Monday Report on Wednesday

Today, Stacey went up the street to the Mexican Grocery Store for shrimp ceviche makings. She was getting a couple pounds of shrimps, about 7 or 8 limes, 2 oranges, a few tomato’s, couple of onions, a few peppers and cilantro. The peppers were probably poblano and they are whole roasted in a skillet with the tomato’s and garlic. Right now, as we speak I can hear and smell the peppers and tomato’s roasting in olive oil. And it is a good thing.

She, Stacey that is, will blanch the 2 pounds of shrimp we have just cleaned. She will rough chop the peppers and tomato’s, add all this together, squeeze the limes and oranges over the mixture, cover and refrig for 24. Hell yea. It’s good with avocado.

But that ain’t the best part. While she was there, she spied this woman buying a large amount of tamale fixings. Stacey commented to the guy who owns and runs the store ” I wanna go eat tamales with her”. So he gave Stacey the ladies name, Maria Hernandez, and phone #. But we’re gonna call him and just let him order for us, since Stacey thinks the tamale maker only speaks Spanish.

Here is a good book, if your looking for something to read. Milking the Moon, by Eugene Walter as told to Katherine Clark. I read it years ago and am gonna read it again. Soon I am gonna write a little something about Eugene Walter. I do remember it was an enjoyable and easy read. But I am partial to stories about Mobile and the monkeys who made it what it really is.

Shutter table is coming along just fine.

All is well, thanks. Hope the same for you.

N.Y.C. Day 2

So we checked out Sunday morning and dropped our bags at Lisa’ apartment. Then we took the subway uptown to the MOMA to see the Richard Serra show. Stacey and I had seen his work about 5 years ago in Bilbao, Spain. We wanted to see the Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry. The museum was new and all the rage, I am not sure I knew who Serra was at the time.

Well the show blew us away. These huge, beautifully rusted sheets of steel that had been twisted and fashioned into simple, organic, flowing sculpture. Talk about abstract, what the hell did this stuff mean. Why did he do it? I’m glad he did it, but why?

It was beautiful and like I said before, I would like to live in it. Just put a roof over a few of the pieces and add a little plumbing and I’m there. The show consisted of some of his work from the last 40 years and there were other pieces besides the large steel sculptures, but they are by far my favorite.

The MOMA has just had a huge renovation and addition job. The new, outdoor sculpture garden had a few of Serras’ huge pieces on display. I tried to take a photo showing part of a sculpture and some of the apartments that over looked the garden.

Stacey and Lisa were picking out which one they would like to live in. I decided I would live in the garden and they could both keep an eye on me.

We spent hours checking out the Serra show and the rest of the museum. There was a lot to see, five floors of art and the garden and we gave it our best shot. But our dogs started barking and we needed to get off of them. So we headed back to Lisas’ hood and had some Margaritas and some good Mexican food. We met Richard Marx, he waited our table and was really nice. It was starting to rain so we hurried back to Lisas’ place and got our bags then got a cab, then got a plane, then got another cab and were in bed by 12:30. We were tired. Stacey took Monday off and we took it easy for the day.

From what I’m hearing Belize got smacked hard and it might be a while until Stacey and I can make that trip, but the rooms are paid for so you can count on a report as soon as we can get there.

N.Y.C.

So Stacey and I have been planning to go to Belize for about a month now. We were going to leave Saturday the 18th. Well, seems Hurricane Dean has plans of his own. We had to postpone that trip and by the path of Dean it may be a while before Belize is ready for visitors.

Things have a way of working out. It’s always been that way for me, just let it all unfold and deal with it.

I had heard about the Richard Serra show at the MOMA and knew it was only there until September 10. We decided to go Saturday morning and return Sunday night. This is how it all unfolded…

We started like we always do before we go to New York, making a list of restaurants we wanted to visit. After expanding that list to about 10 we started thinking about a place to stay. My cousin Lisa lives in a really great apartment in a really great neighborhood. If it wasn’t the night before arrival we would have planned on staying with her, but not cool calling the night before and asking, hey we’re coming to town tomorrow and we were wondering…….

So we got up the next morning, used Priceline.com and got great room. 60 Thompson is a boutique hotel located at 60 Thompson St. The rooms start at over $300 a night and we lucked into one for half price. We didn’t know at the time about the Roof Top Bar and Sun Deck.

