Month: August 2008

The AP just reported that the lawsuits brought by three Gee’s Bend quilters, Annie Mae Young, Lucinda Pettway Franklin, and Loretta Pettway have been dropped.

The lawsuits were aimed at Tinwood Ventures, William Arnett and his sons Matt and Paul (Tinwood was founded by the Arnetts). Paul was dismissed from any lawsuits last year.

A small portion of the article reads:
An attorney representing the quilters, Peter Burke of Birmingham, said the lawsuits “have been resolved.” He would not elaborate.

An attorney for the defendants, Greg Hawley of Birmingham, would only say that his clients “are pleased the cases have been dismissed.”

Franklin claimed in her lawsuit that the Arnett family stole from her two quilts that she said were more than 100 years old (me: pics of those quilts are above). Pettway claimed she was tricked into signing a copyright document, even though she could not read.

Attorneys for the Arnetts had called the lawsuits frivolous.

—
Ah, at least it’s over.

I don’t like to to defrost anything. Anything-anything. But there are some things that are worth mixing up ahead of time and keeping in the freezer until the next big get-together or just a visit.

This past week, I made up some cheddar mix – and the smart thing about it is that with this in the freezer, you can make either cheese straws or pecan party biscuits. I made just one baking sheet of pecan biscuits to enjoy now and the rest of the mix is in the freezer for whenever they’re needed.

This recipe makes about…oh, probably 50 small cheese straws or pecan biscuits. It’s very similar to my regular cheese straw recipe too, so either way is fine.

Ingredients:
1 stick butter, softened
4 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1-1/4 cup flour
…pecan halves, if you’re making pecan biscuits – one per biscuit
couple of dashes of salt
Tabasco – I use eight big splashes but you can leave that out if you want

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350*

Grate the cheese, then add to the Kitchenaid along with the butter, flour, salt, and Tabasco. Mix on low-medium until it comes together.

For cheese straws, form them using the technique at this post. For pecan biscuits, roll the mixture into rounds just a bit bigger than a really large grape. A parchment-covered baking sheet is perfect. Also, you can crowd them more than I have here since they really don’t spread:

Take the prettiest pecan halves you have and press them onto each round – push them in good so they will set. This will flatten out the rounds so they look like this:

At about 18 minutes in the oven, they will just start to brown on the bottom – perfect.

These will disappear in no time so make many more than you think you need!

In Steel Magnolias, Truvy (Dolly Parton’s character) called sweet tea the ‘house wine of the South’ – which of course it is.

My favorite memory of sweet tea comes from my Aunt Helen. She was my PawPaw’s sister, and she was a real character. I remember one time in college, I brought one of my boyfriends over to visit and she started talking about how she had “very cold veins” (you know, varicose veins) and she had no more than finished her sentence than she was standing up with her skirt over her head to show them off.

Oh yes.

Those were some very cold veins alright.

She was just that way. It wasn’t done to make anyone uncomfortable or even to be funny. It was just her. I could tell a million Aunt Helen stories.

Now this is my same Aunt Helen that had her good furniture encased in clear plastic – but I grew up thinking she was the pinnacle of good taste. One bathroom had long red plastic beads hanging in the doorway rather than having a real door there (which I read as: “wow she is so sophisticated she doesn’t even have doors to the bathroom!”), red carpet, everything. They had a formal dining room that was so formal that no one ever ate in there (me: “wow she’s so rich she has a room with furniture that goes unused!”). Aunt Helen’s kitchen had orange formica countertops too (me: “so Brady Bunch! She’s so with-it.”). Even her refrigerator was different from ours – the freezer was on the bottom (me: “fancy-fancy-fancy!”).

Well, getting back to tea, Aunt Helen even served tea differently than everyone else – rather than serving it with sugar, she sweetened it with Tang (so worldly!)!

And it even had a final touch. Aunt Helen wouldn’t serve a glass of tea until she had wrapped a paper towel around the glass.

