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.
But what about that invisible rubric? That is, why can’t Channel Orange be enough in the way that Mockingbird is? Is it because rather than keeping us almost entirely out of the empty room, as Lee did, Ocean chose to let us in through hints and ephemera? And more broadly, what are we owed by an artist whom we profess to love? Why does the quiet deliberation of one soft-spoken Southern Gothic artist with a widely adored debut inspire awed respect and deference, while another inspires bitter disappointment? How do we maintain an earnest interest in and desire for art we love, while respecting the autonomy of the person who creates it and the fact that creating anything at all is the most excruciating of human endeavors? — //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js Howard Finster’s An Angel of the L-rd #10000 at the High
— Bon Appetit has come out with their list of Best New Restaurants 2016, and in the South category, there are four, all of which are in Louisiana (three of those, NOLA): N7, Josephine Estelle, Pop’s Poboys, and Willa Jean (knew it was Willa Jean from the shot of the cookies with milk and beater!). Well deserved.
…cookies that are crisp and caramelized around the edges, soft in the center, and studded with gooey pockets containing not one, not two, but three (very specific) varieties of Valrhona chocolate. The milk—cold and rich, infused with Tahitian vanilla bean—miraculously tastes as though one thousand cookies have already been dunked in it. And the kicker? The egg-beater whisk served alongside, onto which clings more raw cookie dough than any grandma, no matter how permissive, would ever let you sneak. Yeah: It’s like that.
— Loved Stranger Things on Netflix so much. I’m going to be Eleven for Halloween and Av is going to be Dustin (I already have the Castroville Artichoke Festival tee for him). It was filmed in Jackson, Georgia, and one of the funniest things ever is it re-imagined as an ’80s sitcom:
Mary Frances, one of seven grandchildren, is now the keeper of the treasures of Henrietta’s life, from photos with Walt Disney to handwritten notes attached with straight pins to first-edition pages of “Southern Cooking.” Open a scrapbook and Mary Frances dials back time, telling stories of white gloves, tomato aspic and Atlanta debutante parties, of Sis Hennie’s Japanese Fruitcake on the sideboard at Christmas, of crisp corn pone at supper. And of war rationing, wringing a chicken’s neck, beating egg whites by hand for angel-food cake, and the knowledge that before Sis Hennie was famous, she sold food to the ladies at First Baptist Church to support her family.
“Mississippi is not a state,” he says. “It’s a club.”
— The Hattie B’s Hot Chicken supper at the James Beard house August 11: Hors d’Oeuvre: Deviled Eggs with Pickled Ramps, Crispy Hot Chicken Skins with Tennessee Honey, Beer-Boiled Peanuts, Benton’s B.L.T. Bites Dinner: Tennessee Tomato Gazpacho with Fried Chicken Crunchies, Fresh Cheese, and Pickled Green Tomatoes; Poppers and Pickles – Nashville-Style Hot Chicken Rillettes with Three Bean Salad and Pickled Watermelon Rinds, Ramps, and Okra; Sweet Tea Sorbet with Lemonade and Mint; Family-Style Hattie B’s Hot Chicken with Tennessee Speckled Butter Beans, Southern Braised Greens, Raw Corn Salad, Housemade Chowchow, Skillet Cornbread, and Bourbon Barrel Sorghum Butter; Banana Pudding with Torched Meringue — Gore Vidal and Eudora Welty talking religion
— A bottle tree made by my friend Stephanie Dwyer, in Port Gibson, Mississippi
From the WaPo: A barbecue case that helped the cause of civil rights — although this story is worthy of more than the paltry 322 words given here. Also: there’s an error in that Maurice Bessinger (who had a thing for the battle flag at his South Carolina Piggie Park restaurants) died in 2013 — it was actually 2014, though his kids were implementing changes at the restaurant earlier.
I came here to eat at those restaurants, and in particular to eat their enchiladas, plate after plate of fat-dipped tortillas wrapped around their filling, topped with cheese and broiled into molten excellence. I ate enchiladas with intent. Because: It would be great to make enchiladas at home. It would be great to make them casually, often, for a weeknight meal for family and friends.
For anyone interested in doing that, in deploying the American home cook’s standard mechanism of taking a delicious restaurant dish or regional specialty and making it into a casserole (that’d be me!), the restaurants of Houston are a good place to start.
