Month: October 2007

We took a short trip to Talladega this past weekend, and saw some of the loveliest homes there. Here are just a few:

I’m so excited – we’re getting all our plans together for Halloween! Shug’s costume is here (I really wanted to make it myself this year, but instead found someone to make it for him and is it ever *so* cute! I’ll post pics of him in it on Wednesday), and we’re going to get all dressed up and go trick-or-treating at different friends’ homes, then be with Leslie to give out candy to the trick-or-treaters that come to us.

I’ve got this scarecrow out on our porch. I got the idea from one of the first Mary Engelbreit Home Companion magazines, and even though I can’t draw, I was able to paint his face:

Happy Fall!

Just last month, I heard about a new program for people who want to donate their hair for a good cause – it’s called ‘Pantene Beautiful Lengths‘. I’ve donated my hair twice before to Locks of Love but this time I decided to send my ponytail to Pantene instead.

Pantene sends donated ponytails to a company that puts at least six of them together to make a wig, then the wigs are made in different colors, textures, and lengths. They get sent to American Cancer Society wig banks and are distributed (free) to women undergoing cancer treatment. They’ve made 2000+ wigs so far. So nice!

There’s a group for before & after pics on Flickr here.

Av took us and our friend Leslie to the beach this week as a little early birthday present for me! We had a great time and even spent the first afternoon in Pensacola to take Shug and Leslie to McGuire’s for their first time, and to get some fish from Joe Patti’s.

This is the fifth time we’ve stayed at The Beach Club. I had told Leslie about how beautiful all the condos had been, and this time we somehow got one that wasn’t decorated anywhere as nice as the others – which is **really** weird, because it wasn’t furnished like how it appears on their website for this particular unit, either.

The beach was beautiful:

…and here are my two favorite boys!

Pictures from the last four condos we’ve had at The Beach Club are here: one, two, three, four.

In November of 2005, I posted about how I used fabric to change the look of a couple of bookcases. Since it’s been a couple of years, I was thinking it would be nice to do it again — and at just the right time, there was an article in…I think it was the last New Orleans Magazine but I might be wrong…about a shop on Magazine Street that carried this wonderful custom toile with scenes of New Orleans.

The shop is called Hazelnut, and one of the owners is Bryan Batt, who plays Salvatore Romano on the AMC show Mad Men (I love that show! And Damages on FX too. But they both just had their season finales and now there’s nothing on tv until Lost. Well, except Curb and The Office. But anyway.).

So anyway, the New Orleans toile came in and it’s just beautiful. Here are the bookshelves with the old fabric:

…and here they are with the New Orleans toile (it comes in different colors – I got the ‘magnolia’ shade because I just thought it would make that end of the room appear lighter):

I made this mayhaw glazed chicken last week and it was *so* good. Just wonderful. And sooo easy.

This is based on a recipe in the October 2004 issue of Martha Stewart Living for apricot-dijon-glazed chicken, but I thought I could make it my own by using a local fruit, like mayhaw jelly. I had a small jar of it in the pantry, so I gave it a try — perfect. Mayhaws grow mostly in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana so it’s in most grocery stores here, but if you live far away, there are places you can order it online and have it shipped. Of course, if you don’t live here in the South, you probably have some other wonderful local fruit that would be good.

Oh! And I used some honey I bought from the Pond Store (601.888.4426) in Pond, Mississippi (about 15 minutes from Woodville). The very, very nicest lady, Liz Chaffin, runs it. The present store has been there since 1881. Inside the store she has a dollhouse that her uncle or cousin or ?? made for her, and here are some pictures of the interior:

Isn’t it great!?

Okay…back to the chicken…

Ingredients:
4 pieces chicken
1 small jar mayhaw jelly
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
salt, pepper

Preheat the oven to 425*. Wash off chicken pieces, dry, and arrange them in a baking dish. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

In a small saucepan, bring the jelly, mustard, and honey to a boil then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for about twenty minutes so it’s thickened. Spoon this mixture over the chicken pieces, and place the baking dish in the oven.

Every ten minutes or so, baste the chicken with the juice from the bottom of the baking dish. The chicken should be cooked through at 30-35 minutes.

So good!

Kentuck was great this year!

One thing that was really nice was this little memorial to Jimmy Lee Sudduth – this is the tree that he would sit under each year and sell his paintings.

Some of the Gee’s Bend quilters were there, and were doing demonstrations.

Y’all know I had to get a pic of Shug in front of a quilt! He loves riding around with daddy in his Baby Bjorn and being a little kangaroo!

This piece of pottery I thought was really special. It’s done by Ned Berry (from Cataula, Georgia // 706.660.8226) and is called “I Got The World By The Tail Sitting On A Rainbow”:

This is Yvonne Wells’ tent. We got one of her quilts last year and Shug loves looking at it in his room.

I liked this silver chair Chris Clark did:

…and this one of Chris’ is just beautiful:

The one thing we bought this year was one of Chris’ quilts.

We stayed home Tuesday night and watched the APT documentary “Mr. Dial Has Something To Say” – it was **wonderful**.

