bottom drawer

Hot off the Oscars press - Born into Brothels has won best documentary. Well, never say that Alabama is behind the times. We're having a screening of it in my 'living room' (aka big tin warehouse) in two weeks.

William Christenberry, the wonderful artist of Alabama's decay, came to the Red Barn this weekend to give a talk in the building whose change he has documented for nearly fifty years. His quiet, calm, careful words and his photographs and sculptures were very moving, almost bringing me to tears. At nearly seventy, he stands tall and poised, with perfectly combed hair, crisp white shirt and slacks.

Yesterday was another vintage Alabama event - the Perry County Historical Society's annual Low Country Boil. This takes place at the rather distinguished, in a white-columned old South way, former Female Seminary in Marion, where the society is based, in a huge echoing dinner-hall of a room. The good ladies of polite white Marion bake endless cakes and cook up an enormous amount of shrimp, sausge, corn, potatoes and so forth in a Cajun boil and my band, as two of my fellow members belong to the society, played along while a steady stream of old ladies, young couples with babies and Judson professors ate, drank and gossiped. Some old ladies were already waiting before the food was served at five, eager to secure their place in the line and get out with their take-home packages. Several Rural Studio folks came along, and were bought their tickets by the Mayor. The echoing hall meant we couldn't hear each other's instruments at all, but nevertheless we managed to get the servi...

After the weekend's jam session, which ended up mutating from bluegrass to gypsy swing to jazz, I ordered a CD from Amazon of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli, to remind me what I should be aspiring to on this front. It's such amazing music and reminds me of when I first got to know their stuff via an old LP in my childhood home. It's the kind of things that classical musicans (such as I was then) like to play when they branch out because it appeals both on a level of musical intricacy and on the showmanship - look what I can get my fingers round. High energy, that amazing soulful gypsy sound and the evocation of a more decadent yet playful party age. And of course, both Django's Paris jazz and old-time bluegrass and country have roots in the ragtime of the South, Scott Joplin, the delta blues and all that stuff, as our jam mutation showed. Old bluegrass irresistibly melds it with the Celtic dances and fiddle tunes, and of course French/Cajun influences rather th...

It's amazing what you can send through the mail and have arrive intact. I got a package of miso paste today - the real stuff, not the dried version. I'm excited.

Somehow, with the kind of day it's been, I was craving homely Japanese food and with the recent food packages from my mother, I was in a position to indulge...simple stuff but somehow very nostalgic and exactly what I wanted. A salad of seaweed and thinly sliced cucumber, pan-fried tofu with ginger, garlic and lots of spring onions, dressed brown rice with nori to roll it up in with the tofu in a sort of improvised hand roll. Somehow, very nourishing and soothing, yet with the right amount of almost spicy freshness in the salad and the spring onions to zing up my taste buds. And followed with choclate from todays food parcel. [Today was the zenith so far of motherly parcels - I received three, thank you mother!! chocolate, tea, gloves, lucky cat charm and a book of poetry which I read at lunch while munching on my take-out rib plate from Mustang Oil in my back garden.]

Apart from the whole football fiasco, today was pretty useless on the work front. Somehow it was one of those days where all my team, including me, had left vital brain cells tucked up in bed. Plus it was a ridiculously warm day, like August in England, so we all felt kinda drowsy and hot and not particularly like exerting ourselves up on our roof. So, we made silly mistakes, spent ages correcting them, and so forth. It was the kind of day when we should have all given up at about 11am and gone swimming in the Black Warrior river.

After a rather frustrating day of work, I get home, race to the computer, and find out that my damn team fucked up yet again. . This is not our season. For once, I'm going to give in to the urge to rant in public about the state of North London football and play pundit: we should have sold Vieira, who hasn't done anything for us this season, taken all that cash and invested it in some decent defendes who don't get injured every time they have an outing. Why on earth we needed Flamini, I don't know. Arsene's lost his touch. It's insulting to the world-class players we do have, like Henry, to put them in a squad with dunces like Cygan and the goalies. No wonder Reyes wants to leave. We draw or lose to teams we should waltz over. Our players need a good Fergie-like kicking, not some kind of French philosophizing. I love the elegance of Arsenal playing at their best, but sometimes they just need to get physical, irritate the hell out of the opposition and get the da...

