I left at 0500 Wednesday morning for the airport, headed back to my roots, as I try to do every few months.  My trips of late have less frequent due to health, so this one was long overdue.  Jazz Fest was of no interest or intent, but it was to begin in two days at my destination.  There was not an empty seat to be had in the gate area or on the aircraft.

The flight arrived late (is there such a thing as an on-time arrival anymore?); I got the rental car, and headed off to pick up my mother.

Mother lives in an assisted living facility.  Though not a nursing home, her greatest fear, it certainly isn’t what she’d prefer, her own car, house, and garden, freedom to go when and where she pleases, her old circle of family and friends, her enjoyment of volunteer work at the hospital, her prayer group, and the comfort of living in the town where she was born and raised, to which she had returned after Dad’s death.

The frailty of many years’ passing has robbed her of all those things and now she lives in The Crescent City, where she lived for most of her life, but in an area of the city with which she was never familiar.  It doesn’t make much difference however, for without personal transportation and living in the space about the size of my living room, she may as well be in a foreign country.

Well, almost.

The difference is my sister, who lives less than 5 minutes away.  If it weren’t for her, Mother’s life would be a lot different, for the worse.  Much worse. 

My sister is Mother’s lifeline.  Despite having more than a full-time job, she sees to Mother’s every need, which over the years of declining health has become an ever increasing list of requirements, some physical, some emotional.  Mother’s quality of life is a direct factor of my sister’s love and dedication to her, and it continually amazes me how it can all happen.  My sister is human, too, with her own responsibilities, problems, and limits, but you’d never know it by how she achieves priority one, the well being of our mother.

……

Now, if you were cooking for the residents of a large assisted living facility serving two meals each day in a community dining room, and a rather nice dining room, I might add, breakfast would be, at least in some respects, not much different from what I’ll refer to as “military style.”  That is, whatever can be poured into and prepared in large cooking vessels is tops on the list.   

Eggs do not fit the bill very well, but what’s breakfast without eggs, at least occasionally?  To meet both needs in compromise, all eggs there are scrambled — not a discernable line between yolk and white in sight.  At least they aren’t powdered.  I’ve had more than my share of those, and anyone who can’t tell the difference has diseased or deceased taste buds.

Well, Mother loves fried eggs, sunny side up, yolks rising from the surround of tender yet firm whites.  Not a chance in hell of that in assisted living, so we have a bit of a tradition.

I usually arrive the airport around 0800, so I pick up Mother and we go to Dot’s Diner.  Of several locations available, ”her” Dot’s Diner is the one on Jefferson Highway across from the Shell gas station, about 10 times the distance of the one closest to her place.  I like “her” location, too.  We eat there and she gets her sunny side up delights.  I get an omelet, grits, and biscuits, or a pecan waffle.  I have arrived and life is good for a little while.

A late lunch was, as usual when I’m in town, at one of my favorite seafood places.  Fried everything.  (I’m confident my cardiologist is among the millions who doesn’t know this blog exists.)  My sister and I shared, as we frequently do, a half seafood platter.  The full platter there feeds four; we split a half platter and still have a take-home box.  The platter is piled high with soft-shell crab, oysters, shrimp, catfish, and three sizeable crawfish balls, not those little golf ball size things.  A bed of French fries protects the platter beneath, and on the side is a dish of the best coleslaw around.  Their onion rings there are to die for, too, served in a black iron skillet, but only a moose would attempt the platter and onion rings, even the “small” order.

While we were there, a lady at another table brought back a memory for me.

Some years ago, when our son Brian was a youngster, he ordered boiled crawfish, as did “a little old lady” at a nearby table.  As I remember, they were both served at about the same time.

Brian, liking boiled crawfish but not experienced at peeling them, bravely forged his way into the mound, while the lady at the other table, obviously a seasoned veteran at the skill, whipped off those shells like they were paper Christmas wrap.  She finished the entire thing while Brian was just beginning to make some progress, and though not a fair “competition,” I kidded Brian about it.

Well, wouldn’t you know, as we were sitting there and just beginning our lunch on Wednesday, a lady sat down at a table directly opposite me and ordered boiled crawfish.  It didn’t take long for them to be served and before most at our table were finished with their meals, that lady had gone through the entire tray of crawfish, leaving only a mound of empty shells.

I thought of Brian, who is just too, too far away, as are each of our sons.

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Day 2, Thursday

The killer of a day, this was the day for a drive to Opelousas, 150 miles distant, where Mother and her family were born and raised and where I was born.  As a child I knew that town as well as my own neighborhood because were there frequently.  Opelousas is in the heart of Cajun country, about 20 miles from Lafayette, and that entire area has some of the best food I have ever had in my life.  Anywhere.  Anytime.

I love boudin.  Again thankful Cardio is not reading this, but I have been off the stuff for a long time, honest, well, though the trip was to see an ailing relative, I just knew I had to have some boudin.  And when I told my sister I felt a boudin attack coming on, she promptly replied that I’d better bring some back for her.

So, while in Opelousas we visited with my cousins and my uncle, ordered take-out dinners from Soileau’s Dinner Club (I had my favorite since childhood — stuffed shrimp), and managed to get to an optical shop for repair of my eyeglasses.  The left lens had fallen out earlier and I had scotch tape holding them together.  I couldn’t have felt nerdier if I’d had a plastic pocket protector.

I don’t know why Soileau’s stuffed shrimp isn’t considered a signature item — it should be.  A salad, roll, choice of potato (anyone who’s eaten there before will likely choose the stuffed baked potato), and 2 stuffed shrimp is quite a meal.  (Also available with four stuffed shrimp for the moose.)

I’m not talking about those little butterflied shrimp with a tablespoon of cheap dressing plopped on top.  No, I’m talking large/jumbo shrimp, not butterflied, surrounded by a crab meat dressing of very high crab meat content, packed around that intact but peeled to the tail shrimp.  Two are quite sufficient, thank you.  Ohhhh, goooood stuff.  

……

Time to head back to Chocolate City. 

Oops!  Did I say that?

Well, yes, but I wasn’t the first one.  The twice-elected (what were they thinking?!) mayor of that city said it in public, very public, so…

In any case, it’s time to buy a cheap Styrofoam ice chest and some ice. 

Done.

Now to Ray’s Grocery Plus, where I’ll get the same boudin I’ve been eating for a lot of years.  If only Ray’s would ship, I’d be on the other end ordering.

Different strokes for different folks.  The differences in boudin recipes, though of basically of the same ingredients, nevertheless result in subtle differences in textures and tastes.  The exception is in the content of spices, where boudin ranges from relatively tame to downright challenging.  “Subtle” does not describe the difference in spices.  I’ve had boudin from most places that sell it in Opelousas, Thibodaux, and Houma, and I prefer Ray’s, which is on the mild side.  So, Ray’s boudin placed in the cooler, we head homeward.

A short distance down the road, we stop in Port Barre at Bourque’s Supermarket.  Sometimes I’m in the mood for a more spicy boudin, and Bourque’s ships.  Anywhere.  So there I add a few more pounds of product to the boudin cooler and we head back out again, Mother and I each sipping a Chocolate Soldier drink along the way (no, not a Yoo-hoo). 

Some boudin is for supper and some, most, is for the freezer, in preparation for its final journey back to Florida.  It takes a lot of willpower not to eat a lot more of it on the spot.

By the way, I don’t know if I envy or admire a couple of guys, but I’d love to have spent some weekends with them.  See here.  One look there and you’ll see a lot of information about boudin, including just how geographically unique it is.

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Day 3, Friday

Another item on our traditions list is Morning Call.  That’s where Mother and I go for coffee and beignets.  I grew up having beignets at the original Morning Call in the French Quarter, but Cafe du Monde is the only real beignet place left there now.

Thankfully there are small Morning Call locations elsewhere in the city, but without the history or ambiance of the original location. There’s nothing like a coffee, café au lait actually, in the style of combined near-boiling milk and French-dripped chicory coffee, beside an order of three warm, light pillows of dough that have been fried until puffed full of air, and topped with a generous “I dare you to not get it on your shirt” portion of powdered sugar.

A few years ago I was in line waiting for my order of beignets in the airport when a flight crew, dressed in uniforms of white shirt, dark blue coat and trousers, and tie, came up behind me.  The captain told a junior officer who had apparently never had beignets before to be careful because the powered sugar was almost impossible to get off the uniform.

After they sat down at a table next to mine, the junior officer took a bite of her beignet and began coughing and choking.  After she recovered, I leaned over to the captain and told him he forgot to caution her to not inhale.  Number 2 grinned and said, “I’ll add it to his checklist.”  Powdered sugar doesn’t do very well in the lungs — one is wise not to inhale on approach to taking a bite out of a beignet.  Experienced beignet consumers don’t even think about it — not inhaling on approach is a natural thing.

When I was a kid we used to take the ferry across the river to the French Quarter and pull into one of the drive-in parking slots beside Morning Call.  The waiter would bring the beignets to the car in a brown paper bag, shake a generous amount of confectioner’s sugar into the bag, and then shake the bag vigorously.  Each molecule of the beignets’ surfaces was covered in white as he placed three of each on each saucer.  Now THAT was a mess waiting to happen in the car, and it always did, but that was part of the adventure.  

Mother and I don’t have a drive-in slot to go to anymore — that died along with the original Morning Call location — but we do enjoy going to the Metairie location and having, as Dad used to say, “our coffee and doughnuts.”

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Day 4, Saturday

Mother is exhausted, still, from the Thursday trip and the short beignet run yesterday was the final straw.  She doesn’t travel well anymore, so my sister and I go to Dot’s for breakfast.

Menu decisions at Dot’s are sometimes difficult, so we end up splitting each other’s meals.  We each have half of a rather large and thoroughly filled western omelet, some not-to-be-missed onion hash browns, and a pecan waffle.  A hell of a combination and one that will last a good part of the day.

Back to the house to pack.  Check the soft side cooler that will go in my suitcase and there is some room left after I test fit the boudin packs.  My sister gives me a cooked but now frozen wild duck with sauce (oh yeah!) and says she’s going to the grocery - will be back in a few minutes.

It seems frozen crawfish meat was on sale.  She’s bought several packages and tells me whatever I can fit in the cooler, go for it.  I fit three in and just do manage to get the zipper closed.  No air space in there — it will travel nicely.

Head for the airport a little later, survive the Jazz Fest Saturday crowd of a zoo there and the attitudinal TSA people, arriving Orlando late (again), and finally to the house.  Everything is still frozen solid.  Very nice.

Ah, yes.  There’s nothing quite like a trip filled with family, food, and memories.  Well, nothing quite like it unless you bring some of it home, too.