We had been in touch with Lisa and of course she offered to put us up for the night. She was at the beach and wouldn’t be back until about 9 p.m. So it was good we had a room to throw our bags in and to use as a home base while we checked out our SOHO neighborhood.

One of the restaurants on our list was Lupa. This is part of a group that has about 5 restaurants in N.Y.C. It is billed as a osteria romana and is one of the many restaurants under the Mario Batali umbrella. At the time we didn’t know this was was one of his places. We just found it on the internet and I remembered reading good things about it. So this is where Stacey and I headed after checking in and checking out our hotel, which by the way, was very nice.

Check this out for a degustation. Stacey ordered a caraf of Sauvignon Blanc and me a Italian style beer brewed in Brooklyn. This is what we ordered and we asked the waitron to bring it all at once. A cannelli bean and tuna salad with olive oil and mint leaves, a plate of coppa cotta, escarole salad and sweetbreads and fried artichoke.

The cannelli beans and tuna is just as it sounds, a very simple dish, which is the norm for this place. You have the beans mixed with tuna which was probably from a can, which if you have ever had a can of tuna in olive oil imported from Italy, you know how good this can be. Add small, whole mint leaves, mixed and served in a bowl, and that’s it. More is not needed. It’s perfect just these 4 ingredients.

The salad was maybe the best plate on the table, and again very simple. Escarole greens, red onion slice very thin, toasted walnuts with just oil and vinegar dressing. On top was a generous amount of grated Pecorino cheese. Pecorino is one of my favorite cheeses, it’s hard and great as a replacement for any dish calling for parmigiano.

The coppa cotta was beautiful, sliced, house cured meat. Laid out on a long thin serving tray. Places like this are all about curing their own meat and they offered about 4 different choices. This to was sublime.

I haven’t had sweetbreads in a long time and don’t get the chance to eat them in the U.S. very often, so I had to have them. They were fried with small artichoke hearts and served with lemon wedges. Again, simple and wonderful.

After that we just strolled around and tried to walk it off as they say. Whoever “they” are. SOHO was good for walking, so many neighborhoods in N.Y.C. are so crowded it’s a pain to walk around. Tons of art Galleries and lots of vendors selling original art on the street. Then back to the hotel.

We hang out in the room for a few and then like always, realize where we are and head out again. This time straight up to the Roof Top Bar. Two $18 cocktails each and we are back on the streets. But let me tell you the roof was cool. I have never been on a roof top in N.Y.C. and in SOHO the buildings are not as tall so the view was great, even at only 13 stories. It’s a nice place to have $18 cocktails. Check out the photo we took.

So we’re footing it around the city and Lisa calls, she’s back and ready to go. We meet her in the lobby of our hotel, which is only about 10 blocks from her place. We sit and chat for a minutes and then up we go for a good view and more cocktails. We were charging the drinks to the room and they automatically add 20% tip, so when we checked out the cocktail bill was more than the room itself. Thank you, thank you very much.

Gotta eat again. We decide on a place we had never heard of until our internet search the night before. The name is Kuma Inn, and the Chef’s name is King Phojanakong. It was only a short cab ride from our hotel. Check out their cool website. They advertise themselves as a Pan Asian Tapas Bar. This was our degustation.

Sierra Nevada beers, pork wasabi shumai, steamed edamame with thai basil lime sauce, Chinese sausage with thai chile lime sauce, seared ahi tuna in a thai chili miso vinaigrette, shrimp shumai, whole fried dorado and pan roasted ocean scallops with bacon, kalamansi and sake.

The shumai dumplings exploded in your mouth. Lisa said the chinese sausage was as addictive as crack. The WHOLE fried dorado fish was a work of art. Scored and deep fried and plated to look as if the fish was swimming on the plate, so we were told. It was a great meal, in a tiny upstairs restaurant that seats only 28. Bet Lisa goes back real soon.

After I went downstairs and checked out the Bulgarian Nightclub, for about 30 seconds, we said goodnight to Lisa, as she was headed to some friends birthday party. Stacey and I walked home which was just what we need after those two meals. Went to sleep with the very loud bass sounds of the bar one floor below us. Good thing we are only staying one night, it’s loud and we can’t afford the cocktails.

