Monday, January 22, 2018. I wish I had all the time (in both micro and macro terms) that I'd need to write all of the ideas that fill my mind. One of these lately is a flow a long parade of thoughts and memories left over from fifteen years I spent working in a local convenience store.
Both I and the store were in their golden eras--the 1960s. I still have faint connections with the stores, which despite their simplicity and the long time since then, is never far from my thoughts. I recall:
1. Getting fired
2. Being wooed unsuccessfully by several of my co-workers, both male and female
3. Watching an armed robber beat up my co-worker, from which he never recovered
4. Learning how to fry chicken, but only after brining it
5. Having as a fellow employee a high-school English teacher of mine. He was working on the side at the store because he needed the money to pay rent
6. Presiding over the advent of a new kind of frozen drink that became a major phenomenon, and knowing I was the first person in New Orleans who served one of them
Those are off the top of my head. The list is too heavy on the unfortunate side. A good deal of fun transpired too. I really think I could get an interesting book out of this. Everybody's familiar with the convenience store, but few know that there is a unique culture behind it all. I doubt there are many other people who worked in these stores for as long as I did who cared about remembering it all. Especially giving the ordinariness of it all.
But that project will have to wait. Probably a long time. Because my readers are insatiably interested in my number-one concern. And I thank them, as the New Orleans Menu moves into Year #44.
Red Beans With Pecan-Crusted Catfish Meuniere. Mary Ann and I return for the first time in a month to New Orleans Food and Spirits. Just half a day after the grilled oysters at the Acme, she and I are assaying another pile of them shot at that hard-to-resist appetizer. The oysters are running big and tasty, although a few small ones work their way into the stack of bivalves.
The pecan-meuniere catfish is one of the two or three best dishes at NOF&S. It is one of the more convincing proofs of a theory of mine. It notes the perfect flavor match between almost all seafoods and all beans. Really. Pick any fish or shellfish, assemble it with any kind of bean, prepare it in any way that makes sense, and it will be better than a dish that contains no fish or beans.
On this day the chef--who knows from my telling him that I love his red beans--sends the beans as a side to the catfish. And it all harmonizes.
I don't think I've told you about another unexpected finding. The outlet that powers my microwave oven has not worked since the big job of rewiring much of the Cool Water Ranch's house. That causes a problem for my coffee routine, which is to make a classic café au lait in the style of the French Market. I microwaved the milk in the microwave. So what do I do now? Mary Ann, who says that she never uses the microwave for anything, told me that all I needed to do was to warm the milk in a pan on top of the stove, then mix it with the brewed coffee and chicory. That struck me as clumsy and time consuming. But as long as she's standing there, it behooves me to let her tell me what to do.
At first I thought the results were a fluke. But after a few times, not only had this technique worked perfectly in getting the milk hot, it added a flavor I don't recall detecting before. I have decided that this is the milk's sugars in action, creating a mellow flavor that's even more agreeable that the hot milk in café au lait. I like the new flavor so much that I get right into my second cup as soon as the first is gone.
It's rehearsal night at NPAS, and something unexpected transpired. Our conductor Alissa Rowe asked if anyone in the choir room was interested in auditioning for a pair of short solos for at our next event. All interested singers had already tried out. "Is that it? Alissa said. And somebody said, "Tom is sitting in the hallway." Now I am singing "When I Fall In Love" and "The Way You Look Tonight." I know both songs very well. I got both parts. This was clearly my lucky night, given the number of other excellent singers in the group, most of whom have much better sight-reading abilities than I do.
And so my career in singing increased fivefold for the next two weeks. If I dare call it a career. I must say I enjoy just thinking about it.
