Can 'Unknown Bob' the Democrat win in a red state like Alabama where everyone knows Roy's name?

Bob Vance’s quickie campaign is pulling no punches in his bid as the Democratic candidate for Alabama Chief Justice, spending money on last-minute TV ads while respected jurists from both parties tout him over his Republican opponent, Roy Moore.

Vance entered the final week of the campaign with more than $200,000 in cash and more money pouring in. He was ready to launch a new ad campaign and possibly has more in the works before the Nov. 6 general election.

On Halloween, he dropped $144,000 on another media campaign, financial disclosure reports show. A-VOTE, the Alabama teachers’ union political action committee, dropped 50 grand on the candidate Oct. 31, dominating the $60,510 that Vance raked in that day, according to disclosures, which now must be filed daily until Election Day. Vance ended the day with $121,000.

Moore had only $33,000 available going into All Saints’ Day, as his campaign has spent money practically as fast as it has come in – and even then it has relied on loans to stay solvent.

But Moore has plenty working for him in his bid to resume leadership of the state court system and its high court – a return to the post he lost in 2003 when he was kicked out of office for refusing to follow a federal judge’s order to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building.

It may be negative to some and positive to others, but Moore has name recognition. He is running in a decidedly red state on a day President Barack Obama seeks re-election. Moore outright won the primary against two mainstream Republicans when the state’s ultra-conservative base turned out in support of Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich for the Republican presidential nomination. Even though Mitt Romney won the Republican nomination, voters in Alabama love to vote straight-party tickets, so a vote for a Republican presidential candidate usually automatically translates into a vote for the Republican running for chief justice.

But the Alabama Republican Party – especially the considerable money behind it – never embraced Moore. He and Justice Tom Parker aren’t considered ultra-friendly to corporate interests when compared to their mainstream Republican counterparts. The Business Council of Alabama – one of the top donors nationally in state Supreme Court races – completely bowed out of the 2012 chief justice race. In the last month alone of the 2006 campaign (the last time the chief justice seat was on the ballot) the BCA’s political action committee, Progress PAC, gave the Republican chief justice nominee $275,000.

Many in the Republican Party consider Moore an embarrassment, who brought attention to Alabama for what they consider to be the wrong reasons. And after Moore was removed from office for disrespecting the law, the thought of putting him back in charge of the judicial system doesn’t feel right to many. Oddly, Alabama Republican voters twice soundly rejected Moore in gubernatorial primaries.

Vance has gotten money from the usual Democratic backers, as well as a considerable cross-over funding from typical Republican backers including legal corporate defense, nursing home and insurance interests. On Monday, three former Republican justices endorsed Vance, including current Justice Tom Woodall, who is not seeking re-election because he has passed the state mandatory retirement age.

But while Vance is highly respected in the legal field, he has little name recognition statewide. It didn’t help that his campaign didn’t start until Aug. 20, after the party booted lone qualifier Harry Lyon for what party officials considered non-judicial comments he posted online. Typically, a candidate without primary opposition would have had months to air “get-to-know me” ads, trot out some issues ads in October and maybe even get down and dirty in the last couple of weeks before the election.

Vance has had to make a last-minute introduction to a state of 4.8 million in his effort to convince a majority among 2.7 million potential voters to pick him out of a crowd of names on a presidential-year ballot. While he’s hit the airwaves hard, it may not be enough in a state where everybody knows Roy’s name.

Edgewood's 'little church that could' celebrates 100 years

(I sent this out as a media release about the centennial celebration at Edgewood Presbyterian Church, our family’s church in Homewood, Al. The story behind this church is so interesting, I wanted to post on my blog in honor of the official celebration of our 100^th birthday.)

Edgewood Presbyterian Church celebrates its centennial this month by reviving a symbol of its past while building a foundation for its future.

The congregation first met under a tent in what would become Homewood, Al., at the corner of Oxmoor Road and Peerless Avenue on Sept. 23, 1912. Church leadership chose the name Edgewood Presbyterian Church on Oct. 12, 1912, according to a church history edited by Melissa Tate, a retired Samford University professor.

The Centennial Celebration includes reinstalling a church bell that called residents to worship from 1916 until 1952, when Edgewood’s original wooden sanctuary and bell tower were condemned and torn down. The bell was brought out of storage for the church’s 95^th anniversary and restored this month to a new tower in time for the 100^th. For the official celebation today, members will ring the bell before entering the sanctuary.

Hanging the old bell in the new bell tower for centennial

Members also are launching a $250,000 capital campaign to replace the 50-year-old air conditioning units and make other physical improvements, upgrade technology, update landscaping and retire debt.

Known for its huge stained-glass window depicting Jesus, tiny Edgewood Presbyterian church is a prominent landmark on Oxmoor Road, Homewood’s street of churches. Many know Edgewood as the final station in the annual “Way of the Cross” procession on Good Friday.

“A lot of people mention they have seen Edgewood and noticed our Christ window, but never have been inside,” said Rev. Sid Burgess, the church’s current and longest-serving pastor. “This is an opportunity for folks to see us from the inside, as well.”

Giant stained-glass window
is an Edgewood landmark

Edgewood Presbyterian Church formed when members of Oak Grove Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Rosedale Cumberland Presbyterian Church congregation merged. They built a wooden sanctuary, installing a bell that had been donated to the Rosewood church in 1898.

