Month: February 2015

At first, The Historic New Orleans Collection doesn’t quite sound like a museum.  I remember first thinking: jewelry? A gift shop?  But it is actually one of the best museums in the Quarter.  And it’s not just a museum — it’s  research center and publisher as well.  It’s one of the places I visit every summer without fail when we live in the Quarter for a couple of weeks.  It’s interesting, it’s lovely, and it’s…air conditioned.

This is the Counting House, a 1794 warehouse which was renovated in the 1830s, which features paintings by Louisiana artists:

Several other galleries of the museum make up the ‘Louisiana History Galleries’.  This is an oil painting by Jose Francisco Xavier de Salazar y Mendoza.  He arrived in Louisiana in 1782 from Merida, Mexico, and did this painting ca 1795 of Clara de la Motte (ca 1761-1822) who was a Jewish emigre from Curacao.  She had only arrived here in 1787 and married Benjamin Monsanto, who was also Jewish.  But…they married in a Catholic ceremony at the Church of St. Louis. After a fire, a rebuilding, and adding on, that today is St. Louis Cathedral.

This is a collage with watercolor, ca. 1842 by William Henry Brown, and what makes it so special is…
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…that it was done as silhouette.  All these pieces are actually separately cut out and applied:

This oil is from 1860, by John Antrobus, and is titled ‘A Plantation Burial’:

The owner and his wife look on:

and the artist has painted himself in, as well:

Portrait of Judah P. Benjamin,

Ad for ’60 Very Choice Sugar Plantation Hands’:

In holdings of more recent vintage, this 1991 bumper sticker for Edwin Edwards (funny thing: Av had a phone conversation with him late last year, said he sounded like a likable, regular guy):

…an anti-Huey Long medal (made to appear as a toilet seat with him being hit in the jaw), to commemorate an embarrassing incident in which he got into a fight in a men’s room in Long Island:

Here, a placard and cue card for the Mahalia Jackson Show:

…and you know *exactly* what this is:

The museum’s next exhibition begins in March: ‘New Orleans and the Domestic Slave Trade, 1808-1865’.

Lunch at Mr. B’s Bistro (another Brennan’s restaurant…this one is run by Cindy Brennan) in the Quarter…

The most well-received dish here is the barbecue shrimp, but I was really only hungry enough for an appetizer — in this case, the duck springrolls (‘two house-made springrolls filled with duck confit, shiitake mushrooms, spinach and goat cheese; served with sweet ginger-garlic dipping sauce’) which weren’t quite as good as I wanted to be.  The description sounded amazing but altogether it tasted of nothing in particular.  Well, the Bloody Mary kept things going, at least.  And I couldn’t help myself from having some bread, especially after it was presented in that super-cute bag…

I got mildly lost last month.  Well, as lost as you can get with a Garmin and a phone loaded with Google Maps, Waze, and the rest. Turns out, we weren’t paying attention along the coast and took one exit too early. A half-mile off I-10 there was a shopping center that full of chain restaurants and shops that was so cookie-cutter, I couldn’t help but mention out loud that we could be anywhere in the country and have no idea where we really were because everything there was national and there were no independent businesses.

It makes sense that if you have a concept that works, you go off and keep that going as long and far as you can (see: Target) but those places have no soul.

That’s why we drive so far out of the way to go to places like Ezell’s Fish Camp in Lavaca, Alabama.  Granted, Ezell’s has tried to make their own restaurant work in other locations but when you see the original, you realize how it can never truly be replicated.  Because it’s that kind of perfect.

To get there, you drive on a little road through a cotton field, and…true to fish camp…they’re right on a river.  The Tombigbee.

They have the best coleslaw in the world (better with a couple of Lance crackers crunched in). It takes just like my MawMaw’s.

Fried pickles to start, then frog legs:

and what else? Catfish:

Two big fans:

Two boys, three boars on the wall:

What kind of fish camp could it be without an autographed Senator’s picture? Hi Mary and Mary Abigail! Thought y’all would be tickled to see this pic!

Out on the porch, rocking chairs and this board where hunters post some brag pics:

Old-fashioned candy in big barrels were available at one of the shops in Dollywood, and the colors were striking in the sunlight streaming through the windows.

Asking the boys what one of their favorite things we did all last year was, they would certainly put Dollywood in the top five (probably somewhere between going to art camp, and living (because we never want to get out) in the lazy river at the Gaylord Texan).

We’ve put off amusement parks so that they would both be tall enough to ride almost everything, since not being able to ride things can be a drag.  Shug is seven, but already tall enough to ride *every single thing* at DW, and Shugie can ride most.  Shug’s favorite is the ‘Wild Eagle’ which takes riders upside down three times (I think three times, I actually have to keep my eyes closed most of the ride!):
//player.vimeo.com/video/114282905?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0
Wild Eagle – New in 2012 from Dollywood on Vimeo.

This is us after getting off the ride — messed up hair but pretty happy!

At first, Av and I had no intention of getting a yearly pass, but when we saw that — and I think it’s probably this way at similar-size amusement parks — an annual pass is actually less expensive than two separate day visits, we went ahead.  And we got our money’s worth, as we took five or so visits last year.  We didn’t even go during the summer, when we knew it would be crazy crowded, and on each of our visits we almost never heard a complaint about a wait time.  Going in the winter is pretty anyway, because the park has its lights up.

And wow, what to say about the park? I grew up going to Six Flags in Atlanta and occasionally (school trip) Opryland before it closed.  Dollywood seems to be supremely clean.  It’s themed to music and Appalachia, almost equal parts admiration and poking fun at itself.  It’s very ‘family’.  I’m not much for amusement park food, but they have a snack called cinnamon bread…simply bread, butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon…and it is one of the best/unhealthiest things ever.

And one thing that I’m thinking almost no other amusement parks have: a chapel on the grounds.  Here, it’s the Robert F. Thomas Chapel, named after the doctor that delivered Dolly Parton.

It’s open, and they conduct services here too:

All the artwork is quilted: