July 2010 • Page 2 of 3 • Deep Fried Kudzu

July 15, 2010

Jose Fuster’s Art Environment In Cuba

I’ve been wanting to show these pics for so long now! They were all made by Av’s father, during his trip to Cuba last summer. This is the home / art environment of Jose Fuster, who lives in the Jaimanitas neighborhood of Havana.

He has exhibited all over the world and uses the funds he makes at those shows to improve not only his home but those of his neighbors.

Reuters ran this article about him last year.

Part of the article reads:

By standards in Cuba, where people receive various social benefits but earn an average of $20 a month, he makes a bundle of money and has freedom to travel abroad that most Cubans do not.

But he views his sales as a source of hard currency for his cash-strapped country. He happily pays the required 50 percent taxes on art income and says he invests most of what’s left in Jaimanitas, either in the art works or in helping his less-fortunate neighbors.

“I have the idea that I have to give back part of my money,” he said. How much has he invested in Jaimanitas? “I don’t know. Everything,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. His neighbors use the funds for home repairs and other needs.

Thank you, Papa, for sharing your pics of this *amazing* art environment! xoxoxo!

July 14, 2010May 17, 2017

Thursday

…back on Thursday with a *really* wonderful art environment!

July 12, 2010May 17, 2017

Better Buckets

If you live in the Deep South, it’s not too late to plant more tomatoes so they’ll still be producing in October before we get close to the first freeze. Thing is, my garden is full, so like many people, container gardening is the way to go.

One of the best/easiest ways I’ve heard of to grow tomatoes is to use one of those orange five gallon buckets that are so inexpensive (and usually right by the front door) at Home Depot. Thing is, these are going to be pretty visible so I was trying to think of a way to make them look a little bit better with some help from acrylic paint, Mod Podge, and the gorgeous RH Shumway catalog…

Supplies: Bucket, Drill (for drainage holes), Spraypaint primer, Acrylic paint for whatever design you like plus brushes, newspaper/catalog pages, Mod Podge in matte or gloss, Clear enamel spraypaint to help with weatherproofing

1. Punch holes in the bottom of the bucket with a drill, then spraypaint the bucket all over with white primer.

2. Get craft paints ready for whatever design you’d like to use (and this step can be completely removed if you like the look of the pages you’re going to Mod Podge without any extra ornamentation). Remove pages from the newspaper or catalog and paint on your design.

3. Since this is a tomato container, I painted…a tomato.

4. Liberally apply Mod Podge (those sponge brushes that are $.20 at the craft shop are perfect) to the bucket, then lay on the pages you’re using to decoupage, then Mod Podge again all the pages, on top all over. Make sure to get those edges especially.

5. Wait for the Mod Podge to dry, then paint the top of the bucket (where all the ridges are), handle, etc. with a complementary paint color.

6. Once all the paint is dry, let it set overnight then seal the outside (while you’re outside) with the clear acrylic spray. Let that ‘cure’ for a day before using as a container.

Much better!

July 8, 2010

Whitefish Salad

Before we left Pensacola, we had breakfast at Bagelhead’s – Av got a chocolate chip bagel with peanut butter, and I had a salt bagel with cream cheese, red onion, tomato, capers, and lox:

Can I even? No, I can’t even say how good that was.

On our way out of town, we stopped by Joe Patti’s as we always do…

This pic of the interior is from a previous visit, but you can get an idea of how big and busy it is:

We filled the large cooler we brought (they’ll pack it to travel, too), and one of the things I had to have was a smoked whitefish.

To make whitefish you don’t even need a ‘recipe’ – just a couple of extra forks so you can taste, add some of this, some of that, then taste again with a fresh fork, and so on.

Just remove the skin from the fish (it peels off super-easy), flake the meat into a bowl with your fingers so you’re sure to catch any bones, then add, for example, onion (I used 1/2 a vidalia cut chunky because I like the crunch it gives) plus capers (1/2 a small bottle, drained), and a little mayonnaise (Duke’s, always). Salt too. Taste and add more of whatever. You could add dill, sour cream, celery slices, yogurt, maybe a little bell pepper for extra color and crunch.

Great on a bagel, in the scoop of a celery stick, in a bowl with a few plain Captain’s wafers…

July 7, 2010

LEGO Table

When we were shopping for Shug’s birthday, I really wanted to get a table for him to construct his LEGO creations. I looked on Amazon and was really surprised that the ones that weren’t made by LEGO were getting some negative reviews because they didn’t perfectly fit the blocks; and tables made by LEGO, which were of course perfect, cost so much.

Surely it wasn’t going to take upwards of $300 to get a good surface to play on…right?

Just have to add here, I played LEGOs on ’70s shag – love the shag! – carpet and so did Av, and that was perfectly fine…but you know…the kiddies these days, they like their LEGO tables…

Last month when we were at IKEA (are all these four-letter, all-caps words bothering you? me too, and we haven’t even gotten to how the table is from their LACK line. I’m officially ignoring how these things are supposed to be typed from here on in this post.) among the goodies we brought home was a Lack end table. Its dimensions are 21-5/8″ x 21-5/8″ and we were able to get the ‘walnut effect’ finish which doesn’t clash with the existing furnishings in Shug’s room. Giant plus: all the Lack end tables are on sale right now for the crazy-low amount of $7.99.

Then I went onto Amazon and bought four packs of official Lego small building plates, 10″x10″, at $6.80/ea.

Going by the dimensions, this leaves a nice space of about 3/4″ around all the plates so it actually looks like we *meant* to do this – or even bought it this way. Pretty nice! Even more nice? It cost just over $35 to make this Lego table with real Lego building plates.

Finding and marking center:

IKEA Lack Table Becomes LEGO Table For Preschooler

Starting to apply Gorilla glue, which worked perfectly:

One plate down:

Av’s idea of clamping the plates together with Lego blocks to keep them from slipping any while drying and to make certain that they are completely even between plates:

All done!

—

A couple of months ago, I read ‘Do One Green Thing: Saving the Earth Through Simple, Everyday Choices‘: the author was on Martha’s show, and in the book she listed some mattress companies that had the ‘greenest’ product (turns out, the fire retardant in many mattresses is made up of some pretty nasty chemicals). The best mattresses included Ikea’s; they have ones that are 85% natural latex and cotton. So of course Shug got his big-boy mattress there too.

Oh, and you know that smell that new shower liners give off? Not good. Yucky PVC. Ikea sells non-PVC shower liners for less than $2/ea.

So you know I bought everybody I know one.

Can’t you just imagine?

“Guess what Ginger got me? A $2 shower curtain liner from Ikea.”

“Well, for goodness sakes.”

—

My favorite thing to do at Ikea? Dream about kitchens.

July 6, 2010

New Favorite Gallery In Nashville

What a fun gallery!

You know how sometimes galleries just don’t seem particularly warm (maybe it’s because of the huge expanse of space some of them have)? Or the artwork is displayed in a very stark fashion?

Well, the Art & Invention Gallery in Nashville is comfortable perfection.

The pieces there encompass a huge range of accessibility – you could easily leave there with a lovely gift for a friend under $35. Or if you were looking for a more substantial (either in size or workmanship) piece, that’s available too.

You can tell from the outside that it’s going to be fun – the owners began with an artists’ studio they called the Garage Mahal:

Now for the terrific, fun art:

We’ll definitely have to come back for their annual Tomato Art Fest in August!