“Day After” Doldrums

Deviled eggs -- I forgot about Michelle’s deviled eggs at the Big Fat Family Feast. I think I was in denial because I probably consumed a dozen of them.  And Rachel’s simply superb stuffed mushrooms --  I know I ate at least four. It usually takes three days for me to process the events (and the foods) of a week of visiting relatives, but I don’t have time to take to my bed right now.

I expected to attend Mamie’s birthday party, but I didn’t expect to cater it. Mamie’s older son Junior would surely have thrown a birthday bash for his mama’s ninetieth. Then he died. His wife, Greta, his kids, Travis and Brook, and his grandkids are still reeling from the loss of Junior, as is most of Coker Creek. If there’s one thing I know how to do it’s “wing it.”  So I elected myself to organize the “do” – from six hundred miles away – with people I hardly know.  What was I thinking?

I have to help Richard cook for Charlie and Deborah’s Bluegrass night, and I have to decorate the Ruritan hall for Mamie’s ninetieth birthday party. Where’s Elaine when I need to arrange flowers and greenery. Where’s Terry Sue when I need to make ribbons and garland? At least I have Richard in residence to help me cook and carry.

We have no idea who plans to attend or what they plan to bring. Everybody is just coming off of Thanksgiving travel, cooking and feasting. Who really needs another event, or more food -- especially with Christmas less than a month away? But Mamie is my mountain mama, so I want to celebrate that she’s still alive and kickin’. A party will be had – Coker Creek Cajun style.

Judy and Deborah have promised to bring beverages. Mamie’s niece-in-law Wanda has committed to sing. Mamie’s great-grand daughter Brook has sent out invitations and organized the extended family’s participation. Junior’s son Travis is arranging to get Mamie there.  Mamie’s friend Mary Jane has alerted the Ruritan members and arranged to have the mayor declare it “Mamie Murphy Day.”  Leal from Coker Creek Village has informed the area churches and helped me plan the menu.  Jack’s friend, Mark, from the Monroe County Buzz has promised to cover the event.  And what an event it will, hopefully, be.

Charlie and Deborah are having their Bluegrass gathering the night before Mamie’s “do”, so there’s dinner and dessert to prepare for that event. While I set up the tables and chairs for Mamie’s party at the Ruritan hall, Richard peeled and cooked butternut squash; seasoned, browned and sliced pork tenderloin; and made a batch of spiced cranberry sauce. During my short visit home between the Ruritan hall and Charlie and Deborah’s house, all I had to do was arrange the butternut squash base with a crown of pork slices, surrounded by jewels of cranberry and a center of ginger-cran-pear chutney to create a dish fit for a queen. This was a trial batch of the same meal I planned to honor Mamie, our Queen for a Day.

With some squares of carrot cake and our chafing dish, we made it to Bluegrass, but I didn’t even make it to dinner before I had Richard deliver me to my bed. I still have a full “Mamie Murphy Day” symphony to survive.

One Big Fat Family Feast

Individual members of our family are generally not fat, but boy is the size of our family ever fat and getting fatter -- as are our family feasts. It all started with Scott and Buffy offering their home for Thanksgiving because Elaine and Bub are still recuperating from Briton and Jeanne's wedding less than two weeks ago. Elaine has been working non-stop since arriving back in the New Orleans area. Rachel's family drove dpwn from Atlanta and stayed the week with Elaine and Bub.


We drove down with foods from our produce-packed freezer and pantry. These included pickled beets and okra, ginger-cran-pear chutney, spiced pecans, butternut squash, potatoes for oyster dressing, corn, bell peppers, canned tomatoes, pumpkin, smothered okra, and what I thought was a bag of turnip greens, and a bag of cooked giblet mix for making giblet dressing. I also brought some of my loose pepper jelly to pour over cream cheese and serve with crackers.

I had little cooking to do, so I spent much of the week visiting with kids and grandkids, my niece Nikki and her daughter Corinne, and my Godchild Gary. Miya and I made bows for lots of loot on Santa's sleigh. That bag of greens -- turns out it was actually basil, so it didn't make it to the buffet table, but I did make Bub's favorite oyster dressing and some turkey gravythe day of...

Buffy's mother and dad drove in with their RV refrigerator packed. Their offerings included Ann's southern-style potato salad -- the kind I love with as much egg as potato, a huge pan of cornbread dressing, and everything but their kitchen sink for making Dewey's should-be-famous chicken gumbo and rice -- and another bag of poatoes for mashing. Buffy kept Richard busy painting her newly remodeled hallway and helping her clean and set up tables and chairs. Scott spent several days running back and forth to various stores for party supplies -- and staying out of Buffy's way..

