Month: December 2010

Gingerbread versions of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater have been made before:

Image courtesy coleypauline under Creative Commons A-N-S 2.0 Generic license. Thank you!

…this was done for a competition this year.

Even Acura’s ad agency tried something similar this month:

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Of course, if you *really* like gingerbread and you have $15,000 to spend on it, there’s this from Neiman Marcus.

If you celebrate Christmas (or not: we just used one of our neighbors’ trees) and have been thinking about getting a bottle tree for your backyard, consider upcycling.

Wet the edge of half the circle with your finger.  This helps make the dough ‘stick’ together while cooking:

Take a fork and crimp the edges together, then immediately place into the hot oil:

Fry for a couple of minutes each side until golden brown and you can’t take it anymore:

These are literally so flaky and delicate that you must eat them on a plate with a fork.  Oh my stars.  Delicious.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to contribute one of my pics of William C. Rice’s Cross Garden in Prattville to a piece at the website for Art:21, a program that airs on public television.  Since 2001, “86 featured artists in the series demonstrate the breadth of artistic practice in the United States today. Each one-hour program is loosely organized around a theme helps audiences analyze, compare and juxtapose the artists profiled.”

They’ve done shows on everyone from Jeff Koons and Cindy Sherman to Ursula von Rydingsvard.

My local PBS station doesn’t carry the show (I am still trying to get over that they don’t carry Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood) but at least all the Art:21 episodes can be viewed in full online.  And their blog is great too.

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Tonight on Conan, a friend of a friend, Erika Nelson, will be on to talk about her *amazing* project that she’s been working on for years:

The World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things

While we were in Montgomery for our magnolia wreath, we had lunch at Odessa’s Blessings in this pretty home:

It was Saturday, and they’re actually only open on weekdays from what I understand, but they were hosting a luncheon for some college faculty (didn’t realize all this until we had come in the open door) and they offered to seat us.

In Montgomery, so many independent restaurants downtown (Isaiah’s, Martha’s Place, etc.) are only open on business days because so much of what gets done in town is government-related.  So when state government isn’t going on, the restaurants are closed.

While I have a soft-spot for Montgomery – it was the “big city” to go to while I was going to college at Troy – I’d rather do almost anything than eat at one of the chain places on East Boulevard.

The whole house at Odessa’s was decorated for Christmas.  This is the serving table that we had lunch from:

Now, it was really good, but this picture isn’t terribly attractive.  I think what’s missing is a beautiful green vegetable or two.  I could have gone for some collards or okra, but they must’ve already run out by the time we got there.  In any case, I was happy with my chicken & dressing, macaroni and cheese, squash casserole, and steamed cabbage.  So were the boys.

We made our annual let’s-get-a-wreath trip to Montgomery this past weekend.  The best, best, best place to go is the Curb Market which is only open Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

During other times of the year, we get all kinds of homemade jams and jellies, cakes, candies, fresh fruits and vegetables, and giant fall mums there.  It’s also where I got my huge cotton wreath.  These are a few pics from this latest trip, where as far as you could see it was all fresh greenery:

I came home with this fresh magnolia wreath for $30 which is $30 less than the exact same size one I saw at Whole Foods at my last visit.  And if you had to order them online, they get *really* expensive.

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If you get the Montgomery Advertiser, you might have seen my peppermint bark in Wednesday’s paper!

…moved more than 200 pieces of her work into a new space in Tallahassee Mall near Sports Authority. She’ll be at the mall this weekend selling her work to raise money from around 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day. If you want more information or want to volunteer to help her, call 850-443-4199 or 850-591-6454.

We had a wonderful Chanukah. Hope you did too – or if you’re having Christmas, I hope you’re going to enjoy the best one yet.  And if neither of those apply, Happy December.

Happy December anyway – this has to be one of my most favorite months of the year.  People are decorating, it’s not 100* outside, it’s a great excuse to nest and eat and drink and just enjoy each others’ company.

One of the traditional foods for Chanukah is sufganiyot (pronounced: soof – gahn – ee – yote).  You know those crazy-good creme or fruit filled doughnuts at Krispy Kreme?  Sufganiyot.

Because Chanukah is based on victory of the Macabees and the miracle of the oil, we celebrate with foods fried in oil.  Thus, latkes and sufganiyot.  And it’s a good excuse for anything else you like to eat that’s fried.

