Saturday, March 19, 2016.
Dinner With Friends.
I have little on my schedule today. Even the radio show, originally scheduled to run at its usual time of two till four, is pre-empted by a baseball game rained out yesterday.
Yet, tremendous amounts of work and pleasure pass through my hands as the day goes on. I finally dispatch a few piles of office work given me to do by Mary Ann, who is now gone to Los Angeles for two weeks.
And I jack up the lawn tractor to remove one of the rear wheels. It lost its ability to hold air late in the fall season. I still haven't figured out how to actually pull the wheel off. What looks like a small plastic hubcap prevents me from loosening whatever is holding it in place. This project is beginning to be urgent. The spring weeds are unambiguously bursting out all over.
Speaking of getting ready for the warm half of the year. . . I had to run the central air conditioner yesterday, so warm and humid it was been. Two years ago, the A/C guy said I would need a new unit, and that it would be a good idea to wait until early spring to get it done, because he's not so busy them. But after all this time, the bad system is somehow still cooling the downstairs, as long as I monitor it for freeze-ups, to which it is prone. I don't want to keep pumping coolant into the thing and widening the hole in the antarctic ozone layer.
To brunch at the Abita Roasting Company. This is a coffee operation with a serious café added to its year-old Covington location. (It has a smaller shop in Madisonville.) It serves breakfast and lunch every day, and is evidence of a trend on the North Shore toward excellent new breakfast specialists. This one competes with Mattina Bella for the Best Breakfast In St. Tammany Parish. It's a nice-looking place with sharp service and polished food. Last time I was here I had a variation on eggs Benedict with hot sausage instead of the standard ham.
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The Abita Sunriser breakfast. You attempt to eat all of this.[/caption]
Today, I ask for the ten-dollar combo breakfast they call "The Sunriser." If I had known how formidable a plate this is, I would have called a friend or two to help me. Here goes: soft-scrambled eggs with two cheeses, grits
and hash brown potatoes, a hot sausage pattie, and a full-size pancake. Before I saw the reality of this overfeed, I added a side dish of hollandaise. I was stuffed even after leaving about a third unfinished. And it was all delicious and beautifull served, to boot.
Without its making her come home any sooner, Mary Ann is feeling sorry for me, all alone here at the Cool Water Ranch. She has been feeding me suggestions as to people I should call for dinner, and she has set up such an evening for me tonight. It's with our friends the Fowlers, whose network crosses our own in ways too numerous to mention (and in some instances amazing).
The Fowlers have a beautiful house, and they prefer to stay in it and cook dinner than to go out to a restaurant. Which is fine by me. My program of cooking at home every Sunday night has been wrecked by MA's lengthy departures.
Veronica Fowler's superb kitchen is fun to cook in. It's her turn tonight. She puts together that classic salad of baby greens and spinach with strawberries and candied pecans. Then grills some crab cakes rendered crusty and tasty with brown butter. The entree is filets wrapped (but not for long) in bacon and seared on the stove top.
The side dish was good enough for me to take notes. She boils small brown potatoes, then cuts them into quarters, sprinkles them with shredded cheese and sour cream. She tosses all these things together, with the heat of the potatoes creating a sauce out of cheese and sour cream. It was so simple that its goodness was surprising.
We have a pleasant evening after dinner, as we lingered over a bottle of Man Family Cabernet Sauvignon from South Africa. Big wine, this. After we polished it off, we put a dent into another Cabernet from the Fowlers' collection. The conversation moved to the ever-fertile matter of our children, who are now grown up and near to being married--with their own kids either present, on the way, or part of an easy-to-imagine future. We reach the consensus that all these plans sound pretty good.
Abita Roasting Company. Covington: 1011 Village Walk. 985-246-3345.
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Sunday, March 20, 2016.
Chilly Spring Begins.
I am mildly hung over after last night's three glasses of wine. That's about average for me at any dinner where wine was served. Or at least it was through most of my adult life. My norm now, however, is just one glass, with maybe half a refill. Any more than that, and I feel it the next day. Another disadvantage of the senior years.
