Elmo, 1994-2009

We lost little Elmo today, after years of him cheerfully enduring and ignoring major health problems - diabetes, thyroid malfunction, and a tumor. The tumor returned in force, and that is probably the culprit, along with no longer being able to regulate his insulin well enough.

He was a fun guy, a real pal. We joked that Elmo was a proactive patient, very involved in his health care. He'd come yell at us when it was time for his insulin shot. He was demanding and cranky at times, and we enjoyed that about him.

When we picked him out at the SPCA 15 years ago this summer, he was lank and tiny, like a washrag with a ping-pong ball-sized head. He had a little croupy cold and the attendant shook him at us and said, "This one doesn't come with a health guarantee!" Indeed, not. But he rallied, and became big and healthy.

He and his partner, Scat, whom we brought home from the SPCA that same day, once chased a pack of three rogue pit bulls who'd tried to venture onto our porch. We know because we ran out on the porch in response to the high-pitched wails and screams of the dogs as they ran down the street.

Elmo was calm and sweet on our evacuations these past few years, putting up with all manner of inconvenience and disruption.

He liked to lay in Cherry's arms while she rubbed his tummy. He enjoyed running through the house and crying the hunting song cats make. He liked sitting on the warm bricks of the patio and getting a little sun. And he loved to eat anything tasty. A little thin-sliced ham was his favorite treat, and he'd smack you if you weren't delivering it quickly enough. He ate a slice today, before succumbing to a seizure.

Elmo died in Cherry's arms, getting a belly rub, already made comfortable with fluids and valium, unafraid and knowing he was the center of the universe. Just another day.

God bless you, Little Elmo. You gave us good friendship and love, and made every day in your company joyful.


Scat and Elmo


PeeWee and Elmo form "a sullen alliance," tolerating and ignoring one another. (photo and comment by Cherry, earlier this week.)

Perfect Place

It hit me over a dozen cold, clean oysters in the Quarter today, that I was well into a perfect 24 hours in New Orleans.

Yesterday afternoon and early evening offered a ride down Highway 90 and over on 308 to Thibodaux, for a visit with the old men and dinner at Spahr's. The seafood gumbo and fried oysters on a bun were, as always, wonderful.

Highway 308 is beautiful in the daylight, with Bayou Lafourche on one side and old houses backed by cane fields on the other. But it's a twisty stretch and known to be treacherous. On the way back, the rain had made it wet and we had to turn around and cross the bayou when we came up on a wreck that looked like it would take a long time to clear from the two-lane blacktop.

That was precursor to the storms that have continued through the night and into today. I sat up until 1:30, waiting for a tornado warning to pass. It was extended instead, and I slept uneasily all night. But for two hours I watched a screen filled with little curving arrows indicating "circulation" -- tornados! -- and clusters of white lightning bolts, all against blobs of red and green that mark the degree of storm and level of rain, stretched across a map encompassing Southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. I give big props to Margaret Orr, the only weather caster in the City to track this big storm through the night.

Here in our house we call her Mary Margaret Orr, remembering her many years back, losing her composure a bit and urging us all to run for our lives as Georges approached. By the time of Ike, she'd gained gravitas and poise, and now she's our elder weather stateswoman, as worthy a successor to Nash Roberts as we have. But when the hurricane is closing in, it appears that she accessorizes with progressively larger crucifix-wear, and hence, she becomes Mary Margaret.

It continued raining today, but with less drama, and we headed to the Quarter for the first of several events we'll enjoy at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival. We parked in our favorite lot, on Toulouse between Chartres and Decatur, and reminded ourselves to stop and take in the things we love, as we scrutinized and photographed the old walls backing onto the lot. Then, a quick lunch before masterclass with John Berendt, whose work "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" we'd both loved.

His teaching was on place, and it was appropriate. He quoted Wendell Barry, saying "If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are." I know that of all the places I've lived, I am what New Orleans has made me.

Sitting in the cafe, with its full-length doors open to the Quarter sidewalks and the rain punctuating the conversations drifting around the room, I tucked into a stellar platter of oysters. They came on a bed of ice, just as cold as they could be. The schucker had cleaned them well, and the purple and white shells sparkled against the shine of the ice.




I can't imagine living anywhere else.

Oyster Bliss

I had an envie for oysters last night and persuaded myself to buy two dozen from Whole Foods, at 49¢ each. That's less than the average at an oyster bar, except for Wednesday nights at Jaeger's. And though I did a pretty good job shucking them, I worked up a sweat over just those 24 ersters. I don't think anyone would want me behind the oyster bar on cheap oyster night.