A really good lecture tonight from Koning and Eizenberg who are here for a visit and to give us all a kick up the ass with our projects. Great stuff, great bolshy attitude, I like. Made me excited about architecture again.

Better late than never, here's a photo from last weekend's picking with the Selma guys and Chip (on bass) my fellow Kudzu member.

On things I don't like to eat The theme for this month's IMBB, set by Carlo of My Latest Supper , is things that you hate to eat/others hate to eat. Foods that are taboo, disgusting to one culture though delicacies in another, personal hates. Although untraditional by IMBB standards, this is an inspired topic - food as cultural icon in our multi-cultural age, the ultimate expression of our personality when we are all dressing the same, listening to the same music and so on. We all know someone who hates mushrooms or spinach, who forbids themselves to eat pork while happily getting drunk and stoned, who seeks out their traditional delicacies when away from home with a zeal unparalleled in any other aspect of their life. And my particular food hates, my food fascism, is at the heart of what I consider 'real food' and why I continue my love affair with cooking and eating. I am totally, voraciously omnivorous, with no body part or bug too disgusting that I've balked; y...

One way to get over a mild hangover is to do physical work, of course, and today a brief window of semi-un with the promise of mild rain later prompted me to get out into my garden. I dug and raked and planted salads, spinach and basil as well as doing some overdue nurturing of the coriander that I planted in the autumn that is battling through anew. And, perfectly, a little light drizzle started at the exact moment I finished sowing and covering my seeds - exactly the kind of rain that one feels will gently germinate the seeds.

Hanification 3 and 4 I may as well come clean about a bit more Hanification that actually occurred some time ago. The tape measure. I cut it in half with the chopsaw by mistake. The hammer. I managed to break the wooden handle off from the metal head while trying to remove a nail from a 2-by. Crappy hammer, I say, but still...I got one with an all-metal construction as a replacement. And as I write, people are offering me a responsible job for next year, fools. For those who are confused, 'hanification' was a term coined by one of my best friends to describe the process whereby I manage to somehow ruin anything of value or usefulness that I come into contact with. First applied (I think) to a pair of treasured second-hand Green Flash trainers circa 1997 which I wore out until they were more hole than shoe. I was subsequently informed that the BF had 'hanified' her Green Flashes while gorge-walking in Cyprus and she could think of no better term for what she had done t...

Hanification 2 I don't have a photo for this one. Because it's my camera , which is now stuck with the lens permanently extended. My camera mark 3, that is - the original (a boyfriendly gift) being stolen in 93 Feet East , the second (insurance replacement) being hanified by a pencil in my bag destroying the LCD screen, and now the third...So unless I manage to find a repair place in Tuscaloosa to fix it, there's another item for my Amazon wishlist...

Its been another rather busy (in a good way) weekend. Again, lots of bluegrass and the obligatory Sunday hangover. I performed my first paying gig on US soil on Friday night - slightly less-than-glamorous (a wedding party) but still a lot of fun and the provider of $120 to my needy pocket. The weirdest bit - being requested to play Sweet Home Alabama which definitely does not come into our repertoire of genres. Possibly the worst version ever played, but they loved it. Then, yesterday I spent all day at the bizarre and wonderful bluegrass music convention in, of all places, McFarland Mall . This is the generally scummy and mall-rat-infested old mall in the terrifyingly sprawling no-man's-land of Tuscaloosa. And where, for one day only, the whole mall is filled with the kick-off to the new season of jam sessions, hundreds of musicians of all ages and abilities camping out in little circles, jamming, sizing each other up, passing the breaks around and challenging each other to little...

