Breakfast At N'Tini's. One Hour. Crabmeat Is Perfect.

[title type="h6"]Saturday, September 7, 2013.[/title] Mary Ann offered herself up as a breakfast companion, as long as the venue was N'Tini's. Is it the all-meat omelette she likes, or something else? [caption id="attachment_39615" align="alignnone" width="480"] Lost bread at N'Tini's breakfast.[/caption] I have come to love the lost bread at N'Tini's. They make it with slices of Texas toast--wider and thicker than regular sliced bread, and in this case made with whole-wheat flour. They give you three slices of the resulting custard-saturated pain perdu. One slice would almost be too much. I think we can chalk this up to the Chalmette influence. (Owner Mark Benfatti, and a large percentage of his customers, were shooed to the North Shore by Katrina, and are happy together with their culinary mores.) The radio show was cut back to a mere hour this noon. Next week, too. Football is back (get it? back?), and I will have to get used to the truncated programs. We are in possession of a pound of jumbo lump crabmeat--from Mr. Higgins in Lafitte, no less--and a pound of crab claws. We called our friends the Fowlers to join us for dinner. Even though they haven't completed their move from Pennsylvania yet, and so have very little furniture in their fine-looking house here, it's still better than the wreck of a place that is the Cool Water Ranch Main House. Mary Ann allows only relatives to come here, and not all of them. Dinner was simple. Veronica Fowler made a pretty salad with a zing in the dressing. I sauteed the crab claws in garlic and butter, then made a sauce by adding white wine, lemon juice, and a dash of Tabasco to the pan. The jumbo lump went into the making of crabmeat Remick, one of my favorite appetizers. Mary Ann, unfortunately, said she didn't like it. I understand why. I'd forgotten a couple of key ingredients. It wasn't terrible--hard to do that with fresh, unpasteurized jumbo lump crabmeat. But I can do better. We drank a bottle and a half of wine (with no help from MA, who is very close to being a teetotaler these days). We alternated laughter with serious musings about our children. They're all in their early twenties. As if there's anything we can do to pull them closer in to the main orbit again.