Sunday, April 10, 2016.
A Taxing Day.
A lot of people named Lee figure into in my life. Lee was my wife Mary Ann's father. He gave his name to MA's big brother. The "Leigh" in our daughter's name is a reference to her grandfather. When my parents lived in Treme, my father and uncles were regular customers of Lee's Lounge, a block away from our house.
And there is Lee Wilszynski, a fellow tenor in the choir I used to belong to before they changed the rehearsal evening to one I would never be able to attend. Lee is a thoughtful guy with interesting angles on the world. One of my favorites is his goal of paying a million dollars in taxes during his lifetime. His reasoning is that when he hits that mark, it means that he earned a much more impressive--and satisfying--income in order to do so.
Remembering that cheers up my day a little. I spend almost all of it working on my income tax return. I am proud and astonished that I actually finished the project. The proper amount of displeasure attached itself to the check I had to send along with the return. But the rest of it made me feel good, if with a lot of eyestrain.
I think there's a place for a first-class North Shore restaurant to open on Sunday evenings. There are not enough of them to avoid repetition. In order of goodness: La Provence, Sal & Judy's (a real challenge for finding a seat), Trey Yuen, Nuvolari's, and. . . who else? Hardly anything, really, except for neighborhood cafes, and even those are in short supply on Sundays.
Which is why I keep turning up at Zea on Sunday evenings. That, and the fact that the waiters know what I like and how. I begin inevitably with the good tomato basil soup. Then the house salad with the spicy Asian peanut dressing. Entrees are up for grabs. Today I get the rotisserie special. Slices of beef sirloin in an intense, thick red-brown sauce made with mushrooms, drippings, and (I'm pretty sure) red wine. Very tender. Something about it reminds me of the roast beef, gravy and mashed potatoes so omnipresent on restaurant menus back in the 1950s and 1960s. In appearance, anyway. The Zea beef tastes nothing like the old days. It's incomparably better.
Having that supper pulls my brain back together so I can continue working on the tax return. It takes me almost till ten p.m. before it's done. I try calling Mary Ann to let her know the news, but she doesn't answer. I go to bed an our early.
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Monday, April 11, 2016.
Thank God For Red Beans.
I depart this Thursday for Los Angeles, there to be present Saturday at the baptism of my son Jude's son Jackson. Someone asked me a couple of days ago whether the little boy is named for Michael Jackson. First time I've heard that. I also hear that the Andrew Jackson statue in Jackson Square is in danger of joining with P.G.T. Beauregard and Robert E. Lee in being removed to a non-public place. As long as they don't take Henry Clay and John McDonogh down in Lafayette Square, things remain rational.
One way to keep a lid on life is to lean on one's routines. Having a plate of red beans and rice on a Monday, for example. At the reliable New Orleans Food and Spirits, which offers a grilled pork chop of some size for only two bucks extra. The chop is a T-bone, with the sirloin strip side a bit hard to cut, but the tenderloin side lives up to its name.
[caption id="attachment_34538" align="alignnone" width="360"]
Red beans and pork chop, N.O. Food & Spirits.[/caption]
The lady who serves me at NOFS knows everything I will ask for before I open my mouth. Here's the iced tea. Here's the salad with remoulade dressing. I turn down a scoop of ice cream for dessert, but she asks me about it before I get the chance.
The radio show is agreeably lively. One oddity: I am still getting around five queries a day about the Moving Forward restaurant, which allegedly serves a six-star, eight-course meal for twenty bucks aboard two giant buses that tour the city. My annual April Fool restaurant review is more successful than I would have imagined.
NPAS rehearsal of the songs planned for our celebration of America this summer continues. My minimal sight-reading abilities have me falling behind as usual. But I am given courage by something that comes up again and a again in the book about Frank Sinatra that Mary Ann gave me for my birthday. Sinatra openly admitted that he couldn't read music. But after hearing the instrumentalists play the melody, and after he wrote the lyrics down in his own hand, he usually had the songs locked and loaded.
On the other hand, I saw Sinatra live at the Superdome in the 1990s, and saw the video screens displaying all the lyrics of all the songs, from all directions. But he had the notes exactly right, and there was no cheat-sheet for that except, of course, from the orchestra. But that's normal.
In other words, I am not Frank Sinatra.
Red beans and pork chop, N.O. Food & Spirits.[/caption]
The lady who serves me at NOFS knows everything I will ask for before I open my mouth. Here's the iced tea. Here's the salad with remoulade dressing. I turn down a scoop of ice cream for dessert, but she asks me about it before I get the chance.
The radio show is agreeably lively. One oddity: I am still getting around five queries a day about the Moving Forward restaurant, which allegedly serves a six-star, eight-course meal for twenty bucks aboard two giant buses that tour the city. My annual April Fool restaurant review is more successful than I would have imagined.
NPAS rehearsal of the songs planned for our celebration of America this summer continues. My minimal sight-reading abilities have me falling behind as usual. But I am given courage by something that comes up again and a again in the book about Frank Sinatra that Mary Ann gave me for my birthday. Sinatra openly admitted that he couldn't read music. But after hearing the instrumentalists play the melody, and after he wrote the lyrics down in his own hand, he usually had the songs locked and loaded.
On the other hand, I saw Sinatra live at the Superdome in the 1990s, and saw the video screens displaying all the lyrics of all the songs, from all directions. But he had the notes exactly right, and there was no cheat-sheet for that except, of course, from the orchestra. But that's normal.
In other words, I am not Frank Sinatra.
