Diary 10|01|2017: Half-Doughnuts. Breakfast And Brunch Simultaneously.

Sunday, October 1, 2017. Why Did I Eat That Doughnut? I ate it because half of it was there, in the St. Jane de Chantal parish center. I'm glad they cut them into two to ruses. It doesn't help that these are rather large, heavy doughnuts. But that church-doughnut connection has always been difficult for me to ignore. Mary Ann is running around on errand, after first saying that she would be up for brunch somewhere. Improbably enough, we land on Andrea's. MA thinks I should go to the Metairie Italian restaurant if only because I haven't had the chef's brunch in years. (Come to think of it, I rarely show up at any brunch.) He also has a new breakfast menu that has escaped my notice. We begin with prosciutto and melon--a classic Italian appetizer, especially in the northern part of the boot. The prosciutto is good enough, but the cantaloupes needed much more ripeness. MA doesn't like such things, so instead she has a salad with big, nice shrimp. I eat an Italian breakfast classic: a frittata. That's a simple concept--an omelette that's neither flipped, folded , or rolled. All the ingredients are scattered around on the eggs as they sit there in the skillet. It comes out looking like a small pizza, but there's no crust, just eggs. I rather like my eggs that way. We get two bread baskets. One of them is filled with soft muffins filled with blueberries and apple. We both found this excellent. The other basket contained house-made biscuits that I thought a bit heavy. I ate one anyway. Chef Andrea was not there while we were, but that was in accordance with the rule that says that the A-List cooks, waiters, and customers don't always show up on Sundays. When we get home, the weather is incredibly hot. It has been this way, with very dry conditions, for weeks. It occurs today that this is the perfect day to cut grass, because tomorrow it will rain buckets. (In fact, there would be floods here and there.) I fire up the tractor and point it in the direction of Huckleberry Meadow, which actually does have a bush full of the berries--until the birds eat all of them. It will be the first time the meadow has been trimmed in over a year. That's how much rain there has been, and hasn't been. The old tractor does its job. I hope I can cut the front acre of the Cool Water Ranch sometime soon, but tomorrow's rain won't help. Andrea's. Metairie: 3100 19th St. 504-834-8583.