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.
Space One Eleven has a very sweeet spot in our hearts, and they *always* have the most interesting windows in Birmingham — really compelling art.
On September 11, their “The Infanttree Project” opened, and the exhibit will be up through March 2016. It includes this piece by Larry Thompson, a professor at Samford:
As for the pies, they had spiced pumpkin, I-40, cranberry walnut, southern buttermilk, caramel, chocolate meringue, pecan, chocolate meringue, coconut creme, and granny’s apple. And I think there were even more than that: //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
Full pies are $26 but they also have small pies, four for $16. We got one for each of us: pecan, buttermilk, chocolate meringue, and caramel. The chocolate was too pudding-y and not sweet enough, and the others were okay but not the delicious we were really looking for (the crusts look somewhat underbaked and were soggy, none of the fillings truly flavorful and satisfying). It sounds as though we should have tried the I-40 which is a big favorite — it has chocolate, coconut, and pecans. It’s clever and cute, though, how each different flavor has its own unique meringue treatment to help identify.
I like to look for inspiration in flavors so in my head I totally couched this as a way to research for the big bake coming up. For the last…maybe dozen or so years, I’ve made between 25 to 30 pies for a church that feeds a large part of its community each Thanksgiving and Easter (as long as Easter doesn’t fall during Passover).
Have to admit, after a full day of making pies, taking a picture of the finished product is really satisfying. And more satisfying is when Av and the boys go to deliver them and send me pics of them setting up (because at that point, I’m thinking of the idea of a tidy kitchen…and then an hour-or-so combo of Netflix + couch).
— In North Carolina, the News and Observer has a story about a woman who started baking pies once her son was deployed to Iraq in 2005 — she prayed and baked, prayed and baked. Now her pies are in gourmet shops in Raleigh and even Dean and Deluca. And her most popular fall flavors: apple caramel crumble, pumpkin with pecan streusel, maple walnut, Mayan chocolate pecan, pear cranberry custard, and red velvet custard.
The pie in question is Four and Twenty’s estimable Salty Honey, a delicious variation on a chess pie…
Once Smith gets his hands on the pie, he drizzles it with hot fudge and sprinkles it with sea salt, then mounds approximately three pints of his Nonna D’s brown-sugar-cinnamon-and-oatmeal-lace-cookie ice cream on top of it. That’s not all: There’s another coating of hot fudge and a crumbling of Ample Hills’ patented Crack Cookies over the ice cream, because why not?
— And: The Great British Bake Off from the BBC (via PBS, and Amazon Prime) is the best show on television right now. The contestants are smart and lovable, and there are no hateful comments or swipes. Now that sounds goooood.
Birmingham, Alabama A six-foot spinning dreidel, a Krispy Kreme–themed “Hot Sufganiyot Now” sign, a larger-than-life menorah—it’s all part of the outdoor extravaganza at the “Chanukah House,” a privately owned Birmingham residence. Check it out on your own or during the Wacky Tacky Christmas Lights Tour presented by Fresh Air Family, which takes place December 15 and 16. freshairfamily.org
“Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe’s wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes.” He sees that as stemming from the “fierce localism” that is a part of Southern culture. During my visit to North Carolina, he showed me a map that he sometimes displays while giving speeches; it depicts “The Balkans of Barbecue.”
and more to the point: …the pledge posted on its Web site, TrueCue.org, says, among other things, “I will not eat meat cooked only with gas or electricity and mislabeled ‘barbecue,’ except when courtesy requires it.” In Dan Levine’s view, “There’s a continuum. We’re not fanatics. We just think there’s one right way to do things. Otherwise, it’s just oven-roasted pork.”
— From the C-L — Mold Threatened Faulkner Manuscripts: Mold has threatened some of the University of Mississippi’s most precious possessions — William Faulkner’s original manuscript materials and B.B. King’s personal listening collection.
On Aug. 18, university officials shut down the J.D. Williams Library, where mold had already infected archived volumes of historical manuscripts, newspapers, logbooks and literature.
“Fortunately we’ve not lost any materials,” said Julia Rholes, professor and dean of University of Mississippi Libraries. “Luckily, we caught it early, but not as early as we would like.”
