[title type="h5"]Sunday, September 22, 2013.[/title]
I slept better last night than the night before, but nowhere near well. I'm still roiling with thoughts about the future of the radio show. Mary Ann, who is both sympathetic to my disturbance and full of ideas about how to turn the whole situation to my advantage, began her comforting program by offering to join me for breakfast. At Bella Luna, yet, which she avoids because the food is too good there for her to resist eating too much of it.
We had another of those wonderful morning repasts. Hers was the usual meat-jammed omelette, mine the poached eggs with fried eggplant, Italian sausage and marinara. Vincent Riccobono, the owner, told me that a lot of people had come in recently as a result of my placing Bella Luna very high on the list of best breakfast places in the New Orleans area last week.
Still too wet to cut the grass. I took an extra-long walk instead, and managed to push the radio situation off center stage.
Across the lake to River Ridge I went in late afternoon. I was to give a talk to a group of middle school students and their parents about the history of the New Orleans food culture. They were all in a program focusing on the history of our area as it relates to local geography, geology, and anthropology.
I wasn't sure how my specialty would go over with eleven-to-thirteen-year-olds, or if the three stories I always begin my talks with would even be understood. In fact, almost all of the forty or so young people were fully attentive, and asked excellent questions about local foods and cooking. Not from having read up on the right questions to ask, but because they were obviously very interested. Food cuts across all demographic lines.
The talk took place at St. Matthew's parish center. I was never a student there, but it was closer to where I lived than my alma mater St. Rita's, so I was often involved there. In fact, I was a member of St. Matthew's Junior Holy Name Society, a fun group of pre-teen boys (only!). I still have my lapel pin around somewhere.
