Roll Tide National Champs

Yes, my team, The Alabama Crimson Tide are the National Champions.  That means there are just about 10 1/2 months before we start to worry about Auburn.

There was steak, because since our loss to Ole Miss, I have been cooking steaks outside, so due to paranoid superstition, the game day meal had to be the same.  I have a great ajvar sauce that I use for potatoes, a kind of red pepper ketchup.  I was at the end of the bottle, so it ended up looking a bit too Jackson Pollack in the picture, but it is the superstition, not the sauce that mattered.

Both Teddy,

and Trick took turns wearing the Nick Saban hat. It was actually a Christmas tree ornament from their auntie Beverly.

Not only was I adorned in my game day shirt, also from Beverly, but I wore my favorite elephant hat. Not everyone has a favorite elephant hat.  And lest we forget, this was my living room, not the Golden Globes.  However, had I walked that red carpet in my lovely elephant hat, I'm sure I would have been on many a Best-Dressed List.

And now on to break the Bear's record.  Roll Tide.

November 30th

This is my November 30th post.  Yes, it is a bit late.  I could tell you about the inclement weather and power outages, but my guess is a bit of old-fashioned laziness!  My bad.  But the power did go out!  Anyway...

November 30 has two odd, but cool anniversaries.  Both events should have been windfalls for the people involved, but as fate often has it, both individuals died broke. 

On November 30, 1858, John Landis Mason invented the Mason jar.  Well, technically, he invented a jar with external screw threads that allowed for a metal lid with a hermetic seal to be screwed onto the jar.  This make canning much more safe and accessible.  If it had not been for Mason, no one in Brooklyn would have anything to drink out of, not to mention all those canning blogs that would have to fold! 

I am sure you get at least one link a day on Facebook telling you all the nifty ways one might use a Mason jar. ( FUN FACT:  All Ball jars are Mason jars, but not all Mason jars are Ball jars. ) Still, John Landis Mason died broke.  His patent expired in 1879 and and he expired in 1902.  Sad but true.

On November 30, 1954, Ann Hodges became the first and only person ever hit by a meteorite. ( Well, maybe there was a kid in Africa, but we like "first and only" better and we have never seen his bruise.) I am rather fond of this story because it occurred in Sylacauga, Alabama, my sort of hometown.  I often drove past the actual house where the meteorite crashed through the roof. 

So this particular day in 1954, Ann Hodges was napping on the sofa when she heard a crashing noise, the meteorite came through the roof, destroyed the radio and hit Hodges, leaving the enormous bruise; after all the space chunk was a good 8 pounds!  After much Cold War paranoia,  the rock was returned to Hodges, who could have sold it for big bucks...but there was a glitch. She rented the house and the owner claimed the rock was hers.  So they fought over it until no one wanted it.  Hodges ended up giving it to a museum and then having a nervous breakdown, leading to and early death.

Needless to say, this was about the biggest thing that ever happened to Sylacauga... until Jim Neighbors became Gomer Pyle!

The moral of this story is:  if you get hit be a meteorite and you are a renter, share the wealth!

Roll Tide Bruschette

(We would like to take this opportunity to reflect upon those readers who don't care about football.  We are sorry, but for the next few months, you will have to endure many a post about the SEC.  Mostly on Saturdays.  You have been warned.)

Today is the first Alabama game.  A bit saddened that is against West Virginia, as EVERYONE I met today has on their yellow and blue.  I laid low, only changing into the BAMA shirt when I got home.

Last night I started cooking some beef cheeks for the game.  I used a winter chocolate spice blend, then braised them in beer  for 14 hours and we are pretty excited dig in.  We harvested our crop of Mexican cucumbers and we are going all in cucumber on the gin and soda.  Cucumber gin, cucumber soda, and a cucumber garnish.

Pre-game snacks include our Roll Tide Bruschette. 

This is a more upscale homage to 5 or 7 or 9-layer dip and chips.  I admit it, I was that kid who didn't want their food to touch! So layered dip is a bit problematic.  While I like the idea, I have to admit that after the first few chips, it starts to look like the bottom of my compost bucket.

