As always, unless otherwise noted, all images here copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Ask me before using in any fashion. Thank you.
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In Chicago, Big Jones does cuisine-themed suppers and this week, a Southern ‘Dinner on the Grounds, ca. 1913’. Prepare yourself a for sudden hungry feeling:
Pimiento Cheese with heirloom Sheepnose pimientos and Otter Creek summer cheddar
Salt-Rising Bread
Sliced Boiled Calf Tongue
Watermelon Pickles
New Crop Sweet Potato Biscuits
Green Tomato Preserves
Cold Fried Chicken
Cold Slaw with cabbage and summer apples
Dressed Sweet Potato Greens
Angel Food Cake
Peaches with wine jelly
All dishes are adapted from Martha McCulloch-Williams book Dishes and Beverages of the Old South.
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Forbes on 100 years of making Goo Goo Clusters.
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Auburn’s Rural Studio is working on a new playground in Uniontown.
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At Holeman and Finch in Atlanta, they’re doing a ‘silly homage‘ to Nashville-style hot chicken (even though Linton’s never had it…kudos to him for giving it a larger audience nevertheless). Proud to say I’m married to someone who prefers (and survives!) Prince’s hottest chicken:
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Noel Polk, one of the world’s greatest Faulkner scholars (+Welty, +Robert Penn Warren), passed away this week. Services at USM on Saturday.
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On Kickstarter: a project to document the Pawpaw, the largest edible fruit native to North America.
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At Barbara Lee Black’s window:
Ma’Cille’s Museum of Miscellanea: An incomplete catalog of the collection. Drawings by Glenn House, Sr. Gordo, Alabama: Paper Souvenir Press, 2012.
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One of Av’s friends since high school, David Oh, is living on Mars time because he’s the ‘flight director of surface operations‘ for the Mars Curiosity! Av has been sending him song ideas for when they ‘wake up’ the Curiosity each morning.
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‘Intimate Interiors‘ exhibit at the Birmingham Museum of Art, August 26-November 18. From the BMA:
“Taken from the Museum’s permanent collection, Intimate Interiors presents portraits of intimate moments and spaces including places of religious worship, bedrooms, and entertaining. It is within these spaces that we are at our most comfortable, and oftentimes most vulnerable. The works showcased in this exhibition are alternatives to the racist images of blacks encountered daily in the global visual culture. As cultural critic bell hooks states: the image is not about good or bad, but about “transforming… creating alternatives, asking ourselves questions about what types of images subvert, pose critical alternatives, and transform our worldviews and move us away from dualistic thinking about good and bad.” By exhibiting alternative images, we encourage dialogue about the similarities we all share while celebrating black cultural experiences.”
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Design Sponge did a feature this week on Zelda Fitzgerald.
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Lulu Kalman’s food tour across the South in Paper Magazine; she mentions Tennessee, and Decatur’s Big Bob Gibson’s on day 1, then later on in the week spends time around Marion with Scott Peacock: Scott cooks for us in his candlelit kitchen, which which was painted pink by the previous owners, mixing corn muffin batter and juggling 5 different pots over finicky flames. My mother and I wander through the rooms in the house sipping wine and taking in photographs, and his grandfather’s encyclopedias, his collections of books on painting, quilting, cooking, and Alabama. Scott puts out celery with pimento cheese, almost a currency in these parts he tells me, and sugary sungold tomatoes. Dinner includes butter beans, lady peas, pink eyed peas with okra, stewed squash and sweet onions, garden tomatoes with Southern mayonnaise (peanut oil instead of olive or corn oil) and corn muffins. This is true comfort food… For dessert, we’re treated to blanc mange and shortbread with roasted peaches and figs from Scott’s tree.
Scott is giving a talk on January 25, 2013 at Auburn.
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Last of the Bohemians, the film about Eugene Walter (who left us in 1998…I will love him forever), will be on APT September 2 at 8p and September 3 at 9p.
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Our friend Amos Kennedy Jr (above, with our little Shug) will be at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in December: “The MFA in Applied Craft and Design and PNCA’s Printmaking Department welcome Amos Kennedy as part of the 2012-2013 Graduate Visiting Lecture Series. Amos Kennedy is a letterpress printer, papermaker, and builder of artist’s books based in Gordo, Alabama. He quit his corporate computer programming job at the age of 40 to follow his dream of becoming a letterpress artist, or as he calls himself, “a humble negro printer.” His work embodies his passion for stirring up strong emotions and encouraging people to think in new ways. Kennedy is the subject of the documentary Proceed and Be Bold.”
Also: There was a fabulous pic and feature on Amos in the latest Garden and Gun — they listed him as one of the ‘15 Trendsetters Shaping the World of Style‘.
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National Geographic on the Mississippi River depth woes / the drought / the Gulf’s saltwater heading upstream…
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Bloomberg reports that the U.S. National Slavery Museum (to be in Fredericksburg VA) is no longer in bankruptcy. It is still only architectural drawings, though. From the article: “Although the museum filed a proposed reorganization plan, Celebrate Virginia called it “vague and speculative” without demonstrating how the necessary $5 million in contributions could be raised. Celebrate Virginia also opposed the plan because it was based on the idea of selling off 20 acres and breaking the deed restriction requiring use as a museum. Celebrate Virginia argued at length that the deed restriction couldn’t be broken under Virginia law. Celebrate Virginia filed and won a motion to have the case dismissed or converted to liquidation in Chapter 7. The museum recommended that the judge dismiss if he was inclined to grant the motion. The judge obliged by dismissing last week.”
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The first Waffle House (now a Waffle House Museum) gets a historical marker.
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The art world, and probably the whole world anyway, was stunned at the ‘restoration’ by of an ecce homo fresco in Spain. As you can imagine, the Photoshopping has just begun: The Atlantic.
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The Dixie Theater in Haleyville:
The NYT does a piece with nice slideshow on resort towns’ theaters facing the expense of digital projection in order to continue.
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(this is the inside, where we had greens and blackeyed peas on New Years’ Day 2007 after Av did their annual Polar Bear Dip)
The AP just got around to reporting about the ‘Worship at the Water’ UMC church meeting at the Flora-Bama. From the article:
If Jesus returned to Earth, he’d probably kick back at the Flora-Bama, said Jack de Jarnette, a founding pastor of the church.
“It’s the sort of place he often went and hung out with people,” he said. “When you cannot get people to come to church, the alternative is to bring the church to them.”
A band in tie-dyed T-shirts played Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready,” as parishioners gathered underneath an awning adorned with rows of Land Shark beer flags on a recent Sunday. Most wore flip-flops and shorts, but some wore swimsuits.
“If you look closely, you might see a few of the churchgoers having a Bloody Mary or a bushwhacker,” longtime bar employee Blitz Poston said. “It’s really a wonderful thing that brings together people from all walks of life.”
Offerings are collected in neon tackle boxes placed throughout the bar.
Pastor Jeremy Mount wears Mardi Gras beads, shorts, sandals and T-shirt that is fringed around the sleeves.
“There are seven places to drink and no place to worship God on this key,” he said. “We feel like God has called us here to be a ministry. Where would there ever be a better place than the world-renown Flora-Bama?”
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The new-ish paper hats at The Varsity in Atlanta — celebrating 80 years of the Varsity Orange, here in Instagrammed fabulosity:
