Today. Well, what a day.  My closest Republican friend stopped following me on Twitter today.  Then resumed following me by day end.  I understood her need for space not hearing us pat each other on the back.  Then one of the Republican attorneys I work with said he appreciated Obama’s speech, reaching to those that did not vote for him.  He felt that was the right start for Obama.

Then Obama started to assemble his transition team and it’s got a number of familiar names, familiar from Clinton’s cabinet.  What?  Where’s the change?

Then my Rebulican brother called and said he will not bad-mouth Obama.  That Obama will be his president too and he wants us to all come together and work hard.  It’s gonna be a hard four years regardless of who has won.

And in the meantime, my blog post from yesterday stirred a lot of commotion in the comments and ultimately on Twitter.  I try to stay positive and nice.  But I stumbled.  Passive aggressive behavior gets me damn near every time.

But at the end of the day, it was dinner with my Republican friend as usual with no ugly talk of politics.

I said it earlier today on Twitter, and I’ll say it again now:  I love that the NOLA people are already back to talk of food and drink. Priorities, I tell ya! Unity in satiety.

Now for me to fix myself a martini.  After a day like today, I earned it.

My uncle died Friday, I found out today.  Well, technically, he’s the husband of my first cousin once removed, but what do you call such a relation that is more than twice your age?  In the South, we call him “Uncle.”

My 80+ year old “aunt” and I share the love of genealogy.  I visited with her a few years ago to share our notes.  I pass my uncle’s office regularly and think about them all the time.  I wish I had called again before he died.

I finagled my tight schedule today and hustled to the viewing.  I even knelt and prayed for the respite of his dear soul.  He was a good man, a devoted husband, a respected attorney.

My aunt excused herself from talking to my cousin and me, “I need to say hello to my cousin from Houston.  Well, he’s your cousin, too…,” her voice trailed.  My cousin and I followed her to new relatives: we were introduced to Louis and Millie (also 80+).  I was delighted to finally meet the distant relative that had started me on my path in genealogy.

We gushed.  We talked about our love of cemeteries, libraries, archives, successions.  We talked about the NOLA books we are reading, have read, must read.  Then Millie stole my heart.  Louis said, “Millie woke up this morning and asked, ‘Can we have oyster po’ boys for breakfast?’”

So then we talked about restaurants.  And sweet Millie!  Louis explained that Millie compares every oyster po’ boy to Mandina’s.  Fair enough, eh?  But Millie!  “They ruined that place!” she exclaimed.  And I knew just what she meant.  Katrina dumped some 6+ feet of water in Mandina’s and they rebuilt.  But the rebuild is so, well, clean and shiny.  It’s distracting, all that shiny glare.  “And Mother’s!” Millie continued, “Have you seen their bathrooms?” She sneered, “They’re spotless!”  “How dare they!” I responded, all of us laughing respectfully.  These were icons.  You don’t chip away the grime from icons.

I said my goodbyes, made Louis and Millie vow to look me up next time they are in town so I can take them to another neighborhood joint, and returned to my office in time for my next appointment.

I also dug up some gravestone pictures I’d taken way back when.  I’ll be sending them to my new family soon.

Sun and I tagged along with Pete to his appointment at La Maison d’ Absinthe and the Absinthe Museum of America, both located inside 823 Royal Street. It still has the sign for Vive La France out front; and they are awaiting the decision on changing their sign by the Vieux Carre Commission, famous for being very deliberate in their decision-making.

The store is a delightful surprise to the senses; appealing to the eyes, and you want to touch everything in there.

Everything the absinthe imbiber/enthusiast could want lies on the shelves and in the display cabinets–vintage and modern reproduction glassware, coasters and bistro saucers and spoons. They even have individually wrapped sugar cubes. The only thing they don’t sell so far is the absinthe.

The saucers have different numbers on them and different colored stripes along the edges. The absinthe collector Pete met explained that the numbers on the saucers indicated the price of the drink, in Francs and Centimes, that was served on the saucer. The colored stripe allowed the waiters to quickly pick out the right saucer for a particular drink. The expert also gave us this little tidbit of absinthe lore. Women back in the day loved absinthe as a cure for cramping, or as he put it, “to help their monthlies.”

