The worst part about this pandemic has been...well, you could start this sentence multiple ways and still be spot on, couldn't you? This past year, we had several trips planned to some really cool places:
Spring break in Florida, with trips to Disney World and Universal on the agenda. When I was planning the trip, which took forever, by the way, because we had to work around sports and academic schedules and work-related hiccups, and more things to name just to get away, we actually got a Fast Pass for every major ride in the parks, including the Avatar ride, the new Star Wars rides and several other impossible ones. Had to cancel the entire trip. I actually burst into tears after cancelling the perfect fast passes (the Disney people will understand - you never get everything you want, and this time I did, and had to wipe out the entire thing. SIGH) Thanks, Covid!
We were going to a Niall Horan concert in Columbus in May, where we had scored floor seats to see The Peanut's all time favorite music crush. We were right by the aisle stage that he would walk by to get to the center stage in the stadium, and Niall would be close enough to almost touch but definitely close enough to make eye contact with, except...tour cancelled -- thanks, Covid!
During the summer, The Peanut and I were going to Europe on a whirlwind grand tour of London, Paris and Rome, with a school tour group that included a special extended tour at the Vatican for Catholic schools that I was particularly excited about...until it was cancelled, due to Covid.
Mr. Smith had gotten me a particularly awesome Mother's Day gift -- tickets to see Sting in in Law Vegas at Caesar's Palace, with a backstage pass to actually meet Sting in person. (OMG!! I Know! I nearly exploded with joy on the spot. Sting! Holy cow!)
Did that happen? Nope. Cancelled due to Covid.
You see where this is going, don't you?
The funny thing is that we haven't been big on planning travel the last few years, because The Peanut's sports practice schedule tends to be year round and our planning for any trip has thus tended to be spur of the moment. We've also been saving for college and retirement and not particularly huge spenders on luxury travel and events. Not last year. Last year we were going big. It was our last shot at big travel with The Peanut before college takes over her schedule next year, and we thought we'd add in a lot of fun things. Last year, we decided you can't take it with you and let's have a great summer before her senior year in high school.
Covid had other ideas.
After months of trying to be super careful, gallons of hand sanitizer, always wearing my mask, and staying home whenever possible, I am jonesing for some travel. For some reason, as we edge toward ringing in the new year, New Orleans is calling my name.
Couldn't we all use a little more laissez le bon temps rouler in our day to day weary trudge at this point in the pandemic?
More than anything, I'd like to be strolling in the humid heat down by the delta of the Mississippi River, brushing off some powdered sugar from a fresh plate of beignets and a large cup of chicory-laced cafe au lait at Cafe du Monde. Or planning a meal at Arnaud's, in the heart of the French Quarter, with a stop at their fabulous French 75 bar for a cocktail or three before dinner.
Instead, I'm going to have to settle for cooking up a bit of New Orleans at our house today. Food is a religion of sorts in the Big Easy, a fusion of French, African, Italian, and later Vietnamese cuisines, with a sprinkling of every immigrant that came to the city looking for work or refuge. The spice is high, and the taste is amazing for every great meal that I've eaten there. Certain spices bring me right back to the French Quarter: paprika, oregano, cayenne, tabasco, and the holy trinity of celery, onion and green bell pepper.
Just thinking about New Orleans food makes my mouth start to water.
Right now, I've got chicken thighs marinating in a spice rub from Chef Paul Prudhomme's Fork in the Road cookbook -- those will get roasted this evening for dinner. Chef Prudhomme passed away in 2015, but his seasoning blends are still being sold, and I'm here to tell you that his Poultry Magic will change your life. Spicy, but not so spicy that it peels the hide off your tongue, fabulous on chicken, and just enough spice that it rubs off on the drippings and onto the potatoes that you roast along with it in the oven. You can find it at the grocery store in the spice aisle here in WV, so I know you can find it where you are, too.
Chef Paul Prudhomme's Fork in the Road cookbook was one of the first cookbooks that I ever purchased in college. He used spice blends for his recipes that brought them to life, and there were no recipes that called for a can of cream of chicken soup, so I knew that I'd crossed the Rubicon into big girl cooking when I made his delicious potato soup for friends on a ski trip in graduate school, and everyone was standing around trying to snag the last few drippings from the stock pot with bread in hand.
I'll be making a big pot of easy red beans, too, along with some collard greens and rice. The red beans recipe is a big favorite that started with a recipe clipped from the New Orleans newspaper, the Times Picayune. It's easy and delicious, and the best possible comfort food on a rainy day when you come home from a long day at work and realize dinner has been cooking for you in the slow cooker all along.
Seriously, if you take only one recipe from this blog, take the red beans recipe.
By the time dinner rolls around at our house, it will smell like New Orleans food, even if we don't get to travel there in person.
If you want some reading about New Orleans, may I suggest a couple of great books that will give you a little flavor of the area? After Hurricane Katrina, the restaurant industry in New Orleans was devastated, first by the storm, and then later by the lack of tourism in the wake of the storm. I would imagine we are seeing a similar issue today, as every restaurant we know here in WV is dealing with a serious slow down in dining traffic and struggling to stay afloat. New Orleans lives and breathes tourism and conventions, and neither is going gangbusters at the moment due to the virus. The Times-Picayune put together a cookbook with contributions of recipes from some of the favorite places around the area, as a way to raise funds for restaurants and workers who were out of work, and also to help local residents who had lost their cookbooks and newspaper clipping recipes in the deluge that Katrina had brought with her. Cooking Up A Storm: Recipes Lost and found from the Times-Picayune of New Orleans was an effort to knit the community back together through the medium that New Orleans uses most: food. The recipes are fantastic, but the stories that come with them really make the book extraordinary.
The other is a book called Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, which does an amazing job of taking you to the heart of food's place in New Orleans and letting you into the kitchens of some of its most intriguing citizens. You feel like you have just pulled up to the table and got handed a bottle of Tabasco.
All this to say, Covid has been horrible for all of us. We may have to stay in for safety reasons, but that doesn't mean that we can't read and cook our way through this together.
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