Monday, April 18, 2011.
MA Makes Red Beans.
One at least two mornings a week, Mary Ann makes a trip to Zoe's bakery in Covington. It's the creation of Shane Gorringe (rhymes with orange, perhaps only name on earth that does). He came to town from his native England to be pastry chef at the Windsor Court Hotel. He left to open Zoe's at around the same time our family moved to the North Shore, in the early 1990s. Zoe's doesn't look like much from the outside, but Shane does a tremendous business making the classiest kinds of cakes, pastries, and other bakeries.
The Marys love Zoe's. One summer Mary Leigh spent a few mornings a week working there as a baker, as much for fun as for the money. (She has a gift for baking.) Remembering this loan of our youngest child, Shane often gives Mary Ann second-day leftovers from his case, free. (I think Mary Ann actually prefers leftovers to fresh stuff.) She gives Zoe's products a dispensation from her otherwise draconian diet.
She usually comes home from Zoe's with something for me. My favorite items at Zoe's are the little tartelettes made with blueberries, apricots, and the like, with fillings along the lines of clafoutis. I had half of one of those for breakfast this morning, with my café au lait. Simple but wonderful.
Jude is visiting from Los Angeles later in the week. That promise turns Mary Ann into a tornado of clean-up. Her particular project this time is refinishing the deck, an overdue job that she is performing to an extreme. (Mary Ann is an extremist. It's all the way to one side or another--intense care or total neglect, black or white, never a middle ground or shade of grey.) She has worked on this for weeks, and although she is aching with the effort, she will not stop until the deck is completely cleaned and resealed.
The lawn is atrocious. The early-season weeds are past peak, and now the lawn must be mowed so the grass can grow back in. But this is my job, and that's a job I can't perform at the moment. Getting the tractor started is such a complex job that nobody here can do it but me--and I can't even get to where it's parked. We need a new tractor, really. Or to get somebody over here to do it. My suggestion that Jude cut the grass while he is here outrages Mary Ann, who treats him like a prince. (As I have noted many times in the past, I am indeed jealous of him.)
On the other hand, she takes good care of me in my disability. During the radio show, she cooked up a pot of red beans and rice, knowing how much I like that Monday meal. They were just right, with firm, discrete beans and a light sauce. (I would have said that they were the way my mother made them, but that high praise from me is taken as a red flag by MA.) The final link of Vaucresson hot sausage left over from the French Quarter Festival was the perfect accompaniment.
Zoë's Bakery. Covington: 118 West 32nd Ave. 985-892-5570.