Possibly the best gumbo I've ever made

Top Chef came to New Orleans and the contestants of course had to make gumbo. One chose duck and andouille, and that made me think that I'd never done a duck gumbo. So over Mardi Gras I picked up a duck, some andouille and a pint of good P&J oysters.








The duck was the wild card and I found several recommendations on how to prepare it - boil it in a stock, braise it. I don't like the current practice of serving duck medium rare, so after quartering the duck, I braised it, put it on the rack in a roasting pan with celery and onion, and roasted it for an hour. I deglazed that pan and put the duck and juices in a stock pot with celery, onion, fresh bay, s&p, and let that turn into a wonderful stock that I then kept overnight.





The next day, I prepared my creole mirapois (the holy trinity): onions, celery, and peppers, along with some garlic and the andouille.





And prepared a roux. It turned out to be the best roux I've made in many years, probably since I was cooking professionally. I stirred it for 45 minutes, until it would simply get no darker.









The duck stock was warming on another burner the whole time, and it drove Peewee crazy. Please give me the duck! I want the duck.



Once the roux hit a deep, dark brick red, I took it off the fire and added a cup of trinity. It went a shade darker, to deep brown, as the vegetables practically melted into the Cajun napalm.






After that, it all came together nicely. I strained and ladeled in warm stock, added the rest of the vegetables and sausage, the shredded duck.



While that simmered for an hour or so, I made rice and yams, and finally added the oysters.



The final product (don't forget the filé on top!)

Muses Never Fails to Awe Me

Warren Easton High School Band
Lady Godivas

Xavier Girls' Prep - the Fighting Yellowjackets!
Shiny and Blue
LED Pump.

Flambeaux.
Marine Corps Band, playing "Halls of Montezuma"

Krewe du Vieux Takes on the Stimulus Package

Winter is Seafood Season

I splurged on good, jumbo lump blue crab meat from the Gulf tonight. $25 for a pound, but it was worth it. We enjoyed it on a salad of mache, romaine and shaved fennel, with celery, green onions and tomato. Remoulade topped it off. There are a few nice Gulf shrimp in there, too. Boiled in Zatarains, of course.

All because its Carnival Time!

Every year, the elementary school a block away does a practice run for their Mardi Gras marching. I was grading papers and C. was working but we managed to make it out to the porch and enjoy the marching band, and the kids in costumes throwing beads.


It's become a harbinger of Carnival for us; a normal work day suddenly includes the sound of horns and drums in the distance. Voices add to the mix, then the sound of lots of feet. It's a gift! Carnival comes right to us.

A good season in New Orleans

Shopping a week ago and saw this sign of the times - lemons, potatoes, garlic and Zatarains. Time to eat crawfish.

Shrimp and Grits

This isn't a traditional New Orleans dish, but I always enjoy it. I tried Paula Deen's recipe, and liked it. It has a lemony flavor. Next time, I'll try a South Carolina recipe.

2009 begins and with it, new interests

Today we bought some new cookware. It strikes me as a good start to a new year, and I think I will write about it in the coming months.

Yes, it is mundane. Banal even? But of great importance to me.

We live in one of the most diverse and pleasing culinary environments in the world, New Orleans. Here in the kitchen of our rented shotgun, we've created many wonderful meals. But there's never a shortage of places to go or call for equally fine food; for a long while, with my teaching and C's work, we've turned to that option far too often. In 2008, with its leaner times, I started once again to cook more frequently at home. It's been satisfying, and along the way, I've extended my repertoire. Sometime in the past few months, I started to really hanker for a Le Creusset pan, maybe two. I wanted to experience the enamel-coated surface; I love cast iron, but sometimes am dissatisfied with the taste and color it can impart to food. This was an idle wish; at $250 a pot on average, I could not justify the expense.

Last night, we enjoyed a good etouffe prepared by our friend LB, and while helping her do dishes afterwards, I was taken aback by the big, red, enamel pot on the stove. Wow! You got Le Creusset for Christmas! But no, not at all. It turns out Martha Stewart has taken on the French cookware giant and produced a challenger, a fine example of heavy-weight, well-made enameled cookware priced for the reality of this economy, made available to lower-middle-class me. Oh boy. And it's on sale, to boot. Oh wow.

C and I discussed it and I hightailed it to Macy's today, returning with three pieces: a 7-qt. round casserole, a 5.5 round casserole, and a little 1.5 qt. stone bakeware pot, all for about $135.

