July, 2009

Broadening my Louisiana life experience, I met some reporter friends in Houma to go crabbing. What’s crabbing? You go fishing and come back with fish. You go crabbing and come back with crabs.

The process is pretty simple. Find some water. Tie a string to the dock or a stick or other object that won’t move much. Tie a piece of meat on the other end of the string (we used chicken necks.) Throw the line in the water. When a crab grabs on, pull the string into shore and scoop up the crab with a small net.

That last step is the hardest and even though we had several lines out, the crabs were not biting and holding on.

(It’s important to keep them alive. Ours got a little stunned by the coldness of the ice chest. They were alive, but more paralyzed than snappy.)

It started raining so we left with nine, but half of them were decent sized. We threw them in a pot with corn, potatoes, garlic and sausage and there was more than enough food to go around.

One had just done a story about a crab meat factory, so he had some insider secrets on how to best get the meat out. If we ever break crabs together (breaking is one of the steps,) I’ll share the secret with you.

Six:

I will miss… snowballs on a hot day. As I’ve written before, a snowball is not a snow cone. You could say it’s just shaved ice and syrup, but that’s a bare-bones description. There are dozens of flavors and fresh toppings and hundreds of combinations. And there’s always the right amount of syrup. A snow cone runs out of juice halfway through. I’ve never had anything close to a snowball outside of New Orleans. It’s one of those things that will have to stay and be appreciated when I visit.

I can do without… the annoying commute. So my “commute” is only 4 miles, or about 10 minutes, but it is the most horrible way to start the day. First I have to reverse onto a busy street, blind, thanks to surrounding cars. Then I have to be “directed” through “traffic” by two rent-a-cops outside the wealthy Isidore Newman School. There is never cross traffic and usually the one cop has his Blackberry in one hand and waves on traffic with the other. Finally, there are usually at least two guys standing by a truck outside my office who think I like being whistled at when I get out of the car each morning.

Commander’s Palace is a New Orleans classic, one of those things on my to-do list that always put off because it will always be there. With one week left, Alex and I made a reservation for a Friday lunch. Although Commander’s is known for the food and attentive service, it is also known for one of its lunch specials: the 25-cent martini.

Why stop at a three when they’re four for a dollar?

I’ll admit I had low expectations for the food because it is such a tourist destination. But everything we had was excellent: famous turtle soup with sherry, shrimp and tasso henican, Creole spiced drum with eggplant and spinach, steak with a basil sauce and cheese bread, Creole bread pudding soufflé with Jack Daniels cream sauce and peach upside-down cake.

Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Harry Reid (D-Nev.) argued in 2001 that bringing back the extravagant business lunch (tax deductible) would help stimulate the economy (Newsweek). Our drink tab (only $1.25 because a few were on the house) wouldn’t do anything much, but if everyone had to take Friday afternoon off to recover from the lunch — unpaid, of course — that might help.

We dressed in style — Alex in his vest and me in my hat — and relished the afternoon. Another item crossed off the list and another New Orleans memory added to the bank.

Seven:

I will miss… coffee with chicory. According to Cafe du Monde, chicory was first added to coffee by the French during their civil war as a cheap way to ration coffee supplies. The tradition traveled to Louisiana with the Acadians. Chicory is made from the root of the endive plant. Claimed benefits of chicory include balancing insulin levels, cleaning the blood and destroying bacteria.

Coffee with chicory is a little thicker, has a different flavor. I like it because it tastes like wood — a nutty, delicious wood. French Market became my brand of choice and the best part about this thing I will miss is that I can bring a hefty supply with me.

I can do without… cats. The past two years have changed my views about cats. I grew up in a house with a dog. We were and are dog people. The cats I met in my childhood were not friendly, loyal or obedient. They hissed. They were not dogs. However, I gave cats another chance when I pet-sat for a friend’s mom’s cats. The cats kept to themselves and one even approached me! I pet-sat again in the fall, this time for three cats and two dogs, without fail or injury. I’m cool with cats.

I’m not cool with wild cats. I don’t mean feral cats (although I’m not cool with those either.) I mean cats that people let roam the streets at night, during the day, whenever. My grandparents let their cat do this, but they lived on a farm and the cat earned its keep by catching mice in the barn. I wonder, in a city, how safe it is to let your cat run around? I see them everywhere and at all hours of the day.

While running errands, I saw one with a huge bloody gash on his side. It looked like he had scraped against something rough. Hair was missing. I was on my way somewhere so I left. When I returned 40 minutes later, he was still hanging around this corner. I called the number on the tag. The woman seemed irritated I had called. “He’s an outside cat,” she said. “He has a skin allergy so that’s why he eats his skin. But we put some food out every once in a while.” She went on, explaining why I had no business calling her about her bloody cat. That’s what I get for being nice.

Eight:

I will miss… fresh oysters, shrimp, crawfish… I love seafood. I was born and raised in the wrong part of the country for that, but I made do with what I had. When I was a kid, my parents would get me to try new foods by telling me they tasted like shrimp. Thanks to advances in refrigeration and food technology, you can get gulf shrimp in the Midwest, but they don’t taste like gulf shrimp in the gulf states. The shrimp are plumper, firmer. There’s an invisible line north of Louisiana where you can’t order raw oysters for a good reason — they’re not good. I’ve been spoiled and I am worried how I’ll cope with the move to bison and Rocky Mountain oyster country.

I can do without… fried food. I love seafood. The fried shrimp po-boy from Crabby Jack’s is heaven wrapped in paper. The sandwiches are stuffed with 3 times the amount of protein that should fit. It’s awesome. It’s also really unhealthy. Louisiana ranks 8th for adult obesity and the 7th for overweight youths and it’s not surprising when fried chicken and a french fry and gravy sandwich are on the menu. Crawfish etouffee, fried oyster po-boys, bread pudding — all delicious but not suitable for every day eats.