CS had today off. Oh, what to do? How not to waste the day? I read the newspaper and scanned what events were going on today.  There was a book sale at one of the libraries.  That’s always a good thing to me.  Then there was a party for the streetcar beginning the route from Carrollton to St. Charles Avenue again post-Katrina.  Well, I am all about streetcars these days.

But then my eye settled on a third event.  A book reading at New Orleans Main Library.  The book was “Cooling the South: The Block Ice Era, 1875-1975,” by Elli Morris.  See, my family, way back when, was a very major player in the New Orleans block ice business.  A great-great-great uncle made a fortune in the business and sold it just before the Stock Market Crash of 1929.  And his line of the family sailed through the Great Depression flush with cash.  My great-great-grandfather had a small piece of this family business and my great-grandfather worked in the business, too, until it was sold.

So, with my curiosity piqued, we were off.  Getting off the elevator on the Main Library’s third floor brought me back in time to the countless hours I spent there researching my family.  How coincidental that that research had brought me back where I started for a book reading.

Inside the auditorium, there were few people.  Elli Morris talked for about 45 minutes.  Her family owned the Morris Ice Company in Jackson, Mississippi.  She grew up around all the machinery.  Her photographer’s eye drew her to the icehouse over and over.  Their icehouse is no longer working (like so many other block ice plants) but it is still every bit in tact.  She lived there for a year in 2001.  And explored and photographed.

Then she researched and learned that her family played a role in a much bigger piece of southern, even American, history.  And so her little story about her family’s business mushroomed into a much bigger project.  Her book is the result of her hard work.

She talked about the inventor of the first ice machine and ice deliverymen, and the ice trucks that were pulled by mules.  She explained that some trucks did not have a spot in the front for a driver; that the mule knew the route and didn’t need to be steered.  And she talked about the switch to refrigerators and the customers who returned their refrigerators because they were too noisy!

She intimated to the decline of the block ice industry, but “didn’t want to give away” the end of her tale.

Morris then opened the room for Q&A and then signed and sold her books and blank cards of her beautiful photographs.  Her book is wonderful–it is hardcover and filled with lovely photographs along with her thoroughly researched story.  The cover of her book shows a block of ice “feathering” as it freezes from the outside in.

Elli Morris will be in the New Orleans area for about a week and then she is moving on to other parts of the country with her book tour.  This is something that is truly fascinating, and hearing her tell of her story and read from it was just a delight.  Click on her site here and check out her schedule.  You won’t be disappointed.

I went on a field trip yesterday, really a wild goose chase that bore no fruit.  It led me to the neighborhood I grew up in.  The area was very badly damaged by Katrina.  As I drove toward my old address, I passed the hospital I was born in, the library I used to spend hours in, street names that immediately reminded me of my childhood.  Simultaneously, everything, all I remember, was different.  But the same.  The buildings are, for the most part, still there.  But most are no longer what they were when I moved away over 15 years ago.

So as I was driving not recognizing a thing, I was turning on the streets without having to look at signs.  I know that area like the back of my hand.  I always will.  And it was the oddest emotional mixture being reminded of dance lessons and summer school and swim lessons and the house that kept their glass Christmas tree in their front show window all year ’round while at the same time seeing just the skeleton of those memories.  The neighborhood is still raw, exposed, vulnerable.  It’s like someone took a huge swath of duct tape and stuck it on all the surfaces and then YANKED.  Underneath it all, it is what I remember, the past.  But on the surface, what is the current, real situation is destruction and slowness of recovery.

The Catholic Church that was right down my street, that housed my Catholic grammar school, is in good shape.  They obviously worked to get it re-opened.  It looks different.  Again, the buildings are the same, but there was a new street and new paint that changed the appearance.  It no longer felt like “my” school.

Then I turned on my old street.  And I got butterflies in my stomach.  I remembered so much!  Our friends’ homes; the house of the cranky old man who had a hook instead of a hand (he was a fireman and lost it in a fire and was very bitter about it); the big house with the fountain in the center that we’d go through as it was being built; the house of the architect and his family–he built it off his own design ala Mike Brady; the houses surrounding my old house that house more memories than I could maintain in the moment.

And for each house that had been worked on and had a car in front, four houses were still empty with the tell-tale watermark and spray-painted “X” on the wall.  Some had painted over the “X” but when your house is brick, paint is hard to cover.  The one bright spot was that there was a car in the driveway of my old house.  It wasn’t a vacant, forgotten house.  It had no watermark.  It looked surprisingly like we left it, even down to a sticker we left on a small window in the front.  That sticker!  I have a shrinky-dink of that sticker in some box somewhere.

