Month: July 2010

Back in early April, Shug and Av put in our garden – tons of different tomato varieties, okra, bell peppers, crookneck squash, watermelons, blue dent corn…


Last night, we had an amazing tomato pie.  We took basil from our herb garden, and picked tomatoes straight from the garden.  They were still warm from the sunshine when I began slicing them.  

Ingredients:
1 deep dish pie crust (make your own, or not…)
12 basil leaves
3 large tomatoes, sliced medium thickness.  Dab them dry with paper towels.
3 oz. shredded Parmesan (approx.)
1/3 cup mayonnaise
splash buttermilk
1/2 large Vidalia onion, sliced into medium thickness half-rings
6 oz. mozzarella, sliced (I love fresh mozz. but use the regular packaged kind for this, it was fine)
small amount olive oil for drizzling
salt, pepper


Directions:
Preheat oven to 400*.
Take a handful of Parmesan and lightly cover the bottom of the pie crust:

In a circular fashion, put in the first of what will later be two layers of tomatoes:

Salt and pepper the tomatoes, then add half the Vidalia slices.  Not too thin, because the onions give the pie a nice little crunch besides all that great flavor:

In a Ziploc bag, put the mayonnaise inside along with a splash of buttermilk.  Close the bag and ‘squish’ it to mix the two.  Cut a small opening into either of the bottom corners with scissors:

This way, you can use it pastry-bag style to add half of the mayonnaise/buttermilk mixture atop the onion layer.


Now add half the basil:

Add half the mozzarella slices and another handful of parmesan:

Now the whole process over again – tomato slices, salt & pepper, Vidalias, mayonnaise/buttermilk, cheeses.  With your hands, gently press all the toppings down into the pie shell so it’s nice and compact.   
Add a splash of olive oil on top…maybe a bit more salt & pepper if you like…  
Place it on a baking sheet:

Start checking at 30 minutes, this was perfect at 35:

Yes, yes, yes.

First slice:

That was *fantastic*.  The cheeses, the crunch and sweetness of the onion, and you can never go wrong with tomatoes and basil.  If you eat it with a fork, you’ll maybe even (probably even?) want a spoon for the leftover juices.  It’s that good.




I’ve had some great things happen the last few days – Leslie got engaged!  And not only did she get engaged, she got engaged to a boy I have known, who has been one of my very best friends, since 6th grade (for those of you who know me from school, it’s Jeff!!!  Yes!!).  


Jeff and I met when I was in 6th grade and had P.E. at the same time.  We always chose each other as square dancing partners (because, friends, six weeks of square dancing – and clogging – were taught each year of middle school).  


If you ever feel like dosado-ing, or promenading, maybe even a half sashay – you can call on me.  And while we’re at it, I do love to do the Virginia Reel, too!  (…seriously, I do.)


Okay.  Anyway.  Leslie and Jeff are getting married!  It makes me so happy to know that we went all the way through school together, even through college, so all this could happen.  I set them up this past winter and it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done in my whole life.  Seeing their happiness has made my heart just *full*!  Can’t wait for my boys, who already love their Aunt Leslie, to know that she and Uncle Jeff will always be together, and be there for them.  


Aaaaahhhh….dreamy….


And!  One of my other wonderful friends, Jenifer, just had a baby girl this past week.  Can’t wait to get to see the whole beautiful family back at home.  Those first few weeks are so busy, I’m hoping she will let me do a little housework for her while I visit.  Jenifer’s a vegetarian so I’ll make one of these tomato pies to help fill her fridge so she doesn’t have to cook.  


Oh, don’t you just love sweet little babies….

This month, we visited the Amish community in Mississippi again – I think we’re going about once every three or four months now, which is great because this way we’re able to keep up with what they’re making seasonally.    

Oh the way I love these signs.

One of my favorite places to stop is at Mr. Gingerich’s workshop – I must’ve bought ten baskets from him already.  He’s always incredibly friendly and loves to just talk and swap stories.  When I went in to visit him this time, though, there were only three or four baskets on the shelves rather than the twenty or so that he usually has.  I asked one of the young girls if he was around (we’ve gotten to the point where he ‘knows’ me), and she said that his wife passed away back in April and he’s just not in the workshop, visiting like he used to be.  I met his wife once and she was so nice; if I remember correctly, she helped him a lot with staining the baskets.  The only walnut-stained basket he had was this one he signed that he made in June, so I brought it home.