Fay Jones

I have my sister to thank for turning me on to Fay Jones. She has lived in Arkansas, on and off for the last 25 years or so. I never thought much about this awesome state until I started to visit my sister and her family. They have taken Stacey and I to many great places.

Two of my favorite places to visit are the chapels Fay Jones has built, both are in rural, wooded areas. One is named Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs. The other, Cooper Chapel in Bella Vista. The great thing is they are open to the public and last time I was there it was free.

Fay Jones died in 2000. He had a very long, distinguished career. He attended the University of Arkansas for two years before becoming a Navy Pilot during WWII. He then earned his Master of Architecture from Rice in 1950. He taught for a few years at the University of Oklahoma, then served as a fellow at Taliesin West under his mentor Frank Lloyd Wright. He returned to the University of Arkansas and spent many years teaching and running a private practice. He designed 135 residences, 15 church’s and chapels. He also designed gardens, fountains and commercial projects.

The chapels we have visited are two of the most incredible places I have ever seen. Jones learned from Wright that using local materials and incorporating the structure with the natural landscape were the most important elements of design. Simplicity is also something they both practiced.

It is easy to see these three elements in each chapel. The materials are wood and glass mostly. The chapels tower towards the sky and come to an apex like the tall trees surrounding them. The transparency of all that glass lets you see straight through and allows the chapels to blend seamlessly with surrounding trees, bushes and natural setting. It is something to behold.

Stacey and I have been fortune enough to have attended a wedding at Thorncrown. A friend Stacey worked with invited us. Approaching the chapel at night, with the light just pouring out was quite a sight. Then sitting there during the wedding and listening to a young lady play Pachelbel’s Cannon on the organ was a religious experience.

It has been way to long since I have visited these beautiful places. I am telling you here and now, before the year is over I am going to go eat at James at the Mill, in Johnson Arkansas, spend the night at the Inn at the Mill and visit both chapels. I an going to visit another chapel my sister has taken us to. I can’t remember as much about this place as far as facts go, but I can see it clearly in my head. It is a stone structure, much different from Mr. Jones chapels. It was built by a man for his wife. I think she ask him to build it for her. I remember it was small and tall and had a organ in the loft. It was also on a beautiful piece of property. I will learn more about the chapel and report again after our visit later in this year.

A year or so ago, I was hired to build a mailbox. Funny thing is, I had been thinking of building one for myself. I wanted to do something in the style of these chapels. So when I was ask to build one, I told my client my ideas and she was all for it. Here is a photo of it.

Another one of Mr. Jones creations that I want to visit is the Crosby Arboretum in Picayune, Mississippi. Click on it and check out another wonderful structure by Mr. Jones. This is the Pinecote Pavilion. I love this mans work and I refer to them as structures because of their airiness and openness. Are these even words? If not they should be, just to be used to describe some of Mr. Jones work.

So this will be a great trip. Three chapels, the Pinecote Pavilion and eating at James at the Mill. I will tell you more about this restaurant and it’s chef/owner Miles James after my next visit. I hope he is still there.

Crossing the Line

So like I said, checked out of the Alluvian Hotel and headed toward Marvell, Arkansas.

We are looking for Shadden’s Grocery and we ain’t grocery shopping. We are bar-b-que shopping. Between our map and our guide, “A Southern Belly” by John T. Edge, we have no trouble finding it.

Shadden’s is on a two lane, very busy Highway 49 and is actually 4 miles outside of Marvell, proper. Eighteen wheelers seem to be flying by as we pull into a parking lot in front of an old, I mean old, white house. There is no mistaking where you are, as there is a menu, hand painted about 10′ x 4′ hanging on the side of the house.

The large trucks are pulled off the side of the road and the truckers are all inside. Most folks seem to be ordering chopped pork sandwichs. As the nice old lady takes orders and heads towards the back to put in those orders, she turns and ask if any one else wants a chopped pork sandwich. Stacey and I raise both hands and the nice old lady laughs and ask if that means we want two each. Yep, two each we tell her.

