By Jim Ridley

Labor of Love

Last Sunday, a group of 39 people assembled at a Brentwood home for the culmination of a year’s worth of work. Some of them had brought family members. Still others could not attend, because they were much too sick to travel. Late in the afternoon, everyone assembled around the TV set in Catherine Morley’s living room. Thirty-three minutes later, the room erupted in hugs and tears.

The occasion was the first showing of Reasons to Live: Women, Their Families and HIV, a documentary produced solely through the effort of a handful of local volunteers. The director had a day job. So did the camera operator. The producer, Catherine Morley, had never made a film before. But she did have a purpose—along with a story to tell.

Two years ago, in April of 1994, Morley herself was diagnosed as HIV positive. From the moment she was diagnosed, she says, her life changed, especially in the way other people responded to her. “I have never surrounded myself with a lot of friends,” she says. “But I have lost people I considered close to me. I have seen them stand back from me, or move away.” When she needed medical help, she expected health-care professionals to behave differently. That wasn’t always the case. As recently as two weeks ago, Morley says, she was refused entrance to a local hospital when her condition was learned.

To combat what she calls “the stigma associated with AIDS,” Morley seized upon the idea of creating a video that would deal with the social and medical issues faced by families of HIV sufferers. Asking for help from acquaintances and rallying community supporters over the Nashville CARES HeartLine, Morley soon received offers of assistance from people willing to operate camera equipment and assist with interviews for the shoot.

One interviewer, Brenda Mosher, set out with only a High-8 camera. Alicia Benjamin, the arts reporter for the Metropolitan Times, agreed to operate another camera. A local filmmaker, Mark D. Jackson, stepped in as director and volunteered to edit the movie in his spare time. The interviewing process itself took a year of traveling the state, speaking to families coping with HIV.

“We talked to women from all walks of life—African-American women, white women, heterosexual women, lesbian women, young women, grandmothers,” Morley recalls. They spoke on topics ranging from family acceptance and denial to their experiences with doctors. While all of the interview subjects were willing to speak before the cameras, not all of them wanted to reveal their names.

Providing a continuous thread throughout the video are letters that Morley wrote from the time she learned she was HIV-positive. “For me, that was the most emotional part,” she says.

Throughout the entire process, Morley paid the production costs out of her own pocket. “I didn’t keep a running tally [of the cost],” she says. “That was the last thing on my mind.”

At the moment, Morley is negotiating to get her film shown on WDCN-Channel 8 this spring, and people wanting to see the film can contact her through the HeartLine at 1-800-845-4266. But she says she has already faced her toughest audience: the people who consented to appear in the film and the people who helped her make it. She had planned on having a big celebration for everyone last Sunday, she said, and she bought some hot dogs to grill outside. When the bitter weekend wind hit, she had to move everyone indoors. All 39 people crammed into her house, watching the movie, eating hot dogs boiled on the stove. No one seemed to mind.

“I’m just feeling wonderful,” Morley says. “I got it completed, and I think it turned out real well.” Now she’s just waiting for the weather to improve.

Is it any coincidence that the Fate Thomas and Sure Shot Rabbit Hunters Association 37th (approximately) Annual Supper takes place just when Peter Cottontail is supposed to be hopping down the Bunny Trail? Maybe it’s just a coincidence that, just when Easter’s in the air, the freezers are full and it’s time to cook up Floppsy, Moppsy and Cottontail.

It does seem that I’ve been reading a lot about rabbit lately. In a recent issue of New York magazine, restaurant critic Gael Greene searched the city for old-fashioned French cooking. Amongst her discoveries were Provençal braised rabbit at Rene Pujol and rabbit with mustard sauce at one of my favorite old haunts, Le Mangeoire. Unfortunately, both dishes fared poorly. Only the civet of rabbit with prune, which Gael discovered at La Luncheonette in “the outer wilds of Chelsea,” seemed to pass muster. FYI, The Chef’s Companion describes a “civet” as “a stew of furred game, cooked with red wine, onions, mushrooms and lardons, then thickened with the animal’s blood.”

Call me unsophisticated, but somehow civet of rabbit sounds far more terrifying than the outer wilds of Chelsea.

