Innholdsfortegnelse for December/January 2021 i Garden & Gun

G& GLive See what’s cooking (or playing) on Instagram Left to right: Maggie Braucher; Hermes Hamanot I often hear from readers that they feel like they’re part of the G&Gextended family, a wildly entertaining and thoughtful bunch that includes musicians, chefs, artists, and others from our pages. To see many of these talents live, be sure to check us out on Instagram (@gardenandgun), where on any given day Alexander Smalls (above) might be whipping up his spin on potato salad, or Brothers Osborne might be playing a private show. It’s like watching the magazine come to life.…

Social Chatter GARDENANDGUN.COM AND BEYOND WE ASKED... What’s your go-to holiday drink? On Facebook and in our Talk of the South newsletter, you shared your favorite ways to toast the season. Bourbon apple cider carries me from the first tailgate of autumn through Christmas, when I pour a nice Champagne in a crystal flute. Anne S. Boiled custard doctored with a tablespoon or two of Jack Daniel’s. I am constantly explaining that it’s a sort of cooked eggnog. Lynne T. Hot spiked apple cider. Beth Cloer Welsh A Poinsettia: Champagne, cranberry juice, and Cointreau. Perfect for any holiday celebration. Lynn W. White Russians. Rhonda Weisgarber Jeffers Homemade eggnog with a little Southern Comfort in it. Rhonda H. Hot buttered rum. Paul Hodo Coffee ice cream punch—especially when we’re having warm…

ASK G&G What’s Shakin’? EARTHQUAKES, EQUINERCISING, AND MUSCLE SHOALS By Guy Martin ILLUSTRATION BY BRITT SPENCER Thank God, we don’t have to worry about earthquakes, too. Or do we? You’d think the Appalachians being 480 million years old would mean the Southland would be spared the tectonic slippage, mudslides, and the like that our California brethren so grittily endure. But it seems the bottom of the North American plate that underlies the South is literally falling away, in super slo-mo, and, in addition to enlivening the seismic activity of the Piedmont, the destination of that rock is resolutely down to the molten core. The upside: This wholly natural process provides much-needed doomsday fodder to the South’s fire-and-brimstone preachers for their scary-ass visions of us all inevitably falling into the fiery…

BOOKS Past Perfect DANIELLE EVANS’S STUNNING NEW COLLECTION DEFTLY WRESTLES WITH HISTORY AND TRUTH By Jonathan Miles Cassie Jacobs, the narrator of the titular novella at the heart of Danielle Evans’s astonishing second collection, The Office of Historical Corrections, works as a field agent for the Institute of Public History, a fictional federal agency “devoted to making the truth so accessible and appealing” that it cannot be ignored. Cassie’s job entails roaming Washington, D.C., in search of historical inaccuracies: a bakery hawking a Juneteenth cake as a way to celebrate the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, for instance (“it actually recognizes the date slaves in Texas learned they were free,” she tells the bakery owner), or the oft-misconstrued origin of the architectural descriptor brutalist. (Cassie would have you know it…

JUBILEE Steak à la Helen INSPIRED BY HIS GRILL-LOVING GRANDMOTHER, CHEF ROB MCDANIEL’S NEW RESTAURANT HEATS UP DOWNTOWN BIRMINGHAM BY JOHN T. EDGE PHOTOGRAPHS BY CALEB CHANCEY Helen Frutiger cooked on a cast-iron grill, tucked into a brick wall in a brick ranch house with a backyard that sloped toward a creek. With a used French’s mustard bottle at her side, filled with water to knock down grease flames, she grilled the fatty rib eyes her husband, Jack, bought on orange-tag sale. Chef Rob McDaniel’s maternal grandmother, who passed in 2014, worked that grill in Oneonta, Alabama, a little northeast of Birmingham. Get McDaniel talking about his grandmother and he speaks of family dinners that began with celery sticks and radishes and ranch. He sniffs the air for the Worcestershire…

GIFT GUIDE Forever Finds A GATHERING OF HEIRLOOM-QUALITY PRESENTS TO LAST A LIFETIME By Haskell Harris PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALICE GAO Styling by Linden Elstran…

The Bloody Mary Bar Best of the Brunch BRONSON VAN WYCK TAKES the HAIR of the DOG to NEW HEIGHTS Stephen Karlisch ART-DIRECTING OVER-THE-TOP PARTIES FOR clients ranging from rapper Sean Combs to Chanel is all in a day’s work for the event designer Bronson van Wyck and his team. He’s just as focused on the details, though, when it comes to celebrating at home with his family in Tuckerman, Arkansas. On Christmas morning, for instance, “the Bloody Mary bar is always fully stocked first thing,” he says. Naturally, the setup is an event unto itself, with plenty of tartan, silver, crystal, taxidermy, and vodka. Van Wyck’s recipe for the cocktail zings, too, with a trifecta of salty, spicy, and sweet flavors from ingredients such as olive juice, serrano peppers,…

