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’tis the season
Wednesday’s daily email from the NYT included a link to the Wall Street Journal’s piece by Bee Wilson on Edna Lewis and ‘It’s Time to Revive the Interesting Breakfast‘. I don’t have a WSJ subscription, but about it, the Times wrote:
Wilson’s essay is a lovely plea for more Americans to channel Lewis and ditch their boring breakfasts of cereal or toast. In many other countries, that’s the norm: Breakfast resembles lunch or dinner more than a dessert. And the rhythms of pandemic life give Americans a chance to make a change.
“For some people working at home during the pandemic, it has been easier to have later and more leisurely breakfasts,” Wilson writes. “When you already have coffee in your body and a Zoom meeting under your belt, you may branch out and turn your mind to more brunch-like dishes — such as a spicy shakshuka of eggs poached in a rich cumin-scented tomato sauce and topped with cilantro.”
Shug made a delicious shakshuka (with a teacher, on a zoom) a couple of weeks ago with rotel tomatoes, lots of cumin, lots and lots of onion, and egg whites, as he really dislikes yolks.
I think of Eugene Walter talking about eating in Mobile. As he wrote in Milking the Moon: A Southerner’s Story of Life on this Planet:
Breakfast was a serious meal, as was the midday dinner. Quite often we had fried plantains and hot biscuits or some hot sweet roll. And then we’d have little bits of fish, little ham steaks, bacon, scrambled eggs, souffle, or grits. Quite often a little tiny breakfast steak wrapped in bacon, and something sweet, like a peach pie.
Y’all, knowing how he was about cats, I waited since THE ’90S to have a boy cat that we could name Eugene.
And last week I mentioned Flannery O’Connor’s quote, “When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville” and I’m also thinking about how Eugene would say that no matter where he was living, he would do so as if he were living in Mobile; that even when he had friends over to his Rome apartment, he’d explain they were entering “extra-territorial Alabama”.
above: a Thornton Dial at the Ogden
A gift by Audrey B. Heckler of 500+ works by self-taught artists, including those by Thornton Dial, William Edmondson, and Sister Gertrude Morgan, will be donated to the American Folk Art Museum.
not included, but I truly-truly wish my late friend Wade Wharton’s environment had made it to Kohler
I heard this week from the marketing director at The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan that they’re opening an Art Preserve dedicated to artist-built environments on June 21, 2021.
above, the Old Courthouse Museum in Monroeville, 2015
Was reminded lately of this quote by Nelle Harper Lee, about the title of “Go Set a Watchman” and the story can also be found at The Guardian:
“For thus has the L-rd said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he sees.” On seeing the provisional cover, Lee reportedly said there should be no comma after “Go”, but an editor argued that there was one in the King James Version. “That’s the L-rd’s book,” the 89-year-old author replied. “This is my book. And there is no comma.”
Great time with the fam at Rickwood Caverns
above, from a visit in 2018
Broussard’s in New Orleans is celebrating their 100th anniversary with a special pecan menu. It sounds so retro, but okay! They’re having ‘Beet Tartare with Pecan-Custed Goat Cheese, Grilled Lamb Loin with Pecan & Fig Demi-Glace, and a Chocolate Pecan Gateau’.
The opening reception for new artworks by Amy C Evans is Sept 26 from 5-8p at Koelsch Gallery in Houston. When I looked last, a ton of the works have already sold. xoxo, Amy!
above, from previous visits to the St Roch shrine in New Orleans
Lee Harper from Oxford has finished her miniature of beloved St Roch Chapel and wow. Her shop here, Insta here.
The Great British Baking Show starts already in the UK, and here in the US on Netflix on Friday this week. I hope it stays kind; that was the best part of the show, having the contestants playful with one another rather than trying to cast a downfall on the strongest one, having the hosts help the bakers juuuuust enough rather than hold back and overly criticize, or purposefully put someone (unfortunately) completely unlikable or unskilled among the group just for show. Slate has this piece about the show’s decline in the last season or so, especially in regards to the technical challenge. Hoping hoping hoping that it will be good fun again this season. If you’re baking along like I’m thinking of doing, one of the BBC websites has a recipe for prinsesstarta, a Swedish layer cake.
Also: caramel cream on a pineapple upside down cake seems a bit much, amirite?
Because of course. ❤
When we visited the town where LSU’s “Coach O” grew up — in Lafourche Parish, about 75 miles down the bayou from Baton Rouge — his mother Coco insisted we eat her homecooked gumbo before we talk. https://t.co/6NgwpsAwie pic.twitter.com/mhfoh9WXnG
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) September 21, 2020
The Story of ‘2 Quarter George‘ New Orleans Draughtsman from Scalawag.
Way Out People, Way Out There from Bitter Southerner:
The 2019 book, Walks to the Paradise Garden follows the paths of photographers Roger Manley and Guy Mendes, and poet Jonathan Williams as they crisscrossed the South — forming friendships and becoming transformed by many the of region’s most misunderstood and beloved artists. Their work became an art exhibit at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta last year and is currently on display at the KMAC in Louisville, Kentucky. As Laura Relyea traced their steps, she came to realize that they encountered something we all might need a little more of these days: “Paradise is right in front of you. It’s not some evasive, ethereal thing that you can never grasp. It is whatever you make, wherever you make it, with whatever you have on-hand.”
above, the Sun -n- Sand, 2005
From the National Trust: Discover America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2020…and among them, the Sun -n- Sand in Jackson.
