Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2022 i Garden & Gun

Fannie Flagg WRITER “Someone said to me, ‘Don’t forget where you came from’”—writer Fannie Flagg on moving from Alabama to New York City (p. 160) When she was in her early twenties, Fannie Flagg boarded a train in her beloved hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, and set off for New York City. “Someone said to me then, ‘Don’t forget where you came from,’” says the actress and author of eleven books, including Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. “I never have.” In “Setting the Stage” (p. 160), Flagg pays homage to the Town and Gown, the hometown theater where she got her start. “Writing this piece gave me the opportunity to go through old photos and call old friends,” says Flagg, who now lives in California. “I realized how…

Styling by Anastasia/The Wall Group; grooming/hair styling by Amber Burgin. Shirt: Vintage on Hollywood; pants: CMMN SWDN;shoes: Bottega Veneta; socks: Uniqlo; rings: Anna Beck and Rhys Kelly; necklace: I Candy Rocks PHOTOGRAPHS BY AUSTIN HARGRAVE Jazz is like putting on your favorite hat, a crop top, and a tie,” says the actor Kelvin Harrison Jr. of the art form that shaped much of his upbringing in the West Bank of New Orleans. The son of jazz musicians, he’s always improvising like that, striving to find the right rhythm in his music and, now, in Hollywood. And memories of life back then—visiting his grandmother, teasing his younger twin sisters, eating red beans and rice—form the liner notes of that nascent but thriving career. Harrison stumbled into acting, he says, while searching…

In his new food memoir, Fishing for Chickens (University of Georgia Press), the outdoorsman and writer Jim Casada makes an appetizing case that his Smokies stretch of the Appalachians serves up a distinct sliver of mountain memory. Born in 1942 in Bryson City, North Carolina, Casada shares rollicking stories of hunting and fishing on his home turf, spanning Western North Carolina into East Tennessee. He also includes recipes that pinpoint the flavors of his family’s home-cooked meals—“freshly caught trout wearing dinner jackets of stone-ground cornmeal fried to a golden turn and served with fried taters and onions,” he writes; Cherokee succotash; blackberry cobbler; “finely chopped ramps atop a dish of scrambled eggs cooked with real butter and partnered with a cathead biscuit.”…

Got a kid scared of spiders, aphids, worms, you name it. We need help, and fast. The joyous Huck Finn aspects of a Southern summer spent outdoors have been sadly reduced. The problem you’re facing is that everything is “unknown,” thus fear inducing. So as you introduce children to the fauna in the back pasture, institute an aggressive handling program—trap everything you can find, ants, grasshoppers, toads, a garter snake if one’s handy. The guiding precept is to make every species known, very much including the species that must notbe handled, such as black widows, brown recluses, scorpions, and vipers. My puckishly wise mother taught us a trick from her childhood on our great-grandfather’s South Alabama farm: Catch a june bug, tie a string around one of its legs, and…

For a brief period, everything that makes a Southern summer so delicious seems to peak at once. Peaches are heavy and sweet. Tomatoes crowd the kitchen counter. Blackberries and cucumbers seem to never stop growing. It’s almost too much, which is why Emily Nunn started tossing it all into a salad. A Virginia native who had lived in New York City and Chicago, Nunn recently moved to Atlanta after spending the past few years living the solitary writer’s life in a barn in Todd, North Carolina. She finished her memoir, The Comfort Food Diaries, which traced her journey of recovery from heartbreak, alcoholism, and the suicide of her closeted gay brother, and then created what has become one of the most popular paid food newsletters on the Substack platform, The…

No two of Quintin Middleton’s handmade culinary knives are exactly the same. At his workshop in St. Stephen, South Carolina, the bladesmith has crafted distinctive tools for a host of top Southern chefs since founding Middleton Made Knives in 2010. But none hold quite the meaning of one he made last year when a friend commissioned him to create a knife with the request that he make something truly special. “I thought, what can be deeper than my ancestral history?” Middleton says. The result is a beautiful eight-inch chef ’s knife that in its own way represents the ugly truths of slavery in the South. He considered every element, beginning with the oak handle. A little while back, Middleton had gotten a call from Charleston’s Middleton Place, a former plantation…

