carrot soufflé entre autres souvenirs

J'avais le projet d'écrire une entrée de blog pour tous les arrêts de notre road trip... mais la voiture roule plus vite que mon inspiration, et nous voilà déjà presque à la fin de notre périple, sans que je n'ai documenté chaque minute. Tant pis, tant mieux.

Ce que je peux dire, in retrospect, c'est que j'ai vraiment le sentiment d'avoir voyagé aux Etats-Unis cet été. D'avoir échantillonné des ambiances, d'avoir mangé de nombreux plats différents venus de cuisines originales... je retiens le "carrot soufflé" mangé au black art festival à Atlanta, ainsi que le gumbo de chez Stanley, et le alligator po'boy à New Orleans. Tiens, je me demande si je ne peux pas trouver une recette pour ce carrot soufflé... here it is:

-----------------------------------------
Because this dish contains no beaten egg whites, it is not a true soufflé the name is derived from its light airy texture. Similar in color and flavor to sweet potato casserole, it pairs well with ham or turkey.
Yield
8 servings (serving size: 1/2 cup)
Ingredients
7 cups chopped carrot (about 2 pounds)
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup fat-free sour cream
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
Cooking spray
1 teaspoon powdered sugar
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350°.
Cook carrot in boiling water 15 minutes or until very tender; drain. Place carrot in a food processor; process until smooth. Add granulated sugar and next 7 ingredients (granulated sugar through eggs); pulse to combine.
Spoon mixture into a 2-quart baking dish coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 40 minutes or until puffed and set. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans

The streets lost their names.

Avenues, drives and alleys,

Martin Luther King and Pinetree

clashed in the wind.

Quicker than one, two, three,

New Orleans' lower Ninth Ward

was unashamedly robbed

of its identity.

But did that really matter

in the end,

when the levees broke,

when the waters took,

Everything?

The hood lost its houses.

Houses lost families.

Armchairs, tables, cars and bodies

floating in the stream.

So survivors fled

away from the flood.

All is gone now but lonesome foundations

left to rest in the shrubs.

Montgomery, Alabama

As we meandered our way from Atlanta to New Orleans, we passed through Alabama. We actually stopped in Montgomery, the state capital. That's where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person in the bus, and by her act of civil disobedience, sparked the bus boycott. That's also where, in 1965, civil rights activists and black citizens of Alabama marched from Selma to Montgomery in order to demand that black people be able to register to vote in local and federal elections (they had the right to vote, but white administrations wouldn't let them register).


(these engravings graced the walls of the Rosa Parks library)


The Dexter avenue King memorial baptist church is very close to the Alabama State capitol, and that's where Martin Luther King jr preached from 1954 to 1960. People were just coming out of church, and it was nice to see the elegant ladies chatting as well the kids running around.


We were there on a sunday, early afternoon, so the streets were deserted and all shops closed. The downtown part of Montgomery is economically depressed : stores boarded up along mainstreet. But there's also a certain grandeur to the city, with elegant state buildings and fountains.
Montgomery isn't the kind of place tourists come to visit. But it's one of those stops that gives you the feeling of travelling. The sort of travelling that brings you to another place, outside your comfort zone, your usual routine.

Atlanta

Atlanta,

Home of Margaret Mitchell, the Braves (a baseball team), CNN and ... Coca-Cola!

Although I had already been to Atlanta when I was 13 or so, it was important to make a stop at Margaret Mitchell's house again. Since then, I had met Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler and was eager to see where those two fantastic characters had been conceived. Margaret Mitchell had an appartment in a large house and apparently referred to it as "the dump". But she nevertheless wrote big chunks of Gone with the Wind there, so I guess bad standards of living don't have a negative effect on brilliant fiction writing! Here's a photo of the dump:

The city of Atlanta seems to be proud to be the home of Gone with the Wind, which can easily be branded as the model of the Southern epic/romance/war novel. I can't thank Juliette enough for having given me that book for my birthday last year!

