TED Talk featuring Thandie Newton

I thought I would share this TED Talk from Actor Thandie Newton with you. I hope you find yourself as inspired as I just was. 

Francie

Savannah and Charleston Weekend

 

When you think of Savannah, Georgia what images come to mind? Long avenues of shady trees with Spanish moss dripping from their branches, southern belles and their beaus walking arm in arm down cobble stone streets, perhaps even a lonely grave yard and the iconic statue of the young girl in melancholic deliberation? 

Source

Savannah is all of these things and more to me. I had the pleasure of going to school just 45-minutes away and spent a fair amount of time here as a college student. It was the quintessential getaway for a girl that was practically being driven out of her mind by lunatic roommates, papers, examinations, or just a desire to be outside with delicious frozen cocktail and never once be reprimanded by the authorities for doing so.

Will enjoying a frozen beverage on River Street, Savannah

  

While Savannah and I are on quite familiar terms, R has never been and so it being his birthday week and the 4th of July and all, the two siblings and their significant others decided to take a road trip and spend one night in Savannah and the other in Charleston. This worked out perfectly for me because while airplane tickets out of Savannah are out-of-this-world expensive, I was able to locate a one-way ticket leaving from Charleston for a very reasonable sum.

Day 1: The 4-hour drive to Savannah was fairly uneventful but as we drove into the city of Savannah, I instantly regretted letting R do the driving because the scenery was gorgeous and I wanted him to be able to take it all in. Every building looks like it did 150 years ago. The tree-lined roads lend perfect symmetry to its surroundings. Even the people are interesting: a dash of Daytona Beach Hill Billy, a sprinkling of street artist and jazz musician, a lovely southern genteel sashaying over to the Junior League or charity benefit, the occasional hipster art student speeding by on bicycles. This clash of culture definitely makes for obsessive people watching and makes Savannah a very charming place to visit.

Unsure of where best to stay, I chose the familiar Mulberry Inn on Bay Street right next to the Savannah Pirate’s House.  When my parents would stay in Savannah, they would often bring us back souvenirs of their travels - “real” gold doubloons and pirate hats from actual pirates that inhabited the Savannah Pirate’s House where they ate lunch that day. When we were finally old enough to see the place for ourselves, we were not disappointed  -the old house was eerie and lucidly reminiscent of its bawdy past. I had no problem at all imagining this as a place where real pirates once drank and ate. Dad further fueled our fantasies by telling us stories of the young boys they would take to the pirate house, get them drunk till they passed out, only to find themselves the next morning in the middle of the open ocean with the enticing agreement to work rather than "walk the plank."

After a brief and nostalgic lunch at a Greek restaurant I used to visit back in college. R and I spent some time walking around and just getting acquainted with the area. We walked to the old cemetery, where I remembered various antic dotes of union soldiers changing the dates and names on some of the graves so the markers would read as though a person had died before they were born, etc. I tried to look for some but think we were in the wrong cemetery and did not see anything mentioned on the ample historical plaques that were almost everywhere.

Jenny in Savannah

After our long walk, we met up with Jenny and Will at a brewery on Bay Street, and tried to narrow down our many dinner options. We finally decided on a restaurant close by, known for its locally grown menu, Cha-Bella. We weren’t disappointed. The food was both true to its Savannah roots and sophisticated. We were especially impressed by the long list of local farms they were buying produce from.   

After dinner we returned to River Street, where I drank a delicious frozen concoction from Wet Willies - something with banana and chocolate in it – yum!

Before leaving the next morning for Charleston, we breakfasted at a popular restaurant called B Matthew's Eatery. While I chose the white-chocolate and banana bread French toast, R had the most amazing plate of shrimp and grits I had tasted in my life. It was a wonderful way to say goodbye to Savannah.

The short drive to Charleston was almost nothing  -thank you GPS! We had no trouble getting to our hotel right on Meeting Street. We lunched at a well-known establishment, Jestine’s Kitchen. It was so sought after that we had to wait in line outside while enviously peering in at the customer’s enjoying their food and sweet iced tea in the air-conditioned restaurant. There were even t-shirts for sale, taunting us in the window, which said “I survived the wait at Jestine’s.” At least they had the decency to put a water cooler out there for us while we waited. Once we were inside I knew exactly what to order: sweet tea, corn bread and fried green tomatoes were our starters. For the meal, R and I split a seafood platter  bursting with deep fried oysters, shrimp, fish and okra, and  two “veggie” sides (macaroni and cheese and collards) For dessert I had a peach and blueberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream. Yes, I definitely brought my appetite.

R hates dislikes shopping and promptly left me to do some exploring while I perused the artisan stalls at the Old City Market on Meeting Street with Jenny and Will. Jenny bought some awesome cat-eye sunglasses and Will bought a driving cap that makes him look like a Newsie or at least member of the Mumford and Sons band.