Much more appealing is a dish described in the March issue of Gourmet as part a review of South Park Cafe in San Francisco. “Rabbit doesn’t get any better than braised in white wine with a touch of mustard and prune and served over fresh noodles.”

Try telling that to the hundreds of people who forked over $10 each for a plate of barbecue rabbit at last Tuesday night’s supper, which was held at the Knights of Columbus Club on Bosley Springs Road. I am fully aware that, over the years, politics—and not rabbit—has been the main course at this gathering. I hear that, in the past, notables such as Jimmy Carter and Al Gore have attended. I assume that, if they were there, they ate rabbit.

Nevertheless, when I arrived just 45 minutes after post time, Penny Harrington was already leaving, thanking everyone for a good time. Richard Fulton had already been and gone. In an ill-advised scheduling snafu, Metro Council was voting on one of the many Houston Oilers/stadium proposals, so we all missed the opportunity to see George Armistead chomp down on a bunny leg.

The only faces I recognized were two of that sort who hover around the periphery of politics: Mario, who held a Michelob Light in one hand and a cellular phone in another, and Karlin Evins. I don’t know Karlin Evins personally. I recognized her from her photo on the op-ed page of the Banner, the one in which she’s draped around Teddy Bart’s shoulders like a mink stole stuck on Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Among the hundreds of people at the Sure Shot Rabbit Hunters Association Dinner, Mario and Karlin were the only two people I even sort-of knew. Someone named Sue McKnight Evans had convinced a lot of people to wear her sticker on their clothing. (She is running for judge of something.) And I think I saw Bill Covington, county clerk, but I’m not sure. I did vaguely recognize people I used to see in the checkout line at the Gallatin Road Kroger.

After buying myself a Bud Light at the bar, I moseyed over to the steam table. Like everyone else, I grabbed a plate, a napkin and some plastic utensils and helped myself to some cole slaw, baked beans, a chili-like concoction, and a slice of white bread before approaching the man who was serving up the rabbit and the barbecued pig.

“What’ll it be?” he inquired as I peered into first one huge dish then into the other.

“Which one is which?” I asked.

“This here’s the rabbit, and that there’s the barbecue.”

“Well, I guess I’ll try a little of each.”

He put a scoop of each on my plate, and I found a seat at one of the large tables under the tent.

The slaw was tasty, with a modicum of mayonnaise, a touch of yellow mustard and just a dab of sweetening. The baked beans were completely ordinary—your basic, everyday, canned baked beans. The chili dish was confusing—it offered ground beef, very little flavor, and a lot of white, not kidney, beans.

The pork barbecue was just the way I remember Fate Thomas’ barbecue—lean and meaty, tender and not greasy, with a smoky flavor and a nice bite to it. You’ve got to hand it to Fate and his crew—they cook some mighty fine barbecue. Don’t ever miss the chance to try it, no matter what your politics.

I suspect that the rabbit had been cooked a long while in what appeared to be the same sauce as the pork barbecue. But no amount of cooking or sauce or gravy or red wine could have disguised its gamey flavor. If I hadn’t been raised to have good manners, I would have spit it right out on my plate. But manners are manners, so I chewed. And chewed. And swallowed. Then I took a very long swig on my beer. Then a bite of white bread. Then another swig of beer.

Maybe the rabbit served in fine French restaurants doesn’t have much in common with the rabbit served by the former sheriff and his buds. Maybe French restaurant rabbits are bred and fed just to be braised and cooked with prunes, then served atop homemade noodles. I’m just glad that, if this is what all rabbit tastes like, I was paying $10 at the Rabbit Hunters Dinner and not $50 somewhere in Chelsea. Besides, my $10, like everyone else’s, went for a good cause—Room in the Inn, a program for the homeless.

Up and down the food chain

And now a moment of silence for two restaurants that have closed their doors. Demetri’s, Nashville’s only full-service Greek restaurant, has closed, leaving the ill-fated space on the first floor of The Continental Tower empty once again.

And, in a move that has shocked loyal fans, not to mention unsuspecting employees, staffers reporting to work last week found the doors to 106 Club locked tight. The club has long been considered one of Nashville’s most romantic dining spots, and there was no indication that trouble was afoot. Callers found that the phone number had been temporarily disconnected.