Hard financial times soon forced Edgewood to affiliate with several denominations. But the transition back started in 1925, when some affiliates split off to join a new congregation down Oxmoor Road, now known as Dawson Memorial Baptist Church. Another group left Edgewood the next year to help form nearby Trinity United Methodist Church.

Again affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, Edgewood’s congregation expanded rapidly before and after World War II. But a rift led to a split in 1950, when the pastor was called to a church in Tennessee and 184 of Edgewood’s 519 members left.

Termites also were gnawing away at the sanctuary and bell tower (below), which were condemned as Edgewood marked its 40^th anniversary. Services would be held in the education building for the next 16 years.

 

A session vote in 1962 in support of racial integration led to another membership split as opponents left Edgewood. The remaining congregants celebrated the dedication of the current sanctuary in 1967, but they could not quite raise enough money for a replacement bell tower.

Today’s Edgewood congregation was hewn from the Presbyterian Church debate to allow women to be ordained and gay people to be members. The opposition at Edgewood, including the minister and about half the congregation, left in 1978 to form a new church.

 

The remaining core of 85 members voted in Edgewood’s first women elders, Nell Barron, Estelle O. Wilbanks and Irma Kennedy. They, along with Carolun Hammill and Amy Duckworth are credited with holding Edgewood together as it sifted through a series of pastors during the 1980s.

Then Burgess – a 20-year veteran of radio and television in the Birmingham area before graduating the seminary – accepted a shared call to Edgewood and another church. His first service at Edgewood, on Nov. 4, 1990, was attended by 25 people.

But the congregation quickly grew under Burgess’ dynamic leadership, resulting in a grant by the Independent Presbyterian Church Foundation in late 1991 that allowed Edgewood to hire Burgess full-time and add key part-time staff.

Edgewood was one of the first area churches to establish a Web site. Under Burgess’ leadership, it has expanded its ministries and commitment to racial, social, environmental, stewardship and local causes.

The church, for example, tithes to the First Light Shelter for Women. The capital campaign will provide an additional tithe to the Living River presbytery camp and conference center on the Cahaba River.

Now with roughly 250 members, Edgewood Presbyterian Church is a demographically and socioeconomically diverse congregation that reflects the PCUSA slogan, “Open Hearted, Open Minded.”

Chief justice race latecomer Bob Vance attracting money, running ads but needs more to beat Roy Moore (Updated)

The Democratic money started to pour into Bob Vance Jr.’s campaign for Alabama Chief Justice this week, with the state teacher’s union political action committee A-VOTE giving him $50,000 and the State Democratic Executive Committee contributing $10,000.

That money represents about 40 percent of the roughly $152,000 Vance’s campaign took during the latest weekly campaign finance reporting period, according to Vance’s latest disclosure report, filed Thursday evening.

But Vance also received substantial donations from political action committees funded by traditional backers of Republican court candidates, including Protective Life Insurance Corp.

The weekly disclosure for former chief justice Roy Moore, who was booted from office in 2003 for refusing to follow a federal judge’s order to remove his Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building, had not been posted on the Alabama Secretary of State Web site by noon Friday. I will update when his report is available.

UPDATE: Moore took in less than $6,700 in cash donations the week ending Oct. 26 and spent roughly $560. Since the primary, he has received about $380,000 total in cash donations and a $50,00 loan from a supporter. He has spent about $385,000 since the primary.

Daily campaign finance disclosures start Monday, Oct. 29, and will continue through the Nov. 6 general election. The chief justice race between Moore and Vance is the only one of five Alabama Supreme Court seats that will be contested. The nine-member state high court currently is all-Republican.

Vance became the Democratic candidate Aug. 20 after the state party booted Harry Lyon from the ticket earlier that month. Lyon was considered a fringe candidate, but he was the only person to qualify in January as a Democrat for any of the 11 appellate court seats on the 2012 ballot, including three each on the lower civil and criminal appeals courts.

Vance’s campaign says its polling shows him in a dead-heat with Moore, for what that’s worth. The conservative state political blog Yellow Hammer Politics has referred to an ALFA poll that it says shows Moore with a substantial lead and Vance with paltry name recognition among likely voters.

Both candidates hit the airwaves in October, with Vance spending more than $750,000 on television aids that aired 1,261 times in total through Monday, according to campaign disclosures and the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks campaign ads and spending in judicial elections nationwide.

Vance spent nearly $96,000 on TV advertising this week, according to his disclosure. But after ending Thursday with less than $84,000 in the bank, Vance faces a quick deadline to raise six figures fast so he can mount what could be a crucial media blitzkrieg in the days leading to the election.

Moore launched an ad campaign on Oct. 19, according to the Brennan Center’s “Buying Time -- 2012” report. His campaign reported spending $250,000 on advertising in mid-October, disclosures show.

Vance’s campaign finance disclosures filed this week show he continues to attract a decent level of donations. He’s also getting money from sources that typically back Republican court hopefuls, but don’t consider Moore to be sympathetic to their pro-business interests.

Some of that money has come directly to Vance, mostly from lawyers and law firms that represent businesses and corporations. Some of the normally Republican money is coming indirectly, through PACs.