Ken Burns is going to make a country music documentary to be released in 2019. Nashville Mayor Megan Barry will use part of the $1.375MM in the proposed budget for ‘music and entertainment economic development and film initiatives’ to help, as it’s believed the film will bring more people to town.
Part of State Highway 36 in Lawrence County, Alabama will be named in honor of Jesse Owens, who was from Oakville and went on to win four gold medals at the ’36 Olympics.
“I cried for three days when I moved here,” she said, leaning forward on her stool and resting her elbows on her bar. “But now, I don’t know why — I hate to love it so much. There’s something about the dirt. It gets stuck in your toes.”
We got in Billy’s crawfish boat with another case of beer and a giant floodlight and headed out into the rice fields, which were flooded with about a foot of water. This is when I discovered that you definitely don’t want to be the person holding the floodlight. I’ve been around plenty of bugs and mosquitoes, but nothing like the swarm that consumes you when you are holding a bright light in a rice field in the middle of the night.
…I’m admittedly biased with regard to these matters. However I do not think that that I am totally misreading the signs of the times with respect to the relative eclipse of critical interest in Finster. The fact is that outsider art gatekeepers no longer spontaneously invoke Finster as an outsider giant alongside the pantheon of Ramirez, Darger, and Traylor. I do not mean to cast doubt on the greatness of this extraordinary triumvirate, but what explains the diminishment of Finster? What is truly curious about the case of Howard Finster is the rather dramatic shift in opinion and, even more peculiar given his cultural impact, the general lack of serious interest, analysis, and interpretation of his life and body of work. In the words of the new folk art curator at Atlanta’s High Museum Katherine Jentleson, the time has come for a “reappraisal“ of Howard Finster (Art Papers July-August 2015).
This very curious piece from the chairman of Howard Finster’s Paradise Gardens Park and Museum in Georgia on how he sees the (as he puts it) ‘activist culture’ at NPS being used contrary to his own beliefs, and EOM’s Pasaquan is mentioned. Just going to keep in mind this sentence the chairman wrote himself:
Rev. Finster, a Baptist minister, had been the pastor of rural churches in Georgia, had become a beloved figure for his lifelong motto “I have never met a person I did not love.”
My understanding (not presenting as fact, but after hearing from some Finster people) is that the author owns only the house adjacent to the property and has actually been banned from the actual Paradise Gardens. Lots and lots and lots of ill will here. I and many others agree that Finster would be very unhappy with this piece, as he did love everybody.
— In Edmonton, Alberta, there’s a new Southern (US) themed restaurant called ‘Have Mercy’ — some bits from the CBC article:
Tacky, trashy and tasty — it’s a winning combination… …”This is sort of trashy food, and they’re OK with that,” Campbell says. The fried chicken came with two juicy, crispy, salty pieces, and a doughnut on the side — because, why not? ‘This menu is a really good representation of what you would find on the back roads of the Deep South.’ I am practically ready to start rending my clothes after reading that. Interesting that this is how the people behind this restaurant in Canada choose to portray their vision of the American South. Fun is fun. But fried chicken with a doughnut on the side isn’t a ‘good representation of what you would find on the back roads of the Deep South’ – not that I haven’t seen some crazy. But still. And these videos. Guns, and kids with guns. Have Mercy, indeed.
The gallery has already established spaces for Daniel Buren in Miami, Barbara Kasten in Sante Fe and Eric Wesley in Cahokia, Illinois. Wesley’s space is a former Taco Bell restaurant “replete with ersatz Spanish colonial architecture”, according to a release.
— A Southern angel loses its wings every time a recipe in Mississippi Magazine starts with ‘1 box cake mix’ and watch out because Betty Crocker has made a Krispy Kreme cake mix.
Jed Portman writes How to Identify a Good Barbecue Joint for Garden and Gun. These kinds of pieces usually swim in the shallow end of the pool, but this one is alright.
— The NYT reminds us that (wonderfully) there are two Welty works playing in NYC this summer — Eudora Welty – Mississippi Stories (features Why I Live at the P.O.), and The Robber Bridegroom, though the Times’ critic called it ‘Southern-fried shtick’ and that the set was a combination of Hee-Haw and Dickens’ Old Curiosity Shop.
— The Improbable Rise of Mississippi Roast in the NYTimes, the recipe for which (by Robin Chapman of Ripley, MS) calls for beef chuck, a packet of dry ranch dressing mix, a packet of dry au jus gravy mix, a stick of butter, and some pepperoncini. Turns out, the recipe has been pinned over a million times. The most curious part is that when the NYT author asked some sources, one who was unfamiliar with it asked if it was called ‘Mississippi’ to be dismissive, as in the ‘White Trash’ cooking book. What? I’d never heard of it either, but yeouch.