Squishing your toes in all that fabric just feels fantastic!  That hose in the pic above is for the sprinkler – we’ve gotten a lot of new sod in the backyard (pics of all the newness soon!) so it’s getting watered a lot.


These are a couple of rag rugs that I’ve gotten in the past.  So useful and so pretty.

When it comes to sleek, style-conscious interior design, the word “Amish” doesn’t necessarily come to mind. Sure, this community is known for its carpentry and craftsmanship, but the lifestyle — no phones, electricity or modern conveniences — would seem to be at odds with the concept of urban chic.

—

Specializing in custom-designed tables, beds, cabinets, side tables and other home pieces, they hope to lure customers in with their stylish floor models and seal the deal with low prices (overhead costs are minimal when your supplier comes from a self-insured community, uses a horse-drawn carriage for transportation and requires no more than $50 in diesel fuel once a week for his workshop).

“A lot of people think our name is an oxymoron,” says Ron Walton, who co-founded the store with business partner Craig Stewart. “There’s a misconception, and it was one that I had, too, that Amish refers to a style of furniture. But it really denotes quality, not style. And it’s not just clunky, rural stuff that belongs in a country home; it’s for the city.”

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Running a contemporary furniture business that must adhere to the values of a technology-resistant, somewhat ascetic population is not without other logistical problems. First, Walton had to track down a handful of Amish families that would be willing to work throughout the year.

“Usually, they build seasonally,” he says. “But when you’re in a retail environment, you can’t sell someone a coffee table in March and say ‘It’ll be ready in November, when farming season is done.’ So we had to track down some people who would agree to work full-time.”

—

More specifically, it’s a three-hour circuit that takes place each day. They fax stuff to a central location, then it gets sorted into colour-coded file folders, which someone drops off at each farm by horse. Then, when the furniture is ready, a guy with a 34-foot horse trailer goes farm-to-farm once again and picks everything up.

A friend sent me this article today about the new Vermontasaurus (pic here).  Part of it reads:

POST MILLS, Vt. – Does a 25-foot-tall, 122-foot-long dinosaur need a permit to avoid extinction?

That’s the unlikely dilemma posed by “Vermontasaurus,” a whimsical sculpture thrown together with scrap wood by a Vermont man. The oddity now faces opposition from neighbors and regulatory challenges from government entities that he fears could force him to dismantle it.

—

Last month, he decided to turn a pile of broken wooden planks and other detritus on the edge of his property into something more. Boland says was the idea was to build a sculpture that could be a community gathering place, with no admission and no commercial element.

Using a dinosaur model as his inspiration, he put out a call for volunteer helpers and went to work.

He cut a huge pine tree into four pieces and, using a back hoe, planted them as the bases of the four feet. Then, over nine days and using dozens of volunteers, the ersatz sculpture began taking shape.

A splintered 2-by-4 here, the rotted belly of a guitar there, half a ladder from a child’s bunk bed here, Boland and his volunteers worked under basic ground rules: No saws, no rulers and no materials other than what was in the scrap pile.

—

Dirk Koppers, 40, who lives next door to Wilson, said he loves it.

“It shows such creativity,” he said. “You just don’t go to places and be surprised anymore. Everything’s always so controlled or so governed.”

———–


There’s also a giant turtle made from wheels in Dunseith, North Dakota:

Image of Dunseith-Wee’l Turtle used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic.  Thank you!






Anyone else know of any newish large-scale roadside sculptures?

A few years ago, Anthropologie was offering their take on Gee’s Bend quilts, and now Pottery Barn is doing the same:

We worked closely with the Gee’s Bend Foundation to re-create these works of American art. Each of our quilts is a close replica of the original piece, hand quilted using the same technique, similar fabrics and the same dimensions – an approximate Queen size. The women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama have developed a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American and African American quilts. The quiltmakers have passed their skills and aesthetic down through at least six generations to the present.

