Edible Memories Day 6: Food and Laughter

My hometown, Lake Charles, is about three hours west of New Orleans. It’s an easy drive on I-10, winding travelers across Louisiana’s southern plain and past towns like Butte la Rose, Henderson, Breaux Bridge, Ramah and LaPlace. My sister and I always started to lose it as the interstate signs announced proximity to Butte la Rose- “Butt la Rose” we’d howl, tears of laughter streaming from our eyes.

As you near Baton Rouge, you have the option to pull off for a stop at Coffee Call. It is always wise to do this because there you can get the best beignets and café au lait outside of New Orleans and Café du Monde. If I’m being honest, and not just nostalgiac, Coffee Call has even better beignets than CdM but let’s just call it a draw for now.

Last time I drove from LC to NOLA, I stopped at Coffee Call and in the parking spot next to me was an old car with a giant statue of the Virgin Mary buckled into the back seat. That is SO Louisiana, I thought, with complete love and joie de vivre.

Even with the sweet treat that is Coffee Call, my favorite part of the drive is cruising across the Atchafalaya freeway which stretches eighteen miles across the Atchafalaya Swamp. The Swamp, also but less romantically known as the Atchafalaya Basin, is a muddy convergence of delta and wetland where gators swim, egrets dive, fisherman putter, and Cypresses, both dead and alive, soar, Spanish moss hanging from their boughs. It is possibly the most gorgeous part of Louisiana; it is one of my favorite sights in all the world.

NOLA is one of a kind, and I love it. Part of my spirit resides there, even though I never have. It would be hard to live more freely –in all senses of that word- than many New Orleanians do. There is mystery and local color around every corner, hundreds-years-old Oaks offering their mighty limbs to the sky but also to the earth, suggesting you sit a spell and rest a while. It’s awfully hot, they seem to say. Sit in my shade.

Mardi Gras beads, caught by branches when tossed high from the floats during the parades, hang in trees year round. Porches so deep you can’t believe it front most homes and make perfect meeting points for early evening cocktails. The sidewalks are gauntlets, so cracked and split they’ve been by the trees determined roots.

Everything is slightly askew and in that, slightly perfect.

My family has a Christmas Eve tradition. It’s not a regular one though I often wish it were. Dressed to the nines, we meet my cousins, aunts, uncles and nieces at Galatoire’s for réveillon. Réveillon hails from French tradition and derives from “waking” or staying awake before Christmas Day. It starts at lunchtime, but lunch is a deceptive moniker because what we actually do is meet at 1p for a lunchtime meal that proceeds to last until dinnertime. I don’t know many cities or restaurants that treasure patrons sitting and eating and drinking for six hours. That is New Orleans and réveillon for you.

The waiters are veterans, they wear tuxedos. The main floor of Galatoire's is one enormous room, with big plate-glass windows looking out over Bourbon Street. The ceilings are so many feet high and twirl with fans circling at a languid pace. The walls are papered in a rich green and gold except for the huge five foot mirrors which cover a band running around the room from roughly hip height. The lights sparkle, bourbon milk punches pour like water.

It’s loud inside Galatoire’s, with laughter and convivial conversation reaching decibel levels and staying there. Everyone is happy, festive, full of seasonal and libational spirit. Kids nosh on baguettes as tall as they are, oysters sit nestled in salted ice, as does a perfect mignonette in a tiny silver bowl.

Soufflé potatoes arrive, all golden and puffed. I can never get enough of them. Shrimp remoulade and crabmeat maison vie for my attention and love. I cheat on one with the other, back and forth, on a heady loop.

Oysters Rockefeller look like spinach-topped presents, and taste even better. There are two types of gumbo, made with a roux so chocolatey brown that you can’t see beneath the surface and you don’t care. What’s in there will be divine.

There’s creamed spinach and Brabant potatoes, trout and red drum, sauce meuniére and amandine.

If you can stomach it, black bottomed pecan pie and eggy bread pudding wait to sate your sweet tooth. Chicory coffee can help cut your feelings of fullness.