In Memoriam Julia Reed Remembering the Larger-than-Life Writer, Reporter, Columnist, Longtime Contributor, and Greatest Party Guest Ever, the Incomparable By JON MEACHAM Eric England for Nfocus Magazine ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL WITTE It all began,inevitably,with a bang— with the sound of a series of .32-caliber shots fired in a secluded, wooded estate in Purchase, New York. The house belonged to Herman Tarnower, the celebrated “Scarsdale Diet” doctor who made the ultimately fatal decision to spurn a lover, Jean Harris, the pill-addicted headmistress of the elite Madeira School for girls outside of Washington, D.C. On the evening of Monday, March 10, 1980, Harris testified, she drove to Tarnower’s home to kill herself, but snapped after seeing another woman’s lingerie in the doctor’s dressing room. In the ensuing clash, Harris shot Tarnower—accidentally, she…

MEET the JUDGE ASHLEY VERMILLION WEBB Founder, Vermillion, Raleigh, North Carolina For Ashley Vermillion Webb, judging the Style category “felt just like Christmas”— and like an extension of her job selecting items for her women’s clothing boutique. The shop is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary with a move to a location twice the size across the street, where Vermillion Webb will continue working with designers including Lela Rose and Carolina Herrera. Seeing the Made in the South Awards entries, she says, “made me feel so proud of the South.”…

MEET the JUDGE T. EDWARD NICKENS Garden & Gun contributing editor and author, Raleigh, North Carolina An expert sportsman, author of The Total Outdoorsman’s Manual, frequent G&G contributor, and a ten-time Outdoors judge, T. Edward Nickens was on the hunt for two things: a product as handcrafted as possible, with “a story rooted in the Southern experience.” This year, he says, the “melting pot of the contemporary South was evident” in the breadth of entries, from a Hawaii-influenced knife to this grill inspired by Argentinean cooking.…

Private Sanctuaries Enchanting hideaways make even these grand Southern estates feel like secluded retreats Broadfield SEA ISLAND, GEORGIA Part of the famed Sea Island resort, the Broadfield hunting lodge sits on 5,800 acres of woodlands carved from one of the South’s first hunting clubs. Reserve the antler-laden, cypress-paneled hideout for up to eighteen guests, and enjoy dinner prepared by an on-site chef after a day spent in pursuit of quail. The Craig Claiborne House WASHINGTON, VIRGINIA While the lavish tasting menu that has earned chef Patrick O’Connell three Michelin stars is by itself worth a trip to the Inn at Little Washington, the tranquility of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains often entices travelers to extend their stay. At the Craig Claiborne House, a colorful two-bedroom cottage just steps away from the…

CONTRIBUTORS “She was truly her own character” —illustrator Michael Witte on the late G&Gcontributing editor Julia Reed (p. 106) Michael Witte ILLUSTRATOR For Michael Witte, drawing Julia Reed was easy; no matter how eccentric he made the scene, it couldn’t be too far off from the writer’s larger-than-life personality. “She was truly her own character,” says Witte, who had illustrated Reed’s column, the High & the Low, since 2011. Now based in New York, where he has sketched for the New Yorker, Harper’s, and Rolling Stone, Witte grew up on a farm outside of St. Louis. “I’ve always felt connected to Julia’s work, especially to the extent it explored the rural nature of the South,” he says. In this issue, Witte bids farewell to Reed with a final watercolor homage…

TALK OF THE SOUTH YOUR GUIDE TO SOUTHERN CULTURE INTERVIEW Larger Than Life EVERYTHING’S COMING UP ROSES FOR THE TENNESSEE-BORN FUNNYMAN LESLIE JORDAN By Allison Glock PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER YANG Standing four feet eleven, with a drawl as thick as summer honey and a wit as sharp as cucumber vine, the Tennessee-born writer, actor, and comedian Leslie Jordan is the people’s Truman Capote. A seasoned stage performer and raconteur famous for his zingers—no more so than during his Emmy-winning run as Beverley Leslie, Karen Walker’s prickly nemesis on Will & Grace— the sixty-five-year-old Jordan has recently stumbled into new renown thanks to a series of viral Instagram posts, many filmed while social distancing in his hometown of Chattanooga. His droll, Southern-camp takes garnered him more than five million followers in…