My purchases: the saucer, the glass in the saucer, and the spoon on top. I had bought the other glass last week at the Tales of the Cocktail market and let Pete put it to good use.

After stopping at the Freret Street Market on the way home, we picked up a bottle of Lucid Absinthe Superieure at Martin Wine Cellar and commenced the green hour rather early with a perfectly performed ritual.

Growing up, my mother was the height of organization and cleanliness.  My mother was a stay-at-home mother that cleaned and cooked. A lot. She’d fuss if we didn’t make the bed in the morning and if we dumped our school books on the kitchen table in the afternoon.

Twice a year, my mother would take all the food out of the pantry to touch up the paint that got scraped. She’d spring clean the closets and strip and redo her linoleum floors once a year too.  All the while, she was preparing dinner for us every night.  With five children, we rarely had leftovers.

I thought all mothers cooked and cleaned as vigorously as my mother.  I learned that was not the case.  We’d have friends over and ask if they wanted to stay for dinner.  They’d inquire what we’d be eating, and I’d go look at my mother’s calendar—she always had her menu written down for the coming two weeks.  My friends were amazed.  Their mothers didn’t know what they were having until about an hour before they ate—no pre-planning went into it.  But with a large family on a budget, planning was essential.

So, every two weeks my mother went to Schwegmann’s.  She wrote her grocery list, organized by the order of the aisles, on an envelope and put her coupons inside.  She’d buy so many groceries, she’d need two baskets.  When the first basket was full, she’d take a note she’d tucked into her purse out and place it on top of the bursting basket, “Please do not touch.”

During the summer, I’d go with my mother to Schwegmann’s. I LOVED going to Schwegmann’s.  We went to the store in Gentilly.  This was their largest store; it was once the largest grocery store in the nation. Can you imagine?  The Gentilly store had two stories; the upstairs had a pet store and the administrative offices.  My sister and I would visit both.  The women in the offices gave us candy.

Downstairs, there was a lunch counter (frequented usually by the working men in the neighborhood), a shoe repair place, shoe store (Shoe Town–remember Crazy Johnny?), hair salon, post office, florist, and even a bar room (also frequented by those workmen).  The Gentilly Schwegmann’s was such a special place.  It was just so big!

It was so big, in fact, that as a child it was the biggest indoor place to which I had ever been (apparently I never went to the Superdome as a child). And in my child’s eye, it was the biggest place on Earth.  Once, I told my father I loved him and he asked, “How much do you love me?” And I responded, “Grocery store much.” He laughed and asked what I meant.  I explained.  Schwegmann’s was the biggest quantifiable thing I could imagine existing.  It became our thing, for me to tell my father I loved him “grocery store much.”

I have many memories of time spent in Schwegmann’s, and all of them are positive.  It was more than a grocery store, more than a Sav-a-Center Rouses or a Whole Foods. It was a way of life. And for us New Orleanians, it is very much missed even still, both the grocery and the way of life.

Update: Thanks Dail_m for the link to a few pics of the inside of the Gentilly store–click here and view the last one, No. 13, for an idea of the size of this place.

I cannot say enough how much I like love crawfish bisque.  It may well be my all-time favorite dish.  Growing up, my mother never made it, not once.  The first time I had it was at my best friend’s aunt’s.  That bowl set the bar very high.  My grandmother would make it every couple of years.  Maybe.  Sometimes less.  The reason you see it so infrequently is that, done correctly, it takes a lot of time.  All together, it probably takes a full day to prepare.