I do not think a single neighbor from 15 years ago still lives there.  The empty lot across the street had a “new” house on it.  It was vacant all those years we lived there.  It had been flooded, and the For Sale sign had a Mississippi phone number.  Another NOLA ex pat.

I pulled away and drove the block and a half to the location of my first job–a hardware store.  It is still open.  Just after Katrina, when we were still rather numb but functioning, I recall being at the corner of my street heading to drive to Baton Rouge (an hour away) to go to the temporary office my firm had set up.  On the local talk radio was a familiar voice.  My first boss.  He was pleading for help in getting electricity back on at the shop so he could sell, you know, HARDWARE to folks that needed it desperately. I almost cried when I heard his voice.  I had been thinking about him, the store, the old neighborhood, knowing it had been hit hard.  But he is tough and survived and was fighting to get back on line.  It was the first real sign to me that the city WOULD recover.  Because of the business owners like him that just wouldn’t walk away and would make it go even with no help from our government (fed, state or local).

I walked into the store yesterday.  He’d expanded the ol’ place.  One of the doors was boarded.  The front desk has a watermark a foot high.  I sneaked to the back and saw him doing something so typical–bending over a lawnmower with a wrench.  He sharpens chainsaw, lawnmower, and edger blades and fixes their motors, too.  He looked up and said, “Can I hep ya… [then he recognized me] … Girl, get over here and give me a hug!” And we embraced. And caught up on the last five years, focusing mainly on his recent heart surgery and his troubles post-Katrina.

He was like a second father to me back when I worked for him.  Two of my brothers worked for him before me.  And his key employee is the same as it was 15 years ago.  And many of her siblings worked there over the years too.  It is a quintessential family joint.

Damn. Writing this is getting to me.  I titled this post before I started writing it.  And I realize I am wrong.  My home wasn’t that house.  It was the people that housed my life back then.  And many are relocated but still around.  And seeing my old boss, my dear friend, WAS going home, at least a little bit.

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!

Drinking in New Orleans.  I could say no more and just post pictures.  But who are we kidding?

Friday, a small group from the Twitterverse met up for lunch at Galatoire’s.  I adore Galatoire’s, and have said so time and again.  For a succulent read of Friday’s foray, read Pete’s post.  It was a glorious time.  After we finished dining, we were not done imbibing.  So after having two Sazeracs at Galatoire’s, we headed off into the French Quarter for more.

Galatoire’s Sazerac

Being already on Bourbon Street, we did not have to stumble walk far to end up here, the quintessential place to continue the consumption of Absinthe:

Since absinthe is again legal in the U.S., there is a new fascination with the green-glowing liquid.  The first brand we tried was Le Tourment Vert from France.  The Old Absinthe House burns the sugar cube and then pours water over the cube to melt it.  There is debate whether to burn the sugar cube or not; historically the cube was not burned.  But, damn, it is pretty:

We then tried Lucid (also from France):

Then we did Kubler, made in Switzerland.  My preferance? Tournment, Kubler then Lucid.  But they were all smooth and tasty.  Absinthe is anise-flavored.  Licorice.  But with the sugar and water that is added, it isn’t overly bitter.  In fact, as for drinking, it is refreshing, and kind of like a breath mint.

Absinthe posters at The Old Absinthe House

Now, aside from the booze, there is really an allure for me to be in a bar in the middle of the day.  It scares me sometimes how much I like it because left to my own devices, well, let’s not think about where I’d be on a given Wednesday at 2:30 in the afternoon if left to my own devices.

My ancestors on my father’s side of the family came to New Orleans over 100 years ago.  We stepped of the boat and started tending bar in the Central Business District and the French Quarter.  And we did this for decades.  It hasn’t worn of yet, that desire to be in a bar during the day.

And most appealing to me is an old bar, one that may have seen my ancestors.  Like the Old Absinthe House.

All the wood and brass.  The patina of years of traffic.  The legends and myths of meetings of pirates.  Ah, to go back in time in the very seat you are sitting on!  As the time passed, the bar went from mostly empty to quite busy.  Much of the crowd, like us, meandered from Galatoire’s.  Mid-afternoon, the skies growled then opened.  And it rained.  A lot.

And if there is one thing I like more than being in a bar in the French Quarter in the middle of the day, it is being in that bar with its doors thrown open when a good, hard rain comes through.  It quiets all of the outside noises down; no sounds of traffic or Lucky Dog vendors or folks walking down the street.  The entire universe, all, is what is inside that bar with you.  It is a lovely way to span time.

