Month: November 2011

These signs are all around Gordo, Alabama.  The ‘day is evil’?  Strange.  If you belonged to a church and wanted to get people to see things your way…well, if it were me, I’d take a sunnier, happier approach.

I think these are all put up by, or by someone affiliated with, the ‘Fellowship of Jesus Christ’ church there, in a somewhat low-slung, mossy green building.  Here we go:

This summer when we drove through Waterloo, Alabama we saw the Trail of Tears plaque on the Tennessee River which gave information about how thousands of Cherokees had passed here on the Trail of Tears. Waterloo was a waystation where people had come from other areas to await steamboat passage for their eventual destination of Oklahoma.  During the War, Sherman crossed the river here and stayed a while in the town.

Each year, there’s a Trail of Tears Commemoration and Motorcycle Ride that begins in Chattanooga and ends in Waterloo.

…and when we passed the cemetery we saw this huge monument for Ezra Lee Culver:

…which mentioned many of his accomplishments in spite of the fact that he had a fourth grade education.  He had developed an innovation with concrete and using that, took part in the construction of Yankee Stadium, the Planetarium in NYC, Lincoln Tunnel, the Waldorf-Astoria, General Motors Buildings in Flint, and the Florida Keys bridges, among others.

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The National Park Service has a Trail of Tears site for driving directions, etc.

The exhibit, “Drawing Pretty Pictures Is A Way To Meet G-d In The World Like It Is” at Visionary Growth Gallery in north Georgia featuring “Lois Curtis, a key figure in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that freed thousands of people institutionalized in mental hospitals and nursing homes” along with works by Carter Wellborn, Alpha Andrews, Betty Wansley, and Peter Loose. Through April 12.

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What a fabulous whirligig at the American Folk Art Museum.

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Doubleday Publishers has started the ‘#Literary Turducken‘ — combining the titles of three different classic works of literature into a whole new entity.  Some of them are pretty good.

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Turns out, homeless people in Charlotte are not big pimento cheese fans.

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The Moline, Illinois post office is for sale and it houses a WPA / Section mural by Edward Millman entitled “Manufacture of Plowshares” — “It hangs on a north wall of the post office at 514 7th St. and is to be reserved for public access, regardless of whomever buys the building.”  Nice!

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Smart, smart, smart: at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, their restaurant, the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe, “enhances the museum experience by providing visitors the opportunity to enjoy the indigenous cuisines of the Americas and to explore the history of Native foods. The Cafe features Native foods found throughout the Western Hemisphere, including the Northern Woodlands, South America, the Northwest Coast, Meso America and the Great Plains. Each of the five food stations depict regional lifeways related to cooking techniques, ingredients, and flavors found in both traditional and contemporary dishes.”


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Thank you for people who are who they are, even after they’ve left, from the Times-Picayune:  At the close of the service, the deacon stepped behind the pulpit and began an a capella rendition of KISS’s 1979 single “I Was Made For Loving You.” Some lyrics were subbed out: “I was made for loving you, baby” became “I was made for loving you, Jesus.” …  Eventually, all in attendance joined in. Some sang the original lyrics; most simply filled in background vocals, clapped the beat, and drummed on the sides of the pews. The unplanned singalong may have been the most touching, and palpably emotional, moment in an unusual yet deeply honest tribute, and at the end, there was rock-concert level applause. A few friends held up the rock ’n’roll “devil horns” salute.  “Rock on, Nino!” somebody cried out.


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Sotheby’s sale of Important Judaica on December 14 includes the Manfred Anson (whom I’ve actually bought something small from before ages ago, on eBay of all places) famous Statue of Liberty menorah.

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I’ve written about the Peter Sekaer exhibit at the International Center of Photography before, but I’m still trying to get over the perfection that is the image in 1936 at the phrenologist’s window in New Orleans.  It’s the exhibit’s catalog cover.

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The new Legoland that’s being built to open in 2012 at Phipps Plaza in Atlanta has announced the ten city landmarks that will be created in Miniland and thankfully they include the Fox Theatre, the High, Stone Mountain, and the Varsity.

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Susan Knecht’s studio and gallery located at the new-ish Lowe Mill in Huntsville: chandeliers with squiggles.

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There’s a nice interview with the directors who made the documentary, Awake, My Soul about sacred harp singings here.  Above is a phone pic Av took of dinner from when we were at the National Convention this summer.

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Can’t wait to read the new book by Elizabeth Engelhardt published by the University of Georgia, A Mess of Greens: Southern Gender and Southern Food.  Part of this wonderful interview goes into Tomato Clubs:
How did Tomato Clubs empower young women back in the early 1900s?