The Mobile, Al, corporate-defense firm Ambrecht Jackson, for example, sent $4,000 to Vance through SEA PAC, disclosures show. Mainstream PAC made two donations totaling $5,000 to Vance this month; the only contributor to the PAC since the primary has been Protective Life, another frequent donor to Republican judicial candidates. Biz PAC gave Vance $5,000 during a period in which the PAC received money from Protective Life and lawyers with the corporate defense firm Balch & Bingham.

Builders, construction companies, Realtors, nursing homes, an insurance agent group – all traditional mainstream Republican backers -- have given to Vance since he launched his campaign on Aug. 20.

The Oct. 19 disclosure showed Moore’s campaign needed a loan and money from two other backers to stay afloat after that quarter-million-dollar media buy mid-month. Mostly, he has gotten donations of $5-$250 from people living in every state in the continental U.S., plus bigger donations from a former Constitution Party presidential candidate, and a few businessmen from Alabama and Georgia and a handful of other supporters inside and outside Alabama.

Stuffing pumpkin with everything wonderful

When I was young and single in Macon, Ga., our friends would gather regularly for funky dinner parties. Another reporter and I -- both food freaks – would choose a cuisine, divide the dishes and cook the meal. It fulfilled two of my passions: exploring other cultures through their food and cooking for a large, appreciative audience.

 

Now married with children and far less disposable time, I jump at any chance to cook for a crowd. And those meals generally follow a theme, such as the two annual Seder meals I cooked for 60-plus people at church. For several years, my obsession compelled to me cook elaborate New Year’s Eve dinner parties for my relatives using recipes from the latest cookbooks by James Beard Award-winning Birmingham chefs Frank Stitt or Chris Hastings. One night, the family of a friend recovering from surgery needed dinner – and wound up with a three-course Indian meal from me.

 

I admit. I go overboard – although nothing will top the 25-dish Chinese-style banquet I cooked one year in Macon for a friend’s birthday.

 

Neither my wife, Anna, nor I were surprised when plans for a simple dinner for four last weekend turned into a four-course French meal, launched with champagne and underscored with French-themed music.

 

Anna bought me Dorie Greenspan’s cookbook “Around My FrenchTable” after hearing Greenspan discuss on NPR her favorite recipe, Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good. Turns out I had heard the same interview and was intrigued by her description of the recipe as well. So when fall rolled around, Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good beckoned.

 

We picked a date with another couple to get together and share a babysitter, telling them about this pumpkin dish baked whole with cheese, cream-soaked bread, garlic and herbs that I planned to cook.

 

Naturally, I couldn’t stop there. So I started thumbing through Greenspan’s cookbook for more inspiration. A must was French onion soup, inspired by an awesome version I had at the Mountain Brook restaurant Ollie Irene. Greenspan had a great recipe. Oh, those Cornish hens stuffed with sausage looked good. Hey, the fresh-cheese spread and pizza-like pissaladiere would be perfect appetizers once our guests arrive. Anna’s a vegetarian, and she’ll need something special if the rest of us are munching hens. She has liked baked Provençal-style tomatoes; how about the version of page 344? That led to the dessert chapter.

 

Heck. I actually took it easy on myself, even I did turn the onion soup into a two-day process involving a marrow-enriched homemade beef stock. I even replaced the stuffed Cornish hens with a simple roast chicken (if you can get the Poulet Rouge Fermier heritage chicken, which is sold at Whole Foods, it is worth the extra money for the flavor).

 

My joy of cooking entire dinners from cookbooks is part of what got me hooked several years back on reading the wonderful blog by Carol Blymire, “French Laundry at Home.” She prepared every recipe from the cookbook by world-renowned chef Thomas Keller and food-writing guru Michael Ruhlman from what generally is considered the best restaurant in the country.

 

Carol took her readers through each step, with plenty of photos to illustrate key points. And her adventures were not only enlightening, they were funny as well. She cut no corners on the recipes – even those calling for whole pig’s head. She did such a great job on that blog and her follow-up “Alinea at Home,” Hollywood may not have made the movie “Julie and Julia” if the producers had known about Carol.

 

So she inspires me to write about my own cooking adventures in my blog. But at this point, I must apologize to Carol, because while I took some helpful photos while cooking, I forgot to pause for the cause before I plated and served it. So there are no “after” photos, only “befores.” I am a poor protégé, Carol, but I promise to improve.

 

Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good is, as Greenspan described it, more of an outline than a set recipe. She got it from a friend whose brother-in-law raised pumpkins near Lyon, France, and had played with the formula through the years. The concept is simple, but most diners will find it exotic. Gut a whole pumpkin, stuff it (with everything good) and bake it. You can make it vegetarian or not.

The pumpkin that inspired this meal, which I bought in late September, was way too big for this recipe. As it turns it, it wouldn’t even have fit into my oven. Greenspan’s recipe called for a 3-pound pumpkin, but I thought that was too small. The pumpkin I ultimately used weighed 10-plus pounds undressed. Ain’t it purty?

 

 

 

 

I neglected to weigh the pumpkin once it was cleaned of its seeds and stringy inner goop (again, Carol, I’m not worthy). Best measure: It fit nicely inside my cherished 5.5-quart Le Creuset Dutch oven, which the love of my life gave me recently.

Just like preparing a jack-o-lantern, I sliced open the cap with cuts at a 45-degree angle to allow it to sit snug when replaced. I sliced the innards from the cap, leaving a smooth bottom (the more juvenile among us now may emit a snerk).

