Sunday, May 29, 2016.
Café Lynn.
After a week full of goings-on, I spend the day at my desk, making good progress on the pile. Something strange is going on. Projects that I expect to take up hours of my time are fixing themselves. For the past couple of months, for example, a lot of the email sent to me did not arrive. Some of it was rather important. But when I began to dig in with the technician on the phone, I found about a hundred missing messages had just arrived. Why? I have no idea. But now it's working perfectly. The printer, which has refused to print for weeks, also decided that it was ready to punch in again. Machine vacations?
I take a long march around the Cool Water Ranch. The box turtle I found yesterday is still gone. I hope he has found a nice spot in the woods, with many mushrooms and berries to eat.
When the heat gets me, I study the NPAS music, and find that I needs something like five hours of sheet music marking and singing along with the recordings. I do as much as I can. My membership in NPAS is giving me new respect for musicians.
[caption id="attachment_51657" align="alignnone" width="480"]
A three-wine flight of wines at Cafe Lynn for $15.[/caption]
MA and I find that the first three places we call for lunch are closed on Sunday--especially this Memorial Day Sunday. We ultimately wind up at Café Lynn, a very good restaurant in Mandeville that we don't visit often enough. The place is less busy than we expect, but the staff is bright and eager to please.
[caption id="attachment_51656" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Crab claws at Cafe Lynn.[/caption]
Mary Ann begins with a boat of crab claws, one of her favorite appetizers. Buttery sauce and a light grating of cheese makes this original and eminently edible. I have snails in the classic garlic, herb, and butter sauce. This is something I almost never order anymore. The snails, no matter what the restaurant, are almost always canned. We have become so accustomed to everything's being fresh or, at worst, frozen. You don't see escargots in many top-layer restaurants as a result of that.
[caption id="attachment_51654" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Escargots with lots oif garlic and herb butter.[/caption]
However, there is something to be said about garlic butter. You reach for the bread, and you know in a trice why escargots as an appetizer will never die. Especially not in restaurants with French names. And French bread. Since this sauce from the hand of chef-owner Joey Najolia, it's lusty. Even the snails themselves--of which one gets a baker's dozen--are more than good.
[caption id="attachment_51655" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Cafe Lynn's pork chop.[/caption]
MA moves into her default dish: a big Greek salad with grilled chicken. A good little green salad comes with my entree, which is a very nice, thick pork chop with an excellent red-wine pan-demi sauce with mushrooms and green beans. It is as good as it is filling, even though it was overcooked by my standards. But this is the North Shore, where many people hold to old myths. A hundred sixty degrees is more than thoroughly cooked for pork food safety, and that's still a little pink in the center. I neglected to ask for it done to that temperature, so I had it coming.
At the end of this fine Sunday dinner, MA and I get into a tiff that ends in a frigid mood. But from my perspective in the time machine that is this journal-- writing these words five days after the events it describes--I know that this cold front has moved through and the sun is shining again.
I think.
Cafe Lynn. Mandeville: 2600 Florida St. 985-624-9007.
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Memorial Day, Monday, May 30, 2016.
I Used To Be On. Now I'm Off. Then On Again.
I like placing the template that represents my radio show's twenty-eight-year run on top of the rest of history, then make comparisons. When I began doing the daily program, I always worked on Memorial Day. Aside from the federal government and its agencies, most business around New Orleans were open for business back then. I always did a radio show on that day. But it's over ten years since the last time. And almost everybody else is off, too.
This has been good for most of the restaurant business, they tell me. The only part of the industry in the doldrums today consists of white-tablecloth eateries in the suburbs. As on Saturdays, there's hardly a place in Metairie for a series lunch. Even Chef Andrea is closed, which is really saying something. The French Quarter and some of the Magazine Street restaurant lineup are rather busy at midday, though. And at dinnertime, most restaurants are wide open, unless they're never open on Monday.
I pretty much have the whole day off. If I did a radio show anyway, nobody would call, and it would be agony.
MA spends most of the day across the lake. I have lunch at La Carreta--the one near the Covington Walmart. I go through a lot of the restaurant's excellent, thin tortilla chips with its even better salsa. Entree is trio of street tacos with barbacoa--very tender shredded beef with very little fat. A cup of their good bean soup is on the side, as are garnishes that the waiter warns me contain some very hot peppers. It's all good.
I don't remember whether NPAS will have a rehearsal tonight. We don't usually on holidays. But our Americana concert is this Friday, and I am sure that I'm not the only one who doesn't have all the music locked and loaded into our consciousnesses. (Although a lot of the singers do.)
I tell MA I'll be back in fifteen minutes. But the singers do indeed have a session. I'm back home two and a half hours later. I'm glad of that, actually. I needed more practice.
A three-wine flight of wines at Cafe Lynn for $15.[/caption]
MA and I find that the first three places we call for lunch are closed on Sunday--especially this Memorial Day Sunday. We ultimately wind up at Café Lynn, a very good restaurant in Mandeville that we don't visit often enough. The place is less busy than we expect, but the staff is bright and eager to please.
[caption id="attachment_51656" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Crab claws at Cafe Lynn.[/caption]
Mary Ann begins with a boat of crab claws, one of her favorite appetizers. Buttery sauce and a light grating of cheese makes this original and eminently edible. I have snails in the classic garlic, herb, and butter sauce. This is something I almost never order anymore. The snails, no matter what the restaurant, are almost always canned. We have become so accustomed to everything's being fresh or, at worst, frozen. You don't see escargots in many top-layer restaurants as a result of that.
[caption id="attachment_51654" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Escargots with lots oif garlic and herb butter.[/caption]
However, there is something to be said about garlic butter. You reach for the bread, and you know in a trice why escargots as an appetizer will never die. Especially not in restaurants with French names. And French bread. Since this sauce from the hand of chef-owner Joey Najolia, it's lusty. Even the snails themselves--of which one gets a baker's dozen--are more than good.
[caption id="attachment_51655" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Cafe Lynn's pork chop.[/caption]
MA moves into her default dish: a big Greek salad with grilled chicken. A good little green salad comes with my entree, which is a very nice, thick pork chop with an excellent red-wine pan-demi sauce with mushrooms and green beans. It is as good as it is filling, even though it was overcooked by my standards. But this is the North Shore, where many people hold to old myths. A hundred sixty degrees is more than thoroughly cooked for pork food safety, and that's still a little pink in the center. I neglected to ask for it done to that temperature, so I had it coming.
At the end of this fine Sunday dinner, MA and I get into a tiff that ends in a frigid mood. But from my perspective in the time machine that is this journal-- writing these words five days after the events it describes--I know that this cold front has moved through and the sun is shining again.
I think.
