strawberry napoleons, mint juleps and recipes that work

We spent the last 3 days listening to rain coming in waves along with a lot of lightning and rolling thunder. Most came at night near daybreak and probably meant a lot of less than regular sleep patterns here.
In the Quarter, I hear the rain on the top of the Persian palms in my courtyard and with the old style gutter action, the rain moves quickly towards the street. But even with the efficient and shielded space, I awoke every night and so spent more time reading and writing and even turning the tv on one night to watch WDSU's weather lady Margaret Orr, who is not at her best at 4 am.
So, I have read a few more books that usual and have updated my GoodReads page and will have more soon.
On the subject of books, I am about to embark on a viral marketing campaign for the Crescent City Farmers Market Cookbook so we can spread the word about the book Poppy Tooker wrote and says about "It'll make you cry without the onions." A great story is finally recorded in her pages with 125 recipes that work too.

And, related to local books: this Friday kicked off my favorite festival in the area. Tennessee Williams Literary Festival is fun because it has mint juleps, local writers, nationally known writers, publishing figures and the Stellaaaaaa shouting contest to close it off. Saw 3 great workshops today, one on Flannery O' Connor, another on Southern Gothic, third on publishing. Second set of panelists agreed that Southern Grotesque was a better description and the best quote from this was "the difference between Gothic (Hawthorne, Melville) and Southern Grotesque is the addition of poverty and isolation". Or SG described as fables with "excruciating characters".

O'Connor panel, best quotes and comments:

"she spent her later life on family dairy farm in town that was home to the world's largest insane asylum."
"She believed in being Christ haunted."
as for biographies of her: "none will be written because lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make for good copy."
She was filmed by Pathe Films at age 5 teaching her chickens to walk backward.
Had 39 peacocks at one time and sometimes reported they all opened their plumage at once.
Said celebrity made her feel like "a cross between Roy Rogers horse and Miss Watermelon 1955."
She remains relevant because although a traditional Southerner, she was acutely aware of modern life. She was offended by the comfortable quality of modern life and wanted to shake us with shock and irony.
Best not to be at ease in this life, but to move to a state of grace for the next (as a Catholic)

Perversely said "Southern was just an accent in her work."

as a teenage, father died of lupus (as she would) and wrote in her journal about his death:
the reality of death...has broken our complacency like a bullet in the side."

She remained committed to the idea that violence recalibrates modern people like nothing else.

A friend said of her "she was looking down the barrel of the misfit's gun herself."

as for publishers and books panels, these things were best:
author Bev Marshall as moderator, fun.
Muriel's upstairs room, because you have to go up the stairs with the spectral sound of music piped in only on the stairs and the chairs were comfortable, unlike the Bourbon Orleans ballroom from earlier in the day.

agent Liza Dawson: "any day I get an offer (for one of her authors) is a good day"

editor Dan Menecker: "it's all a crapshoot. It's not a rational decision. If I read it and I like it, I'll buy it."

2 out of 3 books fail financially.

Do your research on your genre in bookstore and online. Spend time yourself figuring out how and who to sell your book, not just the publishing house's responsibility.

More time on internet, less time on tour.

On the way home from the festival, it seemed appropriate to buy a strawberry napoleon at Croissant D'or. And tomorrow, we'll see Poppy, Sara and Elsa talk about food in New Orleans, and watch the prelims of the shouting contest.

Azaleas, cats and Clay

It has been a glorious weekend here. Weather is in the 70s, sunny-and the widely unknown news for folks outside of the city-humidity is not an issue over late fall, winter and early spring. Our spring may not be one of surprise like snow-covered areas, but it is lovely nonetheless. Here, bougainvillea, azaleas, citrus trees, maple trees, magnolia trees are starting to bloom and pink, yellow, purple and orange seems to be everywhere.
I think the Quarter architecture also blooms in spring; it seems to know it's on show and that the Carnival season that keeps it going all night is done, so it can relax a bit.
With this season, I watch more tourists than other seasons stop in mid street or walk as in a trance toward something when they glimpse a door or a balcony or a slate roof that they find beautiful and unique.
I also have been stopping to admire unique things, and also have been thinking about some of those that I hear about:

The two elementary schools that exist here. One is a public school and one a Catholic. My friend Casey has shared his part of St. Louis Cathedral school where, from his next door apartment, he hears the Mother Superior ring her old school bell at the front gate. That bell calls the children inside and she probably hopes it calls to Casey to tsk about his late nights...
The public school is a good charter red schoolhouse, and has a very lively welcome every morning. Teachers stand on the street welcoming parents and children as they arrive. Sometimes kids run into the coffee house across the street for a hot chocolate or sometimes coffee before they come. Coffee is an all ages thing here...

The skill of locking a bike to something correctly, so you can come back to find both wheels still on. When I was a teenager, the well-organized Quarter bike thieves carefully chipped away at the concrete holding the poles down and then put the poles back in the hole as if they were solid. Once you locked a bike to one, they would simply lift the pole and take the bike. Now, they just take wheels like everywhere else.