First, you need to boil crawfish.  Then pick them.  Then clean the heads.  Cleaning the heads is the worst part of preparing this dish to me.  Not because it is as gross as it sounds (it isn’t much more weird than peeling the tails) but because you have to snip off the noses of the crawfish.  This rips my fingers to shreds.  Here’s what four look like cleaned and ready to be stuffed:

Only 146 more to go.  Yes, the recipe I use (from Marcelle Bienvenu’s “Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic and Can You Make A Roux? A Family Album Cookbook” –great title, eh?) calls for 150 stuffed heads.  That’s a lot of heads!  Now, the next step is to stuff said heads.  To do that, you chop bell peppers, celery, onions, garlic, and crawfish tails and mix that together with stale french bread crumbs.  You then mix in more tails you did not chop and saute in oil with lots of salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper.

Cooling crawfish head stuffing.

Let the mixture cool.  Then stuff the heads and roll them in a mixture of seasoned and plain breadcrumbs.  They will look like this:

Bake them until golden brown in a 375° oven (about 20 minutes).  At this stage, go crack a beer.  And give yourself a high mark for Effort.  You have come far and done well.  You are clearly at the point of no return and the rest, as they say, is a cakewalk.

Okay.  Now, the recipe calls for sauteing more crawfish tails (the recipe calls for a total of four pounds of crawfish tails) with salt, cayenne pepper and paprika.  The recipe suggests 1 tablespoon of cayenne.  That will blow my mouth apart.  We used 1/2 tablespoon this time, and that seems juuust right.  Then you add warm water and roux to the pot.  Well, damn. If I hadn’t read ahead, I’d have been in a pinch because I make roux and don’t buy it.  So before I get going on this step, I make that roux first so that I can add it without having to take my cooking pot off the stove.

Pontchartrain Pete doing the work of the sous chef.

In yet another pot, saute green peppers, onions and celery until they are tender then add them to the main pot along with more water.  Cook vigorously for 2 minutes.  Add more water and cook for 15 minutes at a lower heat.  Then add green onions and parsley and let cook 10 minutes more.  Use this time to also cook a pot of rice.  Your hard work will be rewarded with a lush pot of this:

Everyone you know, and some you don’t, will invite themselves over for dinner.  Seriously.  It IS that good.

And the best thing is that this is one of those dishes that tastes better the next day after the flavors have had time to meld and relax.  So leftovers are as decadent, if not more so, than the first eating.

Bon appetit!

Crawfish boils are a common thing during summers in New Orleans.  I threw my first boil a couple of years ago and was amazed at the amount of work that goes into one.  Here’s a quick to-do list:

1. Order the crawfish in advance.
2. Buy groceries—veggies galore (this year, potatoes, onion, garlic—the typical trio—along with celery, lemons, broccoli, brussel sprouts, corn, artichokes, and mushrooms), sausage to throw in too, along with spices, salt, booze, napkins (and wet wipes), ice (day of), cokes (we in the South, or at least my family, call all sodas “cokes”), water, and garbage bags.
3. Cut the grass.
4. Board the dogs.
5. Sweep the porch.
6. Borrow and set up folding tables and chairs on newly cleaned porch to accommodate 30 people.
7. Put several fans (not less than three) on the porch.
8. Borrow second pot, burner, basket and cover.  Boiling goes quicker if you can do two pots at a time.
9. Fill propane tanks.
10. Be sure you have a tub for the crawfish to soak in pre-boil.
11. Pick up crawfish.
12. Prepare side dishes.
13. Set up pop-up tarp for the men-folk/boilers so they don’t fry in the sun.
14. Clean the house.
15. Bring ice chests down from attic.
16. Get koozies/huggies out of pantry.
17. Cut/prep veggies.
18. Purge the crawfish (sorry, fellas).
19. Boil the crawfish and the veggies.
20. Eat and enjoy!

Yes, they are a lot of work.  Almost as much work as will go into the crawfish bisque we will be making with the leftover crawfish.

Today was such a good day.  My sister and her husband and son arrived early, as did my aunt and uncle, to assist with getting things ready.  The women dressed Sun and prepared side dishes while I drove to the Marigny to get the birthday cake from NOLA Cafe and Bakery.  The men started boiling the seafood so it’d be ready when the guests arrived.

