Month: October 2007

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!

Last week, we went to Camden and visited my friend Sulynn (hi Sulynn!) at Black Belt Treasures. It’s been over a year since we’ve been, and I’ve been *so* looking forward to seeing her and having her meet Shug, and getting to see all the new things at the shop.

Isn’t it gorgeous!? This is the section with children’s items:

Paintings, quilts, books, jewelry, calls, pottery, furniture, baskets:

We got some really neat things, including a couple of things for Shug’s room!

One of the nice about the gallery is that all the artists are from the Black Belt region of the state *exclusively*…so there are things from people you may have never heard of interspersed with well-known artists who make their home in this part of Alabama, like Charlie Lucas, Allen Ham – of the Miller Family Pottery, and the Freedom Quilting Bee.

While we were in Montgomery, we saw two giant fishing lures that are part of the “Hooked on Alabama River Lure Tour” – one on the back lawn of the capitol building with scenes including the Cahaba Lily:

…and this one, sponsored by the Montgomery Water Works, called the “Gee’s Bend Lure”:

There are thirty different lures, and they will be on display until November 11th at different locations in the Upper Alabama Watershed (Montgomery, Prattville and Millbrook).