So gearing up for football season, we got some University of Alabama jello molds.  No jello here, we made a spicy aspic.  (An aside about molds...They never actually look as good as they do on the "artists" rendering on the package.  One would be hard pressed to actually read the lettering on the University of Alabama mold, though the "A" does last for a brief second.   As for the elephant, he is there if you have a bold imagination.  but now that I have told you what you are looking at....)

 

We went very simple and small.  We put our layers in very tiny ramekins to avoid the overt mess.  Here's what we did.

One thin layer of goat cheese, thinned with a bit of milk.

One layer of herbs and scallions, finely chopped.

One layer of avocado.

A final layer of the goat cheese.

An aspic topper.

We toasted some slices of bread and dug in.

 Almost game time...Roll Tide.

People We Never Knew, But Wish We Had

The cool thing about having a blog is the ability to reach people, who live in cities, towns, hamlets, and godforsaken hell holes, who share your interests.  Yes, there are always people in New York City who are cool and cutting edge and share your interests, but really, if you live in NYC it is kind of a requirement.  Those people just love to pat themselves on the back for beings so hip and "withit' but truth be told, there are way-cool people in every corner of the universe. 

Unfortunately, we don't always hear about them until it is too late.   Take June Fore Shaw.  Here is a woman we wanted to party with.  All those years she was just up the road in Birmingham, a fellow Pisces, a Yellow Dog Democrat right there, just ready for us to meet and we never did.

Here is her obituary:

JUNE FORE SHAW, MD

On July 15, Dr. June Fore Shaw of Birmingham ended her lifelong fight against conventionality. Her loved ones are fairly certain of two things: she was ready, keys in hand, the night before, and, that when she screeched up to her final destination in her royal blue Porsche, she demanded to speak to the woman in charge.

June was born in 1930 to Wilna Hicks Fore and Claude Harvel Fore, police chief of Montevallo and later sheriff of Shelby County. As a child, she and her brother loved to hang around the county jail in Columbiana for "fun." As a teenager, she adopted dungarees as her all-time favorite apparel. When she eloped at the age of 16 with a local young man nearly a decade older, her parents were downright distraught. That first marriage, like numbers two and three, didn't last long, but it did produce one adored daughter.

As a determined single mother, she enlisted her parents in the care of her toddler and enrolled in college. She then astounded them by declaring her intentions of becoming a physician, going on to graduate from the University of Alabama College of Medicine in 1960--with only a handful of other women--and completing residencies in both clinical and anatomical pathology. At the height of her career, publishing prolifically, she was the director of both the blood bank and the tissue-typing lab at the University of Alabama Hospitals in Birmingham and was a founder of the American Association for Clinical Histocompatibility Testing. All this, and sitting atop her desk in miniskirt and go-go boots, she lectured to med students too.

The drive that propelled June through her medical career was equaled only by her passion for what she believed in. Of course, there were her less weighty interests: her 1964 Ford Mustang and her 1970 911S; competitive tennis, through which she met her dearest friends, Della Huber and Melinda Powers; music of all kinds, but particularly the Grateful Dead; late-night games at the pool hall; and then, when she had more physical constraints, duplicate bridge. But what June most strongly cared about were justice and compassion for all humankind, and especially the rights of women and minorities in the white man's world. She was known for clearing out many a holiday table arguing impatiently over just these matters with her brother and male cousins. As an early member of NOW, a proponent of the ERA, and a self-proclaimed Yellow Dog Democrat, she would have been elated at our prospect of another chance to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Though she grew feeble after surviving a stroke and, more amazingly, pancreatic cancer, she continued to play bridge and read mysteries as long as she could. Toward the end, she lived as comfortably as she did because of the unwavering care she received at Greenbriar at the Altamont, supplemented by the special attention of her longtime friend and devoted caretaker, Alinda Miller, who had a gift for helping out when June was being her prickliest self. But for the last tender ministrations, it was New Beacon hospice nurse Josie Millican who eased her peacefully on to her next destination.