The Jasper Mall doc is on Amazon Prime right now.
The new release from the Met Opera Shop this week? Leontyne Price at the Met, a two-disc compilation of her performances 1961-1985. And here’s our beautiful girl from Laurel singing Summertime:
…and back to the Met, TUTS (Theatre Under the Stars) Houston reminded us this week that they premiered the musical NINFA! in 1982 about who else, with former Met Diva Dolores Wilson
Ninfa’s on Navigation, 2012
just above: from Shug’s first birthday supper, and the sweet baked alaska they made for him
Really, really going to miss the loveliness of what’s discussed in the second paragraph here, from Ian McNulty on the changes at Antoine’s:
Chicken Rochambeau, for instance, has roasted chicken, a “nest” of shaved ham, onion rice, dueling sauces and pineapple confit (replacing the previous pineapple ring).
The menu is now written all in English. Antoine’s menu previously listed dishes in French with descriptions in English, itself a compromise from the not-too-distant past when the menu was entirely in French.
The dishes are now composed plates, served with vegetables and sides instead of the earlier a la carte approach. Taking a cue from the restaurant’s successful prix fixe lunch specials, Antoine’s now has a table d’hôte dinner option too.
Texas Highways on Giddings, Texas’ Jacob Janda and his custom cemetery monuments; great to see, further, that they’re extolling the virtues of curbing and crushed rock, which is traditional. Hook ’em, Horns. One of the FB posts:
After we installed this monument Mrs. Bonita gave us a homemade cake and a jar of homemade salsa for a job well done.
above, the chess pie at Husk Savannah from a visit last year
Evan Kleiman on KCRW’s Good Food interviews Lisa Donovan on her new book, Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger. Many of us know her from her time at Husk Charleston and Nashville, and her buttermilk pie recipe that was very popular.
Her sentiment here is something I think we need to read/listen to more and more and more:
“I really wasn’t trying to indict anyone in this book….I also think some people feel like it’s a little bit of a cop-out in that maybe I gave some people too much grace, and I think that’s really unfortunate because I think preserving relationships and really trying to allow people the space to build something more than they used to be is also really important in our culture.”
Super random:
a squirrel got into my house. What?
An OG germaphobe, I enjoy things like 64 Things Everyone Forgets to Clean
Duke’s is making bbq sauces now and I saw a pic of their comeback sauce elsewhere, but it’s not on their website at the moment
Snøhetta won the bid to design the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, to be built and finished by 2025 in North Dakota’s Badlands.
Gawd, Frida Kahlo’s breakup/goodbye forever letter to Diego
Henrietta Boggs’ obit in the NYT
The Downton Abbey movie is getting a sequel
Chick-Fil-A is market testing (in the Carolinas) a honey pepper pimento cheese chicken sandwich
Maybe the Pappas brothers will save Luby’s
Easiest way to make those cute pink/purple deviled eggs: buy pickled beets, and do the right thing, which is haaaaaa throw away the beets (except for a few to weigh down the eggs). Then put peeled, hardboiled eggs in the jar’s leftover beet juice. Two days later, and perfection. Warning: it makes the eggs a little rubbery, but whatevs. And your egg salad, if you go that route, is obv a little different because of the pickling but also kinda pretty.
As a matter of fact, I *do* want to get out of bed and water slide into the ocean hi, I mentioned this was the super random section
Art Basel Online Viewing Rooms are open now
and this trailer for Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles doc on IFC (NYT review here):
I’m dressing extravagantly to get my grocery pickups (I love me a grocery store, but sadly, haven’t done my own shopping since mid-March) in which I don’t even get out of the car. I feel this coming on: sashaying around the house in full glamorous regalia like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, because why not? Checking in, apparently my friends are nearing this stage too. This quote by Amy Fine Collins in Town & Country is right on: Because you are: the theater of the street. Getting dressed with care is a mood elevator; it’s a visual, sensual, and aesthetic pleasure. Try hunting for your disinfectant spray the way I do — in vintage Geoffrey Beene and Jean Schlumberger for Tiffany & Co jewels.
Or: you do do. Enjoy yourself.
One of my friends, Destiny, makes (etsy:) these super fun washi tape designs, in typewriter, and thermos.
Wow: Clingmans Dome at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Byron Sonnier has these Lake Chuck tees for sale, with proceeds to benefit those affected by Hurricane Laura
It’s time, y’all, it is T I M E to make tomato pie with those beautiful red tomatoes coming out of the garden. Here’s my fave recipe.
Two Paul Rudolph -designed home in Athens AL — took pics of them both, though the Martin Residence almost impossible to see from the street
The Wallace Residence:
annnndddd: Paul Rudolph went to Athens High.
…and as a complete aside, wondering why architects let things like these frowny faces happen. Can you imagine frolicking in the backyard and looking up at the house judging you? Helllppppp 😂
A PBS POV Feature Film this year:
Portraits and Dreams revisits photographs created by Kentucky schoolchildren in the 1970s and the place where the photos were made. The film is about the students, their work as visionary photographers and the lives they have led since then, as well as the linkage of personal memory to the passage of time.
It can be viewed in full here.
above, from Isom’s Orchard in Athens AL
Have a beautiful weekend, friends! And extra points if you can get your hands on an apple cider slushie at a fruit stand somewhere soon. You deserve. xoxo!