Month: June 2011

We couldn’t be in Destin and not do our usual trip down 30A — it’s the road with the ‘new urbanism‘ communities: Seaside, WaterColor, Rosemary Beach, Alys Beach…

One of the most interesting homes along that stretch is Charlie Hilton’s (he owns three hotels in PCB) home, at Paradise by the Sea:

We’ve watched this house being built for what must be eight years now.  The architect is Arthur Dyson (some pics of it at his site), Dean Emeritus at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.

He writes of the home:
Nestled amid the sand dunes on the Gulf of Mexico at Panama City, Florida, the Hilton residence contains 9,500 square feet of living space. Primary rooms are suspended on concrete pods at various levels within a greenhouse structure of coral-tinted reflective glazing. One interior stairway encircles a glass-enclosed elevator, while another winds around fully grown native palms. The top lacuna of an exterior two-level saltwater swimming pool fountains into the lower basin, then enters the interior by flowing beneath the edge of a glazed wall. Tiered roof wings sweep upward, forming a series of clerestories that shield the open floor plan from excessive sun exposure while presenting unobstructed views of the oceanfront during daytime and allowing stargazing at night. Remote-controlled fabric panels placed strategically over the glazing provide additional solar protection.


Interior spaces flow freely without walls or partitions, while scale and volume are tempered through the placement of palms and other tropical flora. Level changes rhythmically establish area separations and maximize direct ocean views. The varying colors and textures of terraces, walls, planters, and pools avoid sharp definitions of boundary, integrating the the interior and exterior of the home into a sense of contained movement. The gestures of the form join harmoniously with the surrounding swell of seabird, ocean waves, and sand dunes that embrace an exceptional building site. Everything set forward for the program by the clients indicated a desire for fluidity. All the exterior benefits of the site, such as sea breezes and ocean sunsets, are integrated into the residence to establish a refuge from the hectic pace of a busy business life and create a soothing place to relax, read, and write.


Best: these driftwood horses by Heather Jansch at Alys Beach:

Music to my ears: Av came in one day and said “let’s go on vacation at the top B&B in Destin, which got great reviews on TripAdvisor and Frommer’s too” (he knows I believe in TripA and Frommer’s).  Well, he actually said it better, and made it sound more fun than just that, but be still my little heart, #1 B&B!  He set us up so the boys had quality time with Mimi and Papa here at home — it’s an adults-only property — and we were off for a multi-day mommy/daddy date!

The Henderson Park Inn is known as a B&B but it’s more like a boutique hotel (you’re not actually staying at someone’s home) — it looks New England-y, right?

When we checked in, there was a tray with a rose, wine, and grapes, and music playing in the room.  The room itself was very nice but I usually spend a good amount of time on the balcony especially in the early morning and in the evening, and it was pretty small.

Overall, very nice though.  We had reservations that evening to have supper at the hotel and that was good; the best part about the food there, though, is the breakfast each morning.  There are cooks to make your custom omelet or Belgian waffle, and other stations with grits and grillades, all kinds of breakfast meats, breads, fruits, juices…I really enjoyed breakfast (which is included in the stay) best of all.  Also, each day they take your order for a boxed lunch (also included) so you can take it anywhere.  That was nice too.

There’s a communal refrigerator with water and cold drinks, and a cabinet with candy bars that you can get whenever the mood strikes.  Another cabinet was full of dvds and board games.  Somehow, late night wine-fueled games of Scrabble are hilarious.

So pretty — and one of the very nicest things about the hotel is that one side of it adjoins Henderson State Park which means the beach isn’t terribly busy.  We had *such* a great time sitting in the beach chairs, playing in the water, and walking in the sand.  Aaaaahhhhh vacation….

…which isn’t to say we didn’t do our share of other things in Destin and elsewhere, but our stay here was just blissful.

Best part: coming home to our sweet boys who had a fabulous time with their grandparents but were thrilled to see us back too!

Love the dog mansion, Alabama.  The Cubix is also pretty great.

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There is a *great* set of pics of the Kildare mansion (on the National Register) in Huntsville here from when it was for sale; if you ever thought of photographing since it’s been purchased, consider your willingness to be in the public right-of-way and get water hosed, hit with a rock, followed by a truck, yelled at, or simply blinded by a light from an upstairs window.  How very, very strange.

