meme

Due to unforeseen circumstances, my beau was unable to take off any time for Thanksgiving. This means that I got two days with his daughter, since she is out of school and in our care. She calls me "Meme," which is as close to "Emmy" as her toddler mouth could form.

When I was not working in 2013, I would sometimes keep her home from day care to have what we called a "Meme Day." Just me and her, doing errands, everyday tasks, or, sometimes, something special.

Meme Days are my favorite. They are exhausting (I really have no idea how stay-at-home parents do it!), but they are incredibly worthwhile.

On Wednesday, we went to the office in the morning (she is a favorite among the police officers, although she is a favorite among anyone with the ability to see or hear) and then took a child-centric walking tour of the French Quarter that I cannot recommend highly enough. Then we had lunch at Tableau, where she had turtle soup, because soup is her favorite. The other children at our table were vociferously grossed out by her choice. I judged them silently until their parents chastised them appropriately.

She wants to be a chef when she grows up; we cultivate her culinary curiosity and are grateful to not have a picky eater, although I'm prone to believe that young picky eaters are a product of nurture more than nature.

Our Meme Day today started with cleaning from last night's Thanksgiving extravaganza and quickly improved into a holiday tea party at the Windsor Court. It's our third year for holiday tea, and it is always a special way to feel grown up. I asked if she wanted to wear a party dress, and she said she wanted to wear our matching dresses, which always thrills me.

I know my time is limited for her wanting to be like me, although I hope she never stops wanting to look like me.

After tea, we visited her daddy at work, and he took us to the park for lunch. Our Meme Day concluded with a Tinkerbell movie.

I am incredibly grateful for these moments. We only see her for half of her life, so I try to be very cognizant of taking away any of that half from my beau. That's why Meme Days are particularly special.

No little girl dreams of being a stepmom when she grows up, but, this week, potential future stepmotherhood looks promising, full of beauty and love and laughter. Thank you, #heartbreaker, for this reassurance.

thanks

In October of 2013, I wrote about my annual orphan Thanksgiving at the end of this post.

Tis the season. We've got 11 adults and three children signed up for Thursday evening, and I'm excited to throw a party.

Every year, I ask people to bring whatever dish will make it feel like Thanksgiving to them, and I don't care if we end up with three corn casseroles. So far, our potluck sign up includes side dishes (sausage stuffing, asparagus wrapped in bacon, quinoa salad) and dessert (pumpkin pie, whoopie pies, chocolate something).

Also: wine.

Stephanie O'Dea has never misled me, so I'm going to follow her recipe for turkey breast using seasonings from another recipe, because these days I am enamored of herbes de Provence, and my mom always used apple cider in our turkeys growing up.

I'm worried that one turkey breast isn't enough for all of us, so I think I'm also going to roast chicken legs after marinating them in avocado oil, lemon juice, lemon peel, smashed garlic, and herbes, which will render drippings for a complementary gravy.

I'm making mashed potatoes ahead of time, like Real Simple suggests. I'll also make cranberry sauce, subbing shallots for onions and vegetable broth for chicken broth, which I've tripled and made for nine consecutive Thanksgivings.

I love this recipe for oyster dressing, but I'm not sure we need two stuffings.

One of my friends/guests is a vegan; I will stir together a wild rice and mushroom pilaf (with parmesan cheese on the side for the rest of us) and will make simple sauteed green beans instead of my usual gourmet green bean casserole.

I may bake apples for dessert in the very simple style I learned on Whole30: slice and core apples, toss with coconut oil and copious garam masala, and roast at 400 until the desired level of brown. I could put those in the oven when we sit down to dinner, when the oven's done being used.

We still need appetizers. Any vegan suggestions? Child friendly bites that won't fill them up? Low labor intensity? No bake?

I hope that your meal is delicious.
I hope you share it with people you love.
I hope you have many things for which to be grateful.
I hope you feel satiated.

plated

We have started ordering groceries/meals online from plated. The minimum order is four plates (so, four servings of one meal or two servings of two meals); each plate is $12.

It all started when I complained on facebook about how the worst part of being an adult is having to decide what to feed yourself. I was spending a lot of time menu planning, recipe researching, going to the grocery store, schlepping the groceries to my car, schlepping the groceries from my car... and then prepping everything, only to realize I needed three yellow onions, not two... so back to the store I'd go for the forgotten item(s).

This summer, we completed a Whole30, which meant a lot of time at the grocery store and in the kitchen. I'd keep lists of all of the protein + produce we had in the fridge to help prevent wasted leftovers (and to remind us of all of the good food we had to eat so that we wouldn't go hunting in the pantry for Goldfish!).

This got us into a routine of cooking at home, which saves money and calories. It also gives us some good quality time as partners. My beau's daughter wants to be a chef when she grows up, so whatever we can have a five-year-old help with (just about anything that doesn't involve taking something heavy out of the oven or knives) becomes a family event.