Perhaps my strain owes to today's very busy schedule. I show up at Mass early to assist in the distribution of palms and help with a singing procession. Then there is the long Passion Gospel, and some songs I've never seen before. But it's moments like this that force one to learn how to read music.
To Mattina Bella for breakfast after that. I have eggs Melanzana with a couple of modifications. From the bottom up: fried eggplant in eggplant-Parmigiana slices, Sliced Italian sausage on top of that, a kitchen spoonful of marinara sauce, two poached eggs, and a flow of hollandaise. Owner Vincent Ricobono, who shoots the breeze with me for awhile, wonders why my order is taking so long. I explain the eccentricity of my request. It's a great dish, by the way. The combination of hollandaise and red sauce doesn't sound right, but it is.
At home, I find that call time for this afternoon's NPAS performance is earlier than I hoped--1:45. That doesn't give me as much time for a nap. As if to help me out, my alarm fails to ring at the 1:15 setting. I don my tuxedo as fast as I can and am out the door at 1:30. En route, I revive a long-disused skill I developed in the 1980s, when I could tie a bow tie while driving. I make it to the auditorium with minutes to spare.
My big sister Judy is here with her husband Water and daughter (also my godchild) Holly. Judy was a teenager during the era of the songs NPAS is singing, and she loves all those doo-wop numbers. Because of that, I am more familiar with the music than most people my age.
We draw a very substantial crowd, who are more enthusiastic in their applause than I've seen in any other NPAS concert. The chorus really put its heart into it, and afterwards we all agree that this was one of our best efforts. We continue this parley at a party at the home of one of our members, who has done what we do everytime we have people over: we make far too much food.
I suggest to our leader Alissa Rowe that NPAS should have romance as the theme of the concert next Valentine's Day. When I was a barbershop singer, we used to sell our lovey-dovey tunes to a great demand in that season. (In fact, I think they still do.)
Rock musicians often complain about how grueling it is to perform live. It doesn't look like hard work. The kind of shows NPAS puts on are hardly in the same league, but this round of concerts convinces me that there's something to the rockers' complaints. I am exhausted as this weekend ends. Sitting at my desk trying to get some writing done tonight, I fall asleep on my keyboard in mid-sentence.
The Abita Sunriser breakfast. You attempt to eat all of this.[/caption]
Today, I ask for the ten-dollar combo breakfast they call "The Sunriser." If I had known how formidable a plate this is, I would have called a friend or two to help me. Here goes: soft-scrambled eggs with two cheeses, grits and hash brown potatoes, a hot sausage pattie, and a full-size pancake. Before I saw the reality of this overfeed, I added a side dish of hollandaise. I was stuffed even after leaving about a third unfinished. And it was all delicious and beautifull served, to boot.
Without its making her come home any sooner, Mary Ann is feeling sorry for me, all alone here at the Cool Water Ranch. She has been feeding me suggestions as to people I should call for dinner, and she has set up such an evening for me tonight. It's with our friends the Fowlers, whose network crosses our own in ways too numerous to mention (and in some instances amazing).
The Fowlers have a beautiful house, and they prefer to stay in it and cook dinner than to go out to a restaurant. Which is fine by me. My program of cooking at home every Sunday night has been wrecked by MA's lengthy departures.
Veronica Fowler's superb kitchen is fun to cook in. It's her turn tonight. She puts together that classic salad of baby greens and spinach with strawberries and candied pecans. Then grills some crab cakes rendered crusty and tasty with brown butter. The entree is filets wrapped (but not for long) in bacon and seared on the stove top.
The side dish was good enough for me to take notes. She boils small brown potatoes, then cuts them into quarters, sprinkles them with shredded cheese and sour cream. She tosses all these things together, with the heat of the potatoes creating a sauce out of cheese and sour cream. It was so simple that its goodness was surprising.
We have a pleasant evening after dinner, as we lingered over a bottle of Man Family Cabernet Sauvignon from South Africa. Big wine, this. After we polished it off, we put a dent into another Cabernet from the Fowlers' collection. The conversation moved to the ever-fertile matter of our children, who are now grown up and near to being married--with their own kids either present, on the way, or part of an easy-to-imagine future. We reach the consensus that all these plans sound pretty good.
