Just plant a little watermelon on my grave

And let the juice (sluice, sluice) trickle through …

Some days I want a photo blog. I love taking pictures and playing with my camera. And how often is it that you’re on a farm where daisies are growing next to a red barn? Or that you are decked out for the Fourth and pass a giant watermelon on the highway? But I’ll have to settle for this one blog of many uses. I’m not photog enough for a whole blog.

The South’s best potato salad

Blind Pig Pub has it

Published in the June 25, 2009, Oxford Town. The weekly arts and entertainment publication does not have its own site at present, so you can find my articles here.

If black eyed peas bring prosperity, tuna casserole is meant to solace grief, and oysters signal lust, what emotion is mixed into a bowl of potato salad?

Most people approach the stuff with caution. They’re not quite fans, but they don’t hate potato salad. Plus, you can never be too sure on how long the mayo-doused concoction has been sitting in the heat. But you’ll be damned if you don’t suffer through a few bites of your aunt’s tried and true recipe.

As Will Campbell, Mississippian Civil Rights leader and one-time director of religious life at the University of Mississippi, sees it in his book “Brother to a Dragonfly,” potato salad almost means more than saying “I love you.”

Summer

I just wanted to say I love summer, lazy, long, delicious summer. I’m enjoying every minute of this one. I know, it’s not even summer yet!

At this particular moment, I’m the only one in our gorgeous beachy Bay St. Louis house for at least another 24 hours if I so wish. Today in my swimsuit and a sun dress, I rode my dad’s rusty bike (with milk crate tied to the back) to return a Faulkner compendium to the library trailer and request on inter-library loan “Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant.”

Ship Island

So a few weeks ago I went to Ship Island with the fam. Here’s a video I made with the footage. Very calming, pretty seaside-ness. There’s a horeshoe crab, a hermit crab, some osprey and seagulls, dolphins in the distance, Fort Massachusetts, lots of waves.

Probably one of my better videos. It might be a little boring, but I had fun filming and ended up with lots to edit together. Always makes for nicer footage in the end.

Nom nom nom Food Journalism Time

I haven’t posted anything in a while. I’m thoroughly enjoying the calm of sleeping in, visiting friends, painting pottery (for some cash), reading, watching Dexter, swimming daily, watching our rabbits romp outside and our vegetables grow. But in all this calm, of course, I knew I’d get inspired again. So, not two weeks in to my first real summer vacay in years (real as in not a short FEMA trailer break in which I could gear up for my next job, thesis chapter, semester, or something else daunting and impending hanging over my head), I have brilliant inspiration.

I want to start writing food columns again.

Ole Miss Flash Rave

In true Hotty Toddy style, Ole Miss students organized a flash rave, similar to others taking place in university libraries across the nation.

Why? Because … exam stress? finals? whatever.

Where? The J.D. Williams library

When? 10 minutes only, Wednesday (May 6, 2009).

Coconut lime butter thins

So, it’s exam week. I always get to feeling empty this time of year. Classes are ending. I’m leaving professors and great classmates behind. I’m looking at lots of free time returned. Exam week itself is always a lot of great free time. As I did in France, I could probably finish my exams while still attending class. And, oh my, I graduate Friday and Saturday. I’ve yet to secure a job. So, what’s a lonely soul to do? Bake.

Baking has always been so soothing to me. It’s ritualistic, simplistic, somatic. It’s certainly part of my Willow-istic religion. To invoke the self, bake, cook, create.

These little babies sounded too amazing. I made some margarita-flavored cookies last summer, which were a tad too salty. So I was happy to try a lighter limey biscuit.

There's my key lime sweet butter. Mmmm

Inside a first-rate moonshine-drinking, hat-off-and-sweeping-the-floor, Mississippi blues party

I finally got my final from food/travel writing class published! I’m posting the long version (2,500 words +) here, but you can read what ran in the paper (Miss. music comes from the heart, inspired by the kitchen) at Knoxnews.com.

“You get sick of her, can I have her?” Mark Massey, one of the “blue-eyed soul” musicians asked R.L. Boyce, jerking his thumb toward the kitchen.

“Which one you want?”

“The one cook this,” Massey said.  He forked some creamed corn onto a heap of mashed potatoes and scooped it all onto a chunk of smothered pork.  “That one in there is hooking it up.  I might take her back.”

R.L. Boyce jams out. The party nearly spills into the next room of his modest Como, Miss., home.

That’s when Boyce swigged back another dose of clear liquid from his pocket-sized Heaven Hill bottle and belted out, “Not that in there. You ain’t gonna get that in there.  That’s mine in there.  That’s all for me.  And you know what I told her?”  He picked up his electric guitar and cued Lightnin’ Malcolm on drums.

Citations favorites – féministes

Nothing like the inspiring words of one of the first female writers, a feminist, Louise Labé.

Le plus grand plaisir qui soit apres amour, c’est d’en parler. (The greatest pleasure that comes after love is talking about it.)

Incontinent que les hommes commencent d’aymer, ils escrivent des vers. (Unrestrained as the men beginning to love, so they write in verse.)

Bien je mourrais plus que vivante heureuse. (Better I die than live happily.)

Half For You, Half For Me – Hot Cross Buns

Between the two of us, shall goodwill be.

Hot-cross Buns!
Hot-cross Buns!