Florence Falk, who hosted The Farmer’s Wife, gave her audience a taste of farm life by narrating the scenes she spotted through her dining room window and sharing dishes inspired by her Swedish heritage. Adella Shoemaker drew listeners in for a “visit” to her sunroom, reveling in the freedom that the new medium of radio gave her. Birkby says that Shoemaker loved the idea that she could move from kitchen to microphone, appearing before her fans even in an apron splattered with the day’s canning. And after a car accident put Leanna Driftmier in a wheelchair, she hosted her popular Kitchen-Klatter from the mini-studio that KMA set up in her house. There, she dished up recipes for Midwestern staples like meatloaf and angel food cake.
Friends in tourism, tradition: let’s make southern-centric emojis like Finland is doing. Told some Mississippi friends we could do hot tamale, juke joint emojis (I have another hundred ideas). Yesssss.
— Curbed veers off from house-love to this piece on a mind-blowing monument to “one of the 200 white supremacists who rode into the town of Hamburg in 1876, capturing 25 to 30 people and executing six of them” …whaaa???:
“In memory of THOMAS McKIE MERIWETHER,” it reads, “Who on 8th of July 1876, gave his life that the civilization builded by his fathers might be preserved for their children’s children unimpaired. In life he exemplified the highest ideal of Anglo-Saxon civilization.” — From the Houston Chronicle: The accidental pitmaster: Leona ‘Granny’ Ginn and Houston barbecue in the 1930s:
Whatever the cause of the accident, Leona Ginn found herself the single mother of seven children during the depths of the Great Depression. How would she support her family?
The answer can be found in the 1934 Houston City Directory that lists “Leona Ginn (widow Jesse), Green Hut Café, 1805 E. Quitman St.”
— Paste Magazine with The 14 Best Books About Food That You (Probably) Haven’t Read. — And Andy Bourdain goes to Charleston, talks about how above all things, he discovered the fabulousness that is Waffle House. “Talk about exotica…I had never been.”
— The Southern Lit Alliance in Chattanooga starts their ‘South-Bound: Distinguished Lectures’ with Rick Bragg on January 21 which will include a So Lit Dinner at Easy Bistro for those with VIP tickets. See you there?
The most disappointing facet of Z is its dialogue, which is gratingly anachronistic and delivered in a Southern drawl (“That’s why last night was so fun!” Zelda whispers, sounding like she is in an episode of Girls: Alabama). One of the joys of Jazz Age or pre-Jazz Age life was its unique slang, the kind that seems dated now (“tight” meant drunk, and so on). Reading an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, even a dark one, is fun partly because of the hip, poetic way his characters talk. I wish we could see more of this in Z — and frankly, I don’t understand why so many period dramas feel compelled to make their characters talk like they are on a contemporary teen soap (even Mad Men was occasionally guilty of this). Do they think viewers are so simple-minded that we can’t deal with an occasional linguistic throwback?
Note to Flavorwire on just the first point: Zelda grew up in Montgomery, so she likely had an accent (unless you’re saying the actress is doing one of those terrible fake put-ons and then, well, okay.)
and When in the South, talk like a Southerner from the Washigton Post’s advice columnist regarding how to teach children to address adults: Mr./Mrs./Miss Lastname or Mr./Miss Firstname. As for us, we live in a neighborhood with Miss Ann and Miss Betty.
The designer, Trey Ganem, says one of his favorites was for Percy Sledge. Oh, and Trey has patented putting cow hide on a casket. So if that’s in your plans, Trey’s your (only) source.
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Yes they did: Dickey’s Barbecue put forth a press release to try to put everyone’s mind at ease in regards to eating there in the wake of the WHO statement on the dangers of eating red meat.
Great news: 88.5 WFDD, the public radio station licensed to Wake Forest University, is partnering with former 88.5 WFDD news director and NPR newscaster Paul Brown to re-launch “Across the Blue Ridge,” a program created by Brown at WFDD in the late 1980s. “Across the Blue Ridge” tells some of America’s most fascinating stories through the lens of Appalachian music and cultural history. It focuses on the southern Blue Ridge region known as a hotbed of old-time, bluegrass, blues, and country music. The show previously ran on WFDD for more than a decade until Brown left WFDD for NPR in Washington, DC.
Sheep are chomping the kudzu at Georgia Tech. And the AJC asks:
But wait. Shouldn’t the smart folks over at Tech have a better way of dealing with the invasive plant?