In awe of her fiercely independent and sometimes outlandish life, June leaves behind: daughter Trinket Fore Shaw (Joellyn Beckham); brother Claude Harvel Fore Jr.; niece Sharon Fore Napier and nephews Claude Fore III and Kevin Fore; cousin Lyn Wood Loyd; and a host of amazed friends and bewildered strangers with whom she crossed paths over the decades. We're certain that she would be the first to suggest that we skip the church service, throw on our jeans, and begin the eating and drinking. Please join us for that celebration on Saturday, July 26, at 11:00 a.m. at the family residence in Forest Park. June loved flowers, but would have also loved donations to your favorite nonprofit or her favorites, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and the Greater Birmingham Ministries.

Reading about Dr. Shaw, I couldn't help but think of another Pisces, Liza Minnelli.  Once upon a time, she heard a story about a woman who lived in a large apartment building in New York.  She told the story to John Kander and Fred Ebb and they turned it into a show stopping song for her review, Liza With a Z. 

The song was "Ring Them Bells."  It's about a women who can't find love in NYC, so she gathers her savings and goes on a European vacation.  In the unlikely locale of Dubrovnik, she meets the man of her dreams.  As fate would have, he had been her next door neighbor for years.




Well, I don't care that much about love, but do love a good partner-in-crime.  As Liza tells us, they might be next door, or in the grocery line, or walking their cat, or sitting alone at a cafe in Denver or Decatur or even Dubrovnik.   Introduce yourself.  Say hello.  Yes, they might think you are crazy.  Yes, they might be a serial killer.  But maybe, just maybe, they might be June Fore Shaw and think about how much more fun you life would have been if you had only known her. 

Flappers

We love the 1920's.  We love group biographies.  We loved Judith Mackrell's first biography, Bloomsbury Ballerina.  So Flappers was a no-brainer.

We have read extensive and multiple biographies of all six women Mackrell features in her book:
 Josephine Baker, Tallulah Bankhead, Diana Cooper, Nancy Cunard, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Tamara de Lempicka. Having them all in one book set specifically in the 1920's is just too fun.

The women are framed by a history of seismic shifts for women.  We could tell you about gender, race, and sexuality or we could share with you these photos.   Just one look and will want to read the book.

Josephine Baker

Diana Cooper

Nancy Cunard

Tallulah Bankhead

Tamara de Lempicka

Zelda Fitzgerald

Of course you might just know that two of these "dangerous" women were raised in Alabama.  Bless their wild little hearts.

There she is...Miss Alabama

 It is that time of the year, dear readers when you will find yourself faced with a good deal of football news.  To ease you into this, our first "football" post will actually be a fashion post as we have a very early bye week this Saturday.

Billy Reid recently conveyed the startling fact that Alabama has the third most members of the Council for Fashion Designers of America after New York and Los Angele.  Who knew.  Not to mention we have a slew of pageants.   The big one being Miss Alabama.

This year, Miss Alabama is Chandler Champion.   ( A brief aside in the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction vein.  If you were in a beginning writing class and you named your beauty queen Chandler Champion, your instructor would have you change it.)

Champion is headed to the Miss America Pageant where there will be an event called "Show Us Your Shoes."  This is kind of a throwback to the old days where each contestant wore a dress representing their state so you had corn stalk dresses and Mount Rushmore hats.  Clearly, the producers of Project Runway were big Miss America fans.

Since Champion has been at the University of Alabama during its reign as National Football Champions, it only seems right that she commemorate this feat with a big old Roll Tide dress.  Designed by Ann Northington, it is a jumpsuit with a fitted bodice and pants.   There is a full houndstooth oversized float with the Alabama Football National Championship emblem in the center. The float is designed to "hang from the back of the car in the parade."  The front panels of the float feature the ever present, "Roll Tide."

The very snarky Washington Post wrote of the dress, "Anna Wintour weeps."    Really, well ask yourself this -- Did the North London Collegiate School ever with the National Football Championship, Anna? But I digress...

As for the shoes in the Show Us Your Shoes event.  You didn't really think they would be simple, black ballet slippers.   Great use of that Belk's accessory wall.

The tiny hat pin, brooch is a homage to coach Nick Saban's favorite hat.  There is not really a good place on the jumpsuit to pin it, so she is taking it for good luck, I guess.

I am thinking this dress just might start a trend toward houndstooth as the new favorite prom dress material.  And what girl hasn't dreamt of wearing a dress that would hang from the back of the car. 