Fancy-fancy-fancy.

Anyway, the house wine of the South is now flavoring a vodka. I think I found out about this at Chowhound. Av’s dad was in Nashville a couple of weeks ago and after Av told him that I had heard about the new Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka being released in a few states (Alabama not being one of them), he brought some home. Av says it is really good.

The Charolotte Observer suggests, “we vote for 2 ounces of Firefly over ice in a double rocks glass, topped with lemonade and a drizzle of mint-infused simple syrup.”

I guess that’s another variation on an Arnold Palmer…

Last year, Southern Living ran a recipe for Collard Green Pesto. I put it in my notebook to try, and last night I made a version of it to go along with wild-caught salmon that we had for supper.

It was so easy to make. My version is a little bit different, but the original anchovy-less one is here. Just now when I was looking for the original online, I found a recipe for collard green olive pesto from Gourmet magazine, and that sounds wonderful too.

Ingredients:
3 giant leaves fresh collard greens – washed, ribs removed, and torn into pieces
2 tbsp anchovy paste
1/4 cup pecans
olive oil – start with 1/4 cup and add to taste
1/3 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated
dash of salt

Directions:
Put collards in boiling water for about four minutes, remove with a slotted spoon to drain:

Place collards and all other ingredients in Cuisinart and pulse to reach pesto consistency. Start with the 1/4 cup olive oil and add as necessary.

The pesto turned out to be really terrific. Thankfully Shug loves vegetables like I do (Av is a meat-and-potatoes person whereas I could live on greens and rutabagas from now on) and liked this pesto a lot.

I think the article that went along with the Southern Living pesto mentioned that it would be nice at a grits bar. We’ll probably be hosting a big brunch in the next two or three months and that sounds like a good idea for a feature…offer grits with different flavored butters and cream cheeses, different cheeses like cheddar and parmesan, pestos, roasted corn and maybe other roasted vegetables, and so on. Mmmm that does sound good…

Last weekend we visited the Amish community of Mississippi and this weekend, especially after being encouraged by the basket maker we had met, we decided to drive up to the community in Tennessee, in Ethridge.

Wow!

Especially compared to the Amish in Mississippi, this community is *huge*! The houses are largely the very same, mostly white midwestern-looking houses, and just like in Mississippi, the ones with things to sell have signs out by the road listing what they offer.

When we drove up to Ethridge, we noticed that there are an awful lot of businesses on the main highway touting that they carry Amish-made merchandise. I think these are just for people who are either uneasy about visiting or feel like they don’t have the time to drive into the community and shop for themselves. Either way, they mostly look like (sorry!) tacky tourist traps.

Av did go into one of them just to get a map, but the map does not list all the houses with something for sale. I don’t know why some are listed and some are not, but some of the best ones had been left off the one we got.

…anyway….

Ah, it was wonderful. Again. Everyone-everyone-everyone we met was *so* welcoming and *so* nice. It was just idyllic. Even the clothes out on the line had charm:

…caskets, moldings, pickled beets, fire wood, beaded crafts, and jams. Av said to me, “do you think they build them (caskets) like we do?”. Now, yes, it is weird just to be driving along and say “let’s go look at coffins!” but just out of curiosity…um…we did. We figured that maybe their tradition and ours would be similar.

It’s Jewish tradition that when you’re buried, it’s in a super-plain wooden box with no metal hardware at all – the plainer, the better. The idea is that you return back to the earth completely (we don’t even embalm, usually the burial is within 24 hours anyway) and in complete modesty. And you don’t even wear regular clothes! Just a white linen shroud, so that if you’re rich or poor, there is no difference. I think all this is based on Genesis 3:19. Oh gosh, I am not the authority on this, but there’s lots more about it here.

Well is the Amish tradition, casket-making-wise, anything like ours?

Pretty close. The nice man with the shop showed us what he builds. They’re made simply with metal fasteners and hinges, but he said that he could make them just with pegs. We talked about how each tradition is similar: plain, modest box; they also don’t embalm (although he said sometimes in the summer they will); no fancy clothes; and they try to bury quickly.