After our shopping spree, we met Rudo by the pier and walked down to Rainbow Row to look at old houses.  We kept running into this strange threesome of teenagers dressed in pirate’s costumes. As we walked along, they kept reappearing and at one point even staged a sword fight on the beach to our amusement. I don’t know if it was some sort of club, they were hoping we would pay to have our pictures taken with them, or they genuinely wanted to be pirates. Either way, it was highly entertaining. I wish I had taken pictures of them; they probably would have loved it. 

Beautiful Houses on Rainbow Row, Charleston

As we walked back toward the hotel, they sky opened up on us and rained continuously for the next two hours. We were pretty drenched and Jenny had bad blisters on her feet, but I think everyone was in good spirits. 

Charleston, SC

Back at the hotel and waiting for the rain to let up we made plans for the evening, and decided on reservations at a restaurant that R had researched and showed us earlier that day. Despite many other awesome places to eat, Blossoms was within our price range, had received good ratings, and was going to have a Spanish guitar player perform that night.

Jenny and Will at Blossoms

At the restaurant, we chose a nice white wine and all four of us went for the She Crab Soup, a Charleston specialty. The soup was rich and tasted of crab and sea just as I remembered it. After dinner, we moved to the lounge area and watched the singer perform.  I ordered Red Velvet Bread Pudding - a magical twist on two traditional deserts.  R ordered a Spanish desert wine called Sherry that he adamantly said was different from Port wine, which comes from Portugal.  The two shouldn’t be confused, he said (even though they both taste the same).

Dropping Will and Jenny off at another interesting outdoor venue with music and lights, R and I headed back to the hotel, so I could prepare myself for the early morning flight back to reality. 

July 4th Vacations in Georgia

I went home last week to celebrate the 4^th of July with the family. R and I left VA and drove all through the night- relying on Red Bull and Waffle House coffee to keep awake during the 11 hour drive to Georgia. We pulled into the driveway at 6AM, just in time to see the sun peeking out behind our big barn and hear the rooster’s crow from my grandparents’ house next door. 

 

Sitting idle on a farm is a near impossible task. There are so many things to do that look like pure fun to a city girl who spends 12 hour-days pecking away on a laptop. Sleeping very little (because of the excitement) I awoke in the late morning and went out looking for my family. I wandered into the backyard with a cup of coffee in hand. Of course mom was out in the garden busy pulling at the weeds that have dared to encroach around her beloved flower beds. Watching her hard at work, I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty for not already donning my shoes and gardening gloves to assist in mom’s zero-sum game against the weeds.

R slept longer than me, but as he surveyed the yard with his appraising eye he immediately seized on task #1 - the vegetables in the garden desperately needed picking. And so, Mom, R and I launched into the sweaty, yet satisfying enterprise of picking tomatoes. Working in the noonday sun, the ones that were too ripe or the bugs had gotten to first were tossed in the compost bin, while many pristine tomatoes were placed in bins. We did this for most of the afternoon and by the time we finished we had three huge bins of large, medium, and small tomatoes. Each one ready to be devoured – it was a proud moment to see things that have been grown in your soil, that look so good and taste even better. 

Fresh picked tomatoes

Dear reader, you might ask why this hadn’t been done earlier? Why did the yuppies from out of town have to be the ones to accomplish this task? Well, the answer is complicated: for one, the garden is a comprehensive monster that you could spend all day, every day in and still not keep perfectly weeded, watered, and mulched. Second, my mother and brother have been taken to task over trying to perfect our cattle grazing operation- obviously there is a very steep learning curve (more like mountain) that they are coming to come to terms with. Third, mom absolutely needs to cut back on her farming duties and focus on healing. Though the cancer is slow growing and confined to her bones, we absolutely want to make sure it either stays there and doesn’t spread or goes away all together. This means taking a breather and focusing instead on all things she enjoys and makes her happy like working in her flower garden, reading mystery novels, and keeping Madeline [cat] and Juliet, Zooey, and Duke [dogs] in line.

Duke and Zooey

Madeline

On Monday, we celebrated July 4^th in a true food-lover fashion consisting of ribs that had smoked for 4 hours straight with pecan wood from our orchard, and a delicious and authentic tres leches cake for R’s birthday (He shares his birthday with our nation’s independence.)

Tuesday and Wednesday Will, R, and I showcased our produce to various Athens restaurants and were able to find buyers for most everything (except for our Basil). We sold tomatoes to The Grit and the Last Resort Grill. Cucumbers and beets went to the newly established and lovely Heirloom Café, and more cucumbers to Farm 255. In addition to all that selling we made some foodie contacts and connections and collected some great tips from other restaurants in the area. I considered it a highly successful venture and a great learning opportunity for us. 

With the tomatoes that were too ripe to sell, R cooked them down and made his famous spicy salsa that we can’t get enough of. We now have jars and jars of salsa and are contemplating more fun things to do with the other tomatoes too ripe to sell: gazpacho, insalata caprese, and BLTs all come to mind. 

It was fun, dirty work and highly rewarding.

 

Highlight #2 of our July 4^th vacations was the road trip to Savannah and Charleston we managed to squeeze in before heading back to the big city. Our trip to the coast deserves its very own blog post and will be writing about it soon. 

-Francie