Nope.
“This is not only an effective means of removing pervasive vegetation in an area that is hard to reach, but it doesn’t require the application of pesticides, making it very eco-friendly,” said Anne Boykin-Smith, master planner for Tech’s Capital Planning and Space Management department. “We are looking at other areas on campus that would benefit from this sustainable solution, especially as we continue to develop the campus eco-commons.”
Between 1886, when the first American suffragist cookbook was published, and 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted women the right to vote, there were at least a half-dozen cookbooks published by suffragette associations in the country.
These books were the descendants of the post-Civil War charity cookbooks, published to raise funds for war victims and church-related issues.
The suffrage cookbooks came garnished with propaganda for the Great Cause: the fight for getting women the right to vote. Recipes ranged from basic guidelines on brewing tea and boiling rice, to epicurean ones for Almond Parfait and the ever-popular Lady Baltimore Cake, a layered Southern confection draped in boiled meringue frosting.
— The AJC gave The Southern Gentleman 0 of 4 stars:
On my most recent evening at the Southern Gentleman, I happened to overhear the discussion of a couple, recently arrived from a Yankee state, in town to sample our region’s cuisine.
I wanted to send them an urgent telegram across the bar: “Kind Sir and Madam, Please do not believe that our fair city has only this to offer. Please consult with our more seasoned Southern chefs…”
It’s a question that has weighed on Tipton-Martin for years, as she pored over hundreds of African-American cookbooks to write ‘‘The Jemima Code.’’ She got to speak to Lewis at a food writer’s event and, while still in awe of her, steeled herself to tell her that she was not the only one. ‘‘I told her that I wanted to tell the world that there were more women like her than just her,’’ she said. A while later, Lewis sent her a letter, written on the same kind of yellow legal pad that she used to write ‘‘The Taste of Country Cooking.’’ ‘‘Leave no stone unturned to prove this point,’’ she wrote. ‘‘Make sure that you do.’’
Two such museums are breaking ground, starting next year. First up is the National Blues Museum in St. Louis, a 23,000-square-foot facility of mostly exhibition space that will open in early 2016. In late 2017, the Chicago Blues Experience (CBE), a multi-use facility encompassing nearly 56,000 square feet, will introduce visitors to how the blues developed from the Great Migration of African Americans from the deep South to Chicago. It will be housed downtown at Navy Pier. —
I lost a shoe to fire ants when taking this picture.
Owner/Chef Mimi Maumus of home.made in Athens, has her recipe for pickled magnolia petals in the NYT T Magazine, and mentions at her site that she makes ‘Sewanee bites: cheese straws sandwiched with pimiento cheese, rolled in Georgia pecans’.
In Atlanta, we simultaneously took care of deli cravings and came to see poutine in a new light. //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js Turns out, poutine loves chopped pastrami.
The General Muir in Atlanta took us in and, well, we’re ready to go back for more of all of it.
When I make it at home, I leave some pieces more intact to give it a variety of texture, but this way — the texture of softened butter — just terrific.
and that poutine, yes. Yes-yes. Fries, cheese, gravy, and those perfect pastrami chunks. Messy and gooey and the right about of chewy and dark and smokey. //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
Managing editor Jennifer Jameson, folk and traditional arts director for the MAC, said her goal is to move beyond “inward conversation among scholars” and focus on the stories of emerging traditions.
That includes, she said, “even a small group that is of particular interest, whether that is a group of Vietnamese fishermen on the Coast or quilters in Port Gibson or more emergent traditions in urban settings; things like graffiti are just as much traditional art forms passed down informally as quilting is.”
…“(Mississippi) is a state that is impoverished in many things but is deeply wealthy in culture, tradition and stories,” said Rankin, who is now the director of experimental documentary arts at Duke University.
“Folklife is anywhere, but Mississippi has a particular hold on traditional culture in this country in part because it is the origin of so much — music, issues of race and cultures of the Deep South have developed such storytelling traditions.”
“I was terribly upset a few years ago when they had a poll and they announced that Oprah Winfrey was the most famous personality of all times … that’s just not true. She will never eclipse Elvis. There are people in the Outback who know who Elvis is and don’t know who Oprah is. That upset me. Someone said Elvis, Coca-Cola and Jesus were the most three recognized images ever. I think I agree with that.” .
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