The Stuff of Legend Secrets spill in a bourbon family tell-all “Being with Julian,” i.e., Julian P. Van Winkle III, whose bourbon “Pappy” you might have heard about, “made me think about craft in America,” writes the Mississippi-based journalist Wright Thompson in his new book, Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last (Penguin Press). Over the years spent reporting on the Van Winkles, Thompson pondered not only their impeccable talents, but also their sense of fun, as when they sneak the good stuff into the Kentucky Oaks by pouring it into a Seven Seas salad dressing bottle. Thompson’s time with them raised questions about his own family, revealing how ambition can draw both light and darkness, and how some of the greatest stories ever told…

DRINKS Bittersweet Spot SHARP FLAVORS PUNCH UP A CRESCENT CITY HOLIDAY CLASSIC By Wayne Curtis PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHNNY AUTRY Food and prop styling by Charlotte Autry A traditional milk punch—liquor, milk, cream, and sugar, shaken into divine frothiness—is like an angelic visitor who arrives bearing a down pillow for your addled head. It’s often served at brunch, and especially comforts on those mornings when every sound seems rudely amplified (“Does the cat need to purr so loudly?”). But perhaps milk punch is a little too angelic? After all, it’s a drink often associated with New Orleans, where angels tread hesitantly. Shouldn’t it have a character that’s a little more edgy—even devilish? Correct answer: yes. If you add a double dose of bitterness—not enough to topple it into incivility, only to…

GOOD DOG New Leash on Life A WALKING ROUTINE PUTS PEP IN THE STEPS OF A LONELY LAB AND A BURNED-OUT JOURNALIST BY MAGGIE GALEHOUSE ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN CUNEO I used to take solitary walks before sunrise—three-mile, one-hour marches that emboldened or pacified me, depending on which way my mental pendulum was swinging. But last year I joined forces with an eleven-year-old Labrador mix who is utterly impervious to changes in mood. His personality rests at one fixed point: exuberant. That’s all he’s got. Blizzard is strong and blond with brown eyes and kisses of white fur on his face. I am strong and formerly blond with brown eyes and wisps of gray around my face. Blizzard is older in dog years than I am in people years, but neither…

The Handcrafts The Past as a Present MARIANA BARRAN DE GOODALL PAYS TRIBUTE to HER MEXICAN ROOTS with COOKIES and CRAFTING PHOTOGRAPHS BY JULIE SOEFER “I believe things made by hand carry good wishes. I am in a different country than my parents, and carrying this idea to my new home makes me feel connected to my heritage” WHEAT FLOUR, A BIT OF SHORTENING, MEXICAN brown sugar, and milk. “It’s simple and tasty and good year-round,” says Mariana Barran de Goodall of her recipe for gorditas de azúcar, or sugar tortillas. Goodall founded the embroidery company Hibiscus Linens in Houston; the Hotel Amparo in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; and a new venture: the shop Amparo Fine Living in Birmingham, Alabama. But the gorditas de azúcar, the shortbread-like hojarascas, and…

The Table Setting Toast to Tradition COLORFUL ACCENTS HOLD the KEY to STEPHANIE SUMMERSON HALL’S LIVELY GATHERINGS WHEN THE HOLLY HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA, native Stephanie Summerson Hall’s grandmother Estelle died, she left each of her granddaughters vintage glassware from her rainbow-hued collection—vessels that inspire Hall’s own holiday tabletop today. “The ones I remember most were her browns and greens,” she says. “So I chose a few of the emerald pieces—my favorite color.” As a child, Hall often accompanied her grandmother on vintage buying trips, which made her parting gift all the more meaningful. Still, when Hall attempted to expand her personal glassware collection, she found it difficult to complete a full set of any given color. So she created her own line, Estelle Colored Glass, in 2019, and dreamed up…

MEET the JUDGE AMANDA LINDROTH Interior designer and founder, Lindroth Design, Lyford Cay, Bahamas Known for her breezy, sophisticated island style, Amanda Lindroth worked in New York, Paris, and London for names such as Gucci before founding Lindroth Design in 2010 and moving to the Bahamas. She approached judging the Home entries much like she approaches stocking store locations in her hometown of Palm Beach and in Charleston, South Carolina. She hunted “for fresh ideas, and something beautiful”—which she found in the winning plaster chandeliers. “I love that Julie Neill is working in this medium and creating new classics,” Lindroth says.…

