Deep Fried Kudzu

Monteleone Parking Garage
New Orleans LA, 2017.

As always, all images unless otherwise noted copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Like to use one elsewhere? Kindly contact me here.

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Of Karen Freidt’s (Newport News, Virginia) gorgeous pies, via the Daily Press:

(Anna) Sui printed out pictures of the pie and tacked it on her inspiration board and developed a clothing line called “Heartland.” Sui tracked Freidt down and asked if she could use one of her desserts as part of her fashion show. On Sept. 15, Sui’s virtual New York Fashion Week debuted, and one of Freidt’s pies made a grand appearance within the opening seconds.

Karen’s website / her instagram

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Poe’s room at the University of Virginia, taken 2019

One may access the contents of volumes of the Southern Literary Messenger via the University of Michigan (Poe was at one time an editor and contributor).

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nostalgia this week, esp after they were made on the first Great British Baking Show of the new season

At Chowhound, an excerpt from Kelly Fields’ new The Good Book of Southern Cooking: A Revival of Biscuits, Cakes, and Cornbread, and her recipe for upside down cake

“Here’s the thing about upside-down cakes, y’all: there are no rules beyond caramel + fruit + cake batter = upside down cake. Experiment with the fruit you love that’s in season and think beyond pineapple (even though I do love pineapple)…I won’t tell you an exact amount of fruit to add because it depends on the actual fruit, the season, and your personal taste. The important part is to ensure the cake has a single, even layer of fruit.”

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my Lisa Kesler letterpress poster, with a quote from TKAM

In Two Texans Were Critical to bringing us To Kill A Mockingbird at the Dallas Morning News:

Nelle Lee, as she was known then, had dropped out of the University of Alabama in order to pursue her writing career, but at 30, she didn’t have much to show for it, and she had to walk around the block a few times to get up the courage to go inside. Once there, she left a stack of pages with the receptionist, mentioning that she was a childhood friend of Truman Capote and that some mutual friends had told her to come by the agency, which had a reputation for being kind to literary southerners.

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A glorious Elijah Pierce exhibit at the Barnes Foundation brings us temptation, salvation, grace at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Pierce was born on a farm near Baldwyn, Miss., in 1892, the son of a formerly enslaved father. As a boy he began carving pictures on trees, and later he learned to cut hair to support himself. He left the farm and spent several years moving from place to place before he ended up in 1923 in Columbus, Ohio, where he spent most of his career.

He worked in barbershops, toured as a preacher, and died in 1984 as one of the country’s most celebrated self-taught artists.

From WHYY’s piece on the exhibit:

“He’s a storyteller,” said Ireson. “Because he was a preacher he had a real sense of how to hold an audience, how to get people to listen. There’s a performative aspect to the pieces. He had a talent for getting the right story and communicating it in a way that hits a nerve.”

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wish we’d been able to do our usual beach Rosh Hashanah, with supper at Jackson’s in Pensacola (this pic of Shug, starting the holiday with apples and honey, 2017)

Emma Specter at Vogue: My Jewish Holiday Plans this Year? Nora Ephron Movies and Smoked Fish, for One

A devoted You’ve Got Mail fan friend of mine pointed out that I had chosen “the most Christian movie in history” for my solitary Rosh Hashanah viewing party, and she wasn’t wrong—between the heavy Christmas theme and Meg Ryan’s perky blonde shag, the film certainly skews gentile. Nonetheless, I maintain that any film Nora Ephron wrote, directed, produced, or was in any way involved with is inherently a Jewish text on par with Chaim Potok.

True dat! The television in my office plays YGM at *least* a couple of times a week — I mean, what a perfect, perfect movie. Also: I have to mention Nora pre-planned her funeral to tha max, including the guest list, and having her recipes in the pamphlets. In the cookbook she had put together but never sold, the LA Times explains:

She insists that homemade pastry dough is a waste of time: “Don’t ever make piecrust. Just buy it.” Other recipes call for B&M canned beans, Heinz chili sauce and way too much mayonnaise.