Now, on a less intellectual - but nonetheless very cultural - note, here's a glimpse of the Coca-cola footprint in the Atlanta landscape:

Not such an inelegant building, might I add, if it weren't for that coke bottled encased in its very own tower. I mean, really?? In this building, there is - of course - a Coca-Cola museum (which we had visited when I was 13, and decided we remembered it well enough) and a huge gift shop. There's also the founder of Coke who is there to greet visitors, or to force them to drink the brown stuff, I'm not exactly sure which:

I guess every civilisation has its own set of inspirational characters...

But this blog entry might be showing Atlanta in a slightly derivative light. It's actually a very enjoyable town, with pretty parks and many valuable cultural institutions. We were there during the Black arts festival and were greeted by a jazz band. I was also struck by the beautiful sculptures scattered around the central part of the city.

Small town USA

Oxford, North Carolina was a little gem of a road trip stop, in the end. Fortunately, Stephanie had to stop by a post office, so we went to Main Street Oxford and didn't limit our visiting to the motel. Very cute little town, with pretty stores and people who all knew each other. We were propelled in small town USA!

Noticing a cute café, we went in and were served by a young high school girl who seemed to come straight out of the latest cheerleading movie, except that she was actually smart and friendly, with a singing southern accent and dreams of becoming a model, going to Paris and Rome. Then comes in this young high school guy, with a computer under his arm and a tee shirt that has some computer joke along the lines of "who reboots your hard drive?". He was just coming into the café to hang out and chat up the pretty girl at the counter. So, we ended up talking to him too. He didn't seem too happy about the new Wal Mart being built in the outskirts of town, fearing for local business and community. I was quite impressed to hear a teenager talk like that, since most of the american kids I had spoken to before, when I was a teenager myself, were all very excited about wal marts, rather than worried. After nice conversation and copious amounts of coffee, as well as a nice bagel with cream cheese, we were on the road again, direction Atlanta.

Here are a few photos of Oxford:

Road trip

Welcome to Oxford, North Carolina!

Despite the jet lag, my sister, mother and I are making our way by car into the deep south. We left Washington D.C this morning, stopped by Richmond, Virginia to see the grandparents, and are now in a motel in good old Oxford. Tomorrow, we hope to get to Atlanta in a timely fashion to visit with our cousin. So, I guess we could call this a family road trip! I haven't yet taken vast amounts of pictures, but I hope to catch a few roadside oddities along the way.

Unfortunately, the american landscape has gotten more and more uniform, with fast food restaurants and strip malls colonizing the road side. It's therefore less obvious to find small and shabby stores coming straight out of Thelma and Louise or Easy Rider. The film Broken Flowers might be a more accurate depiction of the contemporary road trip experience, since Bill Murray travels from state to state passing by the same chain restaurants and hotels.

But the South of the US remains specific to itself, especially with the singing accents and the affectionate politeness. "You take care, now, sweetheart" or " You're welcome, darling" are just a few examples of the southern manner.

And, although there is a sense of uniformisation, some quirky intitutions still remain. In Richmond, we had lunch in a diner called "Debbie's kitchen", where the owner was this trim lady with a patched eye, and the waitress a smooth blonde woman with a lovely smile. Seeing those two opposite characters, I was reminded of Carson McCuller's short story The Ballad of the Sad Café. And opposite the restaurant stood this general store, elegant and shabby at the same time.




I'll end this post with the anecdote of the day...: When checking into a motel for the night, my mother mentions that she lives in France, to explain something about her credit card ( the adress, probably). And, lo and behold, where else could the receptionist have lived from 4 to 9 years old but... Maison Laffite?

It was

A time of celebration, he said. And it was.
A time of beauty and sharing. And passion. And sadness, a little, too.
Although uncertainty shows its squishy nose, we resist.
We don't know, do we? No.
We'll see. We'll live and see.
Not always so easy, but we try
Nonetheless.