Today I will simply pass on to y'all the wise advice of my mother regarding miso paste. "You talked about the lack of miso paste, so I decided to send 1. light coloured miso paste, sweeter and lighter 2. dark one, which is stronger tasting, more powerful. In Japan, there are so many kinds of delicious miso paste from all regions, and people treasure the difference, and blending them to suit the materials and cooking is a bit of expertise. So, when you like to use those, experiment the blending. Rough guidance is: When you like to use in soups, as miso soup with vegetables ie beans, okras, carrots, potatos, parsnip, leeks, pumpkins, and tofu (I don't think you have this there...), wakame seaweed etc. use lighter one with tiny bit of dark mixed. If when you like to do so called substantial meaty miso soup, as chicken bits added to vegetable mixture, or fish of some kind, use darker one with some lighter one. It erases too fishy or too meaty feel. Always just when you serve, ...

Not sure whether this is a post for this blog or my food blog but as I've just posted there, I'll give the ol' bottom drawer a chance to speak. One of my personal battles on site is not with my teammates, my hammer, the mud or the splinters in my fingers, but with our client. And we clash not over the design of our building, or the mess we make when its wet, but over how many hamburgers she's allowed to eat each week. She is partial to, of all things, McDonalds hamburgers and milkshakes, probably my most despised food on the planet. In addition, she is severely diabetic. On the other hand, she's an 86 yr old with very few treats in life. So when you're going back to town to eat lunch and she asks you to bring her back a hamburger and milkshake (she doesn't drive) what are you to do? It's certainly not good for her diabetes. My compromise solution was that she would be allowed one a week. Last week, we got her one on Monday, and then on Thursday she aske...

I have free range eggs! from the mad egg man in Marion who has a yard full of chickens, via my friend Chip who I play bluegrass with, who gave the egg man a load of dirt from a bass pond he's excavating and was given about 3 dozen eggs in return. So the eggy lunch theme from last week is being revived, and I must say there is nothing better (especially on an edge-of-spring day like today) than a real omelette, wobbly on the inside and golden outside. I don't know why but I have a slight antipathy towards stuffed omelettes and prefer to have whatever might have filled it as a separate side vegetable. Or, if they're going to be all in one pan, do it properly and Spanish style, all stirred together like scrambled eggs, or Italian style, in a fritatta with no fussing around making waves like in an omelette. Anyway, a happy lunch. Now, back to work...

The daffodils are out in Alabama! and we've got our sheathing on our roof, on a beautifully warm, sunny day (t-shirts all round). Apart from the progress we are making on site, I'm learning a lot about Africa for the first time in my life, as I'm researching long-distance for a forthcoming book by General Public Agency . It's amazing that I can work by email from Alabama on a book to be published in England about international work, without many resources apart from Google and what I can let myself buy from Amazon. It's also really fun to start to explore an area of the world about which I previously knew almost nothing, save what remains in my brain from lessons on 19th century colonialism. One of my main starting points for the area I'm researching (innovative best practice in socially and environmentally engaged urban and rural renewal - what a mouthful!!) has been the work of UN Habitat , a UN agency concerned with promoting and aiding good urban governance,...

Well, what was I to do with my new saffron when I got home from work today? given the absolute lack of seafood for sale in Greensboro, much less anything to make an osso buco to go with a saffron risotto, it was to be a pseudo-paella concocted out of what I could find: some chicken, some prawns, my cherished risotto rice, red peppers and so forth. Plus, of course, my fish stock that had been waiting in the freezer for just such a moment. And although rather scratch, it was pretty good, nourishing to look at and to eat, warming and faintly luxurious for a weeknight solitary meal (I made enough for about four people, so that's my leftovers lunches for a week). Yum. And now my big barnlike 'house' smells deliciously of saffon, too. I guess, with my housemate returning from a week working on the Gates Project, saffron is the flavour of the moment.

A beautiful package arrived today for Valentine's day. A luxuriously huge box of saffron from Iran, via our Iranian friend Amir and my mother.

It's a cruel coincidence that since I got my hands on the latest issue of Cabinet featuring work by the Atlas Group on the Beirut car bombings of the 70s, I wake up today to find a reprise has taken place on that iconic seafront promenade.

