelry, February 2007 – NYC…a book featuring projects, sewing tips and tales from the stitching front…a line of home furnishings and textiles.”

The old PA website isn’t really working (just a front page now) and doing a quick search, the only mention I found was in Atlanta’s Creative Loafing, saying in an article dated 11.01.06 “…such as the ones made by Project Alabama (which closed shop just before the show’s opening).”

I wish Natalie the best of luck…and hope the seamstresses that worked on PA are doing well or can retain their jobs with her somehow if they like. What Natalie did with PA – showing at NY Fashion Week and extolling the virtues of domestic (Alabama) hand-sewing everywhere – was so good…for everybody. Hopefully Alabama Chanin will be something even more exciting and successful!

Guess what!!?? Mastercard contacted me, and I just signed a contract to allow them use of my picture of an Acme Oyster House po boy for a promotion they’re doing with Peyton Manning! It turns out, a po boy from Acme is Peyton’s favorite thing to eat…so Mastercard is going to use it on their priceless.com website! They’re supposed to send me the link when the spot they’re using it for is complete, so I will let everyone know!

I’ve also been contacted by a music company about using one of my juke joint pics for the cover of a blues CD they’re issuing next year! How neat is that?! Yay!

I think the Alabama Shakespeare Festival started when I was in middle or high school, and I remember us going on field trips to Montgomery to see Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet, and Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill.

Seeing these shows, along with “Shakespeare Made Easy” books (where the left-hand side of the page is in Shakespearean English and the right-hand side is a translation in modern English) are probably the only ways I ever was able to really ‘get’ Shakespeare!

One of the great things about the ASF is that while they do fantastic productions of Shakespeare, they don’t do Shakespeare plays exclusively. Since high school, I’ve been back several times…my favorite was when we went about four years ago to see The Last Night of Ballyhoo by Alfred Uhry. This year, Av and I are season ticket holders, and I am really looking forward to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (which we’re going to see this coming weekend!), James and the Giant Peach, Death of a Salesman, and most of all…Gee’s Bend!! Yes!!

Gee’s Bend is being performed from January 19 – February 11th, and the ASF website describes it this way:

The first reading of Gee’s Bend at ASF’s 2006 Southern Writers’ Project played to a packed house and rousing standing ovation. This epic but intimate tale spanning 50 years of the 20th century follows the lives of Sadie Pettway and the women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama who create magnificent quilts, and while doing so, sing hauntingly beautiful gospel melodies. As the decades pass, Sadie endures an abusive marriage, racial indignities and the hardships of the working poor to emerge as a great artist and greatly admired human being.

I can’t wait!

Another thing that I think will be lots of fun is what the ASF calls their “Armchair Auction” – it’s January 28th, and they sell props and other items that were used in the productions!

I had to run into Target for a minute the other day, and saw these beautiful lace paper cutouts (which I think are really Tyvek) and knew right away that Target had collaborated with Tord Boontje (who I love for his blossom chandelier and garland lights, like at Moss) for the holidays.

When I got home, I looked it up, and Tord actually did a whole line, called “Studio Tord Boontje for Target”. On his website, he says:

We are pleased to announce this collaboration with Target for Christmas 2006, our largest scale project to date.

The collaboration includes 35 products including tableware, party decorations, consumables and Christmas decorations, all as Studio Tord Boontje for Target.

Further we have designed the Christmas store environment for all 1,500 stores, packaging design and art-direction for all communication, including catalogues and 5 TV commercials.

Products will be available from 2 November until just after New Year in all Target stores. Limited time only.

On the Target website, they only show tableware, but they must be continuing to introduce more of the line, because Tord’s website shows (and mentions) not only the tableware but the decorations, etc…including a beautiful white garland, which I am definitely going to get for my Christmas-celebrating friends!