Illustration by Michael Spitz This is it,” a father says to his daughter as she reaches for a Cuban sandwich, pressed with rendered lard, sliced on the diagonal, and stacked in a gold-rimmed basket to reveal the layers of ham, roasted pork, Swiss cheese, and pickles within. “This is it,” the daughter says to her mother, pulling at a strand of cheese that has melted down the side of the bread and gone brown under the weight and heat of a cast-iron machine that looks like a supersized trouser press. Then mother, father, and daughter snap photos of their sandwiches to post on social media. Flower boxes frame the entrance to Sanguich, a shotgun café on Calle Ocho, the main drag in Miami’s Little Havana. Tourists walk the palm-shaded streets…

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALICE GAO Styling by Linden Elstran/Art Department…

When I first moved to New York, I couldn’t afford air-conditioning, so I stole it. I’d buy a ticket to a movie at a multiplex, see it, and then hide in a restroom until it was time to sneak into another. I credit this life of crime to my parents’ depositing me and my friends at kids’ double features every summer. If we didn’t get goose bumps before the coming attractions, it wasn’t cold enough. We’d curl up, our feet on our seats, knees tucked under our chins, heads thrown back downing two-foot-tall Pixy Stix so the theater looked like a night swamp full of reeds. My husband plays softball in Central Park and comes home every weekend from May to September drenched in sweat and dirt. This is not…

In 1997, at age eighteen, the fourth-generation coffee farmer Geovanni Leiva left his native Guatemala, arrived in Arkansas with twenty dollars in his pocket, and went on to found Leiva’s Coffee, a roastery based in Little Rock that supports his home village of Joconal by selling bags of coffee, hot lattes, and a popular cold brew. “Cold brew actually allows the coffee to maintain flavor in its purest form because it’s brewed slow and cold,” he says. To make your own at home, mix 10 oz. alkaline water with every 6 oz. fresh-ground coffee, steep the brew 18–20 hours in the refrigerator, strain out the grounds, pour the concentrate over ice, and dilute it with water or milk (Leiva favors oat milk for its nuttiness). Or, take the lead from…

Almasgoof Restaurant METAIRIE Mahmoud “Alan” Alhattab grew up in Basra, Iraq, a city that prides itself on the preparation of masgouf, often called the Iraqi national dish. He tried many Louisiana fish—mullet, redfish, snapper—before settling on buffalo fish or pompano as the best substitutes for traditional carp at his Metairie restaurant. The fish is butterflied, bathed in olive oil and spices, and then roasted beside a wood fire. Alongside whole chickens, kebabs, and more, it’s the centerpiece of a feast that lives up to Almasgoof ’s motto: “Go big or stay home.” The Appetite Repair Shop ALGIERS POINT Once an avant-garde restaurant star in New Orleans, Pete Vazquez now runs this to-go-only supper club out of a tiny corner shop in the Algiers Point neighborhood. He cooks what he wants,…

Andrew Kornylak If you recognize that fisherman on this issue’s cover, chances are you’ve seen Woody Platt onstage as the lead singer of Steep Canyon Rangers. Music and fly fishing have been parts of Platt’s life for as long as he can remember. Platt, who lives in Brevard, North Carolina, is also a familiar face around Asheville and the surrounding waters (where the cover photo was snapped), whether rehearsing, floating the French Broad for smallmouth bass, playing live shows, or just enjoying dinner with his wife, the artist and musician Shannon Whitworth, at one of their favorite restaurants, Cúrate. A former full-time fishing guide, Platt still leads a few select clients throughout the season. For more scoop on what to do in Asheville, see page 122.…

FIFTEEN YEARS OF G&G I love G&G for the incredible talent and places I discover- whether it's a new singer in the April/May 2022 issue (Brittney Spencer- oh my gosh- stunner!), a restaurant, a recipe, a spirit, a hotel, or a destination - and for the incredible writing. I love the hunting and birding and fishing articles. Love how G&G showcases the natural beauty of the South and all the fascinating people who live here. Denise Brown Huntsville, Alabama I saw Brittney Spencer tweet a video of herself singing a song by the Highwomen. Since then, I've seen her on the Ryman stage and at Atlanta's Tabernacle. Tonight, I saw her on the cover of Garden & Gun. She's taking over and I'm here for it. Joshua Weichman Birmingham, Alabama…

To watch Erin Reitz drape and pin a length of creamy poplin on a dress form until, suddenly, a shirt takes shape is the visual equivalent of listening to a guided meditation. As she gently, expertly folds and tucks the fabric to taper a sleeve, you find yourself entranced, pondering big ideas: how if you look closely, the beauty of seemingly simple objects actually comes from complexity of design. The same goes for Reitz’s new E.M. Reitz line of everyday women’s wear, basics that sing with composition and details of the finest caliber. As the forty-three-year-old developed the two shirts and the dress that launched her collection this spring, she experimented to produce lovely pleats and ideal pockets and easy-wearing fits. “My typical woman crush is fifty-five,” she says. “Creative…