Also: you know the aliens are out there but aren’t coming to visit because they’ve read the comments section at al.com and nola.com, and that was enough to scare them off, right? Anyway, the comments for this story are generally pretty great.
Jacks said Seaberry’s most lasting legacy was building a structure that allowed people of all races to intermingle without pretense — “people who in any other situation probably wouldn’t have said more than two words to each other, but for a couple of hours on a Thursday night they were best friends because (Seaberry) made it OK.
The AP reported that heavy rains in March caused a ‘slope failure’ on the largest of the Winterville Mounds. The section was approximately 24 ft wide, 18 ft deep, and 100 ft long, and it slid to the bottom of the mound.
Chef Margot McCormack of Nashville’s Margot Cafe & Bar and Marche Artisan Foods collaborated with us to create a Premium Goo Goo with unique flavors and ingredients for our Summer Chef Series. The Margoo is made with salted caramel, candied hazelnuts, hazelnut butter caramel ganache, and Willa’s Classic Shortbread, all coated in rich dark chocolate.
GQ Magazine did a piece on Five Gross Sandwich Combinations People Actually Eat — they dislike the idea of banana/mayo and pineapple/mayo, but I approve and am married to a peanut butter and bologna adherent. Last month, we hosted two Israeli girls for camp, and they introduced me to what they like: cottage cheese on a slice of bread, open-face. I would have never thought that up.
This is a story we are all being fed. A story about overalls, rich soil and John Deere tractors scattering broods of busy chickens. A story about healthy animals living happy lives, heirloom tomatoes hanging heavy and earnest artisans rolling wheels of cheese into aging caves nearby.
More often than not, those things are fairy tales. A long list of Tampa Bay restaurants are willing to capitalize on our hunger for the story.
Over several weeks, I visited Tampa Bay’s outdoor markets. At a dozen different markets, I counted 346 discrete vendors, many of whom sell at multiple markets. Of that number, only 16 sold their own produce, honey, eggs, meat or dairy. Plenty of wind chimes and hot sauces, but less than 5 percent represented Florida farmers growing their own food.
and
I ask a young woman if the produce is from her farm. She says yes. I ask if it is all from her farm. She says no, they buy from neighboring farms. When I notice asparagus and apples, which generally don’t grow in Florida, I ask if it is resold produce from a broader radius. She says yes. And then I ask, specifically, which items are grown on Lee Farms.
Her answer: “We are currently replanting.”
In 40 seconds, Lee Farms went from growing everything to nothing.
CNN ran ‘16 Things to See and Do in the US in 2016‘ includes the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum outside Birmingham, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture opening this fall, and EOM’s art environment Pasaquan in Georgia which will reopen to the public later this year.
“Dr. King’s first memory was standing at the bread lines during the Depression. In his letters, he compared the quality of food at the jails where he was imprisoned; though the conditions at the Albany, Georgia jail were brutal, he wrote that their breakfasts of sausages, eggs, and grits, were generally good. In fact, one of his last conversations on that fateful day in Memphis was about what they would be eating for supper,” Akila McConnell, owner of Atlanta Food Walks, explains. “Our Culinary Storytellers intertwine Dr. King’s story with the history of Southern food, from slavery through the Civil Rights Movement to today’s fusion cuisine.”
Rural Studio’s partnership with Serenbe to build its $20k homes there for artists to use while in residence at Serenbe turned out to cost about $135k for two of them plus a deck. Sounds like it was completely worthwhile and Rural Studio learned a lot, though, in what it would take to further mainstream their acceptance and construction beyond Hale County, Alabama where RS is based. From ArtsATL:
The houses are not only too small, they are too cheap. Contractors work on commission, generally 20 percent of construction costs. Says Smith, “A contractor won’t get out of his truck for less than $20,000.” That’s kinda hard to do if the house costs less than $100,000. In addition contractors assess costs based on past experience and rely on subs for materials estimates, usually based on square footage. You can bet that nary a contractor has, like Rural Studio, actually counted the number of two-by-fours needed on a project. Images here at Atlanta Magazine.