All the while, you smile and laugh, clink and toast. Someone’s passed out jingle bells on velvet cord, and everyone’s wearing his or her necklace. Coats have long since been shrugged off, ties loosened, lipstick gone.

The lights never dim and when you finally stagger outside the front door, you can’t believe that the sun has bid you adieu. 

Edible Memories Day 4: Food and Childhood

Nanny was a surprise baby, born when her older sisters, Hilda and Elia, were teenagers. I never knew Elia; she died in her 50s after a fast and furious bout with ovarian cancer. Hilda was my mother’s favorite aunt. She called her Aunt Da, and so, my sister and I did too.

Aunt Da lived on a corner lot near the train tracks. I don’t remember if she was on the good side or the bad side or even if there was such a thing. I didn’t know and didn’t care. She just lived in the old part of town, and my sister, Elia (named after Aunt Da’s sister, of course) and I loved to visit.

Her house was old and creaky. It was the house she’d grown up in. I don’t know for sure, but it appeared to be raised on those flat-topped concrete cones. Was that what held it up so that rainwater could run underneath? Three concrete steps led from the sidewalk to Aunt Da’s front door, and to the right was as screened-in front porch –was it screened, actually? The memories are both vivid and faint.- on which sat four metal chairs, each painted in a different hue. They were colorful and comfortable, and for a decade now, I’ve wished I could find some like them.

Aunt Da let Elia and me take pennies over to the railroad tracks and lay them on the rails. Those rails baked in the hot Louisiana sun all day and glistened with the exertion of doing so. Gingerly, we set our coppers down and then scurried back to the safe, cool, dark confines of Aunt Da’s house.

Her kitchen was at the rear of her home, abutting the back yard. The yard where Nanny broke her back when she was little, falling off the swing and landing spine-down on the edge of the sandbox. If you looked out of the back door, you’d see a magical garden: ancient Amaryllis shooting thick and strong from the earth; a whole fence covered in Dr. van Fleets, the most beautiful, delicate climbing rose I’ve ever seen.

When Aunt Da died, Mom took some bulbs and clippings, and now most everyone has the descendants in their own yards. I love the idea of the bulbs reproducing underground, generously sharing of themselves in the ways Aunt Da always did.

She was a tremendous cook. An old-school Louisiana woman who knew what to do with flour, sugar, butter, beans and drippings. God, I can still taste her butter beans, each one big as a thumb and so tender I couldn’t understand how it hadn’t fallen apart. How did it retain its oval shape, still with the tiny embryo clinging to one side? They were soft, velvety, utterly and unabashedly beany. They tasted faintly of onions and bacon but mostly of the earth. I imagine that’s exactly what a butter bean is supposed to taste like.

After the train roared by, my sister and I would run to the tracks to fetch our pennies-now-pancakes, copper disks smooth and shiny as a water’s reflection on a sunny day. They were oval-shaped, like those butter beans, and still warm from all they’d endured. Treasures. Each one.

When we got sweaty, from too much play or from the simple fact of living in Louisiana and being in a home without central air, Aunt Da would clear off her sink and surrounding counter and tell me to jump up. I’d lay down and tip my head into the deep basin of her sink, just as the cool water began to run.

Aunt Da believed in Prell shampoo rinsed clean with cold water and white vinegar. Even though her hands were gnarled with arthritis, they were strong and the skin unbelievably smooth. She’d massage the fluorescent green Prell into my hair and scalp, and I’d close my eyes and take it all in.

Suds, vinegar, bacon, beans, her tea cakes or maybe a French Silk pie.

My dad and I loved that pie. Like the fudge his patient always made him at Christmastime, the French silk pie is not for the faint of heart. It is rich and creamy, and it is sublime. Eggs, melted Ghirardelli, Cool Whip and our family pie crust. It’ll bring you to your knees.

Years ago, so long after I was a child, the taste memory of that pie coursed over me suddenly, like the train over the pennies, like the cold water through my hair. I called Nanan, which is what I call Aunt Da’s daughter, and said, “Nanan, do you have Aunt Da’s French Silk recipe?”

