Friends of the Café Dinner: Adam Evans

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I’ve stopped trying to rank the meals I’ve had at the Friends of the Café dinners at the Alabama Chanin factory in Florence. When I think a Factory meal can’t be topped, I travel over to the Shoals and have another meal that once again makes me appreciate food in a new way.

I have missed a few of the Factory events but I think I have now attended six or seven starting with an amazing dinner featuring the food creations of chef Vivian Howard in July 2014.

The Factory’s own executive chef, Zachariah Chanin, and his staff created a truly memorable Spring Harvest dinner in May 2016 that blew me away with its exquisite simplicity and low-key elegance. That meal was not long after the legendary Frank Stitt and South Carolina pitmaster Rodney Scott teamed up for an amazing spread featuring Scott’s savory whole hog and a slough of accompanying sides by Stitt and his crew.

So it was with great excitement and anticipation that my friend Anne and I trekked back to the Shoals for a late-summer dinner featuring chef Adam Evans, a Shoals native, and benefiting Southern Foodways Alliance. Evans is transitioning now after several years in Atlanta with gigs at The Optimist and Brezza Cucina; exciting rumors were circulating at the dinner about where he may launch his next culinary venture and, if they are true, I may have many more opportunities to sample his exciting food.

I have written in more than one essay about how Natalie Chanin promotes community in her work and design and in her outreaches such as the Factory dinners. At Zach’s dinner in May we sat across from a charming couple from Indianapolis and at the Evans dinner our dining partners were another great couple from Tulsa.

Chef Adam’s meal was personal and full of surprises, telling his story of working in restaurants in many locales with the feast “beginning and ending right here in Alabama” as the menu note stated. Passed around hors d’oeuvres included grilled oysters and lemon butter, pork belly and watermelon, lobster roll bites, and tomato and bacon tea cake sandwiches. The big surprise of the hors d’oeuvres was a chicken stew soup dumpling which demanded to be downed in one satisfying bite. The savory dumpling had a filling of actual chicken soup that was a surprise and a unique treat. There were wine pairings with every course.

When the diners were seated, we were served a beautiful garden salad harvested from the garden of “Henry H.” – the chef’s late grandfather. Henry’s garden is still maintained by chef Adam’s father. The chef’s story of the garden was as moving as the salad was good.

The surprises continued with a second course of a seafood gumbo with a lot of heat. In lieu of the serving of rice that usually accompanies gumbo, this gumbo had a dollop of potato salad on top. It might not sound good but everybody was raving about the gumbo – potato salad combination. John T. Edge of the Southern Foodways Alliance was among the diners and asked for the chef to come out and explain the potato salad with the gumbo. It turns out Evans picked it up from the father of a friend when he was working in New Orleans. He said the man made a great gumbo and always put potato salad on top. It’s a touch I plan to remember and steal. Indeed, I think Chef Evans managed to introduce a southern food way that surprised even John T. Edge.

The third course featured pancetta wrapped guinea hen with chanterelle mushroom, husked cherry, and Swiss chard. Just when it seemed the chef couldn’t possibly top himself, the fourth course arrived with duckfat poached Gulf swordfish with Carolina Gold rice grits, corn, charred okra, and shrimp chili butter.

Finally, a muscadine and fig crisp was served for dessert, the staff was introduced, and fond partings were exchanged with the community that had assembled for the evening in the very special place that Alabama Chanin has built in Florence in the Alabama Shoals.

At some point during the evening, the people at our table were discussing careers and I said, “I’m a university professor but I’d rather be a ‘lifestyle guru’. I didn’t realize that was an option when I was coming up.”

If I had known that “lifestyle guru” would be a thing that people might make a living at, and if I had managed to become one, I’m sure I would be proselytizing for the Alabama Chanin aesthetic and, after the meal of a couple of weeks ago, for the homegrown and brilliant culinary aesthetic of Adam Evans.

As always, I can’t wait for the next Friends of the Café dinner in October.

Pounding the Sidewalk, 2016

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When I arrived in Birmingham on Friday afternoon for the 2016 edition of the Sidewalk Film Festival it never occurred to me that of the eighteen movies I would see over 48 hours, I would drive home on Sunday night most pumped about a documentary that featured performances by high school color guards.

Contemporary Color is directed by Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross, the filmmaking brothers whose 2010 documentary 45365 about nine months in the life of Sidney, Ohio, is still one of my favorite movies to be screened at Sidewalk ever. The Ross Brothers’ latest, Contemporary Color, was conceived and produced by David Byrne, one of my musical heroes, and documents a one-night only event at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. Byrne invited ten high school color guard units to perform live performances set to original music written especially for the event by contemporary artists including David Byrne, Nelly Furtado, Devonte Hines, How to Dress Well, Lucious, and St. Vincent. Each of the artists performs their compositions along with the color guards live at Barclays.

It’s hard to explain, really.