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The NYT ran their own piece about Kathryn Tucker Windham.

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I somehow missed this article from Time Magazine back in April on Thornton Dial “Art is strange-looking stuff”; there was this from an April Time Mag blog.

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A couple of weeks ago, I tie-dyed around 30 shirts for the boys’ daytime summer camp.  Whew (instructions here if you’re interested in trying it).  On the way out of Pottery Barn this week, a PB Teens catalog had a tie-dye comforter on the cover, so the next time I find a nice but boring white comforter cover I might try tie-dying it.   In the neighborhood: three of the *cutest* beach balls we got at PB Kids for Shug’s upcoming birthday pool party.

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FoodandWine.com purchased rights to publish my pic of a koolickle for their piece on state fair foods.  Curiously, this was a koolickle I had in Mississippi; had no idea that koolickles had ‘migrated’ up to North Carolina.

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Beautiful home in Andalusia, AL:

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A little over a year ago, the National Trust for Historic Preservation released its list of the “11 Most Endangered Historic Places” and the Threefoot Building in Meridian was on it, due to threat of demolition.  Last month, it looked worse than ever:

(this was a pic I took a few years ago that shows the beautiful detailing)

On the Trust website:

In 1930, the citizens of Meridian, Mississippi, had never seen anything like the newly dedicated Threefoot Building, a shiny, 16-story Art Deco skyscraper that was the tallest building in the state.

Named for its owners, a successful German-American family in Meridian, the building was admired for its decorative polychrome terra cotta and granite exterior and lavish interior details, including marble flooring and wainscoting, cast-plaster walls and ceilings, and etched bronze elevator doors. Although the Threefoot family lost their prized property in the Depression, the building was a mainstay of downtown Meridian for decades until it closed in 2000 because of deterioration and extensive upper-floor vacancies. Hopes were buoyed when the building’s owner, the City of Meridian, began negotiations with a developer who planned to renovate the building and turn it into a hotel, but the City later abandoned that plan.

Late last year, the MDAH made possible a $150k grant for a seismic study on the foundation and ground of the Threefoot building. 

The June 6 issue of ‘New York’ has a feature called ‘The Urbanist’s Chicago’ and one piece is called ‘Three Restaurants Chicagoans Clamor For‘ — number one is ‘Next‘ which they say, “Nearly 19,000 people have signed up on the restaurant’s website just to buy tickets—yes, tickets—to Grant Achatz’s latest modernist-dining experiment. The menu changes cuisines and time periods every three months (current theme: Paris 1906). Hands down Chicago’s toughest reservation.“

They’re doing Paris 1906 right now; focusing on a time and place is the idea that John Folse and his team will be doing when his Restaurant R’evolution at the Royal Sonesta opens this fall. They will show how people ate in New Orleans in the 1800s, and that will be manifested in seven different dining rooms to represent seven cuisines that influenced the taste culture back then. There will be a market with meats, cheeses, etc., and the bar will specialize in pre-Prohibition cocktails.  This is on my list when Leslie and Jeff and Av and I vacation in New Orleans this December together.

One restaurant that I’ve always wanted to just preserve in time (there are a few) is/was Weidmann’s in Meridian, which has been in business since 1870.  A few years ago, a group bought it and tried to make it upscale.  Disaster.  Last year, it was purchased by someone who wanted to make it more like it used to be — unpretentious, comfortable.

It used to be open from early in the morning to pretty late each day, and the servers, who most had probably been there decades, were real professionals. There must have been at least 100 options on the menu, and everything we ever had was excellent, excellent. It was the type of food you would fix at home if you time the time or inclination. There was a long lunch counter, a dining room in the back with hundreds of signed photographs of national and local celebrities – from governors and astronauts to flag twirlers and cowgirls – and a room to the left as you walked in that had a very rustic feel, and I believe it was called the 1890 room (or 18-something room). Since butter was in short supply during WWII, Wiedmann’s substituted and put peanut butter in crocks on the tables. The little crocks could even be purchased at the cash register (we have one).


Not a whole lot in updates had ever, I think, gone on at Weidmann’s. Nothing was ever new. If it wasn’t broke, there was no need in fixing it. Weidmann’s was never broke.

