December 2008 Archives

For the third time since I can remember, not all my sisters managed to make it to our annual Christmas Eve celebration in Octagon, but we still had a wonderful time--particularly Morgan, my niece Stacy's child and my great niece. (She is adorable.) I'm uploading some of the photos we took this year--they should be out shortly, but I'll go ahead and post a link. www.joewatts.com/christmas08

Wow, this is my 250th post!

Ann and I are getting ready to head to Octagon for the annual Watts Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve. It will be different this year, but it will still be good to see the family and enjoy some good quality togetherness. It always seems better to me when we are all together. I'm really excited over some of the stuff Ann and I have picked out as gifts. I hope everyone else likes them, too.

This is basically a repeat post from last year, but hey, it all still applies--and I've added photos from 2007 and from 2008 now!.

Here are some memories of Christmas Past:
Christmas 2002
Christmas 2003
Christmas 2004
Christmas 2005
Christmas 2006
Christmas 2007
Christmas 2008

Merry Christmas to Everyone!

Sorting through some old photos. Came across this one of all of us in 2004. Left to Right: Mama, me (Joe), Madeline, Julia, Margaret, Suzanne (back), Cynthia.

See how all my sisters (well the ones that weren't somewhere else in the house) were gathered around in adoration of their wonderful baby brother?

Merry Christmas all around.

Wow, what good times we had.

Old times, but not that old. My three oldest sisters celebrating the Christmas season as children.

This photo was used as a Christmas card one year by my parents.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Well, I don't normally do this sort of thing, but I've been reviewing applications for National Scenic Byway Designation over the past week + and just really wanted to share the itinerary that my friend Colette Boehm at the Gulf Coast Convention and Visitor's Bureau has put together to highlight the great experiences someone can have on a trip to Alabama's Coastal Connection.

There are many ways to enjoy Alabama's Coastal Connection, but none offers more scenic views than our Connecting with Nature itinerary. Take two days and experience the beauty and variety of the natural assets of Alabama's Gulf Coast and the interpretive facilities that help visitors understand their connection. Spring and fall are the best times of year to enjoy this itinerary, and completion times will vary depending upon the degree of interest in hiking and/or biking along the variety of trails.

Start: Dauphin Island Audubon Bird Sanctuary

After beginning your drive along the rural farmlands of Mobile County and by the scenic docks of Bayou La Batre, continue across the Dauphin Island bridge onto the island. Arriving at the Dauphin Island Audubon Bird Sanctuary, you'll find parking and picnic areas and interpretive signage describing the habitats and birds to be found here, and along the Alabama Coastal Birding Trail, on which the sanctuary is a stop. Explore the 1000-foot handicap accessible boardwalk from the parking lot to "Gaillard Lake" or the raised walkway through the Tupelo swamp. The sanctuary encompasses more than a mile of trails through a variety of intact habitats including preserved maritime forest.

This week has been pretty busy, including last weekend. I sat down to work up the January 2009 issue of the Alabama Sierran that I do each month only to discover some unforeseen problems with my new laptop. Really not so much a problem with the laptop as it was a problem with an older version of QuarkXpress I've been using to design the newsletters and much of the other print work I do. It just wouldn't work with the new Mac operating system. After about 2 hours and 20 crashes, I read up on it and discovered that it really wouldn't work. Thus, a forced migration to an admittedly better program, Adobe InDesign. All is better now, but it did force me to recreate the newsletter and start recreating an annual report I do each year. Anyway, I'm off to Centerville, Alabama this morning to talk with the Bibb County folks about tourism and their upcoming website. Here's what the Alabama Sierran turned out like:

Wow, I just haven't been keeping up with my blogging lately. I guess I've been busy. I have added some new content to my Your Town Alabama blog (www.yourtownalabama.org/blog) and I've added a few new pictures to my Flickr account. Mostly, I've been trying to churn out some work. Rode to Montgomery with someone from the Regional Planning Commission here in Birmingham yesterday to work with the Alabama Department of Transportation on developing signs for tourism destination, particularly scenic byways stuff. I set up another twitter account in adddition to my personal account for business (smartgrowth oriented) in an effort to keep up with some new marketing ideas.

I'm hurriedly trying to wrap up an annual report for the Resource Conservation and Development Councils of Alabama (RC&D), a newsletter for the Sierra Club and another for American Mining Insurance Company.

As a result of that, I really haven't been doing much cooking and even less scanning of old photos or writing. Oh well, hopefully some time this weekend will slip in. (Oh, I did post a couple of old photos from a trip Jonathan Merkle and I took years ago onto my biography page--itself always a work in progress).

AlabamaMosaic is a repository of digital materials on Alabama's history, culture, places, and people. Its purpose is to make unique historical treasures from Alabama's archives, libraries, museums, and other repositories electronically accessible to Alabama residents and to students, researchers, and the general public in other states and countries.

http://www.alabamamosaic.org/

Sunday night was chilly here in Birmingham. Decided to warm things up with something simple--that, and the cabinets didn't really hold loads of food as I have been avoiding the grocery store. Settled on a variation of garlic soup.

Roasted Garlic Soup

1 head garlic
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
several sprigs fresh thyme
1/4 cup white wine, optional
3 VERY small potatoes, diced (no bigger around than a 1/2 dollar--hopefully smaller)
1 can vegetable or chicken broth
freshly ground pepper
1 cup milk (I used 2%, but half and half would give it an extremely rich flavor)
2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Rub the head of garlic until the outer layers of skin come off (leave the part that is directly on the individual cloves). Place in a small container, drizzle with about 1 tablespoon olive oil and bake in a 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes or until very tender. Remove and let cool.

Heat a skillet (I like my stainless chef's pan for this) over medium heat until hot. Add remaining olive oil and onions. Reduce heat to medium low and cook, stirring frequently for about 10 minutes. Add garlic and thyme and cook another 2 minutes. *You may need to turn the heat to low for part of the cooking time. The idea is to caramelize the onions and brown them only slightly.

Squeeze roasted garlic cloves gently. The clove should pop out of of the skin with ease. 

Add white wine, if using. Add potatoes, roasted garlic and broth. Season with pepper. Cook over low heat for about 10-12 minutes, or until potatoes are very tender.

Transfer to a bowl and blend in batches until smooth. Return to pan, add milk and heat thoroughly. Spoon into bowls and top with cheese. Makes two servings. Use a little more milk and another couple of potatoes and this would easily stretch to feed three.