I grab a cold beer and we sit at one of the four toppers. Half way thru my beer, our sandwiches are handed to us in a brown paper bag. We tear into the bag, unwrap a couple sandwiches and take a bite at about the same time. We sit and chew for a second and then look at each other and we both say “coleslaw”. That’s a good thing, creamy slaw on tangy bar b que. The perfect yen yang of the food kind.

We each finish one sandwich. I grab our other two and we hit the road, saving those sandwiches for later. For now we are headed to Helena, back towards the Mississippi River.

Helena is kind of desolate. We pull in to town, take the main street til we have to take a left or a right. We choose right and drive past some very cool buildings. Most are closed. The ones that are open are almost vintage looking. They are in good repair but old. It’s like we are on a empty movie set. One building has a old Buster Brown sign. Then you hit the end of this street and looking to the left you see a large outdoor stage. We are hardly seeing any signs of life, except an old lady pulling a rope with a cardboard box tied to it. Just dragging her box down the street.

We were looking for Bullock’s Cafe, and it was right in front of us. Man it looked rough. Now Stacey and I are not shy and we will eat anywhere with anyone, but this place made us stop and think for a second. So what we decided to do was go in the liquor store we had just passed. I always feel comfortable surrounded by liquor. Also there was a giant bar b que pit on wheels out front, just smoking up a storm.

We went in and ask the little old man behind the counter what he was cooking and could we buy some, whatever it was. He said we would have to talk to the guy working the drive-up window. The guy finished up at the drive-up and turned to take care of us. He was a stout man kind of dressed like a cowboy with both the cowboy hat and a six shooter on his hip. Actually I think it was a 9mm, but what’s the difference?

After talking with him a few minutes, we learn he’s the Sheriff. No kidding. Anyway, he was very friendly and we chatted with him about the city and told him it looked kind of empty. He agreed. Told us the city had two large festivals which were what really keep the city going. One was a Delta Blues Fest the other was a Bikers Fest. He showed us his bike out front. It was a Honda gold-wing or something like that, but he told us all sorts of bikers come and filled up the town for the weekend. He showed us the racks of ribs on the smoker. Said he didn’t really sell them. I think they were for a family party or something, but he said he would sell us a rack if we wanted.

Well since there was really nowhere to eat them, and we were there to try Bullocks, we ask him if they would “welcome us” there. That was my way of asking, is it safe. He said they would love the business, so down the street we went.

This place is a juke joint. A pool table right in the middle, a small bar and a few tables pushed to one side. Christmas lights draped here and there. Cora is there, just as Edges book said she would be. Just us and Cora.

No sign of food, so we ask and she rattles off what she has. We start to tell her what we want and she just hands us a plate and tell us to follow her. We go behind the bar, thur a door into a narrow, tiny kitchen. It has a huge commercial stove taking up almost the whole kitchen. Pots and pans every. She shows us everything in the pots and tells us to help ourselves. So we pile it up, fried chicken, mashed taters, gravy, rice, peas, beans, it’s all there. But it’s all cold. To bad because you could tell it would have been really good. I guess we could have ask her to warm it up or something, but instead we picked and ate what we wanted. I think we were both thinking of our sandwich from Shaddens.

Oakleigh

When I was 12 years old my mom and dad bought a house in the Oakleigh Garden District in Mobile, Alabama. The year must have been 1974 or 75. I remember the day we moved in. My brother and I had a bedroom with 12′ ceilings. There we three doors, one fireplace and no closets, and that was just our bedroom. We played a air hockey game and couldn’t believe our folks had bought a house like this. This house was built in 1896 and they have been taking good care of it for the last 35 years or so. If you didn’t grow up in a house like this or in a in-town neighborhood then you might not know what I am talking about.

I am attracted to old, rundown, industrial neighborhoods. I love old stuff. Always have, always will. It is something that has grown not diminished over the years. Since we moved into that great old house, I have lived in really old places. Except when we bought a brand new house in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Atlanta, I have lived in old places.

For years we lived in the Castleberry Warehouse District, in Atlanta. That was a lot of fun. We explored 100 year old warehouses that were empty. We explored the railroad tracks. There were about 8 tracks that ran between our warehouse loft and downtown Atlanta. We live there in the mid-eighties, not a lot of others lived in that area yet.