My husband also finally installed a swing on the porch for Sun.  She LOVED her swing.  How much?  She fell asleep in it!  Ok, that may have been because she still had fever and no nap, but it was darn cute.

I could write many other details of the wonderfulness of today—seeing friends and family that I see regularly and some not so often, drinking Pimms Cups, eating watermelon, enjoying my new teak furniture, laughing, relaxing, watching the rain—but what made today special was something less concrete than any one of these things, or even all of them combined.

Recovering from surgery still, I was FORCED to take things slow and not push to the extreme.  It caused me to be even more organized than I usually am for a party.  But as it got nearer and nearer to 1pm and I could see not every detail I wanted attended to was going to get attention, I didn’t resist or balk or scramble.  I just allowed it to be good enough.  I was confident that overall we were ready.

And those things that did not get attention, I promise you, no one noticed.  I was at peace all day.  As Sun ached with fever, we took turns holding her and caressing her and swinging her.  And she’d feel better or not or nap or not or laugh or cry.  But through it all, she was a delight.  My baby is turning into a little girl.  A gentle, wee bit shy, sweet little girl.  And mamma was mighty proud of her today, and mighty proud of her home, herself, her very life.

As I mentioned, returning from Dallas, we spent a night in Natchitoches (pronounced Nack-a-tush not Natch-i-toe-chis).  I was tired, CS was hungry.  I was content to call room service, but there was no restaurant in the hotel.  Instead, the hotel recommended a whopping two restaurants, Ryan’s and Mariner’s.  We don’t like Ryan’s so we headed to Mariner’s.  All I wanted was a cup of soup, so my expectations were pretty low.  I kept thinking it’d be funny if we ate Fried Green Tomatoes recalling that the movie was filmed here.

We drove up to a bucolic scene of the restaurant nestled on Cane River Lake overlooking fishing camps:

We walked in to a room whose wall facing the lake was all windows.  It was dusk.  It was lovely.

The menu gave a brief history of the city, and offered an extensive array of food choices.  I settled on a grilled shrimp salad.  CS was torn between the Stuffed Cajun Catfish (baked fillet with Rosetta’s seafood stuffing) and the Acadian (Tilapia fillet, blackened or baked, smothered with their award-winning crawfish etouffe).  He went with the waitress’s recommendation, the Acadian.

First they brought CS’s soup, lobster and crab bisque.  I love lobster and crab and a good bisque.  I didn’t order this myself, though I wanted soup, because I wasn’t sure it’d be any good and it would be too rich in any event.  It was rich, but was like silk.  The seafood was perfectly cooked and the seasonings were spot on.  It was a very good start.

Then they brought the entrees.  My grilled shrimp salad was your typical greens and dressing.  But those grilled shrimp were some of the best I’ve ever eaten.

Let me back up a minute.  I don’t eat seafood out of New Orleans very often.  It tends to be stereotypical, overpriced and quite disappointing.  Now, getting into Cajun land, Lafayette, Shreveport, Natchitoches, I ease up on my don’t-eat-seafood-out-of-town rule.  But you need to take care that you are in a good place and not been taken.  So, I was a bit cautious about eating at a seafood restaurant, especially leary of bad seafood.

So, these shrimp were grilled to perfection.  Something that is often not done in New Orleans.  These shrimp had grill marks on them!  And they tasted as good as they looked.  They were just the right size, not too small but not so large that they should be butterflied.  As good as they were, I could not finish them nor my salad.  CS would finish my shrimp, which is something he rarely does–finish my food–but these were just that good.

And then there was his Acadian.  This dish, even in my frail condition, was platonic.  No question this was remarkable.  Again, a little background.  I am not a fan of crawfish etouffe.  It tends to be a bit gritty to me and just something I don’t prefer.  As a matter of fact, when it comes to crawfish I like them boiled (well) the best.  I don’t like them cooked otherwise; I don’t like crawfish bread or crawfish Monica; I don’t like crawfish sausage or crawfish pasta.  These dishes just don’t do it for me.  So, I would have passed on a fish dish with crawfish etouffe covering it.  I’d have been missing out.