Finding my friend Roger's old house on Saint Ann. One day, I realized I was looking at his old house and wondering how he would like the colors the new owners had chosen. Well, he might have winced a bit....

Discussing a new vegetarian restaurant with my neighbor. "Yes they deliver", answering the question after every Quarter restaurant discussion. Delivery is wide spread, from stores to restaurants to bars (at least ones I used to I know about)...

Realizing more and more how many empty or unused apartments are in the Pontalba. These are the country's oldest apartment buildings, designed and built by Baroness Pontalba and now owned by the State Museum on one side and the state on the other. Can I tell you that many nights I have looked up on both sides and seen a single light shining? one apartment. Even during Mardi Gras. Those apartments should be given to an appropriate mix of incomes and professions to maintain their activity, not allowed to be used by city officials on fireworks night or not at all.

Interestingly, the Square that they guard is so full of life and regular activity that is seems like it is in another country entirely. As I live half a block from it, I pass it many times a day and almost never find it empty. I mean I might have seen one or two times that no one was there.
Churchgoers, workers, tarot readers, painters, homeless, tourists, hawkers (like the guy dressed in sports mascot regalia being photographed for a commercial and handing out flyers), folk passing from lower to upper Chartres and the reverse, street cleaners, pigeons, dogs and, of course, the magical cats of the inner square.
As many regulars know, after hours the park around Andy Jackson is locked, and as soon as that happens and dusk falls, dozens of cats creep out and climb through the gates to mingle in their own version of the kegger. You see groups of cats wherever you look in there. They look back without fear or interest really, knowing you cannot invade their place. Spooky and lovely at the same time.

And the last thing that strikes me this week is: how few people know about Clay Shaw anymore. I know his story from aforementioned Roger and the debatable Oliver Stone version in the movie JFK; what matters is this plaque that remains from his friends in one of the loveliest buildings in my current neighborhood:


Whatever else this Quarter is, it certainly holds a lot of admirable stories.

ginger fish recipe

Sea Bream Surprise
(Your guests will never guess)

courtesy of Sarah Rath, Organizer of Food Corps of America

Ingredients

handful chopped shallots (or onion)
handful minced ginger
butter
32 oz jar “good” sauerkraut, drained
2 T sugar
1 bay leaf
1 c cream
handful chopped pickled ginger (reserve juice)
2 large sea bream or whitefish filets
about 2 lbs red potatoes

Process
1. Boil potatoes 15-25 minutes depending upon size. Dry in pot over flame without water, shaking them so the steam gets out, about 30 seconds.
2. Saute shalots and ginger in butter. Add sugar, sauerkraut bayleaf, 2 cups water and cream and simer for about an hour over a low flame.
3. Add the pickled ginger and line the bottom of baking dish with half the mixture. Arrange the fish over the saurkraut. Circle the edges of the dish with the potatoes and cover with remaining sauerkraut.
4. Bake in a moderate oven... 350 until fish is just cooked through.
when ready, add salt to taste and let the liquids cook off before removing from the heat.

Do you Vieux?

I sit typing while in my courtyard under the neighbor's balcony, while the first real rain since before Mardi Gras falls on the plants. I know that because I still have chalk remnants of the Mardi Gras sign I put on the ground..
I am about to get back to work on this blog and so, for me, start the next part of our life here in New Orleans.

What I mean by that is we here feel we are just coming out of our sorrow and shock and now are on the next wave of our city's rebirth.
Much is left to be done, but we know how what we have lost will stay with us, has stayed with us. Our friends lost to water and relocation are still our friends and we make new ones with those who come to help resettle; all of this is now much clearer, 3 years later, so we can sometimes even raise our eyes to other issues.
We also know now that we did not lose our center, our treasures, so can put our minds on play, and on new enterprises. Those new enterprises will be discussed here and my unease with some will also be displayed. Do send me an email if you have your own issues you want to discuss here...

As I mentioned in my last post, I decided to look for an interim apartment while struggling with finding proper financing for building my house (more on that LATER- much more).
I found the best answer for me in my old haunt of the French Quarter. Something in my price range, something in my type of walking, human-scaled village. Great landlady and space.

I am attaching a few pics of some of my favorite moments so far here on Saint Ann. I will say that being here in the old city, I am again taken by two things:

1. The many separate, but sometimes overlapping social circles found on these 120 blocks. Service people bars, wealthy lower Quarter parties, dog owner groups on the Riverwalk, underground and criminal elements, schoolchildren and their parents, business owners watching, thinking and talking obsessively to their customers and neighbors, late night groups, including the fascinating ghost tours and many more.

2. How other New Orleanians view with distaste, with pride and or with ignorance- this old city and how they use it, or refuse to use it. I have friends who cannot bring themselves to come in the Quarter, how others have made it to so much more since I have been here, and what people say to me when they find out I am in the Quarter. Is this village the perfect microcosm for studying urban life, gentrification, crime and small business?

stay tuned...

another day in the Quarter with the Disney cleaning service
barkus from home
fog on river while walking Maddie, the cartoon dog