She found Aunt Da’s old cookbooks which are really just journals with recipes written out in Aunt Da’s scratchy hand and sent me the prize. That very day, I made the pie and with the first bite was transported back to that old house near the tracks from which good smells always emanated, where flowers always seemed to bloom, and where a wonderful old woman waited to hug us tight, wash our hair and feed us well.

I think it's called fried

Oh man, y'all. I am struggling. My body is a million silent screams pleading for quiet. Begging for the questions and demands and narration and bicker to just stop. We have been blessed, this holiday, with the most glorious weather. With family and friends, good food and movie-watching, laughter and a Christmas tree.

But.

The omnipresent "but." That lurker extraordinaire. That nugget of grim reality in even the shiniest of lives. That weighty ball that just can't always be kicked to the curb. 

This is hard, this parenting thing. On Thanksgiving, as several members of my extended family leaned across a kitchen counter, and we talked about a cousin's new baby, I recounted a story from Jack's early months.

One night, he must have been four or five months old, Tom and I had gotten him to sleep and were downstairs relaxing. Tom said, "Honey, wanna walk to Ben & Jerry's and get some ice cream?" And I thought the following: 
How lovely
and
Clearly, he is not cut out for fatherhood because we have a baby sleeping upstairs. 

What once welcomed spontaneity now required a babysitter or at least the daylight hours other than the work and nap ones, of course. And such has so often been the case for the nine years since. 

Mostly, this is swell. It's not like we ever said, "We'll have kids and nothing will change." Because that's malarkey, plain and simple. And neither of us are delusional. And we happen to like our children.

But sometimes, after you give and give and wipe and feed and listen and bandage and read and bathe, you just really want everyone and everything to shut the eff up. For real. Total quiet. Like you all took a vow of silence and meant it.

Sadly, thinking that's possible is too often the damn delusion. 

Because you probably have not only children but also a goddamn dog. Who is as needy as any child ever was.

Said dog is aging and getting mouthy in his years. Barks are for everything now, not just the mail carrier and others who approach your front door. No. Barks for cartoon dogs, real dogs, animals on TV who resemble dogs, animals on TV who do not appear to resemble dogs, hunger (real or imagined), the times you don't get to the porch door before dog's first bark has finished reverberating (you slow, slothlike, shitty dog owner!). Dog is never too tired to bark. No sir. Never. And if you put him downstairs, he will pee on your couch with pissy abandon.

These are reasons #902 and 903 that Percy is our first and last dog. And why I do not recommend having both dogs and kids. Unless you hate silence and never want it in your midst.

Sometimes I think, If I can't beat 'em, I might as well join them. So I'll turn on the music for a dance party -loud enough to drown Percy's inevitable barking because he hates things like other people dancing and hugging which tend to happen when music is played- and not four minutes later I'm panting and exhausted because people, please. I have been up since 6am and haven't sat or stopped doing since then. I don't feel like dancing. Don't feel like noise. And Percy becomes downright certifiable. 

Is it any surprise that I find such comfort in my cat? My sweet purring independent kitty who is quiet 98% of the time and tends to put his bum in Percy's face. That guy is my dream come true. He is no nonsense to the max. He just wants a morning snuggle (awesome), some food (understandable), and plenty of time to prowl the alley (whatever).

It is not any surprise to me.

And so, as this "vacation" comes to a close, I wait for Monday, as I so often do, with unbridled joy and anticipation.

I will release my screams into the vacuum of an empty home and then I'll sit in front of my sparkling Christmas tree and think about Oliver saying "Oh man, this tree makes me so happy!" and smile over his happy outlook on life.

 I'll look at the Periodic Table ornament Jack painstakingly crafted from so many individual Perler beads and appreciate his dexterity and curiosity.

I will brush the cat and walk the dog and distribute the folded laundry and make muffins to refill the freezer store. 

The stereo will remain quiet. Natural lighting will suffice. And I will join myself in peace and replenish as best I can.