[title type="h5"]Sunday, April 26, 2015.
Third Time Is Charm @ Zea. Grass Here, I Shear. [/title]
Three members of the human population of the Cool Water Ranch are engaged with all-afternoon activities. No rain yesterday or today. A walk around the grounds tells me I might be able to cut grass without literally getting bogged down. I buy gas, clean up the lawn tractor, check the tires. Insert the key and, on the third try, the engine turns over and I begin the first grasscutting job for the 2015 season. Not a moment too soon.
That done, I strut my standard laps around the property, then take a nap. When I awaken, Mary Ann inquires about dinner. She has spent the day lolling around the swimming pool of a friend of ours, and has an appetite. She wants to try Mandeville Seafood, which a few months ago took over the restaurant formerly known as Petunia's (no connection with the also extinct breakfast specialist off Bourbon Street). It's still a little new, I think, but I can't win them all, so there we go--to find that it's closed for dinner on Sundays. Second idea (my turn): Tchoupstix. We have been there on Sunday, but hours are always changing, and it's not open either.
[caption id="attachment_36870" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Tuna stack at Zea.[/caption]
We wind up where I wanted to go in the first place. We complete the thirty-mile loop at Zea, where I have exactly what I had last week at this time: the tomato bisque, the house salad with peanut-ginger dressing, and a small raw tuna stack. Yum, yum. But for the Marys, Zea has gone out of vogue, as it has in the past. Cycles.
If I ever start moving in the direction of retiring, the first step will be to eliminate a lifelong habit of working on Sunday evenings. I find I can kick off a round of deep nostalgia by recalling what I did and what played on the radio on Sunday nights at various times in my life. In the years I lived in the French Quarter, there I am, sitting at my drafting table, assembling an ad that will run in the Times-Picayune next week for the Sleep Factory. On the radio: Doctor Demento for an hour, then three hours of jazz hosted by a disk jockey who went only by the name Michael. It was on WNOE-FM, in the days when that was a rock station most of the time. Then I'd move to WTUL, as I worked on writing my five two-minute radio restaurant reviews. I'd finally go to bed at around two a.m.--my norm then.
Compared with life now, I could as well be a different person--except for the persistence of my Sunday night work routine. It starts and ends earlier, but it's still there. I now know that the motivation is that I am stealing time by working when most people are relaxing. After all these years, that is obviously untrue. If Mary Ann would let me have a recliner or a big rocking chair, I would make the shift tonight.[divider type=""]
[title type="h5"]Monday, April 27, 2015.
Downpours. Pontchartrain Po-Boys For Beans.[/title]
It rains ferociously all day. This is good. The mud tracks I left around the grounds when I cut the grass yesterday are all washed away. So are the piles of cut grass. I see that the New Orleans area so far this year has taken over three times the normal amount of rain.
Tonight is dress rehearsal night for NPAS's Carmina Burana performance tomorrow. Both are in Hammond, before 7 p.m. There is no way I will make it there from downtown tomorrow, and I'd be late today. This is too bad, because I'm almost to the point of having the whole work memorized.
So I have the evening free for dinner. Once again, the Marys and The Boy are across the lake. I go to Pontchartrain Poor Boys in Mandeville with red beans and rice on my mind. It is enough for at least two people. Or would be, if they were not so tasty. Those of us who only eat the good things often find ourselves eating more of it than we really need to. (By contrast, bad food is easy for gourmets to ignore.)
I get the beans with a hot sausage patty and a side salad. A great way to begin the week's eating.
[title type="h5"]Pontchartrain Po-Boys. Mandeville: 318 Dalwill Dr. 985-626-8188. [/title]