Hillary Waters Fayle slowly turns a magnolia leaf over in her fingers, coaxing a needle threaded with embroidery floss gently through to the other side. “It’s all about the connection between creation and the human hand,” she says. She means this metaphorically, but she’s also speaking literally: Stitching intricate patterns onto delicate leaves takes a meticulously soft touch. “I’m asking a material to do something it’s not supposed to,” she says. “Even though I’ve done it so many times, I look at a finished piece and think, I can’t believe I got through without tearing it.” Around her Richmond studio lie finished and mid-process works. A maple leaf with red thread tracing its veins; a eucalyptus leaf bearing tattoos of its likeness in orange and blue; a Ligustrum leaf missing…

Food and prop styling by Charlotte Autry PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHNNY AUTRY “Enjoying a dram of Scotch before breakfast was once called a skalk, which translates from Scottish Gaelic as “a blow to the head” During the Long Sequester, so many people became makers of jams that the nation suffered a shortage of mason jars and lids; one jar vendor in 2020 reported a 600 percent spike in sales. We imagine basements from Arlington to Atlanta to Austin bristling with battalions of raspberry jam and orange marmalade stockpiled in quantities not seen since the height of the Cold War. What to do with it all? Well, may we suggest that you make a drink? Jams consist mainly of fruit and sweetener, which is not too far removed from classic cocktail ingredients.…

Food and prop styling by Charlotte Autry Yield: 4 servings INGREDIENTS 4 to 6 handfuls of soft greens, such as butter lettuce, Little Gem lettuce, and arugula 1 big handful of mixed fresh herbs, such as basil, mint, and parsley, torn 1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded, quartered, and sliced 2 big handfuls of big, juicy blackberries 2 large ripe peaches, pitted and cut into chunks (peeling is personal preference) 2 large ripe tomatoes or two handfuls of big cherry tomatoes, cut into chunks 3 or 4 plums, cut into chunks (optional) 2 avocados, cut in half, pitted, and sliced A big handful of radishes, trimmed and sliced 1 large fresh mozzarella ball, torn or cut into small pieces (more to taste) 1/3 of a medium red onion, finely diced Chopped…

Just east of Sanguich, dashing men in black vests with red lapels work the gleaming wood bar, stirring Hemingway daiquiris in the slanted happy-hour light. Cu ban musicians sing from aside stage set like a Havana street scene. A joint project of barman and Cuba native Julio Cabrera and chef Michelle Bernstein of Miami, Cafe La Trova excels as a barroom and as a restaurant, where mezcal-marinated fried calamari and whole snapper in escabeche draw crowds for dinner and, eventually, dancing.…

For Sara York Grimshaw, the heady scent of Japanese honeysuckle heralds the arrival of warmer weather, hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees. “I love how ambitious and sturdy it is all the way through summer,” says the Charleston, South Carolina, floral designer. “Every other plant in the garden will be suffering from the intolerable heat but not honeysuckle—it continues to thrive.” That tenacity also feeds its infamous invasiveness, so Grim-shaw makes ingenious use of the bounty by creating a living chandelier for alfresco suppers. She typically harvests twice as much as she needs, then tucks a clear glass vase of water into a hanging container, positioning the prettiest vines in the water and allowing them to spill out over the planter. Star jasmine and passion vine make fine substitutes, but, Grimshaw says,…

No. 1 STARGAZE UNDER DARK SKIES. Joe Hendricks Nothing says summer in the South quite like a night sky full of stars, and having the time to watch them brighten—whether it’s from your backyard, on a Blue Ridge mountain trail, or on a cross-country road trip. In Big Bend National Park, the sunset brings not only a respite from the West Texas heat, but also the beginning of an awe-inducing spectacle. The expanse of 800,000 acres of desert, mountains, rivers, and canyons contains the least amount of light pollution of any national park in the contiguous United States. Take the Rio Grande Village Nature Trail for a blazing view of the Milky Way over the Sierra del Carmen and the Chisos Mountains, or settle into your tent or RV at…

Call it summer love: I was nineteen when I fell hard for Asheville, the mountainous urban anchor of Western North Carolina. As an interning reporter at the Franklin Press newspaper in the nearby town where my grandparents lived, I slipped away to Asheville every weekend I could to walk the grounds of the Biltmore estate or simply wander downtown, where I discovered art galleries and secondhand shops full of country antiques and Appalachian pottery. ¶ One hot afternoon, my editor (the late, great nature writer and historian Barbara McRae) sent me on a hike to find a rare flower—Stewartia, a cool-air-loving plant in the same family (the tea family) as camellias. Native to the South, Stewartia species known as “mountain camellia” and “silky camellia” bloom in summer. Right around the…

.01 HANDBOOK The Ultimate Guide to Southern Gardens Everything green thumbs need to know about the South’s best flora, seasonal produce and recipes, nurseries, garden tools, and essential height-of-summer inspiration. Including: FRUIT AND VEGETABLE PLANNER FLOWER TIPS STANDOUT NURSERIES SPECTACULAR GREEN SPACES AND MORE GARDENANDGUN. COM/gardenguide .02 MUSIC Back Porch Sessions Return! WATCH A NEW LINEUP OF MUSICIANS IN G&G’S POPULAR BACK PORCH SESSIONS SERIES, ALONG WITH PAST PERFORMANCES FROM THE LIKES OF BRANDI CARLILE, JASON ISBELL, AND LUKAS NELSON. GARDENANDGUN. COM/back-porch-sessions .03 G&G EXCLUSIVES Sign Up for Our Newsletters TALK OF THE SOUTH Vital news and happenings from around the region each week. Plus, a question for readers—and responses. THE SKILLET Ali Harper; Brennan Wesley; Peter Frank Edwards; John Burgoyne Gin fizz fried chicken, a decadent pecan pie, and…

WE ASKED... What’s the best thing about summer nights in the South? On Facebook and Twitter, readers shared their after-sundown delights. Rain on a tin roof. Melissa Wren Night swimming. @glamlifelover The smell of gardenias blooming. John Koster Jr. Evening concerts of frogs, crickets, and cicadas. Ann Huston Clawson Porch drinking. @i_like2bike Memories of Glen Campbell and Allen Toussaint singing about them. Jim Kuykendall Baseball under the lights. @nochcknstrps12r The lingering smell of suntan oil. Elizabeth Gutierrez Henson Bonfires and bourbon. Bonnie Williams Crittenden Going down to the Dairy Dip for an ice cream cone. @Marjd84 The bobwhites. Daddy would call out to them, and they would call back. Susan Tedder Ritter…

In the crowded hatchery of Conservation Fisheries Inc. (CFI) in Knoxville, green nylon-yarn mop-heads sway underwater in a tub, mimicking the vegetation where Barrens topminnows lay their eggs. Strings of white lights dip from the ceiling, switching on morning and evening for the Smoky madtom, which feeds by the pale light of dawn and dusk. A turkey baster sits on a shelf, ready to slurp up yellowcheek darter larvae as they hatch. And a cement mixer swirls water with gravel, which when clean will be returned to one of the 832 fish tanks here. “Welcome to our little mess,” J. R. Shute says. In 1986—a time when river pollution ran rampant and conservation efforts focused on game fish—Shute and his business partner, Patrick Rakes, founded CFI to propagate the smallest,…

A horse is a horse, of course (of course). But Lexington, a bay colt born on a Kentucky farm in 1850, was by any measure extraordinary. As a racehorse, he was close to unbeatable, and such a pop icon that thousands once crowded into sweltering grandstands to watch him race solo, against nothing but a stopwatch. His subsequent legacy as a stud sire, however, proved even greater. Lexington sired 575 foals, four of whom went on to win the Belmont Stakes and three of whom won the Preakness Stakes (uncoincidentally named after another Lexington foal). Not until 1981 did his sire line essentially go extinct, concluding a spectacular and unparalleled genetic run. By that time, though, Lexington’s mounted skeleton—once displayed as an exemplar of the modern equine—was gathering dust in…

Tank and the Bangas RED BALLOON On its third studio album, New Orleans’ Tank and the Bangas decisively transfers the sizzle and pop of the band’s live shows to songs that snap with NOLA jazz and funk as well as some hip-hop poetry and disco soul. Dynamite front woman Tarriona “Tank” Ball leads the line with lyrics that tackle anxiety and self-love, and, on the sung/spoken word “Black Folk,” delivers an anthemic celebration of culture and resilience.…

Hometown: Galax, Virginia Item she’d grab if the kitchen were burning down: “I’d probably stand there so long trying to decide that I’d end up a pile of ashes. But the thing I’d probably be clutching when they found me is my Microplane.” Best book about cooking that isn’t about cooking: “Laurie Colwin’s Family Happiness. It made me want to write about food. And I loved Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto: food as a balm for grief. And Heidi, with all the cheese.” One food that says the South: “For me, as a Virginian, it’s spoon bread, followed by pimento cheese.”…

Yield: 3–4 servings INGREDIENTS 1½ lb. German Butterball potatoes, peeled and quartered 1 tbsp. canola oil 2 tbsp. butter 4 tbsp. crème fraîche 1½ tsp. whole grain mustard 1 tsp. minced dill 1 tsp. minced chives ½ clove garlic plus 4 cloves, minced Salt and pepper, to taste 1 lemon ½large red onion, diced 8 oz.smoked salmon Fresh herbs, for garnish (sorrel, chives, dill, or parsley) Flaky sea salt PREPARATION Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add potatoes and cook until tender—about 8 to 10 minutes—then strain and let sit in the colander for several minutes. Meanwhile, heat a cast-iron skillet over medium heat, then add oil and swirl to coat the pan. When oil is hot, add potatoes. Resist the urge to stir them until…

Production/photo editor: Natalie Gialluca PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRIE WILLIAMS voices carry across Sherry Hodge’s backyard garden in Cashiers, North Carolina, where giant terrace steps lead down through lush white hydrangea blossoms, dark red dahlias, and sunny zinnias before landing in a meadow that overlooks Lake Glenville. “I’ve heard fishermen from their boats out there going, ‘Look at that garden!’ when they see me cutting flowers,” Hodge says. “I laugh and flex my muscles at them, but I didn’t build this on my own.” Hodge and her husband have for decades spent summers in these mountains, driving up from their home in St. Augustine, Florida. Raised in a farming family, Hodge wanted to plant a mountainside garden, but the hilly terrain intimidated her. Then, as a birthday gift to herself some eight…

For Amy and Clay Brock, watching the sun rise from the dining nook in their Blackberry Farm cottage—it’s a window-wrapped perch designed to resemble an enclosed porch—became aneardaily ritual in the early weeks of the pandemic. When the mist that hangs heavy over the Tennessee Smokies burns off in the mornings, the sweeping 180-degree views stretch clear to North Carolina. “East Tennessee in the springtime is a truly glorious place,” Amy says. “Every day there are new blooms on the trees and baby animals being born on the farm, which made it a very life-affirming and soothing place to be during those uncertain days.” And since then, too—when the family gets away to the cottage, even the couple’s three teenage children don’t mind rising early to tackle days filled with…

FRI. A number of great and walkable-to-everything downtown hotels have opened recently, including the industrial-chic Foundry and the Cambria, but I crave green this trip, so I check in at the Inn on Biltmore Estate, which perches in the rolling hills around Biltmore, the Vanderbilt family’s Gilded Age crown jewel of a manor. The inn sits along a rambling path toward the mansion, on-site winery, farmyard, and woodland trails. I drop my bags and admire the panoramic Blue Ridge views from my room, and then take a quick drive to happy hour downtown, in South Slope. Even though the neighborhood has become known as an epicenter of breweries, I slip into Chemist Spirits distillery and its adjoining bar, Antidote, where mother-and-daughter co-owners Debbie Word and Danielle Donaldson sip a gimlet…

The first meal I ever ate in New Orleans was not in New Orleans at all. It was in Metairie, a suburb that lies between the New Orleans airport and the city itself. It was my first visit from New York, and I had done my research, which in those still-rudimentary-internet days meant having somebody mail me a physical copy of the Times-Picayune’s annual restaurant guide. In it, I read a description of the charbroiled oysters at Drago’s, the seafood restaurant opened in Metairie by a Croatian immigrant named Drago Cvitanovich and his wife, Klara, in 1971: how fat Gulf oysters were set atop a blazing grill, basted with garlic butter, and then allowed to poach in the mingled fat, smoke, and brine beneath a bubbling crust of Parmesan and…

Eric Ryan Anderson Is there such a thing as a professional bookstore enthusiast? If so, I’d like to claim the title. My qualifications include a lifelong book-browsing habit; a past stint as a bookseller (at Nashville’s Parnassus Books); and, as an author, two extensive book tours in the past three years—one right before the pandemic began, and one this past spring. On my recent journeys across the South to sign copies of my memoir Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives—all about being an anxious optimist in an uncertain world—I’ve noticed that people are hungry for uplifting stories that offer hope and joy. I am, too. So I’m happy to share a feel-good true tale: Independent bookstores, at least the ones I visited, appear to be flourishing. If bookshops have…