Deep Fried Kudzu

Pimento cheese atop blackberry jam atop sliced buttered & toasted baguette slice…

This version of pc I made was studded with little pieces of pecan:

Yes.

A William Edmondson angel with cape sold at Sotheby’s last month for $98,500.  The self-taught artist from Tennessee was mentioned in the auction catalogue notes: Edmondson was the first African American self-taught artist given a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1937. A New Yorker reviewer acknowledged the “surprising amount of weight and power” of the work but went on to write, “The figures are not decorative enough to be attractive to many, nor have they really enough emotional or intellectual content to be of lasting interest, and it is likely that after the show closes, on December 1st they and Mr. Edmondson will soon be forgotten.” More than seventy years later, that reviewer was proved wrong. The museum establishment has recognized Edmondson as one of the most important self-taught artists of the twentieth century.”


I’ll be in Nashville later this month and will post more pics of some of his other work.

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This Walker Evans photograph of a country store around Moundville sold at Sotheby’s at $8750 this month, within the estimate.

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The B’ham News reported that, “Grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts are down 25 percent in the round of awards announced Sept. 16 in Guntersville.”

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Fallingwater is 75 years old and has undergone serious structural repairs over time.  The AIA put together a nice site celebrating the structure, and FLW.  A copper urn designed by FLW sold for $772k at auction this week.

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Love, love, love, love this by Chipotle, with Willie Nelson singing.

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The photo at the top of this NYT article about how delicious chicken skin is…

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Doyle New York will be auctioning the Arthur Rothstein photograph collection on October 13, which includes many of his photographs from Gee’s Bend, like this one:

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Why the Oyster has the Pearl, a children’s book that my friend Bethanne Hill illustrated, has just been released by Pelican.

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The National Storytelling Festival is this weekend in Jonesborough, Tennessee.  I was contacted by someone there who asked if they could use one of my pics of a bottle tree, if they couldn’t secure one of Kathryn Tucker Windham with one for a printed memorial to her (I agreed, of course).  Thankfully, I think Dilcy found a pic of her mom with a bottle tree, so that’s what they were able to run.  Tada!  They’re also going to have a bottle tree there at the festival for people to leave their memories of her.  Very, very nice.

Sirius is going to air audio from the festival on their channel 145 from Oct 21-23.

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East Tennessee State University is offering a Master of Arts in Storytelling.

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A million thanks to my friend Larry Harris for this link to SPOT’s 1991 journal on art environments.

I made a traditional kugel for Rosh Hashanah (above is a pic I made with regular raisins) but used pomegranate-flavored dried cranberries instead this year.  Whereas I thought I was going to get extra points for using poms in a different way this year — plus pomegranates are a customary food of RH — I noticed when I took the plates back to the kitchen that everyone but me had picked them out.  Okay!  So unless your family likes the idea of it, it might be better to stick with golden or regular raisins.  It was pretty, though:

Kugels can go sweet or savory.  I think what people immediately associate with kugel are those wide egg noodles, but if I remember correctly, Joan Nathan has a recipe for Jerusalem kugel where she uses spaghetti noodles, caramel, and a bundt pan!  Savory kugels, like carrot or potato, sometimes omit the noodles altogether and they turn into souffles somewhat.  I like them best when they’re not particularly dense, and this recipe makes a sweet kugel that is very nice:

1 pound wide egg noodles
8 eggs
sugar: I’ve made this with 1/2 cup sugar and it’s nice, and I’ve used 2c. for very sweet, dessert-type
2 sticks butter, melted
16 oz. large curd cottage cheese
optional: raisins, cinnamon, vanilla, dried berries

Preheat the oven to 350*.  Boil the noodles about 2/3 of the time on the package (you still want them to have some texture in the finished product), then drain.  Mix together all ingredients, and add the noodles.  Pour into a buttered casserole dish.  Bake 50-60 minutes or until kugel is set and it has those lovely browned noodles on top.

Maybe next year instead of pomegranate-flavored cranberries, I’ll serve a cranberry cocktail and everyone will be verrry pleased with that!  Me too!

The $20k House project that Auburn’s Rural Studio works on is genius.  In fact, if I had to do college over again, I’d give up my BBA and BS degrees for either a Master’s in Southern Studies at Ole Miss, or I’d have studied under Sambo Mockbee at Auburn and done the Rural Studio program and graduated in architecture. The idea that these students are making livable, respectable, responsible structures for $20k…

I often look at these and think what a great lake house or vacation cabin these would be for people who would never otherwise have any interest in these homes too.

Architect Magazine had a nice piece last month about Sambo.  This is an article about the new Rural Studio Revolution and Rural Studio Farm, a project in which students have a 100 sq ft greenhouse and will farm to feed 40 of them three times a week.  Scott Peacock, who is going around Alabama collecting stories and memories of food from elderly residents, visited the farm this summer.  (BTW, Scott’s memoir about living and working with Edna Lewis is supposed to be out next year, and his cookbook, Scott Peacock’s Alabama Kitchen, will be out in 2013).

MIT is working on an overseas prototype called the Pinwheel House that could be built for $1000, and another version for Japan for $10,000.  Images and text here.

Late last week, the B’ham News had an article about how a couple of unidentified female artists had painted sections of plywood around the boarded-up Leer Tower, what used to be known as the Cabana Hotel and the Thomas Jefferson Hotel.  So of course I had to go see.

The pyramid-shaped structure on top of the building is a tie-down (mooring mast) for blimps.  Well, the building was completed in 1929, so…

The most interesting piece was this one:

There were/are plans to rehab the building; it looks like this inside (amazing.).  More pics here, here, and here.

We wish the world a happy birthday (this is from two years ago):

May you enjoy a New Year of love, health, prosperity, happiness, and comfort!