Thursday, February 11, 2016.
Twenty-Seven Years. Two Meats-And-Threes.
It's the anniversary for Mary Ann and me. Six months after she hired me for the gig I still have on WSMB Radio, she and I tied the knot, beginning a year of tremendous changes for both of us. By the time we celebrated our first anniversary in 1989, we had traveled to Europe, gave birth to son Jude, and I became manager of the radio station. Two anniversaries later, we had moved to Abita Springs, WWL bought WSMB but let me continue the Food Show, Mary Leigh was on her way to being born, and our lives settled more or less into the routine it kept until recently, when suddenly we find each other with grown-up, departed kids, and we are grandparents.
And the radio show is still on the air. Only slightly less resistant to change is a ritual we practice almost every A-Day. We return on this day to the Windsor Court Hotel, where we spent the first two nights of our marriage. Some years we come again for dinner. On the big anniversaries, we check in for the night. This year, we have lunch in the Grill Room, where Mary Ann has found a menu that suits her tastes perfectly: a meat-and-three collection of home-style dishes prepared with fine ingredients and great care, served in a beautiful setting with detailed service.
[caption id="attachment_50621" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Seafood gumbo on the meat-and-three at the Windsor Court. [/caption]
Her order brings to the table a cup of seafood gumbo, grilled Brussels sprouts, and generously crabby crab cakes. The most intriguing of her three sides is a thin sheet of Manchego cheese melted across a wide plate with a central depression where various vegetables collect.
[caption id="attachment_50620" align="alignnone" width="480"]
A sort of inside-out raviolo.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_50619" align="alignnone" width="480"]
My meat-and-three. Clockwise from the little Tabasco bottle: confit of duck leg, Hopping John, WIndsor Court Salad. [/caption]
My lunch main is a confit of duck leg, just crisp enough at the skin and falling apart at the bone. The threes are Hopping John (black-eye peas with savory vegetables stirred in among the beans), a miniature Windsor Court salad (the very thing we dined upon when we checked into the hotel on our wedding night) and truffled macaroni and cheese. Everything on both sides is terrific. Pretty good lunch for $19.84 a copy.
The pastry shop sends us a miniature wedding cake bearing the message of the day. We are mellow.
[caption id="attachment_50618" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Anniversary cake.[/caption]
When we can't linger another minute, I walk the three blocks to the radio station to commence the good old Food Show at three. As for Mary Ann, she goes home to pick up one of our neighbors, and the two of them drive to Baton Rouge to take part in the big Donald Trump rally. In no other way is Mary Ann predictable, but her politics are. I push away any thoughts I might have had about sharing our anniversary with The Donald.
I am much too full from lunch to even consider dinner. Unless I count a graham-cracker-flavored frozen yogurt at the gas station en route home. I note with pleasure that my new Beetle gives a third again as many miles for the same-size tank of gas in my late, lamented PT Cruiser.
Windsor Court Grill Room. CBD: 300 Gravier. 504-522-1994. The meat-and-three $19.84 lunch is available every day except Sunday.
Seafood gumbo on the meat-and-three at the Windsor Court. [/caption]
Her order brings to the table a cup of seafood gumbo, grilled Brussels sprouts, and generously crabby crab cakes. The most intriguing of her three sides is a thin sheet of Manchego cheese melted across a wide plate with a central depression where various vegetables collect.
[caption id="attachment_50620" align="alignnone" width="480"]
A sort of inside-out raviolo.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_50619" align="alignnone" width="480"]
My meat-and-three. Clockwise from the little Tabasco bottle: confit of duck leg, Hopping John, WIndsor Court Salad. [/caption]
My lunch main is a confit of duck leg, just crisp enough at the skin and falling apart at the bone. The threes are Hopping John (black-eye peas with savory vegetables stirred in among the beans), a miniature Windsor Court salad (the very thing we dined upon when we checked into the hotel on our wedding night) and truffled macaroni and cheese. Everything on both sides is terrific. Pretty good lunch for $19.84 a copy.
The pastry shop sends us a miniature wedding cake bearing the message of the day. We are mellow.
[caption id="attachment_50618" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Anniversary cake.[/caption]
When we can't linger another minute, I walk the three blocks to the radio station to commence the good old Food Show at three. As for Mary Ann, she goes home to pick up one of our neighbors, and the two of them drive to Baton Rouge to take part in the big Donald Trump rally. In no other way is Mary Ann predictable, but her politics are. I push away any thoughts I might have had about sharing our anniversary with The Donald.
I am much too full from lunch to even consider dinner. Unless I count a graham-cracker-flavored frozen yogurt at the gas station en route home. I note with pleasure that my new Beetle gives a third again as many miles for the same-size tank of gas in my late, lamented PT Cruiser.