It's that time of year again when I feel terrifyingly of my age and background. That's right, when you read the Observer Food Awards and recognise all your stalwart haunts on the list. OK, so I hadn't managed to eat at Anthony's in Leeds, but every London-based restaurant, bar and shop is already on my 'regulars' list. Sad, huh! the nice middle-class foodie world. The only surprise is that Loungelover (winner of best bar) was written up as if it was something of a secret. Oh, I don't think so, not if you're a self-respecting twenty-to-fortysomething living to the east of the Blackfriars Road. But please guys, don't rush there all at once - its clientele has already become invaded by too many giggly blonde ad agency girls recently, and I would be very loathe to have to give up their cocktails because it got crowded out with OFM readers too. If, sometime in September, you see a dark-haired girl shooting you withering glances and hissing at her boyfri...

London news update: Sam (of the perenially wonderful and mind-warping Icarus yet again proves how much him and his set of musicians/film wizards/weirdos are absolutely the coolest by announcing the latest Arg! night at 14 Andre Street, E8. Expect crazy music, Mongolians, films: in his words, an "affably uncouth dancable mashup on 18th, with visuals." That's the 18th of Feb. Be there, Londoners!

Shopping in Super Target in the Black Belt. I cannot understand their product selection. Why do they not sell olive oil when they do sell De Cecco and Barilla pasta? why don't they sell any form of miso soup when they sell five types of soy sauce, mirin, nori paper and ramen noodles?

It's been a fairly action-packed weekend. Friday night ended up being rather sociable and lovely, sitting up till late drinking and chatting in the apartment of a couple of Rural Studio-ites, one of the amazing and enviable Main Street apartments that they are living in rent-free while they restore it to a habitable condition. Amazing painted pressed-tin ceilings, fantastic furniture that they found in the apartment, left over from the last time it was used, probably in the 50s, as a doctor's office (there is still an arrow painted in the hallway with the word 'Colored' above it). Its the kind of loft-ish apartment any urban dweller would dram of living in and only the very wealthy could afford, yet here all these apartments are uninhabited except for RS people. Then yesterday, after doing some work on site, it was off for a bit of bluegrass jamming at a party near Selma. Lots of fun as always, and then on to Club 28 for their 'Valentines night' (8-piece band pl...

Roast chicken, ah, the comfort food of all time. Actually, I meant to cook this yesterday but my kitchen is so damn cold that the thing hadn't defrosted at all by the time I needed to cook it...so it was my Friday night dinner (yup, it's a happening social scene here) tonight. But, to echo so many good food writers (Nigel Slater, Simon Hopkinson, the somehat dreaded Nigella) what is better than a straight-up roast chicken. I had some tarragon that I'd bought fresh and dried to stuff under the skin, some potatoes, garlic cloves and carrots to stick in the pan with it and a lemon up its ass. Heaven. And I get leftovers tomorrow. And I get to make stock, and already I can't wait to eat the risotto made with the stock. On a side note, this is one of the funniest expressions of American eating I'ved read recently. What people eat for breakfast in this weird country. Cheese quesadillas? bagels with cucumber and cream cheese? Pepsi and cigarettes? hello America, wake up a...

Hanification Oh dear. This actually happened a while back, tripping over the power cord while trying to get my DV camera cable for my flatmate. But it's getting worse. Time to invest in a new laptop, methinks.

It was the first sunny day all week, so time to christen the baseball hat I got sent by a certain lovely English boy...

Sometimes the absolute quickest things you throw together for lunch when you're stomach's about to implode with hunger are the best. Like what I'm munching on right now - shredded cabbage and spring onions stirfried for a half a minute while you whip together three eggs, some soy sauce, mirin and sake which are then emptied into the hot pan, stirred around and tipped out onto a plate with a hot roll (out of the freezer, into the oven, warms in the time you take to cook the other stuff) and eaten all together with another spalsh of soy on top. Sort of Japanese huevos ranchos or something....and truly a 2 minute, autterly satisfying, dish.

I'm immensely flattered to have got my first convert to the blogging world!! Daniel, I take my bow...check out lovely pottery and more at his brand new potsblog . Congratulations! (Actually, a certain Miss Begg has also registered herself with blogspot but doesn't get the prize as she's not yet gone public. Like all good architects, the pre-fab templates on offer are not sufficiently to her taste so I've been charged with putting my meagre web design skills to the test for her...when I get a sketch of what you want, Lucy!!)