Happy Birthday Zelda

Self-Portrait by Zelda Fitzgerald

In honor of Zelda Fitzgerald's birthday, we urge you to read her one and only novel.  Regardless of what one might have been told, Save Me the Waltz is a beautiful book and well worth a read.  For a view of Zelda's paintings, check out  Zelda: An Illustrated Life: The Private World of Zelda Fitzgerald, published in 1996.  It features many of her whimsical paintings like The Mad Tea Party.

Country Living

Rarely does one pick up a magazine and read an article that features so many of one's favorite things.  Well miracles do happen.  I got the new Country Living which featured an article about a sprawling,

down on the farm party in Elkmont, Alabama.  Here are the 5 "W's" of great journalism.

WHO:  

Tasia Malakasis, one of my favorite cookbook writers and cheesemakers (Tasia's Table: Cooking With The Artisan Cheesemaker at Belle Chèvre).

WHAT:  

A big party on the farm with great food.

WHEN: 

When I opened the magazine! And shortly after the release of the self-titled CD by one of favorite bands, The Great Book of John, who happened to be part of the "WHO" at the party.

WHERE:  

In Alabama!

WHY:  

Seriously, you had to ask, "Why?"  


Somehow my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail --Damn USPS.  Still, reading about it just might be the next best thing.  Check out Malakasis' cookbook at Cookbook Of The Day.

Alabama Shakes

We are feeling rather "tunie" these days and we do love sharing our music with you. My new favorite band is Alabama Shakes. Yes, Virginia, they are from Alabama and while we might just be swayed by that fact, they are just plain great. Lead singer Brittany Howard has been compared to EVERYBODY : the short list: Janice Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Tina Turner and even Jack White. BRITTANY HOWARD. That is all you need to know.

There has been a great deal of hype about the Alabama Shakes. All of it is true. The basic story is this...

Once upon a time in Athens, Alabama...

Brittany Howard wants to start a band. She asks Zac Cockrell, who happens to be in her psychology class, but more importantly, plays bass and wears cool band t-shirts, if he wants to write songs.

Over at the music store, the only music store in Athens, Alabama, Steve Johnson plays drums and Howard invites him along for the ride. They record some songs and Heath Fogg, who plays guitar and was in the coolest band ever to come out of Athens, Alabama (this statement is no longer true.) asks the trio to open for his band. They said sure if you will play with us.

And...

The rest is history.



Buy Boys and Girls. It will be your go to CD for summer fun.

A "Cheesy" Christmas Idea

Give a friend a log of goat cheese and they have a nice appetizer.

Give them a share of Belle Cheve from Kickstater and they have a share in Belle Cheve.

Belle Cheve is a fromagerie in Elkmont, Alabama. The original owner wanted a nice French goat cheese and got herself some goats and the rest is history. Well, actually, the story takes its modern turn away from Alabama. It seems that Tasia Malakasis stumbled across some Belle Cheve in New York City where she found herself transplanted from Alabama. She was so impressed with cheese that she decided she wanted to return to Alabama and make cheese.

This is the point in the story that everyone has from time to time. That, "Hey, I'm going to quite my job and start a food company on a farm a thousand miles from where I am now and all will be fine" moment that most people have and quickly forget about. Malakasis refused to forget. She called Belle Cheve. She begged to work there. She begged to learn how to make cheese. She showed up. She offered to buy the place.

Her dogged endurance paid off and soon, she was making an extraordinary goat cheese sought out by chefs and consumers far and wide. The story hits a bit of a bump in the road, however, because the lease on the land where all those lovely Alabama goats roam free is up and the landowner will not renew the lease.

Belle Cheve needs its own place. That is where Kickstarter comes in. Kickstarter is a way to garner funding from people out there in the real world. So be one of those people.

If you are one of the 1% out there and need a tax right off... send Belle Cheve $100,000 and get cheese for life.

If you are one of the 99%, give goat cheese as a gift... not just the cheese but a chance to keep this great dairy alive and milking.

We Will Be...

...watching the Alabama-Auburn game.

Hope everyone had a glorious Thanksgiving and to our friends across the pond, a lovely Thursday. Swamped as of late, but planning to be remarkably productive in the coming weeks.