Mariner’s offered the best crawfish etouffe I have ever eaten.  In my life.  In my entire southern-Louisiana, 38 year long, life.  And CS agreed.  It was what etouffe is meant to be: spicy and hearty but not heavy and overly rich.

My skin absorbed the quiet and solitude this restaurant, this oasis, offered to me as I was convalescing.  I half wished to stay at this very spot for a week and enjoy the cool breeze that blew on the dock that we stood at after we ate.  It was so relaxing and picturesque.  On the dock, a father was standing with his two children and they were feeding catfish and turtles fish food.  I was informed that if you feed a catfish at the same time every day, you can train him; he’ll return day after day at the same time.

I have this dream of one day owning a fishing camp of my own.  I don’t think I want the dream to come true because then taxes would have to be paid, grass cut, floors cleaned, windows to board in hurricane season, etc.  But I have this vision in my head of owing a little place like the one just across the lake from Mariner’s (in the picture above).  And now I know where I’d like my imaginary camp to go, too.

The thing about doing cool stuff with other bloggers is, well, they BLOG about it before you get the chance.  Yesterday’s food orgy is captured by Pontchartrain Pete better than I could have captured it.  So click here to read about the best oyster po boy I’ve ever eaten followed up by the best sno-ball I’ve ever had (and that is saying a mouthful!).  Truly a grand eats day!

And then for breakfast, I had one of Katie’s Caramel Oat Chocolate Bars.  She gives away her secret recipe.  Go get it.  Now.  I’ll wait. . . . Back?  These bars are the perfect blend of sweet and salty and chewy and crunchy.  They feel homemade yet are rich and decadent.

So, as long as my friends keep posting great posts, I am left with nothing to do but give out the linky love.

So what have I been up to? I’ve been busy with a teething Sun (three teeth in one day!), buying patio furniture I just love (peanut shaped teak bench, coffee table and two chairs), making plans to visit with Katie and Pete at Parasol’s this afternoon (after attending SoMo‘s daughter’s birthday party).  Oh, and hunting streetcar art; click here to check out the awesome pieces I’ve been seeing pop up around town for YLC’s Streetcar Named Inspire project.

Tis the season.  Crawfish season, that is.  And shrimp.  And really, it’s always crab season here in Louisiana.  Growing up in New Orleans, there are many things I took for granted and many things it seems my family actively sought to avoid.  But one Louisiana thing my family has always embraced is its seafood.

All of my childhood summers were peppered with crab boils, crawfish boils, shrimp boils. There is something that draws me to the formality involved in a boil, the ritualistic element: there’s the special large pot and burner, the paddle, the strainer basket, the spices, the vegetables, and, of course, the seafood.  Oh, and the large-handled spoon.  The spoon!  The spoon that is used to dip into the searing hot liquid to taste for spiciness while the seafood is boiling.

What I have tasted from the hand of my grandfather, father, uncles and brothers from that spoon–truly boiling, smoking hot spiced juices.  This is HEAVEN to me.  I once drank cups of this at a time (back when I didn’t know what sodium was).  Oh, me.

YatPundit changed his avatar on Twitter to a long metal spatula holding a crawfish over a boiling pot.  That image is so iconic in New Orleans.  How iconic?  Well, it reminded me of a puzzle I had growing up, a puzzle I still own and still build from time to time.  A puzzle purchased by my mother from D.H. Holmes Department Store.  I give you, “Bayou Banquet”:

I LOVE this picture!  It is so representative of Louisiana food and particularly a seafood boil: boiled crabs, shrimp, crawfish; lemons and vegetables to add to a good boil; oysters on the half-shell and stuffed peppers; cocktail sauce and Dixie beer; the Times-Picayune newspaper to cover the table; the notable Louisiana spices; the seafood basket and net; and French bread and gumbo.  How can you not want to live in a place where this is standard fare on a warm summer night?

For those of you here in NOLA that still call Dillards Holmeses out of habit, I leave for you this picture of the side of the puzzle box: