Category Archives: Uncategorized

Orange Rolls and Hay Bales

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Yum — what about some orange rolls for Sunday brunch? The best ones, of course, come from All Steak Restaurant in Cullman, Alabama. These delicious creations literally melt in your mouth when they’re warm and gooey in the restaurant– and they’re sensational even a couple hours later when you dig into your to-go dozen on the way home. You go to All Steak for the rolls but you’re rewarded with a full menu of fresh and homemade food served with a smile. All Steak has been a Cullman tradition for years, and with reason: It’s good food at a good price made and served by some of the friendliest folks around. And while you’re in Cullman, wander around downtown for some fun shopping. Younger daughter Carolyn and I recently did that. After lunch (with orange rolls, of course), we paid a visit to Biggest Hay-Bale People Ever Made, who were hanging out on a Cullman sidewalk. You just never know what you’ll find! Check out All Steak at www.theallsteak.com

Shopping the Gap

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The other day I was in our Gap store in Regency Square Mall in Florence, Alabama — I usually cruise by every week or so to check out what’s new. And as a new grandma, I usually wander over to the Baby Gap side. Who can resist? Anyway, I found a couple pairs of knit pants for sale and this adorable little outfit and figured I’d better call my daughter Liz to check on sizes for grandson Nolan. “Hey, sweetie,” I said on the cell. “I’m here at our Gap …” She laughed. “Oh my gosh,” she said. “I’m at our Gap, too.” She’s in nearby Huntsville, Alabama, which has a Gap (after closing stores in the two malls) at the newly opened Bridge Street Town Centre. “That’s so funny,” I agreed and continued, “but listen, I’m looking at something cute for Nolan.” She laughed even harder. “Let me guess,” she said. “Is it a blue patchwork vest with pinstriped pants? I”ve got them in my hand right now!” Great shopping minds think alike. I’ve trained my children well.

Scarecrows in Alabama

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There’s enough to do at Huntsville (Ala.) Botanical Garden’s Scarecrow Trail for an all-day adventure. To see the “trail,” you walk through the gardens and admire dozens of scarecrows that have been decorated by businesses, families, groups of friends. and all sorts of folks. The ‘crows are scary, funny, creative — you name it. Of course, HBG is gorgeous on its own. There are acres of shady woodland trails, flower gardens, natural areas and beautifully landscaped formal spots. My favorites are the peaceful Asian-inspired Garden of Hope and the butterfly house at the Nature Center. For children, there’s a playground paradise with games, mazes and all sorts of fun nooks and crannies to explore. Grandson Nolan, at 6 1/2 months, isn’t old enough yet to appreciate all the fun things he can do there, but on a recent visit he did try to eat the ferns in the butterfly house — what a nature boy! Of course, the Botanical Garden is a prime destination for two of my other top activities: eating and shopping. Clemintine’s at the Garden is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays and serves fresh salads, soups and sandwiches, including a yummy roasted veggie pannini plus wine by the glass. Many local folks go there for lunch since you don’t have to pay garden admission to eat there, and it’s certainly worth it. And the gift shop at the Garden is superb — all sorts of seasonal decorations, garden-themed gifts and Christmas-stocking ideas. But the best part of the Huntsville Botanical Garden is that it truly is visitor-friendly. The folks there want to do everything they can to make your experience a positive one. For instance, you can bring your own food and eat a picnic lunch, and if you pay the one-day admission and then decide to become a member that day, you can get your ticket money back. Plus, everything is clean and well-maintained and the volunteers and staff answer questions, give directions and offer suggestions cheerfully and helpfully. Check it all out at www.hsvbg.org.

Picking Cotton

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Before harvest ...

It’s cotton-picking time in northwest Alabama. When we first moved here 13 years ago from middle Tennessee, my young daughters thought the cotton looked like snow on the fields this time of year — and I still think that! Farmers are in the midst of harvest right now, so the rest of us share the roads with hardworking traveling tractors and escaped flying cotton strands. Of course, everything’s all computerized and digitized in 2008, but many people who grew up country around here still remember picking by hand. I love driving by a mechanically harvested field with folks who know from experience

... and after.

... and after.

where the phrase “in high cotton”* comes from. They shake their heads and say in that “back-in-my-day” tone of voice, “Daddy would never have allowed us to leave the fields with so much cotton like that.”

But I love living someplace where tractors and cotton and dirt and gin (not the liquor!) reports on the morning radio are important.

* “In high cotton” means that the cotton plants are high enough so that you don’t have to stoop or bend over to pick it.

Tupelo Travels and Sweet Treats

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Cinnamon rolls. Sourdough bread. Blueberry muffins. All fresh and homemade and delicious. Sound good? The lucky folks in Tupelo, Miss., can get these every day (except Sunday) at the newly opened Dutch Pastry Shoppe on Gloster Street. And you know it’s all fresh and homemade because you can see the work in the kitchen and smell the yummy results as soon as you open the door. No one — and I mean no one! — is able to resist. Does cream cheese peanut butter pie tempt you? Italian Creme Cake? How about pumpkin bread or mocha fudge cookies?But Dutch Pastry’s charm comes from more than its array of goodies. One of the things I like best here is the convenient variety in sizes. For instance,  you can buy bread in full loaves for a big family or mini loaves for a small family or single slices if you want to munch on a sweet treat immediately — which I usually do. There’s also a cooler of frozen casseroles plus a full inventory of readymade slaws, sauces and mustards, including my new favorite peanut butter: Mrs. Miller’s Amish Peanut Butter Spread. It’s smooth and sweet and perfect on a graham cracker. The folks at Dutch Pastry Shoppe are friendly and helpful, too. They’ll answer questions and take special orders. There’s room to sit and enjoy your purchases with some hot coffee or cold milk and even a day-old clearance rack. I think the embroidered wall hanging in the shop says it all. Dutch Pastry is open from 6 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays and 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Fridays. Phone 662.620.6323.

Pumpkin Mania

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Fall means pumpkins, and we all love pumpkins! There’s just something about them — I’m not sure what. Maybe that they’re only around for a few weeks. Maybe because they smell so good and taste even better. Maybe because they just instantly make me happy. Who knows? But I’m always glad when the air gets cooler and the leaves start to turn and I can go all pumpkin, all the time. Bath and Body Works has some great-smelling pumpkin things, such as Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin lotion and scrub. Fragrance oils and sprays also come in Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin as well as Perfect Autumn Pumpkin. This past year at Bath and Body Works, I bought some autumn potpourri that has stones, beads, glass leaves and wooden pumpkins in it and a Perfect Autumn Pumpkin travel candle, although I haven’t seen those items in stores this year. A few drops of oil refreshes the potpourri and everybody who comes in says, “Oh, your house smells so good.” Be careful, though, that somebody doesn’t think the potpourri is Halloween candy and tries to crunch a rock. (Who would do that, Lizzy Jane???!!!!!) And of course, there’s pumpkin you can eat. Pumpkin Spice Flax crunchy granola bars from Kashi are my favorite emergency on-the-road food — although they are, as advertised, quite crunchy. But delicious! Fresh Market sells a pumpkin pancake and waffle mix that’s easy and perfect for cool crisp mornings and fun breakfast-for-supper fall evenings. I’m also a big fan of pumpkin seed oil, which I’ve only found at Tria Market in Birmingham, Ala. (in Soho Square in Homewood, http://www.birminghammenus.com/tria/) It’s a rich and green oil that flavors bread and hearty vegetables with a woodsy taste of fall. But the best fall flavor is the pumpkin dip Connie Carpenter does at Jack O’Lantern Farms, the hydroponic greenhouses in Muscle Shoals, Ala., http://www.jackolanternfarm.com/. The Carpenters have the best selection of pumpkins for sale in northwest Alabama. Connie makes a dip by roasting pumpkins (quarter, brush with oil, roast and remove meat) and then combining the pumpkin with cream cheese, powdered sugar and spices. It’s absolutely October in your mouth!