The idea was to clean out the stringy stuff, but leave the pumpkin flesh. Then I salted and ground pepper into the interior, filled it with most of a baguette, sliced into cubes, and about 12 oz. of cave-aged gruyere cheese cut in cubes. I seasoned the mixture with more salt and pepper, dried rosemary and chopped fresh parsley, then put it into the hollowed-out pumpkin. This is what it looked like filled.

 

I poured a good 6 oz. of heavy cream over the stuffing, making sure everything was covered. I put the cap back in place, wrapping foil around the stem to keep it from burning (I had fantasies of taking the whole thing to the table, but didn’t).

If everyone’s a meat eater, I would heartily recommend adding cooked minced bacon to the stuffing mixture before baking the pumpkin. Since I was serving three omnivores and a fourth who eats no meat, I delivered the cooked minced bacon on the side.

Turns out I lucked out when I decided to get a smaller and fresher pumpkin for this dinner. The latter pumpkin fit just right in the Dutch oven (which I used in case the whole thing softened enough in the oven to fall apart). Also, the shorter pumpkin barely cleared the roof of my oven from the lowest rack.

I baked it a total of two hours at 350 degrees. As Greenspan recommended, I took off the cap for the final 20 minutes, which did help cook down some of the liquid.

A chef’s knife sliced easily through the cooked pumpkin, and it was easy to serve with its exquisite stuffing. The whole thing easily would have fed six, and maybe stretched to eight.

It was delicious. Like most folks, I’ve never eaten a basic orange pumpkin, only carved them into funny or hideous faces. My pumpkin pie comes from a can, although I may someday get all out-of-control and make it fresh.

Baked orange pumpkin tasted as expected, like a winter squash. The stuffing added a nutty, herbal dairy richness. Smoky, sweet pork bits put it over the top.

No wonder Greenspan liked this dish so much. We sure did.

Alabama may yet get its million-dollar 'justice'

The 2012 general election race for Alabama Chief Justice, which seemed destined to be the state’s cheapest in decades, may yet get its million-dollar man by the Nov. 6 general election.

Why should you care? Because while the amount of money spent on elections is mind-boggling in general, the millions spent to elect supposedly neutral judges in Alabama is disturbing. Let’s face it: Political donors give money to candidates who back their causes or interests, leaving common folks perceiving that the scales of justice tip toward the highest bidder.

As a newspaper reporter covering courts, I closely studied campaign contributions in Alabama Supreme Court elections for years. Candidates here have spent about $45 million on judicial races just since 2000. Of the 39 states that elect their top judges, none come even close to Alabama’s spending levels in that period, according to the judicial campaign watchdog groups, Justice at Stake, the Brennan Center for Justice and the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

In 2006, the last time the Alabama chief justice seat was on the ballot, candidates spent a combined $8.2 million. It was the second-most expensive judicial race in U.S. history. That year, Drayton Nabers spent $5 million seeking a full term as chief justice – and lost.

Alabama has routinely dispensed million-dollar judicial candidates like Pez candy. But this year, no candidate for chief justice has reached that mark, according to campaign financial disclosures.

Part of the reason is the state Republican Party seemed to have won the 20-year-old war for control of the state appellate courts. The fight, which brought to judicial politics the bruising campaign style typical of legislative or executive-branch races, started in the 1990s as Karl Rove sharpened his political skills en route to a national platform.

Republicans now control all 19 appeals court seats – after the only viable Democrat, Sue Bell Cobb, resigned suddenly as chief justice in 2010 and the governor appointed Charles Malone, a Republican, to replace her. The other four Supreme Court seats on the Nov. 6 ballot are not even contested.

Distinct groups, mostly taking sides on tort-reform issues, have dominated campaign funding for judicial candidates in Alabama. Republicans got money from businesses, corporations and their lawyers. Plaintiff trial lawyers, the state teachers’ union and the gambling industry gave on the Democratic side. Combined, they have pumped some $55 million into Alabama judicial campaigns since 1993, according to Justice at Stake.

But the main reason for the funding drop off in 2012 was the mainstream funding sources had no candidate they wanted to back after the March primary. The Republican nominee was Roy Moore, who was elected chief justice in 2000, was kicked out of office in 2003 for refusing to follow a federal judge’s order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building and was trounced in two primary bids for governor before deciding to seek his old seat on the state high court. The Democrats had Harry Lyon, a perennial candidate who was known more for his run-ins with the law than his legal prowess.

But the money picture changed when the Democrats kicked Lyon off the ballot in August for what they considered unjudicial behavior. Bob Vance Jr., the replacement candidate, has raised more than $510,000 in cash and loaned his campaign nearly $180,000 more since he launched his campaign on Aug. 20. The Jefferson County Circuit Court judge has spent more than $626,000.

Can he close the $375,000 gap by Nov. 6 and reach the million-dollar spending mark? It’s possible, considering a statewide ad campaigns cost $200,000-$250,000 each. This month alone, Vance has averaged spending $190,000 per week, disclosures show.

Vance had a balance of $62,000 on Oct. 18 – the day he filed is latest campaign disclosure report – so the bucks will have to flood his campaign for it to reach the $1 million spending plateau. Again, it could happen. Several Vance fundraisers in September generated $269,000 total – and the money not only came from traditional Democratic candidate backers but also from lawyers and businesses that traditionally support Republicans. He is on pace this month to match or pass his September fundraising benchmark, having collected some $199,000 through Oct. 18.

