Saturday, December 31, 2016.
The Traditionally Quiet New Year's Eve.
The Marys spend the day in town and don't come home after they drop off Jude and his family at the airport. The three of us, then, have less-than-jolly New Years Eves. I manage to make the television work (I turn it on only very occasionally), and I watch the continuance of Dick Clark's New Year's Rocking Eve. That's pretty good, to have one's name live on after something as ephemeral as a television show. Part of the broadcast originates from New Orleans, but it's hampered by the severe rainstorms the weather guys have been promising for days. I am away from the two women in my life, and they from me. But who cares anymore?
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Sunday, January 1, 2017.
Not Much To Eat On New Year's Day.
The new year begins on the same lonely note with which the last day of the old one ends. This will not go down as one of my better years. Too many changes for my taste. And a few failures. On the other hand, when I think about it all, it seems more a case of underestimating what could not be called disastrous days.
There is one thing that I think should trouble a guy who does what I do for a living. I have a feeling that the thrills of dining and cooking do not bring as much pleasure to people who are about Jude's and Mary Leigh's ages. Since they are the ones who set the vogues and standards, this may take a lot of the fun out of the food world. I've written a few pieces about that, and I'm not the first or the only one. Somehow, there's just not a lot of pleasure in being informed as to what strain of lettuce leaf from which nearby organic farm is being used in making the micro-herb salad with the three grape-size heirloom tomatoes.
Food that makes me laugh (not with it but at it) has a way of failing to be delicious.
It's raining so hard as the clock passes Midnight Central Standard Time that the usual attack of fireworks from all around the Cool Water Range is barely whimpering. You can't tell whether the explosions are from the Black Cat arsenals or are bolts of lighting. There are many of the latter, some of them so loud that one wonders whether the house has moved off it foundation.
Sometime around two in the morning the power goes out as another wave of tornado warnings pass over us. Things are very quiet after that. But somehow the Cool Water Ranch's power returns after just a few seconds. It's the neighbors who have to turn on their generators. It's usually the other way around. I'll take that as a good sign for the coming year.
After I sing at St. Jane's, I get in contact with Mary Ann, who is on her way home from the south shore. We attempt to find a place to have a breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner, and discover that this is one of those days when only the chain restaurants are in operation. I am forced to go to MA's favorite eatery: the consarned Chimes. Sometimes I think she would eat there every day if she could. I have the Pontchartrain eggs from the brunch menu, one of the better parts of the Chimes' usually-mediocre offering. I begin with a cup of their crawfish soup, which is too rich.
We eat hearty because there is no place else to go.I might even be forced to cook later.
