[title type="h5"]Saturday, July 5, 2014.
Birthday Party.[/title]
Vic and Barb Giancola are regular attendees at our Eat Club dinners, and besides that have been active at Channel 12 for a long time. That's where we became friends. Barb's birthday is the fourth of July. Last year, she invited us to join a bunch of their friends for Barb's birthday dinner at Galvez, a great vantage point for watching the Independence Day fireworks.
This year, they celebrate the birthday in their home, and again we make the cut. A caterer (I think from Chateau) does the food, an eclectic, tasty assortment that starts with sushi and crab cakes and runs through artichoke balls and a cheese board featuring the most peppery cheese in my experience. I put a thick slice of that on one of the meaty sliders, and like that, too. And about a dozen other tidbits. Tapas night at the Giancolas.
Vic is a member of a wine club through which he acquires quite an assortment of interesting and little-known wines, with an emphasis on Spain and South America. Good juice all night long.
Mary Ann found a few people who were happy to wallow with her in her favorite subject. I move around to keep my distance from politics, the discussion of which only gets me in trouble. Lots of people here want to talk food, which keeps me busy and happy. If I ever retire, I may hire myself out to attend parties.
When you have a party at your house, it's inevitable that something sitting on the counter, a chair or the floor is still there when the first guests arrive. You see it, grab it, and throw it into a place where it doesn't belong, but at least it's out of sight. At our house, this process requires an entire room and its closet. My office is Mary Ann's most frequent victim. The quantity of the junk requires a hand truck.
Barb is incomparably better ordered than we are, but nobody is immune to this pre-party problem. I find a bag of hamburger buns inside her microwave oven when I try to use it to melt the cheese on the aforementioned slider. If that's the worst they can do, then these folks are neatniks indeed.
[title type="h5"]
Sunday, July 6, 2014.
The Boy Is Back. Exceptional Catfish. Goat Needed.[/title]
The countdown runs as The Boy drives from Greenville, NC to the Cool Water Ranch. He has broken out of his parental home and is coming here to my daughter's open arms, and trying to figure out what the next chapter of his life will be.
For me, his route would break somewhere in the middle, with a hotel stay in a town with interesting restaurants. As long as I'm on the road, why not enjoy the world along the way? I am the only one in our family who feels this way. The Marys, Jude and The Boy all believe that the only way to travel by car is to blast down the highway as swiftly as possible, with stops only for gas or emergency bathroom breaks, looking neither to the left nor the right.
I am getting used to the idea that the long automobile trips I enjoyed in my twenties and thirties--down two-lane blacktops all the way, four hundred miles or less per day--will never happen again. If one such does, it will be solo, in a very reliable car.
The Boy arrives in late afternoon. The young couple reunited, the four of us go to dinner at The Chimes, one of their favorite places to go far too often. I come along, because Mary Ann has a scheme by which I will hire The Boy to do some web work for me. I could really use the help, but I don't want such schemes to be decided upon without my presence.
The other three eat their usual salads and such. I somehow order the best meal I've ever had at The Chimes. It begins with a sure bet: oysters, a dozen raw. If this is a bad time for oysters, I hope they stay this bad, because these are about perfect. Where are they coming from? I ask. "All Louisiana," says the waitress, after she checks with the manager. I can believe it.
I adhere to the axiom that catfish is never better than when it's coated in corn meal and corn flour, then deep fried. It is also best when it comes in small fillets from fish caught in a bayou or lake near New Orleans. Or--a little less good--from a farm in Louisiana or Mississippi that doesn't let the fish get too big and keeps its water clean.
But one must test one's opinions now and then, to make sure they're solid. I order char-broiled catfish from the same grill and with the same light brown, stock-like sauce that Chimes uses on its grilled oysters.
The five fillets that emerge are small, tender, and delicious. I would have liked them a little more charred, but the sauce is just right, and the texture and flavor of the fish are just fine. For the first time in decades, I didn't miss the crackly, cornmeal coated, golden fried textures and flavors. I do still prefer catfish that way, but this is something I will have again.
The Chimes has a small herd of goats browsing on the banks of the Bogue Falaya river, just below the restaurant. They're fun to watch. Especially for kids, who can go down there and pet them now and then.
The goats get me to thinking that perhaps a few such animals or other grass-eaters would be good to have around the Cool Water Ranch. This afternoon, for the third consecutive week, I have to cut two acres of grass again. But the old lawn tractor starts immediately, once again proving that the huge repair bill was a good investment. And our big lawn is emerald-like in its greenness, even though we haven't had any rain all week.
That micro-drought is soon to end, emphatically.
[title type="h5"]The Chimes. Covington: 19130 W Front St. 985-892-5396.[/title]
Written by Tom Fitzmorris July 14, 2014 12:01 in