The Ross Brothers take the live event and turn it into a hypnotic meditation on color guards, interspersing concert footage with individual profiles, backstage glimpses, rehearsal footage, artful segues, and, at one point, the voice of an enthusiastic New Jersey grandfather cheering in the arena. The cinematography, sound, and editing are stunning. Especially powerful are shots of a young color guard performer doing his routine alone in the garage of a house juxtaposed with his powerful performance at the actual event. Contemporary Color is a fierce and brave movie presented without irony. I kept being reminded somehow of Godfrey Reggio’s “Qatsi trilogy” of trance-inducing films scored by Philip Glass that were released between 1983 and 2002.

The thing that can be most frustrating about Sidewalk is also one of the things that I enjoy most about it. Nearly 200 titles of all lengths and genres are presented on ten screens at seven locations on the north side of Birmingham’s city center in a single weekend. With ten or more screenings running simultaneously from early morning to late at night, you must plan carefully to get the full benefit. Even with the most precise planning, one is always going to miss out on something he wanted to or should have seen. That is part of the charm of the event — keep them wanting more.

Contemporary Color was the biggest surprise of the weekend but there was plenty to enjoy and savor; I only walked out of one screening (which shall remain nameless).

A nice little character-driven narrative feature called Little Men, directed by Ira Sachs and screened at the Alabama, was my kick-off to a Saturday full of screenings. Sachs has the restraint to end his film at the exact right moment. Little Men is full of fine performances by grown-ups like Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Ehle but the breakout performance is by a young newcomer – a kid named Michael Barbieri, playing “Tony.” I look forward to seeing more of his work in the future.

DSCN0513 My Sunday screenings started off at the newly restored Lyric Theatre with DePalma, a talky documentary about Brian DePalma, one of my personal “guilty pleasure” directors. DePalma, directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, is packed with scenes from DePalma’s classics like Carrie and Dressed to Kill, Scarface and The Untouchables, and a generous sampling of other directors’ movies that influenced the quirky and opinionated DePalma.

Sidewalk brings in motion pictures, audiences, and filmmakers from all over the world but it has always been notably generous in finding room to showcase Alabama filmmakers. I always work some of those screenings into the weekend. Clearly the most popular of the Alabama-centric titles this year was Gip, Patrick Sheehan’s award-winning documentary about gravedigger / blues musician Henry “Gip” Gipson. Gip, who cites his age as “somewhere between 80 and 100,” is the proprietor of the last remaining juke joint in Alabama

Birmingham’s central city core is undergoing a resurgence and that is partially a result of the efforts of Sidewalk at the festival and throughout the year. At opening night, it was announced that the multi-use refurbishment of the old Pizitz department store building (Pizitz was my favorite of the big downtown department stores as a youth) is set to include permanent offices for Sidewalk and two 100-seat movie theatres. The new development will be “The Pizitz.”

Downtown Birmingham on the final weekend in August is an indie film lover’s paradise, full of memorable characters on the screens and in the streets. I always leave inspired.

The Farmers Market on Finley Avenue

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Recently, when I didn’t feel motivated to navigate the hordes crowding into the more trendy local farmers’ markets, I headed out to Finley Avenue and Birmingham’s old Alabama Farmers Market (www.alabamafarmersmarket.org), a sprawling complex of open air sheds and rows of warehouses where truck farmers sell their seasonal harvests 24/7 and resident vendors display their agricultural products.

As far back as I can remember that big farmers market has been on Finley Avenue in Birmingham’s westside. The Jefferson County Truck Growers Association formed in 1921 and the Association’s Alabama Farmers Market moved to its Finley Avenue location in 1956.

When I was a child we would take Grandmother Harbison to Finley Avenue where she would stock up on fresh produce for the amazing meals she seemed to always be cooking. She would also can and “put up” for the winter in the big chest freezer down in the basement. Grandmother seemed to always have a large pot of homemade vegetable soup warming on the stove no matter the season.

I am an ardent supporter of local food and community farmers; I might hit three farmers markets over the course of any given week during the warm months. I’m talking about those weekly pop-up markets with farmers selling their wares in avenues of tented stalls for three to five hours. If you pay attention, you can find such markets almost every day of the week at a church or parking lot near you.

These weekly neighborhood markets have become ubiquitous and popular– which is great — and many have expanded to include artisans and musicians, deejays and demos. I used to feel refreshed after a Saturday morning stroll through Birmingham’s Pepper Place Market but these days I mostly feel stressed and relieved to get away from too many people, too much noise, animals and their people hogging the pathways, and unnecessarily wide baby strollers. The carnival atmosphere begins to distract from the market’s original purpose to get local food to local residents.

So it was a refreshing change to go out to Finley Avenue after too many years away and get back down to just the basics of a farmers market with growers selling off the backs of trucks. The mechanical pea-shellers were cranking out bushels of peas in mere minutes. Some vendors featured rows of canned items with assorted pickles, local honey, chow chow, soups and such. In August there are abundant mounds of watermelons, cantaloupes, and tomatoes.

The sights, sounds, and aromas took me back to a time when farmers’ markets were less abundant but the shoppers were probably more earnest about their fresh local food. The people who frequented these markets weren’t just seeking out the coolest heirloom tomato (I’m a fan of heirloom tomatoes, too, by the way) but were focused on the values of locally sourced food and finding ways to feed a family in healthy, sustainable, and economical ways.

