Our Whole Foods had their Mardi Gras celebration and the boys had a great time! I kept trying to get Shug to say “throw me somethin’, mister!”. I think I did get a “woo-hoo!”, though.
The baby was racking up on throws too!
Pot Likker Matzoh Balls
Last week I made what is probably one of our most quintessential examples of being Southern and Jewish: collards and matzoh balls as a side dish. It’s really a two-way dish because you can have it all together or you can drain the pot likker (or pot liquor, however you like to spell it) off the greens and use it as a soup base for your matzoh balls.
Ingredients:
* 1 package beef bacon (or, you could use regular pork bacon if you’re not going kosher-style), each slice cut into thirds
* 1 big bunch collard greens, torn into pieces – you could use any kind of greens, though…mustard, turnip…
* 64 oz (two boxes) Organic chicken broth
* Matzoh ball mix (I make **everything** by scratch in our house…except matzoh balls.)
Directions:
Over low heat in a stockpot, add the bacon, increase the heat, turn and cook until crispy. The bacon will go back to limp once you add the stock, but you want to be sure the bacon cooks through and will give all that good flavor to the greens first:
Add the washed and torn collards, then the chicken stock:
Bring to a boil, then let simmer for at least an hour. In the meantime, make the matzoh balls and when the collards have cooked to your liking, roll pieces of the matzoh ball mix to the size of a pecan and add them to the pot. Bring the heat up to high so everything comes up to a boil, then cover and put the heat on simmer. I usually let the matzoh balls cook for at least thirty minutes. Here they are all plumped up. *So* good!
There aren’t many things better than pot likker-infused matzoh balls with collards…
Tu B’Shevat
Last night started the one-day holiday of Tu B’Shevat – it’s the ‘New Year of Trees’ that I posted about last year. This year we had JNF plant two trees in Israel, one for the new baby.
From the JNF website: (A) joint effort between JNF and the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. Contributions from this certificate establish a forest in Israel in memory of the 1.5 million children who lost their lives in the Holocaust. Our hope is that the young people and children of today will honor the memory of these children with their lives by planting trees in our forest. The forest will be “dedicated to the 1,500,000 children whose lives were stolen from us in the Holocaust. They did not have the chance to grow but, in their name, our forest will. We will ensure that these children live on, through living things…in trees…in us…in tomorrows.”
For Shug, the tree planted in his honor for Tu B’Shevat is for the Children’s Forest.
We also planted ten trees with the Nature Conservancy:
This is from their website about where the trees we bought will be:
The trees will be planted by Conservancy staff and partners working in The Atlantic Forest of Brazil. The Atlantic Forest is considered one of the world’s most endangered tropical forests — only 7% of its original area remains.
Tropical forests like this one play a particularly special role in the fight to end global climate change. And this reforestation effort to Plant a Billion Trees in The Atlantic Forest will remove 10 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year — that’s like taking 2 million cars off the road.
Besides having trees planted, the Nature Conservancy also has programs to adopt acres, like the Appalachians, or coral reefs. Maybe we’ll do something like that next year.
Maybe The Best Pie In Alabama
The Twix n Tween in Centreville, Alabama (update: it has since closed) has the best pie anywhere, I think. And their meringue is super-high and makes the whole thing look like a volcano or something:
It gets smushed when you get it to go…but it’s still delish.
Marion, Alabama
Before we left back for home, we went through Marion, Alabama. This is the Scott-Moore-Anderson home, built in 1834 and moved (via 25 mule-drawn wagons) to its present location in 1905:
A restored Wrigley’s mural downtown:
Reverie, built 1858:
This building, ca. 1850, was the Marion Female Seminary and the art studio of Mr. Nicola Marschall, where he designed the Confederate ‘Stars and Bars’ in 1861.
The Lea House, where on May 9, 1840 Margaret Lea married Sam Houston (that Sam Houston):
There are so many other pretty homes in Marion but we were just flying through…
Reverend George Kornegay – House of Apocalypse
One of the least-mentioned art/visionary environments here in Alabama is the one made by Rev. George Kornegay, the “House of the Apocalypse”.
He’s a preacher affiliating with the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and received a message from G-d in 1960 to make his art in order to communicate his message more clearly. Along with his home, the environment he built is called “House of the Apocalypse”. It is in Brent, Alabama.
It’s really a shame, because today so many of his pieces are broken or just missing. It looks like at least 75% of what used to be there is just gone. The whole place has been neglected.
There used to be one piece called “electric chair” or “capital punishment”, which was made up of an electric stove with a figure representing a man rested on the burners. It was nowhere to be found.
The Reverend’s daughter Annie lives at the house now. I tried to carry on a conversation with her, that I knew a little about her family and how the Reverend was her father and had given her this place and that I thought it was wonderful & blah blah blah, but hoo-wee! She does not enjoy company. People who build environments in their front yard 99% of the time want to interact with visitors but Annie is very protective of what her father had built (forget that it has been neglected to the -nth degree) and does not want people coming up to view it. Perhaps she comes across as angry when it is that she is afraid that visitors will take what is left, and her feelings may be rightfully so from what I saw. Such a shame.
Baked Mostaccioli
Macaroni and cheese is good but baked mostaccioli is better. I don’t know if it’s because of the size and shape of the pasta or if I’ve got my recipe just right, but whatever it is, this is really-really-really good.
Ingredients:
1/2 lb. mostaccioli (Bertolli makes this)
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups milk
1 c. grated colby jack cheese
1/2 c. grated sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 tbsp. Tony Chachere’s
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350*.
Boil/cook mostaccioli until just very-very-very slightly undercooked (because it will absorb more moisture when baked). In a large baking dish, stir together the eggs, milk, Tony Chachere’s, and half of all three cheeses:
Drain the pasta and add it to the dish:
Stir well, then add the rest of the cheese:
Bake at 350* for about 30 minutes or until the top is bubbling and starting to slightly brown. So good!
Godfrey’s Cordial
We heard a story about a very strange monument in the Center Methodist Church cemetery in Newville, Alabama (on Co. Rd. 89) – not far from Abbeville. We found it:
It reads: Our Infant, Godford Corcial, Dau. of J.E. & S.I. Brannan (I think it’s S.I.), 1881
((This is one of those stories you hear that isn’t widely-enough known to be called ‘urban legends’ so Av and I call them ‘rural legends’…))
The story is that the Brannans lost their daughter and when someone was leaving to go to town, they asked this person to order the monument as “infant daughter of J.E. & S.?. Brannon, 1881”.
Also on the slip of paper was a request for “Godfrey’s Cordial” which was an old medicine for colicky infants. When the person placed the order for the monument, there was some confusion (plus I guess their handwriting must have not been very clear) and when the monument was delivered, it showed that the baby’s name was Godford Corcial.
Isn’t that strange!? And sad. Okay – but the next post is about something really wonderful…a downtown that people still actually use! And it’s got all these great neon/vintage signs!
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