The Biltmore

For years my sister has been telling me about the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.  A friend came to visit from California and since visiting the Biltmore was on her bucket list, we had to go.  My sister met us there since it's only a few hours from her house.

The Biltmore has 250 rooms - a mere 135,000 square feet or 4 acres!  It's the largest privately-owned home in the United States.  The Vanderbilt family has owned the home ever since George Washington Vanderbilt II built it between 1889-1895. 

The amazing thing about this house is that the rooms are fully furnished and decorated just as they were when the family lived there.  The family spares no cost when it comes to restoring fabrics and wallpapers.  A weaver in France still had the same cards (patterns) that had been used to weave custom fabrics decades earlier and they were able to reproduce some of the original fabrics with those cards.

My favorite room was the atrium.  In the first picture (above) you can see its conical glass roof to the right of the front door.  It's an amazing sight as you enter the house.  It's like a rainforest with a tiled floor and smattering of paired chairs for conversation.  Here's a list of some of the other features of the house:

• 43 bathrooms, in a time when indoor plumbing was almost non-existent
• 65 fireplaces
• 3 kitchens
• 34 bedrooms
• a grand banquet hall
• a huge two-story library with thousands of books
• a two-lane bowling alley, the pins had to be set manually
• an indoor swimming pool

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside so I guess you'll have to take a tour if you want to see the inside, or google it - there are lots of bootleg photos out there.  The grounds were immense and gorgeous.  This is a picture of the conservatory with its unique masonry.  I didn't take pictures inside but you can go here to take a peek.

Below you can see the remains of the wisteria in bloom.  If only we had been there a week earlier!

Here's a gnarly old wisteria trunk.  If only gnarly old wisteria trunks could talk.  It almost looks like it could!

Here's a wisteria imposter, equally as beautiful.  Anyone know what it is?

We thought this Weeping Blue Atlas Cedar would work well as inspiration for a Dr. Suess illustration.

This was a fun lattice tunnel with portholes.  The sun-seeking vines were just starting to weave their way up through the lattice maze.

Look what's blooming in the tunnel!

Mystery of the Bizarre Statue - Solved

There's a statue south of Nashville to the east of I-65.  As you whiz by at 70 mph, it's hard to get a good look at it - but you see enough to know that there's something 'just not right' about it.  Here's a picture taken by someone who labels it as the 14th ugliest statue in the world. 

(source)

If you can get near the private property where it's located, it looks like this.  Yikes!

(source)

The statue is of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.  He also has the 'great' distinction of being the first Grand Wizard of the KKK.

Patrick R. on yelp.com says it better than I ever could:

The Nathan Bedford Forrest Memorial...is probably Nashville's most appalling landmark. And I'm not only saying that because of the historical and racial implications--it's also aesthetically atrocious.

Forrest, who is best known for his work as a general with the Confederate Army and his role as "Imperial Wizard" of the KKK in the years following the Civil War, is depicted in this statue as a ghastly, screaming dwarf.  The horse on which Forrest rides makes the general look like a nine-year-old with a radically contorted face wearing a false beard and a skirt.

Black-eyed Peas

I must have been living under a rock for the last several decades.  Yesterday, I heard for the first time ever that it's good luck to eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day.  It's a southern thing.

It seems that this southern tradition was a adopted from Sephardi Jews who settled in Georgia in the 1730s.  Now, isn't that surprising!?  It is "good luck" to have specific foods on your table for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.  One of the "lucky" foods is black-eyed peas.  This tradition apparently has been "a southern thing" since around the Civil War.

Next year I'm going to have to remember to make up a batch of Hoppin' John and to count the number of peas in my serving, which will predict the amount of luck (or wealth) that I will have in the coming year.  I also have to remember to leave three peas on my plate to assure that my New Year will be filled with luck, fortune, and romance.

Paula Deen, the quintessential southern cook, has a recipe for Hoppin' John that I think I'll have to try before January 1, 2013.  It looks kind of yummy, doesn't it?

Hoppin' John