Saturday, January 24, 2009. Scanning. Annadele's With The Girls.
In my spare moments during the radio show today (and WWL has so many commercial and news breaks that I have lots of spare time, compared with the few fleeting minutes I get on 1350 during the week), I scanned the first twenty-five editions of the New Orleans Menu into the computer. It's a miracle I have them to scan. All my back editions were in my office near the Superdome at the time of Katrina. And my office and everything in it was destroyed beyond recovery. I mentioned this in a newsletter, and received a reply from a lady named Denise. "I was about to throw away a lot of stuff, and I have some of your old editions. Would you like them?" she asked.
She didn't have some back editions. She had ALL back editions, from January 1977 to Fall 1996. This was almost too good to be true. I doubt whether any other complete collections of those things existed anywhere. 
I got them about a year ago, and told myself I'd better scan them soon, before another disaster strikes. But it's a low-priority, time-consuming project, and it sat there. Until today. I got all the four-page newsletters done, and posted on the web site, to boot. Now I have about thirty 32-page magazines to do. I wish Jude were twelve again and living here. I could get him to do it. But no munchkins are available.
The Marys and I went to dinner at Annadele's Plantation again. It was raining, and the parking lot was packed. I didn't think we could get a table, but we tried anyway. They seated us, but in one of the secondary dining rooms. Not unpleasant, but not nearly as nice as the Garden Room, with its three walls of windows looking onto the pretty grounds. (That was booked with a private party.)
Any concerns I had about the restaurant's ability to take care of such a full house were released by the arrival of the first course. Oysters Monrepos (after the original name of the house) consisted of two unconventional Rockefellers and Bienvilles, but were quite good. Lentil soup for wife, wedge salad for daughter.
Entrees: the filet mignon for predictable Mary Leigh. Redfish meuniere amandine for Mary Ann, which she found startlingly delicious.
For me, an excellent sirloin strip with demi-glace and bearnaise. That makes two days in a row with sirloin strips for dinner. Is this a dumb reason? I approached the one last night with some eagerness, but wound up eating only half enough. It just wasn't worth finishing. This one was. Now I won't need another for maybe a couple of months.
After we left, Mary Ann said that there was a man on the other side of the room who ignored his wife through the entire dinner and instead stared at me, clearly trying to listen to every word I say. When we were dating, she used to remark that this effect--which I never noticed but she always did--reminded her of commercials for E.F. Hutton. In them, somebody in a crowd would say, "My broker is E.F. Hutton, and . . . " Then all the other people would get quiet and try to tune in to the conversation. I wish my words really did have that kind of worth. On the other hand, E.F. Hutton is only a memory now, and I'm still here.
Annadele’s Plantation. Covington: 71495 Chestnut. 985-809-7669. Creole.