Here’s another factor in favor of Vance reaching the million-dollar mark: Generally, the biggest contributions and spending tend to occur in the days leading to an election. In 2006, Cobb raised close to $700,000 and spent nearly $750,000 during the last week of her campaign.

In contrast to his Democratic opponent, Moore has raised roughly $220,000 since the March primary. But if not for three men – former Constitution Party presidential candidate Michael Peroutka, Pinson businessman David Nichols and Alabama timber executive Guice Slawson -- Moore’ campaign would be dead-broke now.

The “Ten Commandments” judge mostly has depended on his nationwide army of supporters, who have contributed as little as $5 each throughout the campaign. In late spring, Moore briefly became the cross-over darling of plaintiff trial lawyers, but that financial support waned when Lyon got the boot by the Democrats.

Moore has raised about $73,000 in cash so far in October. But $10,000 of that came from Peroutka on Oct. 10 (for a total of $65,000 during Moore’s campaign). Nichols gave Moore $2,500 on Oct. 15. Slawson, who already had donated $25,000 in cash, loaned Moore’s campaign $50,000 on Oct. 15. Moore’s balance on Oct. 19 was $62,000, after his campaign spent $250,000 on an ad blitz three days earlier.

For those of you scoring at home, Moore, Malone and the third Republican candidate, Charlie Graddick, spent about $1.7 million combined on their primary campaigns, disclosures show. Moore has spent about $385,000 since the primary, and Vance has spent $626,000, bringing their combined total for the general election to just over $1 million.

Alabama now ranks second nationally in spending on its high court races in 2012, trailing only Michigan, according to Justice at Stake. Perhaps there is a spark of life left for Democratic statewide judicial candidates in Alabama.

But whether a Vance victory in November will augur the return of multiple million-dollar judicial candidates remains to be seen. After all, when qualifying ended in January, the state party had not recruited anyone considered to have a snowball’s chance to win as a Democrat in a state formerly known as Tort Hell.

Remembering the day that beer killed 20 people

Nearly 200 years ago today, a disaster at a London brewery launched a tsunami that touched off riots in its wake and left 20 people dead including several who drowned in beer.

On Oct. 16, 1814, a worker at Meux Reid Co.’s Horse Shoe Brewery overlooked a crack in one of the 500-pound cast-iron bands binding a 22-foot-high vat full of ale. It was one of 29 hoops securing the wooden storage vessels, the worker reasoned, so a little crack shouldn’t be a problem.

An hour later the vat burst with a crash that could be heard for miles. The 125,000-gallon wave of dark porter ale and shattered staves burst another vat holding 25,000 gallons of porter then blasted through the 25-foot-high brewery wall built with foot-thick bricks.

Next door on Trottenham Court Road, a Mrs. Barfield was serving tea when the beer wave hit her home. She escaped, but her 4-year-old daughter and two guests drowned.

The river of beer devastated the neighboring community of mostly poor people, flooding houses, shops and taverns. Attempts to help the wounded often were hampered by people scrambling for the free beer. Mobs formed over beer puddles. More than a dozen more people died in the madness.

Patients at the local hospital began rioting when the smell from the beer-soaked injured touched off a rumor that the staff was holding back on the patients’ presumed beer ration.

It got worse. At the morgue, someone started charging admission for the public to view the disaster victims. People packed the room, causing the floor to collapse. More people died.

The official inquest ruled the incident was an accident. But it was an accident waiting to happen, the byproduct of the bigger-is-better ethos of the Industrial Revolution that simply grew out of control.

At the time, porter was all the rage and English breweries expanded quickly in an effort to reap unprecedented profits. Bigger wooden aging vats were the solution that helped push porter production to more than 7 million gallons a year.

The competition touched off what only can be described as a case of vat envy. Henry Thrale grabbed headlines when he premiered one of his huge vats with a seated dinner inside for 100 people. Meux responded with a vat that was 60 feet wide and 23 feet high. Two hundred were seated inside for its premiere gala dinner.

The disaster did not cool the industry’s ardor for giant fermenting vessels. When Samuel Whitbread opened his state-of-the-art porter brewery in 1842, its storage cisterns could hold 124,000 gallons of porter.

But fortunately, the Meux brewery disaster and its horrific aftermath would not be repeated.

This story is based on accounts by Alan Eames in his book “Secret Life of Beer,” and Roger Protz in his book “The Ale Trail.”   

Who cooks for the cook?

Some consider it conventional wisdom: Never cook for a chef.

Yes, it can be intimidating. It can produce a nightmarish fear your food won’t measure up -- much like the time I served a homebrewed beer to a dear friend and professional brewer, who kindly noted I must have intended the off-flavor he detected.

But hey, I figure, who would appreciate a night off from cooking more than someone who spends most days and nights cooking for others?

So I took the plunge recently, drawing inspiration from a trip to Spain taken this summer by the chef and his wife, who runs the front of the house at their restaurant. I had made this dish, Boles de Picolat, before to serve at parties and thought it might be a nice tapas-style dish for this couple to enjoy on an off-day.

Boles de Picolat literally means “balls of ground meat,” according to Catalan food expert Colman Andrews. It is a mashup – or rollup, if you will -- of culinary influences from the autonomous Catalonia region of Spain and the French Languedoc-Roussillon region that abuts it, according to the recipe I used from Andrews’ great 1988 cookbook, “Catalan Cuisine.”