Rick and Bubba and Friends

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Yes, this is my friend Bonnie. Standing on a car. It looks as if she’s miraculously balancing on top of a huge Rick and Bubba sign — and if anybody could do that, it would be her — but she’s actually standing on top of her car, which is holding up the huge Rick and Bubba sign with help from assistants Jana, left, and Cheryl. And this was 5:45 a.m. In the morning. I’m there, too, taking this photo. And why were we in this Birmingham, Ala., parking lot at 5:45 a.m. standing on a car holding a huge Rick and Bubba sign? Of course, it was all Bonnie’s idea — and it was a good idea. The whole thing was a surprise birthday party for our other friend, Cathy Layne. Cathy is a huge fan of the Rick and Bubba radio show, which is broadcast from studios in Birmingham, where Bonnie and Cathy live. So Bonnie concocted an elaborate scheme to surprise Cathy with tickets to a broadcast. She couldn’t get tickets for Cathy’s actual birthday — the closest was almost a month later — so of course she was hoping that would really throw the birthday girl off. Then she told Cathy that Jana, Cheryl and I were stopping in Birmingham to spend the night on our way to Florida and we had to get up early the next morning to make it to Pensacola by noon and we wanted to go to Panera Bread (love their Cinnamon Crunch bagels) for breakfast before we hit the road. Cathy was suspicious but went along with it. She met us — along with Angela and Karen, a couple of their other Birmingham friends — and by the time she walked into the parking lot, she said later, she had it figured out. But we all had fun anyway. Who wouldn’t with this crew? And the sign? It had hung at Rick and Bubba’s former restaurant, where Cathy’s son had worked. He rescued the sign when it was thrown out after the restaurant closed and kept it at his mom’s house. Bonnie thought it would be fun to take the sign to the studio and give it back to Rick and Bubba, but she was frantic when she found out Cathy’s son had taken the sign to Auburn for a recent ESPN Game Day, although it didn’t get on camera. So she had to devise some complicated maneuvering to secretly get the sign back so Cathy wouldn’t know — and, of course, she succeeded, because if Bonnie puts her mind to something, she’s going to do it. I’m so glad we’re friends! Actually, she and Jana are long-time friends since they practically grew up together. But Jana is so generous that she even shares her friends, so we northwest Alabama friends of Jana luckily get to be friends with her Birmingham bunch, too.

It was so much fun to sit in on the Rick and Bubba show. Even if you disagree with their politics, you have to admit that they are master entertainers and so good at what they do. I also admire Rick’s strong faith in light of the accidental death of his young son. They were hospitable hosts, and it was fascinating to watch the behind-the-scenes proceedings of a radio broadcast. Visit their Web site, http://www.rickandbubba.com/, to learn more about their show. I think they were tickled about getting their sign back, although they assured us that we really didn’t have to go to all that trouble!