Well, last month I had the occasion to have lunch at Weidmann’s, and it is more comfortable than it had been (but they can never bring it back completely — even the old owners had changed the layout of the restaurant).  I had the vegetable plate: fried green tomatoes with a little remoulade, corn pudding, and potato salad:

It’s like they’re still trying a little too hard (i.e. the sprinkling of herbs around the rim of the plate) but…overall it was delicious.

Last month we had lunch at Isaiah’s in Montgomery — Av’s fish with mashed potatoes and corn:

…and my vegetable plate with blackeyed peas, corn, macaroni and cheese, and greens:

It was only okay.  And the vibe was wrong — eating out of those weird glass saucers, those non-skid drawer-liner placemats, and the dainty atmosphere…

Our favorite in Montgomery is the Davis Cafe which isn’t as sweet and neat:

Av’s:

The vegetable plate is mine:

…and of course you can sop your cornbread in the potlikker here:

…sure is wonderful!

Well, I can’t talk about meat and threes without showing what we had at lunch last week in Tuscaloosa — Maggie’s Diner:

Where can you even buy a round cake pan big enough to make that monster of a caramel cake!?

Av had the fried chicken:

My vegetable plate — dressing, stewed green beans, collards, and black-eyed peas:

Mmmm.

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The SFA has just done an oral history series on the ‘Lunch Houses of Acadiana‘:

With few exceptions, steam tables and buffet lines are the focal point in Acadiana’s lunch houses. The food is almost uniformly smothered and darkened with gravy, for cooks in this part of the state adhere to two fundamental rules: start with the freshest ingredients possible, and brown the heck out of them to achieve the most naturally flavorful gravy possible.


Several of the cooks we interviewed believe so deeply in the superiority of fresh okra that they put up enough vegetables during harvest season to last throughout the year. Merline Herbert at the Creole Lunch House serves her smothered okra with chicken and sausage. Her rice and sugar come from producers up the road. She buys her sausage, tasso, and catfish from local artisans and growers. Ruby’s Café in Eunice, in the heart of Acadiana’s prairie, is comparable. Owners Curt Fontenot and Dwayne Vidrine source their seafood from fishermen, not middlemen.

Last month, I was at a Borders bookshop in Panama City and saw the prettiest book on French patisseries.  I *think* it was this one.  When I got home, I checked out a different book on patisseries with recipes and it included one for gougeres, which are really what we might think of as airy cheese biscuits or cheese puffs.  A fan of cheese biscuits, cheese crackers, cheese straws, cheese rounds and other various iterations of cheesy deliciousness, I really wanted to try making these myself.  

Oh, and I took German in school as my second language, not French, so I had to look it up to be certain, and ‘gougeres’ is pronounced “goo-ZHAIR” like this.  Just in case you’re lost like me.

I didn’t go exactly by the recipe in the book — changed around a few things — but the finished product turned out to be fantastically delicious gougeres.

Ingredients (this makes about 24-30 regular-size gougeres):
7 tbsp butter
1 cup water
1 tbsp salt
1-1/2 cup flour
6 large eggs
2 cups shredded gruyere

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400*.

1.) Add to a small saucepan the butter, water, and salt, and bring to a boil.
Bring the heat down to medium and add the flour, and stir together well (2.)
3.) Keep stirring until the flour is completely incorporated, and finally as in pic 4, it will start to form a bit of a film on the bottom of the pan:

This is the point at which the eggs are added.  The Kitchenaid makes this so much easier — just mixing enough so everything is together.  Now mix with the Kitchenaid 1-3/4 cups of the grated gruyere into the dough:

Onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, use a piping bag (I just use a ziploc bag with one of the corners cut to pipe) or use a spoon:

Sprinkle evenly with the remaining gruyere.

Bake at 400* until beautifully browned — 18 to 25 minutes:

Wonderful.

This morning we went to the B’ham City Council meeting to see our friend Joe Minter (below from l-r: Mayor Bell, Councilwoman Smitherman, Joe, Hilda) be recognized for his artistic achievements.  Next month, Joe and Hilda will be traveling to Santa Fe, as Joe’s “Katrina” piece will be included in the International Museum of Folk Art exhibit beginning July 3 entitled, “The Arts of Survival: Folk Expression in the Face of Natural Disaster“.  It’s a huge honor.

Joe presented the City with this assemblage which began as a screen door:

I visited Joe again last week — here he is with his Haiti Earthquake piece:

…and this is the new one representing the tornadoes we had here in April: