Saturday, May 6, 2017.
The Big Date. A Day Of Radio And Light Eating.
Fifty years ago today and with great trepidation, I called a girl named Cathy and asked her to be my date at the Jesuit Junior-Senior Prom. She accepted, and I went on over to the Time Saver to work my three-till-eleven shift with wings on my heels. Little did I know that Prom Night would be one of the great pivotal moments of my life, but nothing like what I was hoping for.
Things were much less exceptional today. In the gaps between elements of my errands I had breakfast at Fat Spoon: two poached eggs with hollandaise, mushrooms, bacon, and English muffin underneath. Grocery shopping. A stop at Walgreens to tell them not to bother filling a prescription for which I already had a three-month supply. (My mistake, involving one of the most elementary blood-pressure tablets.) Stop at the cleaners.
Then it was a three-hour radio show on WWL, with less pep than usual. The weather is just too beautiful to waste on a radio talk show, I guess.
The Marys were on the South Shore through the day, with a plan to meet up with me sometime around five at La Carreta--one of the few restaurants deemed acceptable by the girls. When I don't hear from them at five-fifteen, I called them, to learn that they were waiting for me, twenty-minutes away. I wish I had time to fritter away like this.
Usual dinner for me: queso with chorizo, bean soup, and chicken diablo, with its reddish-brown chilpotle pepper sauce. Good food, but I've really become tired of it. Why can't these ladies expand their horizons? I know the answer: the threshold has to do entirely with atmosphere.
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Sunday, May 7, 2017.
Are The Russians Messing With My Computer?
No radio today, but lots of editing to be done of the introductory copy for the new edition of my cookbook. This took much longer than I thought it would, mainly because of a strange phenomenon in what used to be the file directories in windows. Used to be you'd give a file a name and a folder, and it would stay there. Now I do that and then find that the file has moved elsewhere of its own accord. That turned what should have been a sixty-second gathering of three files for e-mail attachments into a weird variant of "Where's Waldo?". I first noticed this among my photographs, which have lately become so difficult to find after I select them that most days I don't have the time to add photos to my articles in the newsletter. It's all beginning to derange my mind.
Monday, May 8, 2017.
Blackened Fish And Reddened Beans.
Mary Ann and I have lunch at New Orleans Food & Spirits, another from her microscopic list of acceptable restaurants around Covington. Usually, I have the red beans, and she eats a salad. Lately, I have had an envie for the blackened catfish with the pecan meuniere sauce. But lately the menu has lost the dinner-size version of this. The lunch portion is excellent to eat and a great bargain, but it's not enough food. I asked last time that they give me two of the undersized fillets, and charge me for the extra one. That worked out well exactly once.
Today, when I place my order the same way, I get two enormous catfish fillets, either one of which would have been too much. Maybe Mary Ann is right when she accuses me of always wanting to mess around with everything I order, never accepting the restaurant's standard way.
But that's the way we are in America. In Europe--France in particular--they'd not only disallow the tailoring, but get worked up about it.
I am worked up myself over something mental. Fortunately, this is rehearsal night for NPAS's June concert with the music of Motown and its like. Singing always refocuses my brain, and I leave the rehearsals feeling great. As I do tonight.
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