The originals like Alabama Farmers Market on Finley will be around for a long time.

Peaches, 2016

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We’re not even to the halfway point of calendar summer and I’m already starting to miss it. Nowadays public schools start ridiculously early and the place where I teach will be starting its fall semester before long. All of these things contribute to the feeling that summer is almost over. At least there is the salve of the impending start of college football season.

What really triggers my late-summer doldrums is the prospect of another local peach season coming to an end. On my most recent trip to Jimmie’s Peach Stand in Chilton County, one of the Harrison sons predicted that their peach trees would only be yielding for another ten days to two weeks this year. The drive to Chilton County and along back country roads to Jimmie’s is always a tonic for me and I hate to see it end each year around this time.

I have written about Jimmie’s in the past and about my regular trips during their season which usually commences around Mother’s Day and ends in late-July and occasionally into August. I try to get down every two weeks during the season and I try to only eat Chilton County peaches purchased at Jimmie’s.

In a conversation a few years ago, I asked Jimmie Harrison for recommendations of good peaches in north Alabama. “I always thought Mr. Isom grew a good peach,” he said, referring to Isom’s peach orchards near Athens. So when the Jimmie’s crop is depleted, I can usually rely on Isom’s for another basket or two (www.isomsorchard.com).

Jimmie’s peaches without any embellishment are perfect and this year’s crop seems to bear an overall larger fruit than usual. It’s impossible to have a surfeit of peaches but occasionally they get pretty ripe before I can get to them and I have some fallback recipes to make sure that not a single peach is wasted. I don’t make many pies so when I’m ready to throw peaches in the oven it’s usually in a cobbler.

Over the years I have collected some ways to take full advantage of peach season and their abundance and, with the local season’s end upon us, it’s time to share a couple of fresh and simple peach recipes.

The peach salsa is simple and has multiple uses. Use it however you would use any other type of salsa but I love it on a fish taco. The following recipe makes a nice batch.

Peach Salsa

2 large ripe peaches, peeled, pitted, and diced

3 tablespoons thinly sliced green onions (white and green parts)

1 teaspoon grated lime zest

1½ tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

¼ jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced

Cayenne pepper to taste

salt to taste

Simply mix all ingredients together and serve.

The Peaches and Beaujolais dessert recipe originally came from Frank Stitt’s Southern Table cookbook. Over time I have used it so much without referencing the cookbook that I think it has morphed into my own version. In fact, I pulled out his recipe not long ago to copy for a friend and realized that I have taken liberties with the original. I had forgotten that the original uses granulated sugar along with the brown sugar. Here is how I basically make it these days:

Peaches and Beaujolais

1 medium ripe peach, peeled, pitted, and quartered

1½ tablespoon dark brown sugar

4-6 ounces good Beaujolais or Morgon

Put half of the dark brown sugar in the bottom of a wine glass. Put peach quarters in glass. Drizzle the other half of dark brown sugar over the top of the peaches. Pour Beaujolais (or Morgon) over the peach and sugar mixture. For a really decadent variation, embellish the Beaujolais with Cointreau or Grand Marnier. Garnish with mint leaves.

Both of these peach recipes capture the freshness and vibrancy of the summer season for me and enhance that distinctive peach essence in an exciting way.

Make the most of the rest of your summer. Hmm … shouldn’t local figs be here soon?

5th of July

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One of my credit cards was compromised online recently by an Uber patron, it seems. The problem was addressed and headed off fairly quickly but when I told my mother about it in a telephone conversation she began to lament all of the crime and evil that are taking place around us and that thread inevitably lead to concern over our politicians, gun laws, and the hopeless impending election. I thought about that for a while and finally I said, “Well, yeah, but at least we don’t have to worry about the stagecoach getting held up by a bunch of armed bandits.”

We’re always living in scary times, I guess.

I was too young to fully participate in the 1960s. But I was there and aware and curious as a young boy – reading the daily newspaper from an early age and never missing the national news that aired each evening at 5:30. I knew (kind of) what was going on in the world around me.

It was pretty interesting. And pretty scary at times.

In October 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis was happening, I was nearing the end of my second month of second grade. I wasn’t sure what was going on but was aware of the gravity in the voices of the newscasters and the hushed tones of my parents as they discussed the news of the day. The teachers at school would huddle together outside the classroom, whispering and looking anxiously back at their charges.

In the television in the den the grim voices were reporting on foreboding things that I didn’t quite comprehend. We usually watched Huntley and Brinkley in those days. I remember going out into the back yard and looking up at the skies at the dark clouds gathering. Or is that just my imagination playing tricks with my memory?

I didn’t understand what was happening but I was aware when the threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis was past and there was a palpable sigh of relief among the grown-ups.

Radio Free Europe was an agency that was broadcasting news and programming from the west into the communist bloc behind the “Iron Curtain.” In the ‘60s, regular television public service announcements would raise awareness about Radio Free Europe. Those PSAs would feature a European deejay behind the controls at a radio station introducing the American song “On Broadway” by The Drifters.