Some introductions read like legal disclaimers, revealing the author’s ambitions (or lack thereof). For a complicated recipe for chocolate buttercream icing, Ephron writes: “I have never made it and I never will. But I have eaten it and it’s great.”

PS: the world needs more Meg Ryan + Tom Hanks movies.

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the staircase at Square Books in Oxford, 2017

The NYT’s list of 17 New Books to Watch for in October include The Dead are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck, and Red Comet: the Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath. Those are Amazon links, but the nice people at Square Books in Oxford can get these to you too.

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Blue Ridge Parkway with rainstorm in the distance, 2019

Under Appalachian Tree Canopy, Forest Farming Enjoys a Revival at Whetstone

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Ernest Tubb Record Shop, Nashville, 2018

Harry Smith’s Musical Catalogue of Human Experience at the New Yorker:

Within those categories, Smith relished the juxtaposition of regional styles. A single LP might contain an Acadian one-step, a Delta blues, a lonesome Appalachian ballad, and a Sacred Harp hymn. Each of the three sleeves was printed in a different color and featured a drawing of a celestial monochord—a single-stringed dulcimer, tuned by the hand of God—taken from “De Musica Mundana,” a book by the Elizabethan alchemist Robert Fludd, from 1618.

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Super random:

What if there were a Gehry x Hennessey collab? It would look like this. And Yayoi Kusama x Veuve Clicquot? This.

Sounds of the Forest

How I buy wine: “oh, that’s a pretty label! Come on home.” but here’s how to really read a label from the NYT.

At The Guardian: Are We Nearly There Yet? Take a 1980s Road Trip Down the A1 — in pictures

This: “I used to work at a shelter magazine dedicated to architect-designed homes for wealthy people. I’d estimate that half of the kitchens in those homes disguised Ikea cabinet boxes with custom door and drawer fronts.”

Thinking that the mix of architecture styles at ‘The Cottages at Symphony Grove’ — one of the WDW Resort planned communities is something like “let’s just do one of everything” hi, I mentioned this was the super random section

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Willie Mae’s, 2012

Willie Mae’s Scotch House is making fried chicken sandwiches — and in a partnership, they’re on the menu at HiHo in LA.

The sandwich, served with housemade HiHo pickles on a brioche bun, features a deconstructed slaw that adds nice acidity while preserving the crunch of the batter. There’s also a hit of sweetness from organic honey. And while the chicken has a little kick from cayenne pepper, this is not a spicy sandwich.

and

“I’m just grateful for anybody that comes,” she continued. “Every guest, every order big or small, I love it all. As long as they want some Willie Mae’s and they miss us and are thinking about us, I’m happy. I feel like we have our brand and when things get back to normal, we’ll be OK. We’re OK now. We’ll be OK then.”

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Very happy to find this little sunflower field going strong this past week in Baileyton, Alabama. xoxo, friends!

Electro Music
Greenville AL, 2017.

Man with ripped jeans riding horse
Magazine Street
New Orleans LA, 2017.

Jackson Lounge
Must Be 21 To Enter
No Weapons!
No
F
I
G
H
T
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N
G
Hermanville MS, 2017.

Eldorado
Birmingham AL, 2017.

As always, all images unless otherwise noted copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Like to use one elsewhere? Kindly contact me here. 

’tis the season

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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”.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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Great time with the fam at Rickwood Caverns

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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’.

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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!

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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.

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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?

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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

 

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The Story of ‘2 Quarter George‘ New Orleans Draughtsman from Scalawag.

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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.”

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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.

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The Jasper Mall doc is on Amazon Prime right now.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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Super random:

a squirrel got into my house. What?

This is perfect

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.

NYTHaikus

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

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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.

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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.

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…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 😂

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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.

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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!

Dream the Unthinkable mural
Birmingham AL, 2017.

St Andrews Episcopal Church
Built 1853
Prairieville AL, 2017