I hope if this is a success that they will consider some of the bolder designs.  


The Museum Craft Collection isn’t only Gee’s Bend quilts, but also items inspired by the collections at the American Folk Art Museum and the Shelburne Museum.  




—
AFAM curator (and other) issues published at New York Mag this month. 

Ever go somewhere that you’ve heard wonderful things about, and for whatever reason – maybe because it’s been built up so much in your mind – that once you get there it’s just okay?


We had a Mommy-Daddy date this week at Little Savannah in B’ham.  It had been a while since we’d gone out alone so above all the expectations I already had, I was really wanting this to be terrific.  The boys were asleep, Mimi was there to listen to them sleep, and we tiptoed out for a little evening…

Oh!  And you know why I really-really wanted to like it?  The chef has done at least one James Beard event that I know of, and just last weekend prepared a supper party in Monroeville as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of TKAM which included fried chicken, sliced tomatoes, turnip greens, collards cornbread, Lane cake, and a special drink: Tequila Mockingbird.  Oh yes.


The menu was broken into three main sections: “Little Vittles” or appetizers, “Middle Vittles” or entrees, and the sides, “Herbaceous Vittles”.  There were five entree choices: flounder, ‘Southern cioppino’, chicken, grilled pork loin, and skirt steak.  Av chose the skirt steak (Meyer Ranch skirt steak, poached egg, potato frites, marchands de vin, truffle oil).  That’s the bottom-right of this pic:

He said it was pretty good but not amazing.  None of the mains really attracted me, so the waiter suggested I go with two of the appetizers that looked more appealing: four fried chicken livers (bottom left of the pic above) and a small plate of shrimp and grits (upper right).  


Unfortunately, someone had forgotten to salt the livers so I had to ask for salt (which…in a restaurant of this caliber, generally frowned on…they had to go to the kitchen to get me a teensy saucer of it), and – well, see the grits in the pic?  The blue/purple grits with the pinky shrimp just did not make for an appetizing dish.  I think this is one of those cases when regular white grits would have worked better in a visual way.  It also was just okay flavor-wise, and I love shrimp & grits otherwise.  It was little disappointing, even.


You know I would so much rather be positive about things.  


Here’s something I can really be positive about – Denise Gee, the restaurant’s mixologist and creator of the Tequila Mockingbird.  The drink is made up of strawberry-infused tequila, honey-black pepper syrup, and sparkling wine.  It’s the top-right in the pic below:

Excellent.  All the way to the left is Av’s Pimm’s cup (nice), and another drink that I had – can you believe I had two cocktails? – the ‘Zelda Sayre’.


Can I even tell you how much I have always loved Zelda Sayre?  She was the beautiful girl from Montgomery who went on to marry F. Scott Fitzgerald and be known as the first American Flapper.  I can go on & on.  Anyway, I can’t recall exactly what was in the drink (um, because it was my second cocktail?!?) but there were notes of lemon, and lavender-infused vodka especially.


Our waiter said that the drinks’ creator was a fan of literature.  Nice!  So guess what else was on the menu?  The Walker Percy: bourbon, muddled cucumber, honey-violet syrup, soda.  




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I have to share this – in today’s email from Tom Fitzmorris, he listed what the chef has on his new menu at Louisiana Bistro:


BPQ Shrimp $9
Jumbo gulf shrimp in a black pepper sauce


Boudin Booms $9
Roast boudin sausage links protecting a “beach” from caramelized onion pork glace


Dirty Bird $26
Crisp broiled oil-poached duck leg confit with dirty rice covered by a mysterious dark goo


Pork Barrel with Leeks $24
Braised pork grillades and gravy in an Idaho potato barrel with crispy leeks


“Top Hat” Surf and Turf $34
Pan roasted prime filet mignon topped with crawfish tail scampi on roasted garlic mashed potatoes


Junk Shot Jambalaya $27
Ever-changing mix of Louisiana fish and shellfish with andouille sausage in a Cajun style tomato rice pilaf




Take a look at the menu page, too…hilarious!