I like to incorporate who we are religiously with who we are as Southerners which means so many things get this really fun spin, and *that* is really what Jewish food is all about because so much of it (seriously) is a take on the regional foods of wherever we were living in whatever era of time.  This means that sufganiyot for Av and I are beignets (for us not so much French as so many sweet powdered-sugar experiences at Cafe du Monde) filled with mayhaw or muscadine jelly. 

This sweet dough not only makes great sufganiyot, you can use the dough that’s left to make monkey bread.

Recipe (makes a ton of sufganiyot, or a reasonable amount of sufganiyot (24 average size ones) and enough for some monkey bread too):

1 cup water (at 110-115* to activate the yeast)
1-1/2 tbsp yeast
1/2 c. buttermilk
1/4 c. evaporated milk
2 eggs
2 tbsp melted butter
1 c. sugar
1 tbsp salt
6 c. all-purpose flour

Fillings: your favorite jelly, bite-size chocolates, or just a sprinkling on top

Directions:
In the Kitchenaid, combine the yeast and warm water and wait for it to bubble/activate and the yeast to dissolve – usually about 7 or 8 minutes.

Add eggs to Kitchenaid, combine well.

Add buttermilk and evaporated milk to the Kitchenaid bowl and keep mixing.

Add sugar, melted butter, salt, and flour one cup at a time while it’s still mixing.  At six cups of flour, you should be getting a dough that is coming together but not get making a ball.  If you lift the dough hook up and it slowly comes down like in the pic to the left-most below, you’re there.  Feel free to add more flour if needed.

Move the dough to a large bowl, cover with Saran and a towel so it’s nice and dark, and let rest until doubled, about 90 minutes or so.

Once the dough has risen, it’s ready to make sufganiyot.  Heat about 1/2″ of oil to 375* in a large skillet.  You can roll the dough out or do like I do and simply shape it by hand into flat little rectangles.  Turn the pieces once they become a nice golden brown, then cook on the other side until golden brown all over.

Put them on a large plate lined with paper towels.  If you like your beignets simple, you can sprinkle them with powdered sugar at this point, or when they’re just cool enough to touch, you can take a spoon and open each of them up just enough to put some filling (sometimes you’ll need to use your fork to remove a bit of dough from the inside to make room for this pocket).  

I like to fill the beignets by putting jelly in a small ziploc, cutting off one of the bottom corners, and squeezing it like a pastry bag.  Av likes it when I tuck a piece of chocolate inside.  If you like candy bars, just imagine all the options with those little bite-size pieces placed inside.  Yum.  Eat while hot.

Whatever quantity of dough is left from sufganiyot can be made into monkey bread.  Just take whatever dough is left, ask for help from the cutest three-year-old you know:

…and together roll into round pieces, about the size of a ping pong ball.  Roll each ball first into melted butter, then roll them around in a bowl with whatever proportion of white and brown sugar you like (you can add cinnamon too) and then place the little pieces in a bundt pan.

Cover the bowl with Saran and a tea towel and let rest for another 45 minutes.  Preheat the oven to 375* and then bake for 45 minutes or so, until browned:

This past weekend, I went to the annual Blue Light Special Art Show in Leeds.  I’ve seen this done some other places, where people pay $25 for a bowl of soup, with the proceeds donated to charity, and an artist – in this case, Tena Payne – supplies the homemade bowls which the patrons get to bring home.  Today the soup was made by Chris Hastings of Hot and Hot, where I first found Tena’s pottery.

Some great things at the show!

Pottery by Janice Entler (more about this soon)
Glass art by Toby Klein (more about that soon too!)
Gorgeous jewelry by Obayana B. Ajanaku
Bill Palmer’s furniture
Robert Taylor brought a tabletop bottle tree

Thank goodness for this show – between Kentuck and springtime, there’s not much going on in art festivals.

Remember the ‘big news’ I had last week and didn’t post it?  Well, I will this week.  Promise.

My friend Amy reminded me after Tuesday’s post that LEGO has an architectural series they’ve done on Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, including Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum.  And did you know that one of FLW’s sons came up with Lincoln Logs?

I wonder if Lego will try to do a series on Frank Gehry:

Image courtesy scottog used with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license. Thank you!

Image courtesy budgetplaces.com used with Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license. Thank you!

…or the newly opened Gehry-designed Ohr-O’Keefe Museum in Biloxi.