Av emailed Celia (she is the director/producer) after we watched it to let her know that we enjoyed the film and that it gave a different impression of Bill Arnett (he’s a…hmmm…hard to categorize him exactly, but most simply, he’s a collector/promoter of Thornton Dial, Gee’s Bend quilters, and some other self-taught artists) than other things we’ve seen/read/heard.

She wrote back that most of the quilters are on the side of the Arnetts. That is, Bill and his sons Matt and Paul, who work together (and also got sued by three of the quilters). We knew that most of the quilters were still behind the Arnetts, but what we didn’t know is that on November 10th, there’s going to be an Arnetts Appreciation Day in Gee’s Bend.

In the film, Thornton Dial couldn’t have been more complimentary to Bill Arnett for all the work he’s done – and Bill Arnett really is shown in a different light…as someone who has been looking out for the artists’ best interests, even to the detriment of his own health and financial well-being. Just a regular guy who got into something big honestly – not as some scheming, conniving dealer like he’s been portrayed elsewhere.

So interesting. I’ve been trying to have a neutral outlook on the Arnetts even though so many bad things had been written, but this gave me a new (good) outlook. Hmmm… I can’t wait to see what/if anything’s going to be reported about the event on the 10th!

So many places have their own original sauces – around Decatur, it’s white chicken sauce. In B’ham, it’s John’s slaw dressing. New Orleans has remoulade. In Mississippi, it’s comeback sauce / comeback dressing.

The thing that John’s slaw dressing and comeback sauce have in common is that they both started in the Greek restaurants of each city.

There are several different restaurants in B’ham (Niki’s West, Niki’s downtown, Fish Market, Costa’s, Sarris, John’s of course…) that you can go in and order “John’s slaw” – and you’ll get exactly the same thing.

Comeback sauce started in Jackson at the Rotisserie, and that family, the Dennery family, owns Dennery’s. Several other restaurants in Jackson (Mayflower, Crechale’s, Walker’s, etc.) all serve comeback sauce.

This week, I made comeback sauce to serve with a couple of different things. This recipe makes about six cups, so depending on how many people you’re serving, you may want to half it. There are *several* different recipes for comeback sauce but I have one that I’ve made for us, and it’s nice…and has a little heat to it, so it’s really wonderful to serve with meatballs, as a dip, salad dressing…

Recipe:
1-1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 bottle sweet ginger chili (you could use 1-1/2 c. regular chile sauce instead)
1-1/2 cup olive oil
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons mustard
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup lemon juice
salt and pepper

First, I use my Braun hand mixer and make a puree of the onion and the garlic. Next, that and all the other ingredients go in the Kitchenaid.

It’s one of those sauces that’s better the next day, so if you can make it a day ahead of time, that’s even better.

Yum!

About three or four years ago, I was reading a magazine and saw a picture of the mosleymeetswilcox “War Bowl” – there’s a pic of it here. I thought I could figure out a way to make a similar one, but use little happy pieces instead. To start, though, I wanted to try to see if I could get the same effect, so I went to the grocery store and bought a couple of packs of little plastic soldiers.

Here’s how it turned out:

I liked the way that it wasn’t melted as much as the original inspiration piece, and had more definition:

Pretty different, but same idea.

So since I figured out how to do it with little plastic soldiers, I thought I would try it with something happy – so I decided to use…

Barrel of Monkeys!

Use the outside grill to do this project – it’s what I’ve used every time, because there’s no telling what kind of nasty fumes are given off from melting plastic.

The outside grill is set to a medium-high temperature — but keep in mind that before you get the temperature **just right** that you might ruin a couple of tries, so buy plenty extra of whatever you try this project with.

Take a sheet of tin foil, and arrange the pieces in a circle. You want the pieces to touch each other in at least two places – three is good – so overlap the pieces by a little bit. I usually use two or three packs of monkeys to make the bowls.

Have some parts of each piece resting on another – when these parts melt on the grill, this is what keeps the whole thing together after it’s cooled:

The next step is to carefully lay the piece of foil with the plastic pieces on the grill – make the sides of the tin foil fold up several inches so that you have something to grab the foil with when you take it off (I’ve also put the foil on a baking sheet, so you can just grab it with tongs).

Keep watching it constantly while it’s on the grill. Once it starts melting, it can go too far really fast. When I use the monkeys, it’s easy to let it go too long, and they melt so much that the monkeys lose their features – so you want to get it to the point that the parts where the monkeys are joined are melted enough to keep it together, but the whole thing is not melted so much that you can’t tell they are monkeys anymore.

Once you get to the point where the pieces are melted together, carefully lift the foil and put it into a bowl, then put another bowl on top so they “nest”. This is what makes the upturned bowl shape.

Once it’s completely cool, just peel away the foil (I haven’t used the non-stick foil on this project, but that is probably the perfect thing to use), and the monkey bowl is done!

I’ve given away my best monkey bowls, so this one I’ve kept isn’t great, but you get the idea. To get more of a bowl shape, use small bowls, like cereal bowls – not big mixing bowls…I think this is one of the first ones I made, where I used a bowl that was a bit too big so it didn’t turn up as much as I was going for, but I still like it!