After more absinthes than I care to recount (ok, four), we left the French Quarter and made a stop at the Swizzle Stick Bar for my other recent luxury, the Adelaide Swizzle.  It was now 6:30pm.  I was exhausted.  We parted ways and ended a perfectly wonderful day of imbibing in the Quarter.

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.

On last travel post relating to our recent trip to Dallas.  Heading out, we stopped at the outskirts of Lafayette, LA to get gas.  We pulled up to this quaint looking place, The Boudin Shop and Country Store:

After filling the tank, CS went inside for snacks.  He returns to the car and tells me that the proprietor told him that George Rodrigue, as in the famous blue dog artist Rodrigue, painted the chicken on their roof way back before he made a name for himself:

I don’t know if this rumor is true, but the chicken DOES bear a resemblance to the pieces Rodrigue did for the Lafayette Junior League’s Talk About Good II Cookbook.  Certainly beats the advertisements for the high cost of gas shown at the other convenience stores!

We drove from Natchitoches to New Orleans today.  I slept much of the way.  Well, rested, I should say.  I didn’t sleep all that much.  I lay in the back seat next to Sun in her carrier while CS drove.  I had my eyes closed and made every attempt to sleep, and I am sure I dosed here and there.  But most of the time was spent thinking about (and occasionally gazing with my glasses off at) the microcosm that is my life: my husband and child.  All that matters to me in the world fits snugly in my car.  With room to spare.  God or Fortuna or The Fates have been good to me giving me such a caring husband and an easily-tempered baby.

I write wills and trusts and living wills for folks all the time.  I also handle estates of clients when they die.  Which they do, we all do.  And although my chance of dying this past Monday was slim(ish), it existed.  It always exists when surgery is performed.  And laying on the gurney moments from being taken off for surgery, I had the talk with CS about my living will and what my wishes were should something go wrong.  How do you NOT think about such a thing when you are about to be put under and cut?

He didn’t try to stop me or think I was being macabre.  I had little to say on the topic, and he already knows my wishes but I needed to know he’d be doing what I wanted done because of quality of life issues not matters of money or guilt.  Then I had a split second thought about Sun growing up without me.  I wouldn’t let myself think about that.  I simply told my husband to call on our friends and family if that were to happen–to LET them help.  He agreed.  Then I was rolled off and fell asleep and woke up hours later with things having gone very well.

Today I am elated.  I am filled with joy.  And gratitude.  And love.  And sadness too.  I am sad that I had to think about my mortality; that my body is aging and showing chinks in the armor; that I am tattered and bruised and have racked up scars like crazy for the past five years; that one day Sun will live without her mother as will I; I thought a lot about my grandmother and the time we all spent visiting her in the hospital during her last days.  Hospitals are depressing places.  Even sick, I am usually the healthiest person there.  Unless you are on the maternity floor where life is celebrated, you are moving among folks that are sick or on the mend, but not always healing.

I feel weird that I don’t have a piece of my body, an organ, with me anymore.  My gall bladder is in Texas.  Being biopsied.  Then they’ll toss it, I guess.  I don’t care what they do with it.  I feel different without it, though.  Ironic that the removal of the organ that stored bile in my body seems to have removed a lot of negative energy with it as well.  I am a better person having released my gall bladder, having observed the unyielding support of my husband and family (more than one member volunteered to drive 8+ hours each way to come get me and allow CS to leave to get back to work), and the complete support from my friends too.

So as we left the hills and curves and smooth highways of Texas and came to the straight, flat lands of Louisiana, passing towns with funny names, bayous and cypress trees with their knees jutting out of the water, signs for Boudin and andouille and swamp tours, and Spanish moss hanging in the trees waving in the traffic’s breeze, I never felt more welcomed, more at home, than I did today.  I know where I belong in the world and I know how I fit into this life I have confected.  And I couldn’t feel better about it or be more grateful.

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.

The loss and devastation currently playing out in Myanmar cannot but remind us here in New Orleans of Hurricane Katrina.  I’ve previously mentioned the loss of my grandparent’s fishing camp in Katrina.  This was a colossal building — two stories, over 3,000 square feet, exterior walls all cinder blocks.  But not all was lost.  In the rubble was this:

This elephant lamp was on the second floor.  How it survived in one piece, I can only imagine.  The only thing more remarkable than its survival was that an identical black elephant lamp in another second-story bedroom of the camp also survived in one piece.

We recovered both lamps.  My grandfather took them home and cleaned and rewired them.  The black one went to my aunt, and the green one came to live with me:

If you shake him, you will hear one large, very solid clump of mud rattling inside.  My grandfather, try as he might, could not break down and remove that last clump of evidence of Katrina from the elephant.  I am kinda glad he couldn’t.