Reflections & Recipes of Chef Judi-A Stocking Stuffer for Gourmets

~Doc Lawrence

Judi Gallagher will always be Chef Judi to me and those countless admirers who continue to enjoy her miraculous food and experience her contagious smiles. For those who live in the Sarasota area of Florida, you already know her as a regular star on ABC7 TV and publications that regularly feature her recipes and cooking insights. 

Blessed with an inscribed copy of Chef Judi’s new cookbook, Reflections & Recipes of Chef Judi, I plunged into a vicarious journey that began with her reminisces of early days in New England and her travels that led to the Sunshine State. If there is one overriding part of Chef Judi’s fascinating life, it is joie de vivre, that intangible attitude to make the best of each precious moment of life no matter the location or circumstance. 

The pages of Chef Judi’s book alternate between nostalgia, love of family, the benefits of cooking with fresh ingredients and an impressive display of originality.  Chef Judi reminds me of Julia Child: Equal measures of charm, talent, love of worthy things and height. Standing tall and lovely at six-foot-two,  as you watch Chef Judi cook and offer anecdotes on her live TV show, the only person who comes to mind is you-know-who.

Chef Judi says that her soul was healed with a love of food. Many, I suspect, might say the same thing. I found her poignant stories and delightful recipes reassuring: Good food, prepared with care and served with an abundance of love proves there is a higher life.

By the way, her recipes for Hummingbird Cake and Strawberries Romanoff are culinary treasures. 

Reflections & Recipes of Chef Judi is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You’ll want a copy for your kitchen library and some extra copies as gifts for friends who excel in home entertaining. 

Thanksgiving Wines-A Southern Tradition

~Doc Lawrence

Everything is planned and ready to cook. The table is set and the room is elegant. Family and friends will gather for this genuinely All-American feast and one item is nagging at you.

Wines.

The newspaper and magazine columns are overwhelming, recommending so many that you don’t know where to begin. A well-meaning friend advises you to pick up a few large jugs from the supermarket bottom shelf, a white, red and pink, but you aren’t interested in cheap anything on this special day.

There are strategies that work well. One is remembering that cheap isn’t a synonym for bargain. A cheap wine (and your guests will know it when they see or smell it) diminishes the ritual and hints bad things about your judgment. To be fair, some high profile wines fit into the unacceptable category, particularly that overpriced Beaujolais Nouveau. The late wine educator/importer Jim Sanders said that if you paid $10 dollars of a bottle of Nouveau, it was overpriced by nine.

The Beginning

Nothing says welcome like Champagne. There are real bargains but some substitutes are worthy. Ask your wine merchant about Cremant. Domestic sparkling wines like Gruet from New Mexico, Asheville’s Biltmore Estate and Georgia’s Wolf Mountain won’t break the bank and are delicious. Serve your bubbly in lovely crystal flutes. No plastic, ever! 

Amuse Bouche, fancy laugange for finger food, will be even more delicious as flutes are refilled, and the laughter and good cheer will increase, setting the stage for the big feast.

Dinner Wines

The multiplicity of dishes from salads, to soups, assorted vegetables, casseroles, and the obligatory turkey, dressing, giblet gravy shouldn’t be challenging regarding appropriate wines. Wise authorities emphasize variety: have different wines-whites and reds available, encourage guest to try different ones and gently assist them with suggestions.

A chilled dry Riesling is so compatible with almost everything. Choices are myriad: Napa, Washington State, Finger Lakes, Texas, Australia and Germany. 

Pinot Gris, a luxurious white wine and a top choice would be from Oregon-based King Estate. Be forewarned: this might steal the show so have several bottles handy.

Red wines are so delicious and the Thanksgiving table would be a little empty without them. Cru Beaujolais, a delicious group of wines from France are fail-safe candidates. Not to be confused with Nouveau, these are dry, brightly colored, totally food friendly with 10 different ones to choose from. Look for Morgon, Fleurie, or Saint-Amour. Good wine stores carry them. Serve slightly chilled. 

For our friends in the Deep South, a red wine staple Syrah from North Carolina’s RagApple Lassie will earn applause. Very drinkable, there’s a little bit of James Taylor’s “Carolina in My Mind” in each sip. North Georgia’s Tiger Mountain Vineyards produces an incomporable Cynthiana, a fabulous dry red wine from the grape of the Cherokee. Most will never suspect that it is a local product.

Pinot Noir, perhaps more popular than ever, deserves inclusion and you can bet that many expect it. Aim a little high and find a bottle or two of J.Christopher 2015 Basalte from Oregon’s Chehalem Mountains.

Desserts

After dinner wines include standby’s like Port, but should chocolate find its way into the menu, offer guests a glass of Madeira, one of Thomas Jefferson’s favorites. Magic will happen.

These are mere suggestions. With wines, flexibility is the key. No rules I’m aware of as long as everything is served with joy, good cheer and boundless love.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

SAM BUSH'S REVIVAL-A Bluegrass Movie

~Doc Lawrence

NASHVILLE-There is only one Sam Bush, a son of Kentucky who found a light of inspiration from Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys and caught  fire from Bob Marley and The Wailers.  A self-described progressive hippie, Bush’s full story, Revival: The Sam Bush Story, just released digitally via Amazon, chronicles the life and career of the newgrass-creator, a musical iconoclast. Since its debut at the Nashville Film Festival in 2015, where it won the award for Best Music Documentary, the production continues to earn more awards.

The film opens with a poignant interview with Chris Thile commenting on the early pressure by bluegrass traditionalists who looked at him as the next Bill Monroe which Bush had the courage to say “No, I’m going to be the first Sam Bush.” In the film, noted musicians – from Alison Krauss to John Oates, from the Avett Brothers to Thile – say many of today’s biggest acts in bluegrass, newgrass, Americana and the jam-band scene owe huge a debt of gratitude to Bush.

A Bowling Green, Kentucky native, Bush began as a teen fiddler, a three-time national champion in the junior division of the National Oldtime Fiddler's Contest.  In the spring of 1970 Bush attended the Fiddlers Convention and was introduced to rock-inspired progressive bluegrass, a game changer for him.

Bush recalls when Roy Acuff offered him a spot in his band, he politely turned it down. He had discovered electrified alternatives to tradition in the Osborne Brothers and manifest destiny in The Dillards. 

Bush became well-known as a member of New Grass Revival playing bluegrass fests slotted in late-night sets for the “long-hairs and hippies.”  The group garnered the attention of Leon Russell who hired New Grass as his supporting act on a massive tour that put the band in front of tens of thousands.  The group issued five albums in their first seven years, and in 1979 became Russell’s backing band. 

A three-record contract with Capitol Records and a conscious turn to the country market took the Revival to new commercial heights.  Bush survived a life-threatening bout with cancer, while their celebrated chart-climbing singles earned Grammy nominations. At their zenith, the group called it quits.

Bush worked with Emmylou Harris’ Nash Ramblers followed by a stint with Lyle Lovett earning multiple awards. In 1995 he united with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, reigniting his penchant for improvisation. After a quarter-century of making music with New Grass Revival and collaborating with other bands, Sam Bush went solo. 

“I am free to try anything,” says Bush. “Looking back at the last 50 years of playing newgrass, with the elements of jazz improvisation and rock-&-roll, jamming, playing with New Grass Revival, Leon, and Emmylou; it’s a culmination of all of that.” 

The film is indeed a culmination of “all of that.”

Revival: The Sam Bush Story can be rented or purchased digitally via Amazon, with more networks to add the film in the coming year.

HOLIDAY ENTERTAINING-THE SEARCH

Fancy Appetizers, Canapés, Petit Fours, Egg Nog and More

~Doc Lawrence

The holidays are much closer and now is the time to give serious thought to all those warm and wonderful gatherings. Decorations, dates and times, invitations and what to eat and drink.

You can almost feel the joy of anticipation right now.

Over the past 20 years, I've been honored to share original recipes with a wonderful audience. This year, it should be extra special. So-called finger food defines the theme of the gathering, whether before the Thanksgiving feast, Christmas gathering of New Year's celebrations which often combine football watching.

And no right minded host would ever neglect this delightful sweets morsels with coffee or after-dinner drinks. Celebrating all we love is no time for restraint. That's for the dreary days of January and February.

Send your favorite recipes either to my email: doclawrence@mindspring.com or on Facebook as a message (Doc Lawrence will get you there). If you have an image, all the better. We'll publish the best based on originality and these will appear in magazines, newspapers, online and on the air.

110 in the Shade-Theatrical Outfit's Springtime Musical

~Reviewed by Doc Lawrence

Sizzling under a Texas Sky

ATLANTA-Theatrical Outfit concludes its Season of Character with a highly entertaining  musical, 110 in the Shade, a mighty effort with a  spellbinding story and powerful songs, successfully resurrected by director Tom Key from 1963 stage gem. 

Based on the play and later film The Rainmaker, Lizzie a young farm girl, believes she is consigned to spinsterhood, forever stuck on her family’s Texas cattle ranch near a small town parched by unbearable heat and unyielding drought. Never mind that she is attractive. She’s heard a lifetime of cruel remarks about her being ordinary and has lost all self-esteem.

For the romantic imagination, however lack of rain compares to lack of love. Both deficiencies are addressed when Starbuck,  a charming conman, comes to town. For a paltry $100 dollars he promises rain and on a quiet Lone Star night, he changes Lizzie’s opinion of herself and introduces her to the miracle of love. Innocence lost opens the beauty of a Texas flower.

Starbuck uncovers Lizzie's Beauty

Starbuck is destined to be exposed, but the metamorphosis of Lizzie is permanent who suddenly she tells everyone she is beautiful. 

Starbuck, ready to skedaddle to another locale and launch another scheme, isn’t the only man attracted to Lizzie. The local sheriff, File, has long hidden his shine to Lizzie and he isn’t about to let her leave his bailiwick.

Sunken spirits and parched hearts are metaphors of the dry land and insufferable heat. Maybe Starbuck delivers on love and rain. You’ll know at the end of Act II. 

110 is a story about hope, overcoming the pain of loneliness, family bonds, our biological need for dreams realized and the universal forces of joy we experience when love suddenly appears.

A Charming Conman

For two hours, the cast honors the promise of true love with voices in harmony with the universe. The sounds proclaim something everlasting, assuring us that in the depths of despair and self-doubt, there is beauty. Never give up: love is just around the corner. How many of us need a Starbuck in our lives?

S. Renee Clark’s musical direction is flawless. The voices are clear and strong, the musical accompaniment seamless. Under Tom Key’s direction, Ayana Reed as Lizzie and Jeremy Wood as Starbuck join a superlative cast in a meaningful and beautifully told story.

Like blossoming flowers in late spring, 110 in the Shade  is a musical that glows brightly on Theatrical Outfit’s stage, rain or shine.

Tickets: www.theatricaloutfit.org

Photo credits: Christopher Bartleski

Breath & Imagination-Roland Hayes Comes Home

~Reviewed by Doc Lawrence

Roland Hayes

Georgia native Roland Hayes was once a concert headliner in Europe and American cities like New York and Boston. His story about childhood in Calhoun, Georgia and Chattanooga, Tennessee is in part one of survival and a path to success. Art Station Theatre’s production of Daniel Beaty’s musical play, Breath & Imagination, begins in rural North Georgia where Hayes and his mother, a former slave, struggle after the death of the father. From their humblest beginnings, the song-filled production becomes an interpretive tour de force of a young man’s rise to international acclaim as a classically trained vocal soloist.

What makes this production so compelling is the powerful blend of Hayes mother, “Angel Mo,'” portrayed by Atlanta’s  legendary song stylist/actress Theresa Hightower and a young man with a very bright future, Marcellis Cutler, who, for almost two hours literally becomes Roland Hayes. Ms. Hightower, a poplar fixture on prestigious performance stages throughout the South, joins the electric handsome Cutler in duets worthy of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. The play allows Ms. Hightower to glow as the quintessential African-American mother who will sacrifice flesh and blood for her son, regularly expressing her devotion and measured discipline with the best lines in the show. 

Marcellis Cutler and Theresa Hightower

Born in 1887 near Calhoun, Georgia, Roland Hayes’ parents were struggling tenant farmers on the same plantation where his mother had been a slave. His father, part Native-American, died when Hayes was 11, but told him “to use your breath and imagination and call the birds to you.”  Angel Mo’ moved the family to Chattanooga where young Roland quit school to work in a local iron foundry, suffering a serious injury leaving him unable to do hard labor.

Tragedy opened the door to fame and fortune. Nashville’s Fisk University and the Fisk Jubliee Singers counted Roland Hayes as a student and vocalist. A sensitive but demanding voice instructor, portrayed by Tony Hayes, leads him into the classics while encouraging him to embrace the wonders of his natural African voice. The result is miraculous. Roland Hayes became the first world-renowned, African-American classical singer, who headlined at Carnegie Hall, sang with the Boston Symphony and wowed Europe’s royalty. 

The play opens in 1942 with Roland Hayes, now successful, back in Georgia where he purchased the plantation where his parents worked the fields, and embarked on a worthy mission to establish a musical conservatory for students of all races. His wife and daughter were arrested for sitting in a “white’s only” section of a Rome, Georgia shoe store resulting in a beating of a protesting Hayes by a local Sheriff. Roland Hayes reflects back on his life, sharing his life’s story with us, while asking if it was safe for his family and students to continue to live and work under the evil potential of violent racism.

He spent the next 50 years living in Boston. The brooding, omnipresent sting of slavery and racism claimed more innocent victims.

Marcellis Cutler as Roland Hayes fulfills a destiny surely ordained by the universal powers of acting and singing. Look for this fast-rising star in many productions soon. 

Theresa Hightower is simply lovable as Angel Mo’ providing emotional connections ranging from good humor to despair. Her singing voice, authentic in every way possible, is perfect, helping to tell a story that needed telling. 

Through June 10.

Tickets: www.artstation.org; (770) 469.1105

NOTES:

Roland Hayes recordings can be found on Amazon, YouTube and The Smithsonian.

“The Life of Christ.” 1954

“Negro Spirituals.” 1955

“The Art of Roland Hayes.” 1990

There are remembrances of Roland Hayes today in Calhoun, Georgia and the University of Tennessee/Chattanooga. His daughter, Africa, lives in Boston.

Angel From Alabama

Mother's Day 2018

“My latest sun is sinking fast, my race is nearly run
My strongest trials now are past, my triumph has begun
Oh, come angel band come and around me stand
Oh bear me away on your snow white wings to my immortal home.”
                             “Angel Band”-Emmylou Harris

By Doc Lawrence

Mothers are precious. I miss this wonderful woman, her laughter, her favorite songs and her Southern dinner table, particularly Sunday after church and on holidays. What a spread: fried chicken, meat loaf (we always had two meats), creamed corn, fried okra, congealed salad, whatever greens were in season, pole beans, field peas, macaroni and cheese and choices of desert ranging from coconut layer cake to peach cobbler. I still believe she made her lemon meringue pie just for me and to this day I've not had a dessert that could come close to matching its dazzling array of flavors and gently browned meringue.

The memories of those days together may be a little faded, but, in the words of one of her favorite hymns, "how they linger, ever near me, and the sacred past unfolds."

A child of the Depression and World War II, my mother represented the finest of the Deep South. Although she never said it, her role model had to be Scarlett O’Hara. Survival and accomplishment were embodied in a beautiful woman who faced fate squarely and despite unconscionable losses along the way including the death of her youngest child, moved forward to face life relentlessly. 

Her name was Carrie and true to the good manners of her time, she was addressed with respect as “Miss Carrie.” Cruel poverty denied her much formal education, but she loved to read and found time to read bedtime stories to me before I was in kindergarten. Saturdays were library days. Books, newspapers and magazines have been vital, enriching parts of my daily living thanks to her. Names like Celestine Sibley, Margaret Ann Barnes, Catherine Marshall, Harper Lee and Margaret Mitchell were on the dust covers of her books.

She departed this world before my first book was published, but she is the reason it happened.

She enjoyed working, earning some extra cash to keep her three children a little ahead with occasional extras. While I was a skinny teenager, she worked in the record shop at Rich’s, a legendary department store in Atlanta. She brought home promotional sample records, and I was introduced to then obscure names like Johnny Cash, Wanda Jackson, Bo Diddly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Patsy Cline and Elvis. A new world of rhythm and harmony opened and I became a rocker, playing and singing with a good band in college. No one ever introduced me to the majestic music of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Screaming' Jay Hawkins or John Lee Hooker. Their music was played loud and clear on those 45's Mom supplied regularly. 

I have never been happier.

It's possible that my mother attended all of Elvis’ concerts in Atlanta. One morning during the Dog Days of August, she called and informed me of his death. I still remember the sharp pain in her voice. 

A devoted Atlanta Braves fan, it was understood that she would never die during baseball season. Her time on earth ended during the December holidays while her beloved Braves were on vacation.

Like Emmylou Harris, Zelda Fitzgerald, Harper Lee, Helen Keller, Tallulah Bankhead and Truman Capote’s Aunt Sook, Mom was an Alabama girl. Born and raised in Sulphur Springs in the northeast corner of the state, Lookout Mountain forms a spectacular backdrop. I always thought it would be a wonderful place for a child.

I’ll visit her grave early Sunday morning to place roses. As the Georgia sun peeks through the pines, sometimes the air stirs a little. During moments of great peace, I listen carefully for the flutter of angel wings.