Every culture that eats meat, it seems, has some form of meatball in its repertoire. Often, the variations reflect the history of that culture. These Catalan meatballs use olives (introduced by the Phoenicians) and cinnamon (one of the lucrative spices that motivated Christopher Columbus to sail the ocean blue from Spain). The recipe obviously is post-Columbian because of the inclusion of New World foods like chile pepper and tomato.

The recipe calls for botifarra, a simply seasoned white pork sausage. But I use the house-made garlic pork sausage at Whole Foods, mixing four parts of the sausage with one part ground beef, then adding garlic, salt and pepper with egg to bind it. After rolling the mix into small meatballs, an inch round or so, and sprinkling them with flour, I brown them with some olive oil in an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven.

After the meatballs are done, the sauce is made by cooking a generous amount of onion in the same oil, scraping up the browned bits, but cooking them slowly enough to keep the onions translucent without caramelizing.

Into the pot goes a little more flour, some chopped tomatoes, sweet pepper (roasted and peeled red bell pepper), cinnamon (1.5 Tbsp. per 2 pounds of meat), smoked Spanish paprika and green olives (figure 1.5 cups per 2 pounds of meat; Andrews insists they be freshly-pitted). Next goes the browned meatballs and enough water to cover them. It should simmer, happily, for about an hour.

The meatballs are extra flavorful from the sausage and the umami caused by browning them. The olives contribute a Mediterranean glow. But it’s that dry pungency from the cinnamon that makes people say “Wow” when they try a rendition of Andrews’ Boles de Picolat.

My hard-working restaurateur friends told me later they loved the meatballs. They especially appreciated the gesture and how it provided them a little more rest and relaxation to go with the gustatory pleasure.

Taking a culinary risk like that can be nerve-wracking. But the payoff for success is both immensely satisfying and confidence-building.

And frankly, it doesn’t even matter if you bomb. No one worth knowing would be anything but appreciative for your truly heartfelt gesture.

Skill-sets for the new journalism

The future of journalism in Birmingham begins Oct. 1, when The Birmingham News ends seven-day publication after 125 years and switches to online all-the-time with only three days of print.

That has meant a major change in who will gather the news and write about it in Birmingham. Centuries of experience have walked out the door, and a leaner, mostly younger staff will proceed.

Those who are departing have shown a tremendous level of class, dignity and professionalism since they were told in mid-June they no longer would have jobs come Oct. 1. The three reporters whose bylines graced the front page of the final daily edition of The News have something in common: Gone. Gone. And gone.

In each of the last two daily editions, a top leader of the new media group has, essentially, said the departing journalists lacked the “new digital skill set(s)” required to continue gathering and presenting news for the new company.

No, the changes to staffing, compensation and working conditions were not a reflection of our abilities to present news in the new media. It was a bottom-line business decision.

Those comments made me think back to the articles I wrote for the paper’s food section in 2009, and all of the “how-to” cooking videos I had shot to accompany the text online as part of our new mandate to “think digital.”

I thought about the package of stories I wrote in 2010 examining and explaining the prevalence of young killers and homicide victims in Birmingham. The crown jewel was an interactive montage, which two colleagues and I put together and posted on al.com.

Here it is: (Killing Years) Roll over each defendant’s photo and you’ll get a synopsis of the crime and learn about the victims. Links on some defendants’ photos lead to longer stories about particularly notorious crimes among this age group.

What skills were required to put that together? First of all, there was no single source compiling all the information about homicides in Birmingham and Jefferson County in the period I examined, 2006-early 2010. I had to build the database myself, first of defendants then of their victims, drawing details and cross-referencing from nearly a dozen sources.

The list of defendants allowed us to know which mug shots to obtain from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department. There were 140 of them. Then I confirmed all of the defendants’ mugs for accuracy, researched and wrote the text about the crimes and loaded that into the blogging tool. Same thing with the larger vignettes. Once the ace designer loaded it all onto the graphic, I had to confirm each was done accurately and supervise alterations.

The Sunday the main story ran, I spent the day monitoring the comments on al.com, flagging those that were inappropriate and interacting with commenters by leading or directing the conversation in other ways. The next day, a Monday, I was the first metro news reporter for the paper ever to lead an online chat.

That doesn’t even bring into account the traditional journalistic skills required such as the years spent in courtrooms that allowed me to identify the trend and know the stories that would illustrate the main points. It wasn’t just a matter of knowing how to put together the research that confirmed an anecdotal suspicion; it was knowing who best could help put my research into perspective – and them knowing me.

When Gabe Watson went on trial earlier this year for the Australian honeymoon drowning case, I spent every waking moment posting multiple unique updates daily on al.com, dashing upstairs at the courthouse to tweet updates at every break in the trial (cell phone service was impossible inside the courtroom), participating in video-update shoots and making sure my articles for the next morning’s paper would be posted online the evening before, when a sizeable Australian audience was waking up and looking for a trial update.

In May, I conceived an elections page for al.com, where we could post relevant information about candidates months before that information traditionally has been available in print. This is beyond the routine we did daily: Find out information, and post it in online and print formats.

Those of us who have been in the business two or more decades have done nothing but adapt to changing technology and industry economics. We continued to do so, and do so effectively, during the transition to online news presentation.