Fire and Ice

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Fire and Ice is a new restaurant in Birmingham, Ala., and some friends and I checked it out a couple nights ago. It’s in Five Points in the building where a Gap was several years ago — and it sure doesn’t look like the place where we used to buy blue jeans. Fire and Ice is a sort of do-it-yourself stir fry/grill restaurant. You don’t cook it yourself, but you create your own bowl of ingredients from a well-stocked buffet and then take it to a huge round grill where cooks sizzle your creation to perfection. That’s the “Fire” part. The “Ice” part is the bar, which is decorated in cool shades of blue to contrast with the red decor of the food part. Here’s how it works: When the waitress seats you, you get a complimentary bowl of chips and salsa and you order drinks while she explains the process and even takes you on a tour. The buffet has a salad bar with the usual items and then a section with ingredients for your entree, although you can mix and match. The entree bar has a wider variety of vegetables such as bok choy and sweet potatoes — some cooked and some not cooked — along with uncooked meats such as scallops, salmon, shrimp, BBQ chicken and tenderloin plus tofu. You can do your salad first and then go back for your entree, which you build in a bowl as high as you wish. Of course, we five experienced moms sort of cringed at the thought of adding raw meat to a pile of vegetables and letting it set for a few minutes, but our waitress assured us it would be OK, and of course it was. The really fun part, though, is figuring our your sauce. There are about 1o or 12 to choose from, with flavors such as Cajun, Asian and Southwestern. I really liked the Roasted Garlic with Honey and then a pineapple-ginger one. You can stick with one or mix some together. So you put your sauce in little cups and take your bowl of ingredients plus your sauce over to the grill, where the cooks deftly arrange your ingredients in a line, do their magic, add your sauce and in a few minutes you’ve got a hot and yummy personalized stir fry. You can take your drinks to the grill while you watch and go back as often as you like. It was lots of fun, but it can be a little intimidating if you feel pressured by the thought that a good meal is up to your own skill at combining ingredients. After all, relying on somebody else’s expertise is one of the reasons we go out to eat. But there are no bad choices, and the sauce redeems all. If you’re uneasy at first, start out small with only a few ingredients — although if it’s crowded and there’s a line at the grill, this approach might slow down your evening. And if you don’t want a stir fry at all, do a hamburger or veggie burger at the grill and get a big basket of fries to go with. Yum! The salad/entree bar is $15.95 for dinner and $9.9 for lunch. There are also appetizers and a dessert, including a fondue for more do-it-yourself eating, but these are extra. As long as you’ve got folks along who are willing to try something new, this is a great place. It’s also good for families like mine, where everybody likes different things. According to the Web site, http://www.fire-ice.com/, Fire and Ice is a chain that started in 1997 in Cambridge, Mass., and now is all over the world. It’s fun and different, so try it.

Sunday Puzzles

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Have you tried Numbrix yet? Marilyn vos Savant, who authors the “Ask Marilyn” column in the Sunday magazine Parade, invented this fun number game recently. New puzzles are in her Parade “Ask Marilyn” column and daily at http://www.parade.com/askmarilyn/numbrix. Here’s how it works: You fill in a partially complete grid with the missing numbers 1-81 so that the numbers are in numerical order without diagonals — only horizontally and vertically. It’s one of the rare puzzles that’s challenging yet simple at the same time. If you need to warm up for a five-star Sudoku or the Sunday New York Times crossword or you just need to rest your brain while giving it a gentle nudge, try Numbrix. A word of warning, though: It’s much easier to do online so you don’t have massive erasing. Unlike Sudoku, where a quick check can show you where you’re going wrong, you can work yourself into a Numbrix hole without realizing it until the very last square — much better to hit the “reset”  button than rub holes in the Sunday parade with your eraser. If a puzzle can be elegant, then this one is. When you’re — literally — on the right path, you get into a satisfying rhythm and everything falls into place. Good luck!

Fall Food, Southern Style

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One of my favorite fall traditions has started: Betty Sims’ Scrumptious Culinary School in Decatur, Ala. A former restaurant-owner and caterer and the author of two cookbooks, Betty teaches eight classes or so in her home every fall. The classes, which focus on simple yet elegant menus for parties and entertaining, are so popular they sell out almost immediately. And no wonder! Betty is a delight — so warm and gracious and the very epitome of Southern hospitality. In each class, about 40 people gather in the basement of her elegant home, which she’s converted into a teaching kitchen. While we sample appetizers and sip wine, Betty demonstrates the recipes, answers questions and shares from her extensive cooking experience. Then the best part happens: We get to eat! This is such a fun evening that’s good for groups of girlfriends together or for going by yourself. A couple classes — a Spanish menu and cooking with wild game — still have openings, so check out the schedule at http://scrumptiousinc.com/