I Love Mail...

Lurch & Holler at the Transmodern Festival 2009

...so today when I went to get my mail, I found I had a package. Now said package did not look at all familiar so I just kinda grabbed it and as I was stepping out of the Post Office I noticed the return address was from EEDowning and I smiled.

Downing grew up in Dadeville, Alabama. Much like "Eloise at the Plaza" Lizzie was the "Emma Elizabeth of the Heart of Dixie Motel" the business her parents owned. She was in her own words:

"...influenced by peeping Toms, traveling Evangelists, circus people, birds in the woods and a mother who sang constantly."

She moved to Baltimore to study painting and formed one of the most influential bands of the age, Lambs Eat Ivy. Well, I loved it and clearly it did not get the recognition it deserved, but I digress...


Any who...tucked into my envelope was a new CD by Lizzie's current band, Lurch & Holler featuring Michael Willis who was also in Lambs Eat Ivy. They describe their music as Appalachian parlor operettas and parables. It is weird and haunting and unlike anything you will ever hear, unless, of course, you listen to Lurch & Holler.



As if that wasn't enough, she is a member of Old Songs, a group that translates and creates songs from Ancient Greek philosophy and poetry. Did I mention she paints?

Bosch Figure on the Banks of the Tallapoosa River.

While I was very happy to get an envelope from Liz, I must admit that it leaves me feeling a bit under- accomplished. I think I am going to go take a nap and dream of Hermes in Alabama.

Requiescat in Pace -- Kathryn Tucker Windham

Alabama storyteller Kathryn Tucker Windham died on Sunday. She was one of our earliest Famous Food Friday subjects -- famous to every child in Alabama. Read more at Cookbook Of The Day.

Balloon Over Opelika

Harry Lowe was going through some stuff a while back and he came across a little scrapbook his mother made when she was a child. The book appears to be an old, discarded account book that she appropriated for her own personal use.


In the book she pasted pictures of ladies in dresses and...


advertising labels...


and other things that struck her fancy.


One of her pages included an advertisement for a grand balloon ascension to take place on Tuesday, December 16, 1884. A Professor Fisk would ascend on his monster balloon being 60 feet high and 150 feet in circumference. He would ascend on a single trapeze bar and give a daring trapeze performance which, according to Fisk, is a wonder to behold.


While aerialists could astound crowds, especially in small towns, no one could actually steer a balloon and "fly" it. In April 1900, the Aéro-Club de France's founder, Ernest Archdeacon and his partner Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe offered $10,000 for a gas powers flying machine that could make a a one kilometer circle without falling from the sky. In September 1901, Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont won the money in 30 minutes and 42 seconds when he circumnavigated the Eiffel Tower. While Santos-Dumont was acclaimed as the first man to fly he holds another distinction. After complaining to Louis Cartier that with both hands "driving" his balloon he was unable to get to his pocket watch, Cartier came up with the first wristwatch for men aptly named the Santos.



So the next time you check the time, remember that you have Alberto Santos-Dumont to thank for it. Nancy Winters has a lovely little book filled with great pictures of Santos-Dumont. (And one or two of his namesake watch.)


Little did Lois know when she cut out the advertisement for the trapeze aerialist what would transpire in the next decade with balloons or flying machines or time pieces or even Opelika.

Alabama Tornado

While we have been writing about Royal weddings and fashion, the phone lines to Alabama (when they were working)have been buzzing. The good news for me: All my friends and family are fine, alive and well with minimal damage.



But 285 people lost their lives and countless others lost everything they own. When I first heard the weather report, I called my BFF Beverly who reported everything was fine. A few hours later I picked up my messages to find a wild and almost unintelligible call -- the tornado had gone over Beverly's house and she was calling from the central bathroom, decidedly upset. The tornado didn't pick up anything from her house but it did deposit debris. Later, they lost electricity and phones. They are still without power with no end in site.




But everyone is alive and well. CNN is features a great "How To Help" list. I know times are tough, but if you can, help out.

Happy Birthday, Tallulah

Today is Tallulah Bankhead's birthday.

She was born 31 January 1902.

She was named after a grandmother who was named for Tallulah Falls, Georgia.