Twenty-plus years of documenting the South's vernacular art, visionary environments and traditions….plus modern art exhibits, Faulkner and Eudora, and This Week's Various. Welcome.
It’s officially king cake season — we were invited to a super sweet 12th Night party a few days ago, and I made a galette de rois, traditional French king cake. It’s been a while since I’ve made one, and this year, used Dorie Greenspan’s recipe from NYT Cooking. As I used Dorie’s recipe to the letter, I won’t publish it here, but I do have a subscription to NYT Cooking and can share this recipe and others each month (so just message me, happy to!).
First, the host has a home in Key West, so she puts up a Key West Christmas tree. We went to Key West for Spring Break last year and loved loved loved it, but even still, I know nothing about this, ha! There were some roosters at the base which makes total sense if you’ve been there.
Terrific guests, amazing food, just everything was fabulous.
And here’s me, tickled to be going to the party, and PS: I actually read my first Judy Blume book last year — because I was not allowed to read her books in school. I know, I know.
The galette de rois turned out great! It *did* leak from one section because I just must have not sealed it perfectly, but that seemed to not affect it overall — just removed the extra filling, put it on a plate, and everyone seemed to really enjoy it.
Another puff pastry I’ve been making over the last month is the incredibly easy Nutella dessert many people are making right now (it’s all over TikTok and Instagram). It’s just two sheets of puff pastry (one on bottom, one on top) with Nutella spread in the middle but not all the way to the edges, then cut into strips, twisted, in the oven at 400* for around :18. Just a little egg wash on top, finished with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar if you wish.
Last night, made a “regular” king cake and used the cinnamon bun spread from Trader Joe’s which was amazingggg
Whatever we’re doing, we need to all work together to keep the meat & threes in business. Pell City Steakhouse is practically preserved in amber. How are the steaks at night? No idea, because I’m a vegetable plate girl and lunch is terrific. And this neon sign is…it’s everything (below, previous visits, for the sign at night)
LB loves this fried chicken. If you keep a scoreboard in your head about the greatest fried chicken of all time and the beloved, shuttered Hotel Talisi fried chicken is right there at the top, same. Um, scroll to the bottom of this post for a way you can still get it — kinda.
My plate — the turnip greens, purple hull peas, the coleslaw…yep. Perfect.
The following pics are all from previous visits. Because I have to show this neon, mostly.
They just don’t make neon steaks anymore.
Certs, Clorets, Rolaids. What year is this!?
and the venerated pie case
oh yes.
Earlier, about the Hotel Talisi (Tallassee, Alabama) fried chicken: this was from there in 2008
Since the hotel burned down, there’s been one place serving it. Called Larry Melvyn’s Food Once Thought Gone (all that is on the sign out front) in Tallassee, even Absolutely Alabama came out to do a piece on it and everybody there used to work at the hotel, so they know the recipes. That’s their Hotel Talisi chicken, fried at 340* so the crust is just-so, in this pic from our visit in 2022.
As always, all images unless otherwise noted copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Like to use one elsewhere? Kindly contact me here.
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“Many people, including those who live there, sometimes associate the South with poverty and rural blight, and while it is undeniable that those things exist, what I found in Walker County was beautiful, charming and full of love.”
Instead, “Dora, Yerkwood, Walker County, Alabama” examines the human condition, employing the camera as a device to witness moments of joy and celebration, as well as quiet and tenderness. “This project changed my life and the way I see things, and this book is my love letter to the community,” asserted Nagasaka, whose care and warmth for the people she met is plain throughout.
The Lusco’s sign is down in Greenwood, but only because it’s being refurbished for the restaurant’s upcoming move to Plein Air in Taylor, Mississippi.
not included, but this is Housetop Variation with Postage Stamp Center Row by Irene Williams, on display at Newfields, from a visit last year
‘I didn’t set out to make art. I didn’t know what art was. My first pieces came about when I made a tombstone for my sister’s children, my nieces who died in a fire in 1979. My own mother had 27 children. I found some sandstone, which the iron foundries in Alabama used to make molds for metal piping, in another of my sisters’ front yards. It had been buried there, in big pieces, as landfill. It was fragile but firm enough for me to be able to work with: I used a crosscut saw that was among my grandfather’s tools to cut it down to where I could manipulate and shape it with a knife, fork, and spoon.
“Southern/Modern” will be the first project to survey comprehensively the rich array of paintings and works on paper created in the American South during the first half of the 20th century. Featuring more than 100 works of art drawn from public and private collections across the country, it will bring together a generation’s worth of scholarship. The exhibition will take a broad view of the South, considering artists who worked in states below the Mason-Dixon line and as far west as those bordering the Mississippi River. It will be structured around key themes that cut across state lines and will take an inclusive view of the artists working in the region. It will also include a number of major artists from outside the region who produced significant bodies of work while visiting. “Southern/Modern” will provide the fullest, richest and most accurate overview to date of the artistic activity in the South during this period and illuminate the important and hitherto overlooked role that it played in American art history.
Those of us who miss it at Georgia will have another chance as the exhibit moves to Nashville in January. The Frist will have it on from January 26 – April 28.
At the NYT: Mellon Foundation Doubles Funding for U.S. Monuments, Pledging a Total $500 Million — The philanthropy will add to its ongoing initiative to tell diverse stories with new monuments in public spaces over the next five years. Featured in the piece is the Memphis monument by Theaster Gates in honor of Tom Lee, who in 1925, rescued 32 people from their overturned boat in the Mississippi River.
Sending lots of love your way for a happy holiday season! xoxo!
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