Those of us who were not invited or who chose not to be part of the future media company were treated decently. Few layoffs are accompanied by weeks of additional paychecks and severance afterward, and the company went even farther to help cushion the blow.

I understand that the new media group has a sales job to do; change always requires that. It must convince its customers that this tectonic change is an improvement.

But, as part of that sales pitch, please don’t even insinuate that the departing reporters and editors lack the skills to be part of the new journalism. That is unfair.

'Famous' in a son's eyes

“You’re not going to be famous anymore, Daddy?”

The words from my son ripped a hole in my soul. He was contemplating the mass layoffs that had been announced at my newspaper in June, and the end of his father’s journalism career come Oct. 1.

Being a journalist made me cool to my son. During our talk that morning, he told me that he liked to tell his friends I was a reporter and that I covered murder trials. They always were impressed, he said.

“You’re not going to be famous anymore, Daddy?”

Those words continue to haunt me this week as my lingering layoff ends and with it a career I love. Being a journalist is who I am – whether it’s telling stories of people’s worst moments, dissecting a matter of great public importance or writing a restaurant review about some chef’s triumphant food.

I’ve always said your career either defines you or is a means to an end for your real passion in life. My sense of self – and how others perceived me – was wrapped in what I did for a living and the subjects I covered.

Without that, what am I? Who am I? Guess I’m about to find out.

Now, I wasn’t famous by any stretch. But I got to know a lot of people, witness spectacular and whacky moments and chronicle historic, disastrous and bone-chilling events. I felt journalism was my form of public service. Many reporters my age were inspired by “All The President’s Men,” and the investigative reporting that brought down Richard Nixon. I got into journalism to help people understand the world around them and society in which they live; to help inform the electorate.

I’m going to miss the compelling stories and interesting people I covered. I’m going to miss having an authoritative understanding of the key events that confront our community and the forum to help readers understand it as well. I will miss the rich storytelling opportunities my court beat offered. And yes, I will miss the adrenalin rush of chasing down a breaking story and publishing it.

I hope Oct. 1 brings a new beginning, a new opportunity in my new career as writer, researcher and gastronome.

But most of all, I hope that my son’s admiration does not fade, now that his Daddy no longer is “famous.”

Just little ol me, Underblog

Hello. I’m Eric Velasco, a lifelong journalist now plying his trade independently of daily newspapers.

After 29 years in the business I was caught in the double-whammy of an inevitable tectonic shift in my industry from newsprint to a digital platform, hastened by the lingering recession that still has us in its grip.

After Oct. 1 I will freelance as a writer, researcher, advocate and gastronome. Each skill draws on decades of experience.

For 20-odd years, I’ve covered courts, judicial politics and justice issues including capital punishment. I’ve distilled court rulings and legal briefs to their essences and picked apart campaign contributions to ferret out who really pays for our politicians. I’ve told stories from individual trials that get at larger truths about us and society.

I’ve covered the Jefferson County Commission. I’ve written about its $3.2 billion sewer rehabilitation program and the corruption and specious financing that accompanied it, eventually helping to lead the county to financial ruin. I’ve covered what may be one of the few valid accomplishments of imprisoned county commission president Larry Langford – a $1 billion school building/debt reduction program funded by a sales tax. (Admittedly, a sales tax is horribly regressive, but about 40 percent of Jefferson County’s sales tax is paid by people living outside the county who spend money while shopping or working here.)

I’ve also covered the litigation over Jefferson County’s hated occupational tax – a levy on wages for people who work in the county and use its services. Loss of the occupational tax – which provided one-third of the county’s general fund money – led to near-shutdowns of county government services and massive layoffs.

I was the first reporter to recognize that the tax litigation would have a more immediate impact on residents than the specter of bankruptcy due to county’s massive bond debt. Loss of the occupational tax is why people now spend hours in line waiting to renew tags or register new vehicles. It is why zoning is about to become practically nonexistent in unincorporated areas of the state’s largest county. It is why 1,500 people who have not been convicted of anything are packed into a county jail designed for half that number, waiting even longer for trial these days, while a brand new jail in Bessemer sits empty. It is why sheriff’s department says it no longer has enough deputies to even move a dead cow out of the middle of the road, much less work a wreck in the middle of nowhere.

I’ve covered city governments as well, including the identity struggles, explosive development and  growing diversity of Hoover (population 400 in 1967; 82,000 today), founded as a white-flight bedroom community and now arguably the biggest small town in the U.S.

I am a restaurant critic, a cook and a food writer with a lifetime craving for all things culinary the world has to offer. As a father of two young children and the husband of a vegetarian, my cooking experiences have expanded even farther. I know how to source many of the very same ingredients found in high-end restaurants in Birmingham, which is blessed with a vibrant food scene. I know my way around most of Birmingham’s ethnic and specialty markets. One of my greatest joys is sitting at a chef’s counter in a restaurant, talking food with professional cooks and fellow-travelers.

February 2013 marks my 25^th anniversary of home brewing. In the late 1990s, I also dabbled in a little pub brewing, making 210-gallon batches part-time for a brewpub in Macon, Ga. I also wrote a beer newsletter, an educational guide and reward for loyal customers of three bars in Atlanta that ended after seven years with a circulation of 7,000.

