[title type="h5"]Wednesday, December 31, 2014.
The Fence Is Finished. Barcadia.[/title]
Mary Ann made a deal with The Boy that if he came back to the Cool Water Ranch after Christmas and finished the few remaining undone sections of the dog fence, she would buy his airfare and the two young romantics would be reunited. It sounds like a rotten deal to me, because there's a lot to be done, and it's going to be cold and rainy. But the power of love is strong, and there the two of them were this morning, running the fencing through a wooded patch to make it less obvious. And building a few gates to allow free passage for the humans living here. So the dogs now have three acres to run about freely. But are they getting enough cheese?
I have more work on deadline at the radio station, so I must go in. Hardly anyone is still working when my show ends at three. I briefly have the feeling that it's Christmas Eve, and that if I don't get something to eat immediately, I will not find any restaurant open. I recall Christmas Eve 1975, during my New Orleans Magazine days. To stave off hunger, I went to the restaurant where Horinoya is now, on Poydras Street. It was a bar with thick hamburgers as a specialty, and I ate one. I was greeted by Jeff Hug, half of the famous Nut & Jeff show that ruled the airwaves on WSMB in those days. I bought him a drink. I think the restaurant's owner had bought his first round. Jeff told me that my fledgling radio show on WGSO 1280 could be a huge success, and that if we got together he would tell me what I needed to do. He offered a free piece of advice then and there: "You don't say your name often enough." I thought about telling him that Arthur Godfrey never said his name at all, but it was Christmas Eve.
Back in 2014 (however barely), I go downstairs from my current radio station and have a hamburger at Barcadia. The place was modestly busy, despite a sign that invited passers-by to come in and get New Year's Eve started early. Instead of the hamburger--a specialty of Barcadia, but I'd had it before), I order the Manager's Special. It sounds like a variation on a Reuben sandwich. The server takes the order, but when she returns with the tomato soup, she tells me that the Manager's Special is out. This is the fourth or fifth or sixth time I try to get that sandwich, always to be told (but not right away) that it is 86. "Do you actually serve that sandwich, or is it just an inside joke?" I ask. She swears that it does indeed exist. But I don't believe it.
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Barcadia.[/caption]
The burger-- whoops! Right then it occurs to me that I am now over my burger limit for the month of December. But it is New Year's Eve, and I only eat half of it.) The burger is pretty good. The fries are even better--fresh cut, dusted with parmesan cheese and truffle oil.
I return to the radio studio, dispatch the small amount of writing and recording on deadline, and note that the place is really and truly deserted. Not one single live show emanates from our six stations. It is that way across America. How far the business has come. When I started, all stations had live announcers all the time. Now it's only me, the omnipresent football games, and Silent Mike in the facility.
Things are no more exciting at home. No enhancement of our plan to do nothing emerges. A few restaurants would gladly take us in if we asked, but I don't like doing that. And besides, I think Dean Martin had it right when he said that he never went out on New Year's Eve, because all the bars were full of amateurs. I am convinced that this is true.
The high point of our evening as we watch 2015 approach on television is a bottle of LaMarca Prosecco that someone gave us. It is just delicious, with a creamy quality but no real sweetness to become icky. I drink two glasses and Mary Ann has four. These are all Champagne flutes, so that's the equivalent of two normal glasses. But still!
Meanwhile, our millennial nieces and nephews from up the road call to say that they have a big bag of fireworks, and that they'd like to come over to the Cool Water Ranch, help Mary Leigh and The Boy build a bonfire, and shoot everything off. They are still firing the artillery when, with the dog Susie lying at the foot of our bed and trembling from all the noise, we retire for the night.
Happy New Year![divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]Thursday, January 1, 2015.
Black-Eye Pea Hummus. Cole Slaw. [/title]
We have even fewer plans for New Year's Day than we had for the night before. Mary Ann is determined to make black-eye peas and cabbage, in accordance with the tradition of eating those two homely items and thereby getting good luck and money.
But she doesn't really like black-eye peas, particularly when cooked the same way we do red beans. She comes home with a plastic container of what look like fresh beans, and the same idea I was considering: turning the beans into hummus.
[caption id="attachment_46141" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Blackeye-pea hummus.[/caption]
In pulling the ingredients together for that project, I discover that the beans MA found were not fresh, but "pre-soaked." So they were soft, but not cooked. So I cook them, then load them into the only piece of kitchenware that Mary Ann brought into our marriage when we were wed twenty-six years ago. It's a French food mill, made mostly of plastic, with a hand crank on one side and two chutes on the other. Run anything soft through this, and it pulls out all the hard or skin-like bits (which emerge from one chute) and turns the prime part of the food into a smooth puree (other chute).
I ran the beans through about eight times, adding the tahini, lemon juice, garlic, hot sauce and walnut oil. (Olive oil would be the standard ingredient, but I saw this on the shelf and tried it, to good effect.) I thought the final product was terrific. Mary Ann thought less of it until she had eaten a good bit. Mary Leigh, who I don't remember even liked hummus, found it superb.
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Cole slaw.[/caption]
The cabbage part of the meal is standard for us on this day: cole slaw, made with what I not-so-humbly deem as the best cole slaw dressing (it's here) I ever tasted. (Of course, I get to make it exactly the way I like it, so your mileage may vary.)
Mary Ann burns two sets of toast black in trying to make ham and cheese sandwiches to fill out this simple menu. If I ever persuade her that cooking everything on high with maximum time is a recipe for disaster, my life will not be in vain.
I am very happy to see that, when I take my walk, I can move into and out of the fenced dog acres with only minimal interference. And now we can open the door and let the dogs out without worrying which neighbor's path they may cross.
That is an auspicious beginning for the new year.