— The trailer for The Free State of Jones has been released:
Robert’s is still carrying the flame for the very idea that you can still play country music in 2015—in front of a live audience, with no cover—and people will be so excited about it that they’ll pay you enough to survive. And as a guest at the bar, you can enjoy all of this while eating a fried bologna sandwich. —
The New Yorker runs Tatyana Tolstaya’s piece, Aspic: It’s a special kind of religion, making the aspic. It’s a yearly sacrifice, though we don’t know to whom or for what. And what would happen if you didn’t make it is also a question mark.
A major example of American folk art sculpture with strong Southern history will be presented for sale at the 2016 Winter Antiques Show by Americana specialists David A. Schorsch and Eileen M. Smiles. The one-of-a-kind apothecary trade figure known as “Tom Long” was made to advertise the Athens, Georgia medical office and pharmacy of Dr. Crawford W. Long (1815-1878), famed as the pioneer in the discovery of surgical anesthesia.
The Winter Antiques Show is held at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City from January 22 to 31, http://www.winterantiquesshow.com
The poplar and yellow pine figure stands 58 inches tall and was carved in Athens by Charles James Oliver, circa 1851-1855, and retains a fine old painted surface. For nearly half a century it stood outside Long and Billups Pharmacy on Broad Street in Athens, Georgia, until 1909, when it was acquired by Joseph Jacobs (1859-1929), an apprentice of Dr. Long, who went on to open his own pharmacy in 1884 in Atlanta, where two years later he earned a place in American history by introducing the first Coca Cola fountain drink to the public.
What happens when strangers with cameras go to Appalachia? It’s a complicated topic that many Appalachians have strong feelings about. This week, we revisit our most popular episode from 2015. Since this first aired, Vice Magazine has published another article by photographer Stacy Kranitz. It’s the latest in Kranitz’s photo essay series called, “There Aint No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down“, which takes its title from the song by Brother Claude Ely.
In 2013, Abramowicz quit his highflying job as a marketer of luxury goods (think cognac and champagne) to apprentice at the 65-year-old Louie Mueller Barbecue, a famous standard-bearer in Taylor, Tex.
“All wood,” Abramowicz says, referring to the lack of assistance from gas or electricity in the J&R cooker, shipped from Mesquite, Tex. The Beast gets its name from the giant, two-ton smoker. “I had to keep it real.”
In 1936, writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans traveled to Alabama to document the lives of sharecropping families in the Great Depression for Fortune. The harrowing experience was eventually published in book form as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which has proven influential for future generations of writers.
Among them are Chicago-based alternative-country pioneer Robbie Fulks, who wrote his new song “Alabama at Night” from the journalists’ perspective. “We were not there to talk, we were only there to see,” he laments, describing the heartbreaking scenes of poverty he sees with empathy.
William Edmondson’s Boxer was the top lot at $785k in Christie’s sale, ‘Liberation Through Expression: Outsider and Vernacular Art’ — it’s a new world record for this genre. Yesssss!!! from ArtNews: And yet calling Edmondson himself an outsider at this point is full of problematic implications. He was the child of freed slaves, worked for a time as a janitor in a Nashville hospital, and didn’t start making sculpture until the age of 57. But, as stated in a biographical note on the artist published by the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art in Nashville, which organized an Edmondson show in 2011, he was also exhibiting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as early as 1937, when he was the first African American artist to receive a solo show at that institution. HuffPo on Why Big Auction Houses Want In On The Growing Outsider Art Craze: For Zimmerman, the more eyes on the historically under-appreciated and undervalued pocket of the art world, the better. “I hope it grows and people who are unfamiliar with it now will know it by heart in 10 to 20 years,” she said. “I hope the work thrives. I want it to take on a life of its own and be in every major museum. I want this to be a part of the art world that people just can’t ignore.”
…Talde and Bowien’s books suggest a shadow aspiration: to pay tribute to the anonymous genius of immigrants, and to build a “strange and awesome” new America in their honor. Inauthenticity becomes a kind of power, a refusal of someone else’s expectations and tastes. The great lengths that diners are willing to travel to eat their food, the hours they are willing to wait for a seat at the bar, may dramatize a desire to return, impossibly, to something unrecoverable—the “flavor memory” of childhood, the simple ecstasy of a packed family dinner table, a transformative Styrofoam plate of food-court stir-fry. A wish to glimpse highs more common in some neighborhoods than in others. Sometimes it has nothing to do with taste at all, but instead is about the chain of associations triggered when you hear the squeak of a lazy Susan, or the sound of a bundle of chopsticks being run under a faucet, and you remember the rote explanation for why your family has an extra refrigerator in the garage, secreting all the ingredients that make you different—that will one day make you special.