ELEVENTH ANNUAL MADE in the SOUTH AWARDS RUNNERS-UP STYLE HAMPTON ROAD DESIGNS Silk Eye Masks Austin, Texas $89; hamptonroaddesigns.com Lisa Davis, the founder of the Austin, Texas, handbag company Hampton Road Designs, has an accessories closet that would make a fashion editor envious. “I gravitate toward purses and jewelry and shoes,” Davis says, because anyone can wear them, no matter their size. But she never loved donning scarves, beautiful though they are. Her search for alternative ways to show off those elegant designs by the likes of Hermès, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton led to Hampton Road’s Heirloom Collection, which stars one-of-a-kind eye masks made using vintage silk scarves from Vestiaire Collective, a Parisian online retailer for pre-owned, authenticated designer duds. Davis and her husband, Bruce, pattern and cut the scarves…

OUR KIND OF PLACE Tree-for-All ON BEING THE FOREST FOR THE TREE IN ATHENS, GEORGIA By Leigh Ann Henion Jason Thrasher Pilgrims travel to the Dearing Street Historic District of Athens, Georgia, in sedans, minivans, and limousines. They visit briefly and leave flowers, or they stay for hours and take selfies. And every year around graduation, students departing the University of Georgia campus show up to say goodbye to one of the city’s most beloved residents. Each traveler must navigate around a tree growing in the middle of the road. In some communities, people might view this as a hindrance. But in Athens, the white oak slowing down traffic isn’t an obstacle; it’s the celebrity folks are seeking. Known as the Tree That Owns Itself, the oak has grand limbs…

EDITOR’S LETTER Remembering Our Friends SAYING GOODBYE TO A FEW G&G STALWARTS—AND LOOKING FORWARD TO A BRAND-NEW YEAR DAVID DIBENEDETTO Senior Vice President & Editor in Chief On August 28, the Garden & Gun family lost a legend. Julia Evans Reed passed away from cancer at age fifty-nine. Her writing was a cornerstone of G&G for more than a decade, and her voice in the pages will be irreplaceable. She could frustrate any editor (including me) with her penchant for filing stories at the last possible minute, but those stories were always worth the wait. As her friend the historian Jon Meacham writes in his tribute to her on page 106, “If we’d tried to invent a character like Julia, nobody would have believed it. She was a tsunami of…

LETTERS “I came across my first issue in a pocket-size grocery, a heartbeat away from the Canadian border” COVER MODEL The recent cover for the Best of the Sporting South issue (October/November 2020) takes my breath away. While I love the idea of your Good Dog Photo Contest for my own trio of Irish wolfhounds, I have never seen a more magnificent photo of a dog than that of Chesa, the German shorthaired pointer. Her stance shows every muscle and curve of her beautiful conformation, and her head and softly veined ears are perfect. She may perform wonderfully as a bird dog, but she is an exquisite specimen of man’s best friend. Chesa’s cover photo is a grand champion winner. Katrina Neylon Old Hickory, Tennessee The German shorthaired pointer on…

ARTS A Deeper South NOW ENTERING ITS THIRD SEASON, TRUESOUTH BRINGS A NUANCED TASTE OF THE REGION TO TV SCREENS By Nic Brown PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAN XELLER John T. Edge and Wright Thompson are lost. For almost an hour now they and their director, Tim Horgan, have been driving around the Edisto River not far from Bowman, South Carolina, peering out the window. “Is that it?” Thompson asks. Nope. It’s just another sandy cut-through. They’re on the hunt for Squirrel Road, a dirt lane where they were told they might find some old fish camps, and even though they’re following written directions—scrawled onto the top of a Styrofoam take-out box by a cook they just met in Orange-burg—Squirrel Road has yet to appear. No one seems too concerned, though, because…

WHAT’S IN SEASON Meyer Education THIS SWEET HYBRID IS THE ULTIMATE BACKYARD CITRUS By Jenny Everett ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN BURGOYNE It’s no accident that the Meyer lemon tree in Jason Stanhope’s backyard is the same age as his son. “When Leo was born, we planted a bunch of fruit trees, started a garden, and bought some chickens,” says the executive chef at FIG in Charleston, South Carolina. “I really wanted him to know that food comes out of the dirt or off a tree.” And now’s the time for three-year-old Leo to start plucking Meyers from those branches. In the South, the thin-skinned lemons ripen just in time for the holidays and stick around until the first freeze. Unlike other lemons, these juicy gems are more orangey sweet than they…