1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater’s campaign ads featured the image of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev warning the west that “We will bury you!” For many Baby Boomers, I suspect that Khrushchev’s was the face of the boogeyman.

In addition to the usual attractions and agricultural exhibitions of a state fair, I remember a trip to the state fair at the old fairgrounds on 3^rd Avenue West in Birmingham in the 60s that also featured fallout shelters for the home back yard. Climbing into the tight quarters, there was information on how many supplies would be needed to survive nuclear fallout. Civil defense signs indicating the locations of fallout shelters were still scattered around when I was grown.

During the time that I was discovering the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, and Motown, I was also living in Birmingham at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Anticipation about the Cold War was augmented by consciousness of the various social movements afoot stateside.

Back then “Breaking News” reports on the television were really breaking news and we would stop and wait to see what had happened. The PTA at Green Acres School had just finished its drive to supply a television for every classroom (largely by collecting S&H Green Stamps) so my third grade class was able to watch live as the announcement was made that President Kennedy had been shot and killed.

Schools had regular bomb drills and “duck and cover” was a mantra promoted in instructional films by a helmeted “Bert the Turtle.” Green Acres was a neighborhood school and most of its students lived within easy walking distance. I lived a block from the school and even had permission to go home for lunch.

So I wasn’t concerned when we got a note to take to our parents saying that on a selected day all city school students would be dismissed promptly at 3:00 and were to walk, not run, to their home. This applied to the children who were picked up at school as well as the majority of us who walked. The directive said that somebody should be at the student’s home to record precisely what time the student arrived. For the majority of us in my neighborhood in the ‘60s that person would have been our mothers.

The next day we were instructed to return the filled out time sheet to our teachers. The result of this exercise was that those of us who could walk home within a certain amount of minutes would be released to our homes in the event of an impending air attack. The rest would remain at the school with their teacher to “duck and cover” I guess.

I was a young and naïve schoolboy but I was pretty sure even then that the duck and cover routine wasn’t going to be any kind of protection if the Soviets started bombing us. There was solace in the fact that I would at least get to be home when it happened.

The 1960s continued and in October 1969 I was in junior high in Nashville. On the day of the Vietnam Peace Moratorium I got to school and heard whispering all around. Some of the students were organizing a massive school walk-out at 1:00 p.m. to protest the war. It was hard to concentrate in class with the tension and anticipation. Between classes, in classes, and during lunch people kept asking, “Are you walking out?”

I kept saying, “I don’t know. Let’s wait and see what happens.” But deep down I knew I probably wouldn’t. I’d get in trouble with Dad and Mother if I left school without permission.

At 12:55 the nervous energy was bubbling throughout the school. I had overheard some of the teachers talking together and trying to decide the best course of action when the walk-out occurred.

Suddenly the static-filled school PA system came on and an assistant principal made an announcement that the entire school would go outside at 1:00 p.m. and stand in silence for ten minutes to honor the soldiers who were serving or who had been killed in Vietnam and that regular classes would resume at 1:15.

There were grumbles among the student organizers that their thunder had been stolen by the administration. For me and probably most of my classmates there was relief that we would not have to make a decision about civil disobedience that afternoon. When our ten minutes were up the majority of us went back to class; a few walked down the street and away …

The 1960s was a combustible and scary time – albeit one with a fabulous soundtrack and lots of style. Looking back from the perspective of a much more complicated world half a century later, the struggles of the 1960s seem better defined, much less confusing, and – frankly – much less threatening than the world we are dealing with in today’s 24-hour never-ending news cycle.

Back then, we could more easily put a face with the threat and the moral boundaries seemed more clear. Nowadays, not so much. The fireworks and celebrations of Independence Day are always followed by the realities of July 5.

Ensley

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Each person’s Ensley narrative varies but the through-line boils down to this: Ensley is a proud and tight-knit community on the west side of Birmingham that once was a bustling steel-making industrial center with omnipresent smokestacks, industrial barns and sheds, shift whistles, train traffic, and massive blast furnaces. Because it was a 24-hour town full of shift-workers, many Ensley businesses in the early to mid-20^th century were 24/7 operations.

The jazz standard “Tuxedo Junction” is about a club at an Ensley streetcar crossing. Erskine Hawkins, a Birmingham native, is the composer of that tune. My favorite rendition is Glenn Miller and his Orchestra’s chart-topping 1940 big band arrangement.

When U.S. Steel shut down its Ensley works in the early-1970s, the area’s population and businesses began to disperse.

Today, ghosts of Ensley abound; much of the community is semi-abandoned and desolate. Birmingham media have a tendency to report anything that occurs in western Birmingham as happening in “Ensley” and you have the additional burden of a bad rep and the not always accurate impression of an abundance of crime.

Crime is definitely a problem these days in Ensley but the community seems to get more blame than it deserves. Recently, when I was visiting my mother in her over-the-mountain Birmingham neighborhood, a local television news report was covering a recent shooting in “Ensley.” When the address of the crime was given Mother looked at me and said “That’s a Central Park address – why are they calling it Ensley?” For some reason any bad news from the west side of the city automatically gets attributed to Ensley.