— Phillip Ashley Rix of Memphis has been named Official Chocolatier of the Grammy Awards Gift Lounge. From the Memphis Business Journal: 23-Karat Gold Salted Caramel Pecan Praline will also be a featured parting gift for guests of the official Grammy Celebration. The Grammy Awards will be held Feb. 5. Rix handcrafts each praline using a rare purple bean cacao, roasted Mississippi Delta pecans and Fleur de Sel. Each praline is laced with 23-karat gold leaf, and the 68 percent single origin dark chocolate shell is finished with 23-karat gold dust. Each piece retails for $79. He’s just finalized a deal that will have his chocolates sold through Neiman Marcus and Horchow — they’ll ship direct from his shop in Memphis.
The Daily Meal’s Best Pie in Every State: Alabama = buttermilk pie Arkansas = chess pie Georgia = peach pie Louisiana = king cake pie Mississippi = Mississippi Mud Pie Tennessee = Tennessee Whiskey – Pecan Pie Texas = Sparkling Grapefruit Pie
Comprising some 500 volumes, the David Walker Lupton Collection documents everything from the industry’s origin in the 1800s to the celebrity cookbook craze of the 2000s. It is especially strong in cookbooks that look back to Africa, celebrate the concept of “soul food,” or originate within local community groups. In addition, the Libraries recently acquired the personal collection of one African-American cook, Viola Pearson Ragland. Donated by her son, Rev. Wylheme Ragland, these books sometime focus on African-American foodways but often simply reflect the main currents of American cooking.
Another exhibit going on now, in Maine, is What to Eat and How to Cook It: A Celebration of the Esta Kramer Collection of American Cookery, The author of the piece about it in the Portland Press Herald mentioned:
In “La Cuisine Creole,” published in 1885, I found lots of “gombo” recipes, including Oyster Gombo with filee. Ingredients: “a grown chicken, 50 oysters and a half-pound of ham to flavor the Gombo.” —. //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js frito pie at home – but not tosti elotes
Via Phoenix New Times: La Carreta de Lily serves something like a Frito chili pie, but it’s called ‘tosti elotes’:
The snack is made using Mexican-brand Tostitos (salsa verde-flavored, for an extra layer of salty spice), mayonnaise, melted butter, chili powder, lime, granulated queso cotija, fresh-off-the-cob elote, and, to top it off, a hit of Mexican hot sauce. …The process involves slicing open a bag of Tostitos, dumping a bunch ingredients over the chips, and finally, planting a plastic spoon into the stiff muddle of chips and creamy goop…
Garden and Gun had a blind taste testing of fast food biscuits — they made the field *very* small and didn’t even include Whataburger or Biscuitville. Here are the results. Thing is: the really good fast-food biscuits, if we must — and we all must at some point really — are the ones under the heat lamps in tinfoil bundles at gas stations and Piggly Wigglys. Alas, the Pig doesn’t have a drive-thru.
Gallardo is affiliated with something called the Extension Service, an institution that dates back to the days when America was a nation of farmers. Its original purpose was to disseminate the latest agricultural know-how to all the homesteads scattered across the interior. Using land grant universities as bases of operations, each state’s extension service would deploy a network of experts and “county agents” to set up 4-H Clubs or instruct farmers in cultivation science or demonstrate how to can and freeze vegetables without poisoning yourself in your own kitchen.
State extension services still do all this, but Gallardo’s mission is a bit of an update. Rather than teach modern techniques of crop rotation, his job—as an extension professor at Mississippi State University—is to drive around the state in his silver 2013 Nissan Sentra and teach rural Mississippians the value of the Internet.
— Louise, Mississippi, a town of ~200 people, passes a resolution in support of Syrian refugees, which I’m only bringing up (I don’t do politics here) because Channel 15 went to Belzoni to speak with Ethel Wright Mohamed’s daughter (if you’ve ever heard of ‘Mama’s Dream World‘ — that’s the house in Belzoni that serves as a museum for Ethel Wright Mohamed’s memory pictures that she stitched), Carol Mohamed Ivy, on her take, as Mr. Mohamed was a Syrian refugee who came to this country in 1911.