A couple of years ago, I volunteered to do the welcome bags for a convention, and decided to make little souveniers to put in each bag. I took a bottlecap, printed out a little logo for the convention, glued that on, decorated around the edges, poured clear resin on top to seal it and make it nice and shiny:

I hot-glued a magnet on the back and put it in a little mesh packet with pretty ribbon, and everybody loved them!

I’ve made these pretty often with different designs – the other day, I found Hello Kitty scrapbook paper at one of the craft shops, and decided to make some with those. I’ve also got Elvis, Ernie from Sesame Street, and others on my refrigerator!

All it takes is paper (either scrapbook paper with a pretty design, or a magazine cutout, or something you design and print…), bottlecaps, a hole-punch (I use 1/2″ diameter because that gives plenty of room for the decoration around the edges), Sobo glue (or any other good glue that dries clear), glitter and other little decorations like tiny beads and sequins, EnviroTex Lite, a disposable cup and stirrer for the EnviroTex Lite, and hot glue & magnets or thumbtacks.

I cut out the paper, then take the Sobo glue and glue the circles to the bottom of the underside of the bottlecap and let that dry overnight:

The next day, I got out all my glitter and tiny beads and sequins, I draw a circle around the inside of each of the caps with my glitter glue, then I push in little tiny sequins or beads or just whatever! I love the little pink hearts on these Hello Kitty ones!

I let the glue glitter dry (usually overnight again), then I take a disposable cup and fork and mix together the EnviroTex Lite. It’s a half-and-half solution between the hardener and the resin that come in the box:

I just pour the Envirotex over the design on the bottlecap (not all the way to the top, but just enough to cover the glitter and everything). When you pour the resin in the bottlecap, you’ll be able to see little tiny air bubbles. The way to make those pop is just to blow on them – hard! It works perfectly.

After about three-four days, they’re dry (Envirotex says they’ll try in a couple of days but I guess because of the high humidity here, I’ve never had them dry in less than three or four, sometimes five days)! I just hot-glue a magnet or a thumbtack to the back, and they’re ready!

We got into Clarksdale for lunch, and wanted to go to Big Jim’s, but they looked closed.

Both Big Jim’s and the Double Quick across the street serve Kool-Aid pickles, also known as Koolickles. They’re made by emptying a pickle jar of at least half the pickle juice and replacing it with Kool-Aid. They get this bright-red color:

It’s a really strange taste. It’s one of those things where you think it’s nasty at first, but as you have more of it, you really start to like it. I guess it’s like when you have your first Coke and it tastes a little weird but then you’re totally hooked…

Tomorrow, November 4th, Pasaquan will be open, and many artists will be showing. I’ve never been to Pasaquan, but would *love* to go – it’s an art environment by Eddie Owens Martin (St. EOM) just outside Buena Vista, Georgia.

I especially like the quote on the website of St. EOM to his biographer:

“I built this place to have somethin’ to identify with, cause there’s nothin’ that I see in this society that I identify with or desire to emulate. Here I can be in my own world with my temples and designs and the spirit of G-d. I don’t have nothin’ against other people and their beliefs. I’m not askin’ anybody to do my way or be my way. Although, when I’m dead and gone, they’ll follow like night follows day.”

We stayed one night in Shreveport/Bossier City since Av had a meeting to attend that evening. Our hotel was the Horseshoe (which, I know, “Horseshoe” doesn’t automatically sound like a great hotel name, but it’s owned by Harrah’s and was super-nice!). On the weekends, the room we had costs over $400/night, but we stayed for *much* less since it was a weeknight!

This is our room – it’s about 550 square feet, and one of the nicest things is that it includes a sectional, which I loved because I got to cuddle up with a blanket and pillow and watch television and knit while Av was out at his meeting!

We had lunch in Natchitoches at Lasyone’s Meat Pie Kitchen and Restaurant. Av loves meat pies, so we went to Lasyone’s, which is supposed to be *the* place to go…

Sorry this pic is out of focus – this is the meat pie plate – one meat pie with dirty rice. I’m not wild about meat pies, but Av thought his was great.