Sunday, April 15, 2012.
Shuck 'n' Jive Expands.
I update the NOMenu.com list of all respectable, open restaurants every week. Once a year, I go through it carefully, checking all the listings to make sure they're open, and scouring all the directories I can find for open restaurants I don't know about. This is a project that takes weeks. I spent far too much time with it today, although that resulted in a net increase of nine restaurants on the list.
Mary Ann's first book, The Suzie Homemaker Chronicles, will roll off the press tomorrow. The printer--which acts more like a publisher than other printers I've used over the years--is taking orders for immediate shipment. Mary Ann's sister Colleen bought the first one. My current involvement with the project is getting MA's blog started. I nailed down the web address, but MA insists that Jude take over from there. I wonder how many books I need to publish (I've done sixteen) and web pages I need to build (around 4,800 so far) before my wife considers me competent.
Or, this could be a hard-wired, genetic survival mechanism. Men tend to disappear before women are entirely through with them. (Reading this a second time, I'm struck by how many levels this is true.) Women need to feel (and be) capable of handling life without male assistance. That's also a basic tenet of feminism. Ironically, at the rational level, I support feminist values, and Mary Ann rejects them.
Late lunch at Shuck-N-Jive, the excellent new seafood house in Mandeville. We learned that they're about to add a seafood market onto the restaurant, with not only the usual crustaceans but also fresh fish. I hope it does well. Fish retailers are the big missing piece of the New Orleans area food marketplace.
We started with three medium-size but very fat crabs. There was so much fat in these that our fingers felts as if they were covered with Crisco. We agreed that the amount of work expended in picking crabs is not equaled by the calories from eating them. If you eat nothing but crabs, you will lose weight. Nice way to reduce.
Now a half-dozen oysters of monstrous size. Not especially salty, due to the tropical downpours of recent weeks, but certainly good enough. I followed that with a fried oyster poor boy, with the same corpulent oysters. I've been thinking lately that an oyster loaf would be better with smaller oysters. I will ask for those next time and see whether that's true.
Mary Ann's entree was a single soft-shell crab, instead of the two that the restaurant would ordinarily serve. Nice, with spicy boiled red potatoes on the side. These guys are good.
Shuck-N-Jive. Mandeville: 643 Lotus Dr. 985-626-1534.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