MEET THE CHEF: LISA DONOVAN Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee The first drink she’ll order in a bar after the pandemic: A super dry, extra dirty gin martini, with enough extra olives that it can serve as a first course. What she’d grab if the kitchen was on fire: “My notebooks. All of my notebooks.” A mother of two, she has this advice for a new parent: “Don’t be too quiet. Let kids get used to the normal noise of the house right out of the gate, including nap times and bedtimes—otherwise you’ll be tiptoeing around them your whole life.” ILLUSTRATION BY LARA TOMLIN…

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS That’s the Spirit EMBRACING THE BEAUTY OF THE TANGLED ORIGINS OF OUR HOLIDAY RITES AND ROUTINES By Guy Martin ILLUSTRATIONS BY DIANA BOLTON OUT EAST OF TOWN, MY FATHER AND GRANDFATHER HAD land that had been cleared for pasture at some colonial moment, but was now tattooed with trees so inexplicably random that their seed could only have been incubated in some grazing deer’s gut or shat out by birds down for a breather from the flyway. The stands included some evergreens, whose haphazard taint was one reason everybody had ignored that section. ¶ Home from school one holiday break with nothing better to do than drive around town looking for different combinations of trouble, my brothers and I thought we’d give the Christmas tree an…

Holidays on the Wing CHASING CALM ON A NEIGHBORHOOD BIRD-WATCHING STROLL By Aimee Nezhukumatathil EVER SINCE MY YOUNGER SON COULD TODDLE, MY FAMILY HAS TAKEN holiday walks along a small lake edged in shore grass and slash pines—an ideal spot for bird-watching—near my parents’ house in Central Florida. On those days when we’re visiting them between Christmas and New Year’s, we can usually don shorts and sandals, even if the neighborhood palm trees are weighted down with Christmas lights and inflatable Santas, softly whirring alive. One of us might carry a pair of binoculars, and because my husband and I are writers, a pencil and a small notebook come along, too. We may find anhingas—those long-necked snakebirds sunning themselves on oak trees—sandhill cranes, egrets, ibis, and killdeers. And if we’re…

The Wreath Rings of Plenty MANDY O’SHEA’S FESTIVE WREATHS SHOWCASE the BOUNTY of HER GEORGIA FARM PHOTOGRAPH BY ALI HARPER Styling by Ginny Branch PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALI HARPER MANDY O’SHEA’S WREATHS ECHO THE FREE- spirited centerpieces, bouquets, garlands, and boutonnieres she and her husband, Steve, piece together for weddings and parties through their Georgia firm, 3 Porch Farm. Luckily, the floral designer and flower farmer’s home in Comer provides an abundant harvest of source material, both cultivated and wild. “Typically, my wreaths can get pretty weird, with unexpected elements like dried grasses, branches, and basically anything that is appealing to me,” O’Shea says of the circlets she assembles using a base of scuppernong vines, so they will last well after the holidays end. “If it’s left out long enough, it’s…

MANEET CHAUHAN Chef and author, Morph Hospitality Group, Nashville, Tennessee In addition to helming four restaurants in Music City, Maneet Chauhan serves as a judge on Food Network’s series Chopped and has recently published her second cookbook celebrating the flavors of India. When judging the Food category, Chauhan looked for “something with the wow factor—something craveable, something memorable.” She found that in the Georgia Jams spread, though “the heart and soul in all of the entries” impressed her, “as well as the thought and detail that went into each one.”…

MEET the JUDGE JOSEPH STINCHCOMB Barman, Saint Leo, Oxford, Mississippi When assessing the Drink category, German-born Mississippian Joseph Stinchcomb kept an eye out for a smartly packaged drink that was simple but versatile—suited for a time of staying in. “Most people don’t have a fully stocked bar at home,” points out Stinchcomb, whose bar program at the Italian restaurant Saint Leo earned a semifinalist nod from the James Beard Awards in 2019. Of Tip Top, he says, “it’s perfect for 2020—hanging out with a friend, six feet apart, drinking a canned cocktail.”…

TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE FOR THE SOUTHERN SOUL DUE SOUTH WEEKENDS Staying Small THESE COZY INNS AND BOUTIQUE HOTELS TOOK THIS YEAR’S SPELL OF DOWNTIME TO INVEST IN THE DETAILS THAT MATTER Kirk Robert Seasoned hoteliers have seen just about everything. But even the most experienced concierge couldn’t have predicted 2020’s pandemic. In a testament to dogged and determined Southern hospitality, these five inns renovated, primped and spruced, or opened their doors for the first time despite every obstacle lobbed in their path (including, in one instance, a tornado). Whether it’s a bar studded with oyster shells at a historic hotel in Apalachicola, Florida, or pops of local art at a ten-suite inn in Nashville, the thoughtful touches at these little getaways prove that small can be full of big charm.…