Bub glazed and cooked a ham, while Rachel produced pumpkin bread, the best stuffed mushrooms I ever put in my mouth, the requested-by-Sarah saffron rice, and mac and cheese.

Scott's best friend and neighbor Sam smoked a turkey and a ham while Scott got geared up to fry a turkey and roast another for his sister who is a traditionalist. Bub decided that he wanted a full fried turkey to take home to his baby boy who was working. At this point, we were up to two hams and four twenty-plus pound birds; but Bub insisted that Scott get another that could be fried last minute -- just in case.

Sam's sister-in-law baked bread, but we also had store-bought becauseRebecca is partial to Parker House  rolls. Briton arrived with deer chimichamgas that he not only cooked -- he shot the deer. I've never had deer that I enjoyed before, but these were some of the best chimichangas that ever passed my lips.

Just when we didn't think we could fit another dish in the house, Sam's wife Michelle rolls in from three blocks away pushing her kitchen island laden with pies: pecan, pumkin, and chocolate -- and an extra-large casserole of candied yams.

Scott's cradle mate Kathleen stopped by, as did another of my nieces, Melanie, with her two-year-old and eight-month-old baby boys. Elaine road in with her daughter Gloria and Gloria's boyfriend. Michelle's brother and his family were visiting from Arkansas. Even Buffy's ninety-two-year-old great uncle made an appearance on the arm of his daughter, with his granddaughter carrying his great granddaughter.

Rachel summed up the family feast, spreading her arms to include the whole event, with, "I just love being back in this part of the country for a holiday." After we finished feasting, each guest left with enough food to feed their families for a week. We all agreed that it was obscene the amount of food we had, but we can't wait to do it again.

A Day of Delight

Here it is late November, and Elaine's flower beds are in  full bloom at her home on Lake Pontchartrain. I was lucky enough to be left at Elaine and Bub's when Rachel, Rebecca, Scott, Buffy, and Bub went grocery shopping for Thanksgiving fixings. This gave me a full afternoon in one of my favorite places on earth with three of my grandchildren, Nicholas, Sarah and Miya.

Nick and Sarah began by serenading me with saxaphone music, as they're currently both studying the same instrument. Sarah then played tunes on Elaine's piano and began tutoring Miya in music reading. This was before Sarah and Miya decided to go peddle boating, leaving me and Nick to enjoy the cool salt air breezes from the swing on the dock.

While I stayed to watch the girls, Nicholas went in and made himself a grilled cheese sandwich. While he was gone, Sarah and Miya managed to foul the propellor so badly I needed to affect a rescue. Watching me attempt to throw the rescue ring got lots of laughs from my granddaughters.
Upon Nick's return to the boat dock, he discovered that I was in the process of rescuing Sarah and Miya, and decided to offer his assistance. The next thing I knew, Nick was chasing Bub's white German Shepherd puppy around the yard, throwing shoes and yelling at the puppy for eating his sandwich off the plate that Nick had left on the table. I managed to get the girls, but had to abandon the boat until help arrived. I made Nick another grilled cheese sandwich. He ate, watched a bit of TV and fell asleep.

While Nick slept, his cousin Sarah decided to enlist her cousin Miya in a project of squeezing all of Bub's oranges into fresh-squeezed orange juice. Since we could find no juice squeezer, we improvised with an overturned ribbed cocktail glass in a glass bowl. The girls had great fun with this, but it must have tired Miya, as she curled up in my lap for me to rock her and sing to her. She promptly fell asleep in my arms, at which time Sarah continued her piano serenade. I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven.

Upon her return, Rebecca went with me to retreive the peddle boat. She detangled the line from the prop while I held the boat up. I enjoyed sharing with Rebecca wonderful memories of our years at Richard's and my house on the lake as we peddled together back to Bub's dock.

At the end of the day, I was able to begin the Thanksgiving Feast food preparations with Rachel and Buffy. My days don't get more delightful than this.

Scott's Spa

Food, glorious food. We got to Scott and Buffy's house, and the first thing Buffy did is show me the leftovers that they saved for me: smoked redfish dip, grilled redfish, sushi-grade tuna, and kickin' chicken salad. She had also cooked a huge pot of her Buffy's Best Butterbeans and put them in the freezer. Yum! What an orgy of fabulous flavors.

We went shopping for Thanksgiving table cloths and turkeys while Richard prepared Scott's hallway for painting. We purchased three twenty-plus pound birds. On the way back to Scott's, I checked in with my niece Melanie, who lives down the street from Scott with her husband and two baby boys. She asked me if I wanted her to bring her turkey to Thanksgiving dinner. Four turkeys, one ham, chicken gumbo, potaoto salad, and two pans of dressing are only the beginning of what we'll feast on come Thursday.

Rachel's family is heading down from Atlanta for the festivities. We're expecting over thirty people, so we're busy relaxing in Scott's hot tub to work up the energy for more food and house preparation.

Rockin' and Rollin'

Adam emailed me that he hopes Richard and I are rockin'. We're rockin' and rollin', but mostly rollin' -- from one friend and place to another. Of course, the van is rockin' more than we'd like on the extremely uneven streets of New Orleans and vicinity. Movin' on to Mississippi.

Home Is Where the Happy Is

Some days happy is just bursting all around us, waiting to be scooped up and carried around. Some places exude that kind of happiness. Pat and Will’s house is a happy house. They live by the philosophy of “Peace to all who enter here.” Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have some spirited conversations, seeing as I lean toward the libertarian in my politics and they lean far far away from the left. I also adhere to no specific religious practices, where they are very devout Roman Catholics. We’re such good friends that we’re actually interested in each other’s views.

Every room in Pat’s home is ringed with large windows letting in views of God’s creation. In front there are flower beds lovingly tended by Will. On one side is a rose garden, on the other fences full of flowering vines like in the secret courtyards of the French Quarter. Both the living room and the dining room open onto a patio through French doors that can be thrown open to the natural environment of a contemplation garden on the banks of a lagoon where egrets frequently are sighted catching their dinner and the rays of the sun.

Inside is a sanctuary. As we entered after a day of travel, we were greeted by the beautiful melodies, played by Pat, emanating from the grand piano. When Pat is not at the keyboard, she and Will quite often have classical music wafting through the speaker system. There are inspirational reading materials all through the house, and both Pat and Will are happy to interrupt anything they are doing to sit and chat for a bit.

I’ve never known how Pat achieves this, but her house is always in order. For me, order is necessary to my sense of serenity. It never mattered whether I showed up unannounced or with several weeks notice, the feeling of open arms welcome was always the same. I have always loved coming to Pat’s house, and I secretly grieve every time Pat and Will talk about moving. Moving has been especially tempting to them since Hurricane Katrina, as they’ve had to see so many of their family and friends relocate.

I feel like I’ve been in the world’s best bed and breakfast sipping wine, looking at the natural beauty, and discussing our philosophical views. I could stay here forever, but we have many places to go, people to see and things to do before going to Mississippi. I do love life in New Orleans.

Slugs in a Sleigh

No matter how you slice it, twelve hours enroute to anywhere is a long ride. We prefer the drive from our house to New Orleans to the drive from our house to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. The topography of eastern Tennessee is much more interesting than the flatlands of Georgia and Alabama, and the hills surrounding Chattanooga are full of hardwoods, now in their last throes of fall.

We typically start this journey with a ride along the Ocoee, but this has been precluded by a rockslide from the hillside to the highway. This decreased the scenic factor and increased the time factor for an already long one-day trip of six hundred miles. Not surprisingly, Richard does have a protocol for our long drives, trading off driving every hundred miles. This keeps us from falling asleep, except for our butts and lower extremities.

Now, my brain is another problem; the slower my body moves the more hyper my brain becomes. After a while of running free, my brain sets up a pinball machine in my head, bouncing random ideas from one synapse to another. In my usual perpetual motion mode, I can guide the brain balls by bumping the body machine every so often. It’s hard to focus when the nearest goal is hundreds of miles and thousands of minutes away. I come up with some of my most exiting adventures this way. By the time we reached our destination, I needed a nap to recuperate from being a slug.

But a nap was not in the cards. Our first stop was to load Elaine’s freezer with food from Mamie’s garden to share at Thanksgiving. Then, it was across Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River to Pat and Will’s house on the far side of New Orleans, where they were taking us to English Turn Golf and Country Club for Friday’s fish feast. I felt strange entering the club at night without a bunch of boxes.

For over ten years, we lived in a neighborhood near English Turn. Pat and I were very involved in volunteer work with an agency that worked to stabilize homeless families, and our major fundraiser was an annual evening auction and dinner held at English Turn. Our long-suffering husbands toted boxes, collected tickets, and listened to endless hours of grief and gossip while we proceeded to spend months of madness and much money to make our auctions a success.

Unbeknown to me, Richard had become enamored of a particular part of the club’s hardwood flooring, and immediately insisted on visiting the exact spot he had so loved. This was the first time we were all together at the club since Katrina. The agency that we had worked so hard for lost its mission in Hurricane Katrina; Richard and I lost our home; and all of New Orleans lost family and friends.

After dinner, we stayed up until midnight talking, but we stayed away from the topic of our losses of home and community. I guess it still hurts too bad.