Turducken Sausage at Dog Haus: Created by Dog Haus’ culinary team and mastermind sausagemaker Adam Gertler, the flavorful holiday link is made with turkey, chicken, duck, fresh herbs, whiskey soaked cranberries and yams. It’s then grilled and topped with sage gravy, a Brussels sprouts and bacon slaw, and crispy onions.
Then he sportingly offered to take a cell-phone shot of me, although he confessed he didn’t know how. After a little explanation, he figured out my cell phone’s push button and took one picture, scarcely glancing through the lens.
The difference was laughable. Mine were just the usual snapshots, while his was a single, masterly composition of someone seated amid the day-for-night kitsch of El Quijote.
Now, Geechie Boy Mill farmer Greg Johnsman brings a crop that industry insiders think could install just as much fervor — Jimmy Red Corn, also know as James Island Corn. Johnsman spent the past eight years cultivating the almost-extinct variety of kernels on Edisto Island. Slow Food USA calls the crop, “… one of the most interesting and talked about Southern heirloom corn varieties …”
“Crab claws. Crab meat. And shrimp and oysters,” he recited, “We don’t do much turkey.”
Though turkey may still be the star for many Thanksgiving feasts, shrimp and crab and oysters will play strong supporting roles on local holiday tables.
“Everybody’s making their fresh gumbo. Peeled shrimp and head on shrimp and crab meat,” said Andrew Gunkel, with Quality Seafood. “Oh yeah, and don’t forget your oyster dressing. Everybody loves their oyster dressing.”
The official grand opening and dedication of the Rural Studio project Newbern Library happened last month. The 17th Rural Studio 20k house, Geraldine’s House in Newbern has been completed.
— Had double date supper with best friends at Hot and Hot (Hot and Hot Fish Club) this month, and while it was good I still stand by the maxim that you really only eat there if you can confirm that Chris Hastings is there. But he wasn’t.
Here, the tiny Hubert Richter Chapel in Cullman, Alabama
The smallest church in America, in Townsend, Georgia, was destroyed by fire this week. There were seats for 12 (the same number as the disciples) and was deeded to Jesus by the woman who had it built in the 1950s.
I love the mountain churches along the Georgia-Alabama line, love the hard-rock preachers in their Conway Twitty sideburns who fling scripture with the force of a flying horseshoe at congregations who all but levitate in the grasp of the Holy Ghost, and every old woman’s purse in every pew smells like a fresh stick of Juicy Fruit. —
These two amazing women, Janice Axelrad Rosenbloom Riddler and Gertrude Kisber, were the inspiration for a cookbook celebrating the congregation’s 130th anniversary — along with many of the other women who cooked up Jewish life, commerce, and cooking in Jackson, Tennessee. The stories of the dishes these women prepared live on today in the cookbook our congregation now shares. A former rabbi paid one of the women featured in the cookbook, Mrs. Gold, quite a special tribute by saying, “her soup was beyond compare as her secret seasoning was to ‘sigh into the pot,’ flavoring its golden droplets with two thousand years of Jewish hopes and dreams.”
— Munchies’ BBQ Road Trip Part Two is here (part one was London) and this time they visited Tennessee, going Nashville to Memphis. At Scott’s Parker’s (think: Ruth’s Chris) in Lexington, the host meets Zach Parker who is still cooking whole hog, a 23-24 hour process.
“That’s what my dad strived on. And I do a lot of things based on the way he would do them. He tried to keep it old-fashioned. That’s what this area grew up on. And that’s the way I want to keep it. If I had to quit doing whole hogs, I’d quit in general. It’s whole hog or nothing. It’s not a job to me. It’s an art. I get to pour all of my love and heart and blood and sweat into it.”
— Bill Murray, Sean Brock, and Anthony Bourdain sit down at Husk in Charleston, and Bill Murray apparently likes CHS so much, “the standard of food here is so high,” he doesn’t want anybody else to move there.
Complete aside, though, the presentation of the last dish in this clip — with the server touching half the meat with his hand — needs to be thoroughly reworked.
A big deal was made of Bourdain’s new appreciation of Waffle House. What I thought more interesting was that Sean Brock mentioned he was obsessed with Waffle House as a child because it was the only place at which he could actually see people cook, how the atmosphere of it all really helped him fall in love with cooking.