Katherine Webb’s 2014 article “Who Is Ensley?” in Weld (www.weldbham.com/blog/2014/01/29/who-is-ensley) provides a good overview of efforts to resurrect present-day Ensley from the challenges it has encountered since the steel mills were shut down. The article provides plenty of first-person evidence of the pride that still hangs strong in the community.

My father was raised on Avenue D and Mother moved around the corner from him to 25^th Street as a teenager. Ensley was the starting point for Grover and Jean Journey’s 63-year marriage. Dad and Mother left Ensley for good in the early 1950s but Dad never ceased to be a proud “Ensley boy.”

Mother still talks about shopping in Ensley as a young woman and I remember visiting Ensley department stores such as Cotton’s and Goldstein & Cohen with Mother and Grandmother when I was a little boy. Dad’s first job was at the poultry shop that Fred Trucks owned over on Avenue E. Marino’s grocery store, which operated then, still operates on Avenue E across from what used to be Ensley Lanes bowling alley.

One could get a meat and three at Ensley Grill or “all you can eat” catfish at Catfish King’s Avenue E location in the building that was once the Franklin Theatre. In Catfish King, tables were set along each side of a center aisle on raised sections that once held rows of theatre seats and the stage was still there (the grand drape too, as I recall). These places were still around when I hit my teens.

Dad’s childhood home, in drastically altered form, is still standing and inhabited on Avenue D but the house that Mother’s family lived in around the corner is gone. A house that was once owned by Mother’s grandfather, Houston McCarn – who lived in Cullman but invested in Birmingham real estate when the city was still young, still stands on the corner down the street from Dad’s house. It has been long abandoned.

It is these ghosts of the past and the hope for community renewal that still draw me to Ensley. But my main draw these days is an ongoing fascination with the beauty and decay of the former Ensley industrial sites that were abandoned when the steel mills shut down. The railroad tracks are still active through the site and the viaduct over the tracks where 20^th Street-Ensley becomes Birmingport Road heading out to the river is a good spot to linger and observe the buildings and remaining stacks that are being rapidly reclaimed by nature.

On a clear day, peering down from the middle of the Ensley viaduct toward Fairfield, you can see to U.S. Steel’s Fairfield plant where the remaining blast furnace was idled in 2015. Fairfield and Ensley steelmaking operations have gone from tens of thousands of workers at their peak to a few hundred at the pipe mill in Fairfield today.

On a hot June morning, the mimosas are prolific at the Ensley plant. Rusty railings and sagging metal buildings with broken windows sit along abandoned roads that used to teem with trucks and industrial vehicles. The few remaining stacks stand tall amid the ruin and rubble. A train creeps through the site, taking loads to more remote locations that are not yet abandoned.

In the modern post-industrial era, things come and go more quickly than in earlier epochs but, to me at least, these 20^th century industrial remains have a pride and dignity equal to that of ancient ruins of early civilizations. The craggy, mineral-laden ground that now nourishes the mimosas, poke weed, kudzu, and wild vegetation of the Ensley ruins is the same ground that nourished my family in a recent past that seems impossibly far away.

I will always go back to check on Ensley.

Tomato Sandwich

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There are many things to love about sultry summer weather and one of them is the opportunity to check out the farmers markets that spring up from spring to fall. When I go to a farmer’s market, I don’t go to linger and socialize; I go to do my business and move on. My typical routine is to make the rounds of all the stalls – making a mental note of what looks good this week – and then to make one more pass to make my purchases and leave. My typical trip to a farmers market takes about fifteen minutes.

That is not to say that I am completely antisocial at the market. There are purveyors that I have seen for years now and have come to know and we always catch up with each other. But there are usually other customers to be served and I don’t like to take up too much of their time so we speak, quickly share any news, and promise to see each other next week.

Today at a local market there were beginning to be tomatoes. By midsummer the tomatoes will be abundant but now, in late spring, good local tomatoes are just beginning to appear. Today it was clearly time to make the first tomato sandwiches of the season.

I have always known tomato sandwiches but I find that I still occasionally get a puzzled look when I mention them to certain people. For those of us who have known them from childhood, there is no standard way to build a tomato sandwich and everybody has evolved a preferred technique over time. My tomato sandwiches are constantly changing based on my tastes and what is available.

The essential ingredients for a tomato sandwich are a tomato, bread, and mayonnaise. The rest is up to taste and imagination. I always challenge myself to use only the freshest available local ingredients.

I usually buy larger tomatoes and I look for them to be less ripe so they will last. Today, however, a Cullman County farm was displaying small to medium size ripe red tomatoes that I knew were destined to go home with me and to be the star of my first tomato sandwich of the season.

I grabbed a loaf of Mrs. London’s bread that was made this morning. It is a fluffy soft bread that I have been buying for years now. Mrs. London’s bread is about the best I’ve ever tasted. There were sweet red spring onions at another stand and I always buy a container of Humble Heart Farms goat cheese; my flavor of choice this week was the Mediterranean blend.

I was ready to go home and make a late afternoon lunch of local ingredients, starring the tomato.

As I walked into my back yard, I plucked some basil off the plants growing near the back gate, went into the house, and began to assemble the ingredients for a sandwich.