♦ On a more optimistic note, opening soon—but not quite as soon as expected—is Provence Breads and Cafe. Originally scheduled to be in full-bake by the first of March, Terry Carr-Hall hopes to have his new venture under way by mid-March.

♦ Z Cafe is no longer operating in Zeitgeist Gallery, but look for a new lunchtime eatery in bustling Cummins Station. Cafe Society will offer a serve-yourself salad and sandwich bar for eating in or taking out.

♦ And, coming soon to the space mercifully vacated by H.R.H. Dumplins in Green Hills will be another outpost of the rapidly reproducing Boston Market. Let’s just hope the façade isn’t quite as flashy as the one on 21st Avenue South.

♦ F. Scott’s has welcomed a new chef, Louise Branch, who arrived last month from California, where she trained with Jerimiah Tower at the acclaimed Stars restaurant in San Francisco and at Bikini in Los Angeles. Before leaving the West Coast for the Third Coast, Branch was her own executive chef at Woodside in Brentwood—as in California, not Williamson County.

He put a scoop of each on my plate, and I found a seat at one of the large tables under the tent.

The slaw was tasty, with a modicum of mayonnaise, a touch of yellow mustard and just a dab of sweetening. The baked beans were completely ordinary—your basic, everyday, canned baked beans. The chili dish was confusing—it offered ground beef, very little flavor, and a lot of white, not kidney, beans.

The pork barbecue was just the way I remember Fate Thomas’ barbecue—lean and meaty, tender and not greasy, with a smoky flavor and a nice bite to it. You’ve got to hand it to Fate and his crew—they cook some mighty fine barbecue. Don’t ever miss the chance to try it, no matter what your politics.

I suspect that the rabbit had been cooked a long while in what appeared to be the same sauce as the pork barbecue. But no amount of cooking or sauce or gravy or red wine could have disguised its gamey flavor. If I hadn’t been raised to have good manners, I would have spit it right out on my plate. But manners are manners, so I chewed. And chewed. And swallowed. Then I took a very long swig on my beer. Then a bite of white bread. Then another swig of beer.

Maybe the rabbit served in fine French restaurants doesn’t have much in common with the rabbit served by the former sheriff and his buds. Maybe French restaurant rabbits are bred and fed just to be braised and cooked with prunes, then served atop homemade noodles. I’m just glad that, if this is what all rabbit tastes like, I was paying $10 at the Rabbit Hunters Dinner and not $50 somewhere in Chelsea. Besides, my $10, like everyone else’s, went for a good cause—Room in the Inn, a program for the homeless.

Up and down the food chain

And now a moment of silence for two restaurants that have closed their doors. Demetri’s, Nashville’s only full-service Greek restaurant, has closed, leaving the ill-fated space on the first floor of The Continental Tower empty once again.

And, in a move that has shocked loyal fans, not to mention unsuspecting employees, staffers reporting to work last week found the doors to 106 Club locked tight. The club has long been considered one of Nashville’s most romantic dining spots, and there was no indication that trouble was afoot. Callers found that the phone number had been temporarily disconnected.

♦ On a more optimistic note, opening soon—but not quite as soon as expected—is Provence Breads and Cafe. Originally scheduled to be in full-bake by the first of March, Terry Carr-Hall hopes to have his new venture under way by mid-March.

♦ Z Cafe is no longer operating in Zeitgeist Gallery, but look for a new lunchtime eatery in bustling Cummins Station. Cafe Society will offer a serve-yourself salad and sandwich bar for eating in or taking out.

♦ And, coming soon to the space mercifully vacated by H.R.H. Dumplins in Green Hills will be another outpost of the rapidly reproducing Boston Market. Let’s just hope the façade isn’t quite as flashy as the one on 21st Avenue South.

♦ F. Scott’s has welcomed a new chef, Louise Branch, who arrived last month from California, where she trained with Jerimiah Tower at the acclaimed Stars restaurant in San Francisco and at Bikini in Los Angeles. Before leaving the West Coast for the Third Coast, Branch was her own executive chef at Woodside in Brentwood—as in California, not Williamson County.