Anyway, I think what I’m talking about is growing up in old, downtown environments. As small as Mobile was, living downtown made it very different. I met all kind of different people and I lived in all kinds of different places. Went to Atlanta and did the same thing.

Now we live in a house built in 1917 in East Point, a suburb of Atlanta. We are slowly renovating it. So far we have finished the kitchen, one of the bathrooms and one of the bedrooms. The livingroom is good but, we still have a bath and two bedrooms to do. It’s slow work but it’s worth it.

Someday I want to build a house. I plan to use lots of old salvaged parts. Some of the materials I have stored away, some I will look for when I start and let what I find lead me in the design of the house.

I make my living building furniture from old salvaged wood. It seems just about every other house around here is either being torn down for new construction or being renovated. That means lots of antique pine for the taking. It’s on the way to the dump and builders are happy for me to take it. The furniture I build is either finished in a distressed paint or stained. It all looks old when I finish with it.

Lately I have been painting pictures. I use the same approach to painting as I do with furniture. I like to make them look old. I will paint the picture on plywood and when I am happy with it I take a sander and blowtorch and rough it up a bit. It’s a lot of fun to make a living this way.

So you can see “old” is a big part of my life. I know the reason I like old stuff, old neighborhoods, ect. is because of that house my mom and dad moved us into way back when. I think watching them work so hard to fix it up, and watching others doing the same, I new it was a labor of love. And has become the same for me. My parents have done a beautiful job with their house, it is the place where everyone gathers a few times a year for some really cool occasions. I will tell you about some of these events sometime in the near future.

Mississippi

I’ve been to Mississippi and I like it.

Not long ago Stacey and I spent a few days driving around the central Mississippi area. We didn’t know for sure where we would go, but we had a book written by John T. Edge on places to eat in the southeast. The name of the book is ” Southern Belly” and a new edition has just come out.

Edge is one of the folks responsible for the Southern Foodways Alliance. He has become a leading advocate for the promotion, preservation and documentation of southern culture. Food is his specialty. This book will lead you from one great place to eat then another, nonstop. We were also lucky enough to find a few things on our own, such as the Alluvian Hotel, in beautiful downtown Greenwood Mississippi, what a cool town to spend the night in.

First of all we headed to Mississippi from Tuscaloosa Al. We had just left my sisters home in Hoover, Alabama. We were going to find us some tamales. That’s right tamales in Mississippi. We are headed to Clarksdale, straight across the state, looking for Oscar Orsby. Oscar set up shop on the corner of 4th and Yazoo St. He’s there every Friday and Saturday from noon til ten. The tamales are good and so are the hotdogs. The tamales are not what we are used to, they are smaller and drenched in a not to hot red sauce.

Now tamales may not be the first thing you think of when you think Mississippi, but they are everywhere in the delta region. Story goes, the Hispanic labours came from Texas during harvest season and of course they would make tamales, with corn being so plentiful. So when they left after harvest season the local African Americans who had starting eating and preparing them with their coworkers continued to make and started to sell them on the streets to make extra income.

Next we head for Greenwood. When we get to town it’s getting kind of late in the afteernoon so we start looking for a spot to spend the night and I tell Stacey, I got the feeling there’s a great place for us to stay in this town.

We drive towards the downtown district. By checking out the old buildings and the size of the downtown area, I know we are gonna find something good.

Well, we turn the corner and there sits the Viking Range showroom. I had read recently the story behind the Viking Company. I remember one article, in the New Yorker magazine, about their first customer. She lives in N.Y.C. She had lots of trouble with the frist stove, but spent years working with Viking getting things right.

Right across the street sits the Alluvian Hotel. A cosmopolitan luxury boutique hotel right in the middle of small town Mississippi. Stacey went straight in and got us a room and then walked across the street to check out the Viking showroom. It’s all a big deal and worth a weekend trip to the hotel and cooking classes at Viking. Viking has lead the way in the revitalization of Greenwood and it’s something to see.

Stacey and decided to order room service and enjoy some wine we had with us. So we sat in bed, ate gourmet food and drank wine, not bad. The next morning we had breakfast in the hotel. They laid out a southern breakfast fit for king and I ate like one.

We checked out and hit the road. Headed for Marvell, Arkansas.