British spats from a US perspective are always amusing. I like the idea that Wonkette would think that BlackBerry-befuddled Alastair Cambell might be a hot catch.

It's a Monday night and time for some real cooking because I'm on my own, so it's time for a solo person's meal treat. So into the freezer I delve, bring out some of the local venison I was given before Christmas, open my prized jar of juniper seeds that I managed to find in Tuscaloosa, the remnants of a rather dubious bottle of red wine left over from the other day, some carrots, celery and onion, one of my mothers stock cubes, let simmer until my stomach aches with anticipation and then pair with one of my favorite winter vegetables, cabbage with caraway seeds. For anyone who hates cabbage, this is definitely the antidote - just braise briefly with a little oil, salt and the caraway, don't overcook and cook plenty because you'll want more. This is a bit of a genetic recipe, the kind that I inherited from my father who got it from who-knows-where, but I have a vague grandmotherly memory in there. It's so so good. Time for seconds. Sometimes I feel deeply se...

I try not to write too much about politics here, or to talk about them to any but my most trusted friends as it inevitably leads to misunderstanding and conflict. But today, as the subject of my ire is the normally sane NPR, in which no-one I know is involved, maybe I can vent my anger. Driving back from site (we've nearly finished sheathing all our walls!) The World on NPR was running an interview with someone on Iran. He was talking about, on the one hand, the grave mistakes made with the invasion of Iraq and the intelligence about WMD that served as the excuse, and on the other how Iran posed the greatest possible threat to the United States of America. So, according to him, Iran is more dangerous than North Korea. North Korea is stable but Iran is an unstable, irrational place. 'Iran is a country with a very grave and great hatred of our country, and they have the potential to do something about it'. 'We must be pre-emptive about Iran.' OK, so like, be...

Only my mother manages to make a parcel containing her home-dried lemon verbena look this wonderful. And who else actually writes 'home-dried lemon verbena (herb)' on the customs ticket? For the record, her concern about my diet has led to three packages in the last week - this tea, four packets of organic stock cubes and a package of dried seaweed and tofu.

Mardi Gras. Great to be in a city which isn't sleeping. A lot of fun to be had in the ridiculously simple task of trying to catch as many strings of plastic beads as possible (and to try and get the most 'special' ones). Why are such things so endlessly amusing? Five hours later and we were still screaming and jumping up and down for more. The new nickname for this activity is Bead Whoring, or chasing the title of Queen Bead Whore (bad pun intended). And then, drinking and dancing till the sun comes up, in small bars with good loud bands and real beer. The highlights: getting the mother of all beads by dancing on the shoulders of a big man; a four-hour set from a band called Sol Fiya whose bass player was definitely the coolest; the stoned kitchen staff in one bar whose close shaves with sharp knives were seriously worrying; escaping Bourbon Street. Back in Greensboro on Superbowl Sunday, we were too lazy to do the crazy thing and go to the Birds Nest (a black b...

New Orleans this weekend was sadly not taken advantage of in the food sense as it should have been. Too much partying and chaos meant that trying to prioritise food on the general group agenda was not going to happen. Still, I did manage to eat some really good boiled crawfish and a decent roadside jambalaya. Sometimes when you come home, all you want to eat is a decent steak and skinny chips, with loads of mustard to slaver over everything. Maybe it was the general paucity and shambolicness of eating over the weekend, but today was one of those days when the hearty and substantial, 'real meal' quality of rare red meat is what I craved. So tonight after watching the Superbowl, it's me, a steak and a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Nothing if not classy.

Hooray! we got all four walls up. This week we've been plagued by rain so it's really great to have actually achieved something apart from sitting in studio arguing about various things and being frustrated by being cooped indoors. Though I did make a new model and do some drawings to try to describe our current design. Below you can see my 'artist's impression [photoshop] and our current state on site... It's Mardi Gras weekend so we're off to New Orleans...

What can I say, but it's exceedingly depressing to be in the middle of Alabama with no-one to commiserate with when your team is trounced by a bunch of cheating Mancunians.