In 1910, Marie Samuella Cromer, a young rural schoolteacher in the western South Carolina town of Aiken, organized a girls’ tomato club so that the girls would “not learn simply how to grow better and more perfect tomatoes, but how to grow better and more perfect women.” The tomato clubs and the women who organized them wanted southern food to transform Southern society — but not from the top down.

The girls had to plant one-tenth of an acre of tomatoes, which would provide more tomatoes than they or their families could use in a year. This forced them to learn how to can, market and sell them — and they could do whatever they want with the money. Glass jars were scarce, so they had to use big pieces of equipment to can tomatoes in tin. In order to finish a year in the Tomato Club, they had to write a report about how they harvested, presented and sold their tomatoes. It was a real lesson in technology, science and entrepreneurship.

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Belle Chevre, the fantastic goat cheese dairy in Elkmont, Alabama is doing a Kickstarter project right now to raise $100k for new land with a custom facility.

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For some reason, with all the baking I did this past week, I felt like the Cake Lady (at the NC Museum of Art) by Bob Trotman.  An exhibit of Bob’s work begins at the Huntsville Museum of Art on December 4.

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Just for fun: Department 56 has come out with a model of Chick-Fil-A.  They’ve already done a Krispy-Kreme building.

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This home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Rockford, IL is going up for auction mid-December.  The most interesting part: FLW designed it to be completely wheelchair accessible.  From this article:

In his letter to Wright, Laurent noted, “To give you an idea of my situation, I must first tell you that I am a paraplegic. In other words due to a spinal-cord injury I am paralyzed from the waist down and by virtue of my condition I am confined to a wheelchair. This explains my need for a home as practical and sensible as your style of architecture denotes.”

Built 40 years before the Americans with Disabilities Act, every aspect of this home and its furnishings, from light switches to doorways to tables, was designed by Wright to keep obstructions to a minimum.

The Laurent House Foundation Board is trying to raise enough money to purchase the home and turn it into a museum.

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Make plans now: 27th Annual Alabama Clay Conference is Feb 16-19, 2012 in B’ham.

At the Cheekwood Gardens in Nashville they have these great frames set up for family pictures!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Done!  Twenty-six pies done before 1p today!

…but this gentleman in Arkansas has done 100 in a night, all different flavors!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Used under Creative Commons.  Thank you, Christina!

This is a cherpumple.  Cher = cherry pie, pum = pumpkin pie, ple = apple pie, all from frozen, then encased in a cake mix.  It’s just…wrong.  But not because I’m not a fan of the flavor combinations (I don’t see how this could taste good together), but because of the list of ingredients.

Now, I love kitsch!  I’m the girl who made the marshmallow snowman one Chanukah!

…and I’m not anti-combination. We love turducken (I think this one we got at Rabideaux’s)!

…and when I heard the idea of the Krispy-Kreme cheesecake, well:

Just as an aside, it really wasn’t so bad once you subtracted all the calories for a regular serving of cheesecake crust (if you calculate Carnegie Deli’s recipe for crust and divide by 16 you get about 91 cal/serving) and instead tabulated the calories from 12 doughnuts (at 190 cal/per according to Krispy-Kreme divided among the same 16 servings, which is 142.5).  So in other words, making cheesecake with KKs as the crust adds 51.5 calories/serving to what you would otherwise be taking in.

With some other little exceptions (you know, nobody likes snooty people or people who let their food snobbery get out of control (who doesn’t like a Reese’s Cup for goodness sakes?) and I’ll admit: crushed-up Nutter Butters make great peanut butter pie crust!) that’s really about far as I’m willing to go.

…but the idea of buying three different frozen pies, three different cake mixes, and a tub of what’s called ‘cream cheese frosting’ then putting it all together goes against all that is good in the world!  Av laughed and asked if I was going to have the vapors over all this (maybe!).

Do you fall out when you open a copy of Southern Living or Mississippi Magazine and the first ingredient in a recipe for something sweet specifies a box of cake mix?  Me too, friend.  Me too.

The cherpumple makes me wonder — did the inspiration for a frozen pie(s) inside something else come from the 2002 Southern Living Cook-Off, when a recipe which included (get ready, y’all!) an entire frozen Mrs. Smith’s pecan pie encased in cheesecake filling *won* First Place, Taste of the South?  Seriously, here’s the recipe.

What will next year hold, do you think?

Whether you’re serving Cherpumple or something entirely made from scratch, I hope you can laugh along with me and have a fabulous Thanksgiving!  xoxo!