Oh, enough of that. When we were there, he asked us inside the house and I think he was enjoying hearing how we are similar in some ways.

I could *not* pass up the chance to see what his house was like! It seemed like the kitchen took up most of the room on the first floor. We met his wife and children – nice. Upstairs was the bedroom, I think everyone slept up there in one big room. That room was also used for storage, and I was a little surprised to see Sam’s Club-sized boxes of Cheerios!

Well, Av and the nice man exchanged addresses and they’ll probably communicate some more. We left, but not before we bought a jar of pickled beets – Av’s mother loves them.

Gosh there are so many places we stopped! There were just worlds of soaps, jellies, cedar chests, porch swings, baskets, potholders, candles, and vegetables, vegetables, vegetables. Oh we had the biggest time!

At this home on Denson Road, we saw this sign for rustic furniture:

…and here’s the house – the railing is sure a lot different than other houses’! If you go to Ethridge, you *have* to stop here. This very-nice man sells gorgeous walking canes, benches, bentwood rockers, and even bedroom furniture.

We bought two bentwood rockers – well, put them on order, actually, because there are about 30 on order ahead of us. They are magnificent! They should be ready late this year. Can’t wait.

Update: here’s one!

And the bedroom furniture he makes…you can kind-of make it out all the way to the right in the pic above. Very cabin, rustic looking – like you see in shops and catalogs for anywhere from $3k-8k for a bed frame – he was selling them for well under $1000. If one of our boys really gets into the outdoors and wants that type theme for his room, we will be driving up to Ethridge to place an order here to get the ‘real thing’!

Shug was loving it all too! There were lots of children for him to babytalk with!

The people at this other house even sell playsets.

This was just one version. The man at this house was also making one like a Noah’s ark design.

We saw this sign for quilts on Hughes Road and of course had to stop:

…and here it is, hanging upstairs in our hallway. Oh am I ever in love with this. I saw on some websites people were selling ‘perfect’ Amish quilts but just look at how perfectly imperfect this one is:

We’ll be going back at the end of this year to pick up the rocking chairs. We just had a fantastic time meeting everyone and looking at all the handmade things…can’t wait!

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This is our homemade map/route of going to all the neat Amish houses:

Friday night after services, we drove over to the Jennifer Hunt Gallery in B’ham to see Kathryn Tucker Windham! The gallery was having a reception / book signing for the opening of her photography show there, which runs through September 20th.

We had the best time – met lots of new people and (oh Suzanne! I met Dilcy and you are right she is great!) ran into some old friends, and just really enjoyed ourselves. After KTW signed our book for Shug, she played with him and it was just so sweet. Love her.

Guess who else was there? Charlie Lucas

All the photographs featured in this show I think were also in KTW’s Encounters book.

On the way back home from visiting the Amish community in Mississippi, we saw a billboard for Bean’s Ferry Pottery in Fulton. The studio is in this little yellow workshop by the owner’s home:

The owner, Keith Carpenter, makes really nice things, but he’s very well known for state Santa ornaments. I got this one, shaped like Alabama, for one of my friends who celebrates Christmas.

I noticed on his website that he does a chalk art ministry too. I’ve never seen / been to one of those, but I have seen a presentation done – in college, I think – where a professional speaker gave a presentation in sand, and the picture would change and grow and it was really pretty fascinating.

Really, my favorite of those kinds of things has to be 3-d chalk painting.

The July/August issue of Mississippi Magazine has an article about the Amish community in Pontotoc county, so we went this weekend!

We had never been to an Amish community before and weren’t 100% sure what to expect. We knew that each family that had something to sell would have signs out by the road, so we just decided to go to the places that sounded interesting and maybe buy some things and just enjoy the experience.

