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Sunday, April 24, 2016.
A Lavish Home-Cooked Salmon Dinner. [/title]
I awaken very early to implement all the strategies I thought about instead of sleeping overnight. I’ve figured out how to connect the two machines so I can move articles from one to the other. By the time I go to Mass, my despair is falling away.
The choir loft has more people in it than I’ve ever seen. Standing room only. And I am a little late. I stand during most of the service anyway. A couple of hymns that go well with my range and style cheer my soul.
I run a couple of errands, then get back to work on the computer project. Meanwhile, Mary Ann decides to cook a grand feast whose elements all fit into her current diet. It centers on salmon, a very large, pretty flank of which she buys at Mandeville Seafood after waiting in line behind some twenty people. That place is moving many sacks of crawfish in both live and boiled form this time of year. And lots of other good fish, too. This is the kind of outfit I feel very good about doing commercials for.
By four o’clock–not an abnormal time for us to dine on a Sunday–MA has the salmon broiled with an appetizing layer of olive oil, herbs, and seasonings. It is further garnished with pesto sauce, made with fresh basil, parsley, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, and parmesan cheese. Its deep green color makes for a beautiful contrast with the orange color of the salmom.
Mary Ann likes to have a lot of side dishes. She bakes some sweet potato sticks, simmers baby lima beans with a big chunk of ham she finds in the freezer, and broils okra with olive oill and crushed red pepper. I find a cube of bread pudding for my dessert. And I kill what’s left of a bottle of Chardonnay, which has become oxidized. It’s a flaw, but there’s something about that nutty flavor that I rather like.
Good think I took my walk before sitting down to this. Doing that, taking a nap, and eating the dinner, I am in much better spirits than I was this morning.
Unless I think about the dog Susie, who is hopping around on three legs with energy. One of the vets said that she is best off trying to get around, instead of just lying there. But still her prognosis is bleak. And so are our moods.
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[title type="h5"]Monday, April 25, 2016.
A Great New Place For Red Beans, Hot Sausage, And Johnnycakes.[/title]
For the first time since I installed the new computer, I attempt to produce a full newsletter from it. I find that some files are missing, which gives me a fright. A new problem–one unrelated to the computer massacree–emerges when a lot of subscribers get a newsletter with the right headlines but the wrong articles. I have no idea how that happened. But it’s always something.
After the new edition goes out, I head out for lunch, the only meal I will have today. It occurrs to me that the Abita Roaster might have just what I wanted: a plate of red beans with hot sausage. The Abita Roaster in Covington is allied with the Abita Springs Café in the center of the namesake eatery. It’s also hooked up–particularly on the coffee end of things–with a little coffeehouse and breakfast spot in Madisonville. The place I am headed today is the best-looking of the bunch, with a substantial breakfast and lunch menu.
All my previous visits have been about breakfast. I am glad to see the chalkboard on the sidewalk announcing the presence of red beans and rice for ten dollars. (Which reminds me: I am very happy to hear that Alexander Hamilton will remain on the ten-dollar bill. The women who were supposed to take his place will wind up on the twenty, I hear.)
You can get your red beans with fried catfish, smoked sausage, or a pork chop. I ask the waitress for a hot sausage patty. She says she’ll check on that, but I already have altered a few breakfast dishes to being made with the hot sausage, so I know they’ll do it.
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Red beans and rice with hot sausage and a jonnycake at Abita Roasters.[/caption]
They do it, and well. The beans themselves are vaguely smoky and luscious, with firm beans in just the right amount. And the sausage is just fatty and spicy enough for its assignment. But here’s a thing: a corn cake, made to look like a pancake but with a yellower color, made with cornmeal. That makes it a johnnycake, or perhaps even a hoecake–although that latter oneadds less than nothing to the dish. The corncake is about five inches in diameter, and the perfect bread for a plate of beans. Jum, jum. And my Monday feels good.
The radio show rocks and rolls for a change–except in the last half-hour. Lots of new voices today, some of them belonging to people who are in town for the Jazz Festival.
To chorus rehearsal. It begins with an announcement from our conductor Alissa Rowe that she had been given tenure at Southeastern U., where she is a professor in voice. Good for her. I am having a hard time with some of the current music. I will write that off to fatigue following the grueling weekend, whose problems are slopping over into the new week. And the dog Susie’s problems aren’t helping our moods, either.
Written by Tom Fitzmorris April 26, 2016 12:01 in