Mrs. London’s bread needs a bit of toasting to take on the load of a soggy tomato sandwich so I started the oven, cut off two generous slices of bread, and toasted it on both sides.

The tomatoes were sliced, the basil leaves were washed and picked, and the red onion was sliced into slivers. When the bread was toasted, I generously slathered mayonnaise (Blue Plate or Duke’s work just fine) and sprinkled some goat cheese on top of the mayonnaise. Basil leaves were layered onto the mayonnaise and goat cheese. A drop of lemon was squeezed over the basil.

Next the onion was spread over the basil. Then slices of tomato were generously layered, completely covering one of the slices of bread, with salt and pepper added at the end.

After I pressed the two slices of bread and ingredients together, I drizzled olive oil over the top slice and let the sandwich sit for a few minutes so the ingredients could meld. I ate it with some fresh strawberries from the farmers market and a big glass of iced tea.

The first day of summer is still a couple of weeks away, but the first tomato sandwich of the season tastes like summer to me. And, except for the mayonnaise and olive oil, everything I ate came from farms within twenty-five miles of my basil in the back yard.

Eat fresh and local this summer.

Springtime and Verlyn Klinkenborg: An Appreciation

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Over the past year, it has been hard to keep the stress and my journal separate and the reader has had a share in what has been going on with my family and me. Yet, even at the darkest moments, I have tried to keep the journal as upbeat and positive as possible.

As spring makes its way into the summer and temperatures in northern Alabama are starting to hit the 90s, I am spending more time out of doors – my favorite place to be – and once again watching nature around my small patch of suburban life. In the past week, for the first time this season, I have noticed the fireflies emerging at dusk. My plants in pots and in the ground are doing okay but it has been dry and daily watering has become a necessity. The robins are playful and cagey, seeing how close they can get to me as they hunt worms and forage before they scamper away if I make a move to pick up a glass or rub my leg.

The magnolias are blooming, I don’t have a magnolia tree but there is one across the street. When I was growing up we occasionally had magnolias in the yard and there was a time when Mother would use the large sturdy leaves for Christmas decorations, often highlighting them with gold paint. The magnolias this year haven’t peaked yet but the trees are full and will be magnificent soon.

Many years ago my family decided to spend Memorial Day at my house and I was determined to have magnolia blossoms on my table. I spotted a gigantic untended magnolia tree in my neighborhood and knocked on the door to ask permission to clip a few blossoms. The lady that opened the door had deeply etched skin the color of old coffee grounds. When I asked her for permission to take some magnolia blossoms from her tree she said, “Is that what that is? A magnolia?”

I confirmed that it was and she said, “I never knew what that tree was called. Take all the flowers you want.”

Last night, as I was watering the backyard plants, I spotted a pot in bloom behind the schefflera. The schefflera spends the cool months inside the house and I didn’t realize something was growing behind it in the corner of the yard. When I pulled the pot forward, there was a healthy hydrangea beginning to bloom. Here’s the rub: the two hydrangeas I have planted and tended to over the past few years are healthy but refuse to blossom for me; this one, which I don’t even remember planting, seems to be doing just fine on its own, thank you very much. There’s a lesson there, but I’m not sure what it is.

Perhaps the most consistent comment I receive about “Professional Southerner” is that the reader finds a calm and relaxation in reading what I wrote. That is a good thing to hear since I began the online journal in 2013 at a time when there was much turmoil going on around me and I wanted these essays to be a break from the stresses of work and everyday life.

Meditating and observing in the yard put me in mind of the journalist and writer Verlyn Klinkenborg whose essays on “The Rural Life” were just about the most satisfying things to hit the pages of The New York Times for close to sixteen years from 1997 to 2013. Klinkenborg lives on a farm in upstate New York and his essays for the Times are meditations on the day-to-day life of the farm in a calm and pensive manner. His observations on the simple matters of everyday life always leave an impression of welcome solitude and the profundity of things which are all around us.

Klinkenborg came to mind when I revisited a collection of his essays in the book The Rural Life (hardcover: Little Brown and Company, 2002: paperback: Back Bay Publishing, 2004) which is a compilation of his Times essays. I gave the book to my Mother for Mother’s Day several years ago, hoping it would be as comforting to her as it is to me.

Reading the essays after several years, it occurs to me that I may be attempting in my recent writing to capture some of the tranquility and spirit that I get while reading Klinkenborg’s minimal and essential meditations in The Rural Life and its sequel, More Scenes from the Rural Life (Princeton Architectural Press, 2013).

In Klinkenborg’s final “Rural Life” essay for the Times on Christmas 2013 he addressed the ways in which his readers’ imaginations embellished the scope and reality of his modest farm. He wrote:

I am more human for all the animals I’ve lived with since I moved to this farm. Here, I’ve learned almost everything I know about the kinship of all life. The only crops on this farm have been thoughts and feelings and perceptions, which I know you’re raising on your farm, too. Some are annual, some perennial and some are invasive – no question about it

But perhaps the most important thing I learned here, on these rocky, tree-bound acres, was to look up from my work in the sure knowledge that there was always something worth noticing and that there were nearly always words to suit it.