Tonight I made blackeyed peas and cabbage with bacon in the two big pots. It was a fine way to start the year. I found quickly that I have to use a low fire; the heat circulates beautifully, and efficiently. The mirapois for the blackeyed peas came out perfectly, and while it has no bearing on the flavor, looked pretty against the creamy enamel coating.

I plan to explore the possibilities of these new additions to my kitchen over the coming months. If good things come out of this, I'll include them here, with pictures (don't know why I didn't do that tonight, but there you go. This is free-form, not a regimen.)

Note to myself: Happy New Year. Make it count.

Things I've Cooked and Photographed with my iPhone

This is an okra gumbo with chicken, andouille (a smoked sausage) and tasso (smoked ham). My friend went upriver to LaPlace this week and brought me the meats from Jacob's (I think). Jason Perlow, on his Off the Broiler blog, has a wonderful pictorial journey through the story of andouille, a Cajun version of the French sausage, developed via French and German settlers in Louisiana.

This gumbo has no roux, so it's got a thin texture. Okra is the thickening agent. Traditionally, one should not add file to an okra gumbo, but we're not traditionalists. We'll sprinkle it in when we serve it.

I tried something new, and steamed several small yams right in the gumbo as it cooked. Gumbo isn't one thing, it's got many facets. There are many gumbos in this world, and that makes the world all the better. There are Creole gumbos and Cajun gumbos, and gumbos made by people like me, who pick and choose from all the options as we like.

Some Cajuns like to eat their gumbo with boiled eggs right in the bowl. I've never done that. But from my sweetie I learned to smash up a small yam in the bowl, with the gumbo and rice. That's my favorite way to eat it now. I'm leaving this in the fridge overnight before serving it. Gumbo's always best the next day.




This is my butternut squash soup, with a slice of bread I made, using the easy, no-knead recipe from the New York Times' Minimalist column. The soup starts with roasted squash, an apple, onion, celery and carrot, bay leaf, fresh thyme, salt, pepper and stock (veggie or chicke.) Remove the herb stalks and blend it up for a soup base - it freezes wonderfully. You can thin that with stock, or with buttermilk. In this bowl, there's a little Bulgarian yogurt, some red pepper flakes and chopped thyme on top. Wow. Good.



Fresh white Gulf Shrimp, in August, from the shrimp guy who drives down my block and delivers 5 lb. bags to our houses. I think this became a Cuban Shrimp Creole - onions, peppers, shrimp, cilantro, garlic, fresh oregano, San Marzano tomatoes - yep, that's what happened here. I served it atop sauteed plantains - Balseros, or rafters - the shrimp atop the plantain evokes the Cubans who brave the crossing on their jerry-rigged rafts, hoping to reach Florida safely.



Making a vodka-tomato pasta sauce - the best part is flaming the vodka. This one starts with shallots and sliced Roma tomatoes (roast them, peel them, and seed them first). Use a shot glass to put in the vodka, let it flame, then add and reduce some cream.

Korean short ribs (kalbi) on the grill. They're amazing - use this recipe from NPR :

- it includes instructions on how to get your butcher to cut the ribs. But if you have an Asian market in town, with a meat section, then quickly, go there and get some ribs and cook 'em up!


Sweet pumpkin curry, bok choy and naan, with a little yogurt raita on top.

I'm still all about my ipod

Since I last posted on this blog, which is of no interest to anyone but me, I got a new iPod - a gift from my sweetheart. It's white, and holds what, 160 gb? I use it for lots and lots of music, but also as an excellent little USB hard drive. It holds Symantec Ghost so I can create and load disk images. It has backups of all the little software tools for Mac and PC that I need to do tech support for the computer classrooms in my department. We teach composition, tech writing, advanced rhetoric and some non-fiction courses in these classrooms. So that little 'pod is a real workhorse, with great taste in music.

With iPod taking a new, and practical, role in my life, I saw no reason not to have more than one. I had reason to want video, so I got a video iPod - black, 80 gb. Also chock full o'music, but now, with video downloads from iTunes.

It's been awhile since I posted, so, yes, there's more. My iPhone. I don't use it for music or videos. It's my camera, my organizer (I owned two Palm Pilots and never was able to use either effectively), my email and browser away from a desk. I lied about music, sort of - I run a line from its earphone jack to the auxiliary input on my car's deck and voila, Pandora while I drive. That's cool.

I like many of the new apps, but right now I'm grooving on Stanza. It's great - I'm re-reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Trilogy tiny page by tiny page.

But the crappy little camera is really making me happy. I'll be posting pictures here now, as a little journal of my life in New Orleans.

It's the all-in-oneness that's so good.

States I've Visted with my iPod

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

States I've visited

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

I've created Pod-loss fear; sorry.

Tonight I learned my good friend has developed fear of Pod loss, after I shared my story at a party a few weeks back.

But it's the very unthinkableness of losing the iPod that has me flummoxed and in stasis. People don't lose iPods easily. I'm unable to explain how I did. I don't want her to be anxious. This is blue moon territory. If she's less happy with her iPod now, I'm unhappy about that, and terribly sorry to have brought that fear to her.

If I had my iPod, I'd make an on-the-go playlist of songs about regrets and loss. But as you know...

Before the iPod

I used to run my iBook through my car stereo. Today I returned to this practice. I couldn't resist. I'd done a little bantering on a blog I like with another commenter, and the topic turned to 80s music (it started with a story on the Weezer lead singer going to Harvard). Had I not LOST MY IPOD, I'd have served myself a hearty 80s playlist on my drive through the post-levee failure badlands to UNO. I settled for shuffling what was on my iBook, in iTunes. It was nice and loud.

Wrap your iPod in something warm

I came across a row of little iPod and Treo cases on C's bookshelf. They accumulate.

For the longest time, I kept my iPod in the black case that it came with. I liked the weight of it, and that the iPod slips nicely into the top. I had to remove it to use it, but that didn't seem an inconvenience. It was sleek.

I bought a different case only once, and that was what it was wearing when I lost my iPod. This one was bulkier. The iPod slipped into a sheath, with its control wheel exposed, and a plasticine window protected its screen. A cover then folded over and snapped behind, like a purse almost. Wearing this, the iPod never fit as neatly into my pocket as it did in its Apple-designed case.

C likes containers. She likes little bags and sacks, traveling cases, purses and backpacks, all sorts of containers. She's had more iPod cases than I've had. I like her current one, a sort of peachy-orange leather sheath.

D has the cutest little pink iPod. Before he bought the pink plastic case, it was a lovely, but ordinary iPod. Now it couldn't be cuter, or pinker.

P, I discovered only this weekend, has a VIDEO IPOD! Wow. She keeps it in a wonderful blue cover that doesn't expose the wheel. The case itself has the texture of the wheel made into it, and your touch works through it. Nice.

When I get a new iPod (too painful to think about right now) I shall return to the original case, if it fits.

But more importantly

I just want to blog about my iPod.

My honey bought me an iPod three years ago. Since then, I've upgraded it twice, and had the 60gb photo iPod. Everytime I picked up my little pod, I thought sweetly of my beloved. Never have I had a better present. Those of you who've given me presents, don't take offense. I love presents, and every present I've ever had was good. Even the plastic monkey and jar of off-brand peanuts that my dad gave me for my 19th Christmas. (He always waited until Christmas Eve around 6 pm to go to the TG&Y and grab the last thing off the shelf.) That monkey and the peanuts weren't good at the time. But he'd dead now, so it's a good memory. At the time, it was totally WTF? Sorry, I lost track.

How did I lose track of my iPod? I think it fell out of my car when I grabbed my jacket off the seat. Or worse, maybe I sat it down while I was administering an exam to a large group of students (not my own!) and some sad, podless person took mine. Could that have happened?

In the car, I'd plug my iPod into the stereo auxiliary line-in, and hit "shuffle songs." I hit fast-forward a lot. I had a lot of crap on my iPod. I tried to remember to mark the really crappy stuff in an on-the-go list. But fast-forward is easier.

I had pictures in my iPod. Pictures of my girl, pictures of my pets, pictures of my family and friends. Pictures of tattoos designs I'd like to get.

I like to listen to loud disco in my car. I didn't like disco as much when I was growing up in the 70s. Something about its big loud and proud queerness appeals to me now. If I'm driving up to my house when Gloria Estefan comes on singing "Turn the Beat Around" or Sylvester is making me feel mighty real, I keep driving, around the block, to finish up.

I like loud bluegrass, too. The Louvin Brothers tribute makes me want to drive and drive.

I'm not that silhouette person with the white earbuds. I'm 800-watt amp and subwoofer in the trunk iPod person. When I first got my iPod, I went to my car, plugged it in, and turned on "Tomorrow Never Knows." Perfect.

Before I got my iPod, I would drive around with my little 12" iBook lined in to the stereo. That was fun. I had a little trippy screensaver, and my front seat felt like my own little audio-visual escape. I will return to this practice while I figure out what's next. That's cool.

I lost my iPod

I

lost

my

iPod.