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Brittany Howard’s Jaime made #2 on the NYT’s list of Best Albums of 2019. KCRW votes it #1. If you know the area around Florence, Alabama, much of this is going to be very familiar:
above: Robert Indiana’s LOVE at the Besthoff Sculpture Garden in New Orleans
Robert Indiana’s Disputed Estate now Estimated to be Worth over $100M
Artistic tortillas, via Texas Monthly: First produced by the indigenous Otomí people of Mexico’s Guanajuato and Querétaro states, tortillas ceremoniales are for special occasions like Dia de los Muertos, weddings, quinceañeras, saint’s feast days, and other holidays. Stamps (sellos) imprint intricate patterns onto the tortillas in a natural, edible dye, like those made from Mexican honeysuckle or hibiscus, or from insects like cochineals.
above: ’tis the season
Emily Dickinson’s gingerbread recipe.
above: Greensboro’s Pie Lab
Thrillist came out with their list of Best Pie Shops in America, and so glad to see Pie Lab in Greensboro, Alabama made the list.
Birthdays & celebrations & random live-it-up times mean dessert, amirite? Eater New Orleans published New Orleans Restaurants Where Dessert Steals the Show: From satsuma almond cake to chocolate cremeaux to pistachio pavlova, you’ll want to save room for dessert at these restaurants, and I think I’ve had dessert at 9 of the 15 listed. Some notes: at Saba, never pass up a chance to get the warm chocolate babka. That was maybe the best dessert I had in all of 2018:
also: #11 on the list is Bakery Bar (and I’ve had theirs, one slice pictured below), I still like the one at Gambino’s best of all, even if when I order them to ship, they arrive a little smashed. Smashed doberge still roxxxx, btw.
Most intriguing? Maybe Gianna, with the sweet milk tartufo with amarena cherries, walnuts, honey and a fried rosette cookie. Nice. And: Food & Wine visits Gianna and talked about the inspiration for their holiday menu (incl tortellini / baccala / chocolate cassata).
Ah, I still love making museum snaps. Some from a visit to the New Orleans Museum of Art:
For the people who’ve said the “perfect church” doesn’t exist, I give you
The Perfect Church. McDaniel St in Atlanta, from a pic I took in 2017.
I visited here in 2017 but somehow managed to not post an update on DFK. This is the site of E.M. Bailey’s home and his sculpture garden on Rockwell St in Atlanta. Eldren Bailey made and displayed a number of his plaster or cement sculptures and shrines in the side yard here. Like Nashville’s William Edmondson, he was a maker of gravestones. The artwork has been moved since his passing in 1987. Bill Arnett took pics of Eldren and his environment, available here.
above: quite possibly the most beautiful sign in Atlanta (haaaaaa)
You know not to call New Orleans the Big Easy, and don’t call Atlanta Hotlanta: it’s like going to a literary convention and mispronouncing Proust. Anyway, Atlantans are so sick of it, Monday Night Brewing has a new flavor and they’re hoping this will help. Sidenote: Atlantans aren’t crazy about “The ATL” either.
Watching The Irishman on Netflix is the Best Way to See It and I did, and yeah.
The Chefs Reinventing the Midwestern Supper Club
But eating is only half your purpose here, for this is a Wisconsin supper club, a distinctly American subgenre of restaurant that for nearly a century has largely and triumphantly ignored the passing of time. The owner greets you at the door and shows you to the knotty pine bar — no rush to get to the dining room — where there might be a cracker table waiting, with cheese spreads to sample, and a relish tray of cold crinkle-cut carrots and sweet-and-sour pickles. The bartender makes you a drink, muddled by hand. It’ll be a brandy old-fashioned, if you’re doing this right…
above: boiled cookies just out of the pot, starting to set
Apparently people are discovering/rediscovering boiled cookies, and Edna Lewis’ recipe for them is at WaPo.
above: the Gee’s Bend baby quilt we got for Shug
Opening in February 2020, “We Will Walk—Art and Resistance in the American South” includes paintings, sculptural assemblages, and quilts ranging in date from the mid-20th century through the present day. All of the artists either hail from Alabama or one of its surrounding states, which together comprise a subregion of the US popularly known as the Deep South—long a hotbed of race relations and civil-rights resistance.
above: how the Futuro on Pensacola Beach appeared, 2006
Nice: this restored Futuro in California.