Thanks, Klinkenborg. May your imagination forever notice and embellish.

Serenity Now: Reflections on a Weekend

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(for Anne T.)

So here’s the deal: Because of family matters in Birmingham, I have not spent an entire weekend in my house in eleven months. On the weekend of May 20 through 22 I had a dinner engagement over in the Shoals in Florence and planned to spend the weekend at my house and return to Birmingham on Monday (I am on a break until Memorial Day).

On Friday morning I began to cultivate a kitchen herb garden in my tiny back yard and re-pot and re-plant some things that have been neglected in the past year. I met with my friends Scott and Michelle and their two daughters for dinner at a favorite chili place on Friday night but the daughters preferred Mexican with buddies so Scott and I were dumped and had to be bachelors for the night (well, Scott did – I’m always a bachelor for the night).

My friend Cindy, who was supposed to be my companion on Saturday night in Florence, was forced to cancel and I was suddenly looking at wasting a much sought-after ticket for a sold out dinner. These are amazing dinners, however, so I was going whether the other ticket was taken or not.

I immediately thought of my friend Anne who lives in Decatur – about halfway between Huntsville and Florence. I also remembered that my friend Anne is a very busy and active woman and would most likely be out-of-town for the weekend.

I sent a text with a somewhat embarrassed invitation and, to my surprise and delight, Anne texted back “Yes. What time?”

Just before I got to Anne’s house in Decatur, my “low tire pressure” warning came on and I pulled into the driveway with a tire rapidly deflating. Anne was happy to drive her car and I decided to deal with the tire after the dinner.

As we prepared to leave for the Shoals, Anne’s beloved 16-year-old Jack Russell terrier, Zeke, had a frightening seizure and Anne rallied to try to get Zeke through the crisis. Zeke’s seizure ended but he remained disoriented and Anne called upon a trusted friend to sit with him for the evening.

Slightly disoriented ourselves, Anne and I left Decatur in Anne’s vehicle and she said the only stop we needed to make was for “petrol.” We pulled into a station on the outskirts of town and suddenly were met with a Michael Jackson impersonator with full Michael Thriller-era wig and complexion performing full out to “Beat It” in the filling station parking lot. Anne assured me that he was a Decatur tradition and passing vehicles rolled down their windows and cheered him as they passed. Anne wanted to tip him but I wasn’t so sure. Now I wish we had because how many guys are committed enough to run around performing Thriller tracks in Decatur in full Michael drag?

Next time I see him, I’ll take a picture. He gets a tip from me next time.

When we got to the Alabama Chanin Factory in Florence for the Spring Harvest Friends of the Café dinner, the place was already jovial and full and hors d’oeuvres were being passed. We grabbed a devilled egg and headed toward the dining area and were greeted by Natalie Chanin, the acclaimed “slow fashion” designer and host for the dinner (www.alabamachanin.com).

Anne was her always charming self, as was Natalie, but as we moved away Anne muttered “I’ve wanted to meet Natalie Chanin for years and when I finally do I have egg in my mouth.” Not to worry – Anne had another conversation with the designer at the end of the evening and I don’t think there was any notice of the hors d’oeuvres incident.

I need to write an essay on the dinner itself, and I plan to (but I got no decent photos – was far too busy eating the food and chatting). The featured chef for the evening was the Factory’s resident chef, Zachariah Chanin, and it was one of my favorite meals ever at the space (I think I’ve made six of the ten Friends of the Café evenings). The amazingly fresh spring harvest ingredients were primarily from Bluewater Creek Farm in Killen, Alabama, an organic farm run by Collins and Liz Davis in partnership with Doug and Donna Woodford (www.bluewatercreekfarm.com). I wrote about my tour of Bluewater Creek Farm in the essay “Sustainability and Soul” in November 2014.

Suffice it to say, the meal was brilliant. Each Friends of the Café event is a benefit and this one was no different. The honoree was Nest, a non-profit organization that supports artisans and makers throughout the world and with which Alabama Chanin is very involved (www.buildanest.org).

Incidentally, the dessert, a strawberry shortcake with local strawberries macerated in a thyme simple syrup with freshly whipped cream is assuredly the best and freshest I’ve ever tasted. Almost as good as the dessert’s taste was watching Zach Chanin and his staff assembling the dozens of desserts on the café bar.

As always, new acquaintances and friends were made at the family-style seating. Anne and I sat across from a couple from Indianapolis. “What brings you to the Shoals?” I asked. “We drove down for dinner” was the honest reply. A family next to me had driven in from Corinth, Mississippi, for their first Factory meal and assured me they’d return.

During dinner, a spontaneous conversation erupted at my end of the table about “Seinfeld” catch phrases.

“A Festivus for the rest of us.” “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” “The Bro.” “Sponge-worthy.” “Yadda yadda yadda.” “The Contest.”

And my personal favorite – “SERENITY NOW!”