The community is only a few miles from Pontotoc, Mississippi. If you take Highway 9 out, take a left onto 341 then a right onto Salmon Road, where the community is. They’re a few miles down Salmon Road, on both sides of the road (you’ll cross a semi-busy road between the Salmon Road turnoff and the actual community). When you see plain-looking, white, mid-western-looking farm houses, you’re there:

Nearly every home has a sign out front to let people know what they have to offer. They all seem to be open on Saturday, and some of them a couple of other weekdays, but no Sunday sales.

We drove to the home that had the sign above and I got blackberry, scuppernong, and muscadine jelly plus pickled figs and pear butter. Across the driveway from that house is another home that sells baked goods, where we got *the* most delicious sweet rolls.

We also picked up some other things at other homes: cookies (although to be honest we got cookies from two different places and each time they had a very cake-y consistency and we didn’t care much for them), some beautiful brown speckled eggs, some soap, gosh – just a bunch of small things.

There was only one place we visited (and I guess we went to six or seven homes) where the people weren’t just super-friendly. We felt very welcome and enjoyed talking with everyone.

Everyone in the community was in their traditional Amish clothing (of course) and it was just so different seeing the children dressed in miniature versions of their parents’ clothes. The pants the men wore had no zippers – I guess they were just kept up with suspenders, and the shirts had no buttons. Dresses were kept together with safety pins, also no buttons. It was all very lovely though.

At the home that Av bought the sweet rolls and chow-chow, another family drove up, saw we had Alabama license plates, and right there on the front porch Av and this family started talking Alabama football (the first thing they asked Av as they were coming up the porch was “we saw you are from Alabama. Just one question: Alabama or Auburn?” right there in front of the nice Amish lady! Bless her heart for putting up with the seven or eight of them talking about how great this year’s team is going to be!). Well, Av told them that his baby boy was going to be either quarterback or wide receiver on Nick Saban’s 7th national championship team, and that we were expecting another one two years behind Shug so we were going to have a bona fide dynasty in Tuscaloosa. Oh they loved it! The man said he had a baby daughter and that she could already say “Rooolllllll Tide!”. Of course they were all very respectful in front of the Amish lady and she was enjoying their good-natured joking around too.

…anyway…

At one driveway we saw a sign for baskets, so we drove in, went to a workshop and met *the* most wonderful man who wanted to tell us all about the baskets and how we was from Ohio and how there was another community we should visit in Tennessee…we talked for a long time and met another couple of guys from Tupelo who were there to buy peanut brittle.
…and we were just *amazed* at the craftsmanship in the baskets that were being made in front of us and offered for sale. We wound up getting three different ones.

We’re planning on going again sometime in the Fall. I can’t wait!

Back in October of 2006, I did a little project where I took a couple of old ’60s armoires and updated them with chalkboard paint. I loved the way they turned out!

We are changing one of the guest bedrooms here to the new baby’s room, so we decided to get rid of the chalkboard armoires and go back to using our Scandinavian bedroom suite from SDG. Oh – and yes we did order that set of furniture that we had been looking at for the nursery – the crib, dresser, and armoire! They’ll hopefully be here the end of August.

Anyway, what to do with those old armoires? Well…I thought that since they weren’t heirloom-quality and that since I could use some storage in the back yard for potting materials, etc. that we could re-purpose them into garden pieces.

I have to admit – I’ve seen people do things like this in magazines and it turn out really fun and chic, but I did have my moment of doubt when I was just hoping we wouldn’t look like crazy bumpkins who leave their furniture outside. hahaha!!

…well…

Ooooh I love it now! I took chalk and just drew designs on them all over:

…loaded them with plants and extra pots and things (the top plants are going to be repotted this afternoon into a galvanized tin container that I later want to do a mosaic design on), lined/decoupaged the drawers with some pretty wrapping paper, and put on Mackenzie-Childs knobs.

I am *so* happy with the way these turned out – and the best part of all is that since they can be wiped clean and chalked over, when our children get older they can have something in the backyard to draw on and be creative with. Yay!