Diary 7|7|2014: Fifty-Cent Oysters. Mama's Red Beans.

[title type="h5"]Monday, July 7, 2014. Mothers Turn Up Where You Least Expect Them. [/title] Mary Leigh has several cakes to bake for various clients, one of which is the little bake shop in Abita Springs. So she leaves The Boy at home and heads off to work. I hope he doesn't get comfortable with that pattern. ML's work ethic is hard to compete with. The two are still busy when it's time for supper. We go through the usual routine, in which Mary Ann says that she's not really going to eat anything, so it doesn't matter to her where we go. I suggest a half-dozen venues and hear all of them rejected. I ask her just to tell me where she really wants to go. Why do we have to go through the first part of this every time? The Po-Boy Company, she tells me. Okay with me. A roast beef poor boy is as fine a Monday meal as a plate of red beans and rice. But we find that the Company is no longer serving dinner, at least not on Monday. "What about Crabby's Shack?" she offers. This is Keith Young's very casual little seafood house in Madisonville. MA is forever suggesting we go there, but the mention of the name makes Mary Leigh scream and The Boy squirm. Neither is a seafood eater. I must not have contributed much to her gene pool. But the lovebirds are off having their own supper elsewhere. So to Crabby's Shack we go. We pull up to the place and I see an oyster special on the board outside. Six dollars. What do you get, though? "A dozen raw oysters," says the waitress inside. I was hoping she would say that. Let's go! And here they come. Big, cleanly shucked, salty enough, lying on a bed of ice and almost as cold themselves. I scarf them down with great enjoyment. I feel no guilt that MA gets none of them. She doesn't eat raw oysters. A Five Easy Pieces moment comes. I ask whether I can have hot sausage with red beans and rice. "That comes with smoked sausage," waitress says. Yes, but can you swap out hot sausage? If anything, that would probably be cheaper for the restaurant, and hot sausage is available as a poor boy. I can't convince her, although I didn't do what I should have: ask for the beans, hold the smoked sausage. And a hot sausage poor boy, hold the bread. I'd pay full price for everything. That might have led to a funny story, but Mary Ann doesn't like it when I'm an ahsholey. [caption id="attachment_43023" align="alignnone" width="480"] Red beans and andouille at Crabby's Shack.[/caption] The matter is dismissed when the beans come. They are identical to the ones I grew up with, and on a good day for my mother's cookery, to boot. Which is to say that each bean is still in one piece, unmashed, in a sauce that borders on soupy. When they were like that--and they were on most Mondays--it was my favorite rendering of red beans. And here they are, for the first time in many years (except at home, of course, where I fix them that way always). Mary Ann started in on them and agreed that they are as good as red beans get. And that to me is very good indeed. It's a beautiful, sunshiny day, and all is right with the world. [title type="h5"]Crabby's Seafood Shack. Madisonville: 305 Covington. 985-845-2348.[/title]