As always when I am at the Factory, the spirit of community and connection is palpable. In addition to the fine company in the room, Anne texted our friend Deb in Paris and we both wished she was with us. So the good feelings spread beyond Alabama and the Shoals and were truly international. After a thoroughly satisfying evening of food and sociability, we said our goodbyes and walked out under a bright and friendly full moon. When we got back to Decatur my tire was flat as a pancake.

It was late. Anne offered her guest room and I decided AAA could wait until morning.

By morning, I went downstairs to find Anne tending to a much calmer Zeke and my ruined tire was tended to by a particularly pleasant AAA tow truck driver. At last, I was back on the road and headed home.

A very wise woman once advised me that I should reserve a part of each week to be quiet, relax, and regroup. When my schedule allows, that time has always been Sunday night at my house. I cook a good meal, sit quietly, and listen to soothing music until time to go to bed.

I realized that this particular Sunday night would be the first chance I’ve had to renew that tradition in a long while. Inspired by Zach Chanin and Bluewater Creek, I surveyed my recent farmers market purchases to see what I could put together that was fresh and local and planned a healthy evening meal. I needed to run to the grocery store to supplement some things. In the produce section I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in over two years. As we quickly caught each other up on what had been happening, I realized anew how hectic my life has been recently; no wonder I feel tired

Returning from the store I decided to sit in the back yard to savor the warm weather, have a cold drink, and observe my weekend’s progress before cooking commenced. As I sat quietly, I heard a plaintive voice in the back alley: “Se-REN-ity … here, Serenity.”

As the voice got closer to my back gate I saw a woman looking in every direction and calling for Serenity.

I went out the gate and into the alley. “What have you lost?”

“My dog, Serenity. We just moved in to the house down the street and somebody left the gate open and she got out.”

I told her I would keep an eye out for Serenity and asked what she looked like.

Serenity is a Jack Russell terrier.

As I write this, I am sitting in the tire store getting a new tire. The HVAC guy should be at the house by the time I get back, working on some outside conduits. I’ll pack to go back down to Birmingham where there seems to be a full schedule waiting for me, including a trip to Tuscaloosa, taking Mother and her neighbor to see the Cahaba lilies in bloom, this season’s first peach run to Chilton County, a Japanese steakhouse dinner to celebrate my nephew finishing sixth grade.

When I get time, I’ll have to make some cheese straws for those new neighbors – the ones who named their dog “Serenity.”

Railroad Park

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Growing up, I lived in Birmingham during some of its most tumultuous years. Through it all, I loved the place and was a vocal advocate for its potential to anybody that would listen. I find that most Birminghamians across the board seem to be a loyal bunch even as we recognize the challenges.

The last time I lived in Birmingham in the early 1990s, the movement toward developing city center living and lofts was being discussed even as the discussion was being met with skeptical smirks. I was an advocate for downtown living and hoped to be a pioneer in downtown Birmingham loft living but my career track had other ideas.

Birmingham is now in the midst of that long-anticipated renaissance as it is touted as a food destination, as it boasts more public green space per capita than any other American city, as it is competing successfully for new development, and as it aggressively restores long-neglected buildings and properties.

Birmingham’s central district is divided into north and south by railroad tracks that run through the center of the city. The financial district and the historical downtown are north of the tracks and the medical center, UAB campus, and Five Points South entertainment districts are south.

For many years the area next to the railroad tracks was a no man’s land of broken concrete and chert, poke sallet and weeds. In 1910 Railroad Park (www.railroadpark.org) opened as a 19-acre green space with trees and lakes, numerous paths and recreational areas, a food area and performance space, and nine acres of open, sloping lawn.

Railroad Park sparked development in that part of Birmingham south of the railroad tracks and now Regions Field, home of the Birmingham Barons baseball team (www.milb.com), is across the street from the park, Restaurants, micro-breweries, shops, apartments, lofts, and condos make the area a populated and busy space with new development all around. A couple of blocks from the eastern edge of Railroad Park, Rotary Trail in the Magic City (www.birminghamrotary.org), a four-block long green space claimed from an abandoned railroad bed, continues the expansion of green space to the former industrial site that is now Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark (www.slossfurnaces.com). Railroad Park was designed by Tom Leader Studio and was the 2012 winner of the Urban Land Institute’s Urban Open Space Award. Among its competition was New York City’s High Line.

An expansive park in the heart of downtown might have sounded like a place nobody would come to a few years ago but now it is always full of people and a great place to stroll or relax, picnic and play. Scattered through the park are descriptions of the city’s industrial heritage and stunning new views of the downtown area. Paths are made of recycled materials and bricks and rocks from the site are used throughout as the bases of benches and platforms.

Trains are constantly moving along the tracks in each direction.

On a recent visit to Railroad Park I saw families celebrating birthdays, people catching a bite to eat, frisbees and sunbathers on the lawn, people walking dogs, a dodgeball game. Many people were just hanging out until time to walk over to Regions Field to catch the Barons game.

I restrained myself from starting up a conversation with a young man sitting quietly under a tree and reading The Great Gatsby – just about my favorite novel ever.

Railroad Park is a relaxing respite in the middle of an increasingly vibrant city center. It is one more example of the city of Birmingham getting it right. There seem to be lots more examples these days.