When I was old enough to think seriously about what kind of man I wanted to marry, what character traits and so on, I knew I wanted someone who could recite Maimonides’ Eight Levels of Charity as well as the entire heirarchy of ordering hashbrowns at WH: scattered, smothered, covered…
At the end of the WH segment, Sean says, “you don’t come here expecting The French Laundry. You come here expecting something *amazing*.”
To which, Bourdain answers (mouthful of pecan waffle): “This is better than French Laundry, man.”
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— I found out that next month I’m going to an event with Sara McDaris of Grunches and Grins which ran on Alabama Public Television from the mid-70s to mid-90s. This intro was my 3-year-old jam:
I wanted Miss Sara and Mister Rogers to get married.
Bless Mrs. Sanders in Hartsville, South Carolina for the etiquette class she gives at the high school there, from the NYT:
First period Monday morning this week was no different. Desks had been pushed together to make tables. Her family silver, including her late mother’s silver goblets in the Francis I pattern, was laid out in proper formation. Place cards were read. Napkins fluttered to laps. The 29 students spent the next hour eating turkey and making polite conversation.
“It’s a lost art we must carry on,” Mrs. Sanders said as she made last-minute adjustments to butter knives and plate chargers. “There’s got to be civility.”
— The Advertiser reports that 39 of the first Acadians, who were buried from July to November 1765 along along the Bayou Teche (now Loreauville) will be exhumed as part of the New Acadia Project, a ‘multidisciplinary research effort designed to systematically locate, identify and investigate the 18th century homesteads and unmarked gravesites of Acadian exiles — the first Cajuns.’
Yahoo Travel decided to tackle who made the best pie in each state, and for Alabama, Pie Lab was chosen. Shugaree’s in New Albany (and their pretty chocolate meringue) won Mississippi.
“I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force,” Faulkner wrote later. “Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first words, I knew what the last word would be. … Before I began I said I am going to write a book by which, at a pinch, I can stand or fall if I never touch ink again.”
— //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js My refrigerator right now: That Green Sauce from HEB. BTW, yes all those things are on a lazy susan, and yes one day I will license the idea to some huge appliance company and make a zillion dollors because yes, it is a great idea (and I’m sure a zillion other people are doing it too!)
And GLO-ree Hallelujah, HEB is shipping online orders! That means my Texas-shaped chips, Whataburger ketchup, and ‘That Green Sauce’ (oooooh the green sauce) is a click away. YESSSSS. Now if Buc-ee’s would just send me some fresh Beaver Nuggets…
STANDOUT SHOW. BLW/JW: We once curated a show here in the gallery of the late blind sculptor Hawkins Borden of Memphis, Tennessee. We draped the gallery with black plastic to create total darkness, filled the space with Bolden’s haunting masks composed of hole-pierced pan sculptures and allowed people to feel the sculptures before seeing them.
ON THE IMMORTAL BEAT WRITER WILLIAM BURROUGHS. BLW/JW: Yes, we first did an exhibit of William Burroughs’ artwork in 1994 as our inaugural exhibition in our current building … William’s paintings and Bill Daniel’s photos of train-car graffiti. We met William and asked him what he thought of having a show in Waxahachie, Texas. He said, “It’s as good a place as any.”
— A short film called ‘Central Texas Barbecue’ was published on Vimeo this week, featuring Kreuz, Louie Miller, Davis Grocery, Taylor, and Black’s.
“…our family, we say barbecue, but that’s family, that’s what that means. And for someone who’s not from around here may kinda, that’s kinda weird, put religion, politics, and barbecue up there, but barbecue’s family, I mean everyone knows that.”
Bruns uses a wooden rake to gather finished salt crystals into a pile. Her company will produce about 10,000 pounds this year to be dried, sorted, put in small jars and shipped out to top restaurants like The French Laundry in northern California, Husk in Charleston, S.C., and Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore.
“I think of salt as like wine, so the minerality of our salt is different from the minerality of any other salt, kind of like a pinot noir grown in California is different from a pinot noir grown in France. Could be exactly the same vine but because of the earth that it’s grown in it gives you a different flavor,” Bruns says.
At Ninfa’s on Navigation (the original and the best)
When is Tex-Mex No Longer Tex-Mex: Could the answer lie in a puddle of chili gravy? at Houstonia:
And it occurred to me then: could good chili gravy be the lynchpin of “real” Tex-Mex? I scanned my memories for all the terrible Tex-Mex meals past, eaten in places like Rochester, New York and Manchester, England. What did all of those meals have in common? A distinct lack of chili gravy.
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