I am a native Yankee who has lived in the Deep South since age 4, mostly in Georgia, but also in South Carolina and now in Alabama. I love all sports – yes even soccer. Baseball and college basketball are my favorites and the Atlanta Braves is my favorite team.

But you can’t spend decades in SEC country without developing a healthy appreciation for college football. I’ve tried to be bi-lingual – I say War Tide. But since my in-laws all are serious Bama fans, my son has become a partisan for the Crimson Tide.  Still, he was mighty impressed when he got to try on our neighbor’s rings from playing on Auburn’s championship team in 2010 (which won the national title in January 2011).

After discovering college football in the 2009 season and seeking Alabama sandwich national championships around the War Eagle feat, my son may feel a letdown the next season a team from outside Alabama ends it crowned No. 1. Hopefully that day will not come soon.

This blog will touch on all these subjects and a few more. There will be some commentary on what’s going on around us and where we could go. But we’ll also talk about the finer things in life: the food, drink and conviviality that make life great.

Restaurant Week Blues

Once again, Restaurant Week in Birmingham will end this weekend without my participation. It’s not that I don’t like the concept. This is a great promotion of the independent restaurant scene that makes this city special and that should be cherished.

I love to eat out, and I have to be forced to eat at a chain restaurant. But for some reason I’m never in a position to take advantage of Restaurant Week (actually it is 10 days because organizers were smart enough to include two weekends in the promotion).

For those not familiar, participating restaurants offer special fixed menus at an attractive price – $5 -$15 for lunches, and $10-$30 for dinners. You can eat a three-course meal for $30 (before drinks and tip) at the best restaurant in town, where you might spend $60 or more any other night ordering three courses from the menu. It’s a great way to try a place you normally can’t afford, experience a different restaurant or check out that chef getting the raves these days.

The problem is Restaurant Week just doesn’t work for my situation. My wife, the most wonderful person in the world, is a vegetarian. She has a hard enough time finding something haute that’s not just a mishmash of side dishes; her choices are even more limited on Restaurant Week menus. But as the movie Mafia man said, “This is the life we chose to live.” It goes with the territory.

My wife and I measure time like most parents do: BK (before kids) and AK (after kids). BK, Restaurant Week would have been attractive, even if my wife would end up having to order off the regular menu. AK: the extremely limited (although thoughtful) selection of Restaurant Week kids’ menus makes it less attractive. Throw in school and aftercare in the modern double-income family and extracurriculars like piano, football and gymnastics and it’s darn-near impossible even to find the time to take proper advantage of Restaurant Week.

But mentally, I devour those Restaurant Week menus. In my fantasy world, here’s how I would have grazed this year (with extensive workouts in-between):

Saturday 1: Beer Saturday at Avondale Brewery, followed by a trip to Little Savannah for corn chowder and Alabama catfish, ending with peaches and cream.

Sunday 1: Limited choices: I’d head to Jim N’ Nicks for the brined, smoked pork chop.

Monday: Another day with limited options, but great ones. Lunch at Little Donkey for Salad Picado and tacos; dinner at VINO (where just about everything on the Restaurant Week special menu sounds good).

Tuesday: Now options are widening. Dinner plans this week would feature a tour of participating Big Dog restaurants, so why not launch with a Frank Stitt day-night double header? Bottega Café for lunch (a wood-fired pizza). Then dinner at one of the best restaurants in the country, Highlands Bar and Grill, for chilled corn soup, pork confit with Southern vegetables and what sounds like a decadent chocolate sundae dessert.

Wednesday: Lunch at Café de Paris: “gaspaccho” chilled tomato soup and Mediterranean chicken. Dinner at Ocean would bring a surprising choice from a place known for its seafood: slow-braised short ribs with (OK, so it’s not a total stretch) crawfish etouffe. That cherry, heirloom tomato, local greens and goat cheese salad sounds interesting, too.

Thursday: Rogue burger for lunch. Dinner at The Veranda for the ham and melon plate appetizer, pork duo entree (mmmmm, pork belly) and pound cake/berry dessert.

Friday: Blaze on with another Stitt double-header: Lunch at Chez Fon Fon, cucumber soup and Poulet Provençale; dinner at Bottega Dining Room where the braised lamb with eggplant probably would win out over spaghetti with clams.

Saturday 2: Here’s the chance to visit another James Beard chef, Chris Hastings, for dinner. But before there’s serious eating and drinking to be done: Lunch at JoJo’s Diner in Homewood to check out that chuck-brisket burger; Good People at the second Beer Saturday hosted by Dave’s Pub.

Then it’s time to hit Hot and Hot Fish Club for what sounds like a fascinating chilled soup that includes tomatoes, watermelon, squash, cucumber and – yes you’re reading this right – heirloom tomato sorbet. Truly an Iron Chef-style inspiration. My meal at the chef’s counter also would include the 13-Mile shrimp pasta dish and a rich panna cotta.

Sunday 2: Slices at Slice for lunch. And for dinner, haul my now-bloated body back to Little Donkey, because that tamal of the day and wood-oven braised chicken tomatillo sounds too good to miss.

Of course, I never could make it through 10 days of over-the-top eating like that – from a financial or health standpoint. If anything it’s just an exercise in vicarious pleasure.

But one day, perhaps as my children’s taste buds become more sophisticated, I hope to do more than fantasize on Restaurant Week in Birmingham.