Enter plated. Garlic comes peeled. Spices come in premeasured baggies. Brussels sprouts come already shredded. Condiments come in tiny bottles. Very rarely does anything have to be measured - you just add the whole container of ___ to your pot/pan/mixing bowl.

We also tried blue apron and HelloFresh and found that plated was the best fit for us.

• We liked the recipes and packaging best. 
• I liked the optional minimum of four meals. Sometimes all we can commit to is two meals cooked at home in a five-day period.
• They deliver in New Orleans on Wednesdays, giving us two weeknights and the weekend to prepare food.
• I like being able to know exactly what ingredients were coming so that I could modify/supplement; for example, if one night we're having a noodle-based dish, I'll make sure we have some frozen broccoli or fresh romaine on hand. 
• We find the portions to be very generous; we order two plates and always have enough for two adults and one child and then typically have enough leftover for one or two lunches. (We both sit at our desks and eat lunch. A lot. A friend recently described this as eating "al desco," which I find hilarious.)
• The meals are relatively healthy. You know how many calories are in each serving and can portion accordingly.
• The animal products are all organic.
• The recipes are far simpler than the ones I typically make.

I recommend finding a friend who has free boxes to give away (I talk about it so much that I lack invites right now) and trying it, especially as we enter the craziness of the holiday season. Sometimes all you need to feel calmer is to stand around as a family, create something together, and then share it.

caramelized

I jokingly tell people that I am the Mayor of the French Quarter, which is basically what my job is. Being the Mayor comes with some special perks, like parking and hosted meals and special invitations inside homes nearly as old as our country.

Last week, it meant leaving a meeting after dark and getting followed by someone creepy.

I am hyper vigilant about my surroundings, especially when I am alone. I have learned that the best way to politely (and safely) excuse myself from drunks/vagrants/unpleasantness is to duck into the nearest praline shop:

1. They are well-lit.
2. They are open late.
3. They will offer you free samples, and pralines are delicious.
4. They will deter anyone following you around.

I walked into the Magnolia Praline Shop and was greeted by two very nice male employees who seemed disturbed by my plight. They walked me to the door after a few moments, and they scouted for any potential wrongdoers. They watched me walk to the corner, where I had to turn (on a better lit street) to get to my car.

I stopped by the store today to speak with the manager about this above and beyond service, and now I'm telling you, too. Because I like to put compliments into the universe and to keep my people safe. And well-fed.

food, inc.

On Thursday, a girlfriend asked if I could help them make pasta salad for a fall festival/fundraiser at her stepdaughter's school. Knowing that she returns favors with cash and/or really, really good wine, I agreed. They had already bought all of the ingredients; they just needed me to follow a recipe.

Which was something like this:

14 oz rotini
2 finely chopped cucumbers
1/2 cup finely chopped onions
3/4 cup finely chopped olives
10 cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 cup Italian-style dressing

I needed to multiply the recipe by 10.
And my girlfriend's husband had done all of the math/shopping.
Note: pasta typically comes in 1 pound (16 oz) packages... including the pasta he brought me.
I also think he bought 200 ounces of salad dressing (some of which was accidentally fat free), and I know there were only 18 cucumbers (the only thing I chopped by hand).

The Italian-style dressing's first two ingredients were soybean oil and high fructose corn syrup.

I don't care for raw onion in most of my salads, so I pulverized half of a (red) onion for every pound of pasta I made. Olives are pretty much the only food I cannot eat (because they are vile), so I left them whole, because I know a lot of other like-minded (correct) people who also cannot eat them. I also left the cherry tomatoes whole, because people are weird about raw tomatoes, I worried that the juice would interfere with the taste of dehydrated red bell peppers, and I had absolutely no desire to cut up tiny tomatoes into fourths.

Basically: it was the opposite of the kind of pasta salad I would ever consider making for myself, for people I love, for people I don't love, for strangers. I wouldn't give an enemy high fructose corn syrup... or anything else Monsanto.

So once I could get over that (which, clearly, I'm not), I had to figure out how in the world to boil 10 pounds of pasta in my non-commercial grade kitchen with an urban amount of counterspace. And then how to mix 10 pounds of pasta with soybean oil, pulverized onions, and cucumbers. (Tomatoes and olives stayed on top so people can pick/choose.)

I recycled pasta water and heavily relied on this NYTimes article, in hopes it was true.

I couldn't help myself: I added dried organic basil and oregano to the mix. I added Tony's, as you do.

I ended up using half of my house to accomplish the end result, which was 3 giant aluminum trays.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to clean my kitchen. While I do so, I will pray for a world where children do not have to choose between hunger and genetically modified foods.

essentials

I was asked to apply for an incubator-type group to further develop my ideas on education reform that could potentially build a non- or for-profit entity. They call the program "The Essentials." The incubators are super out-of-the-box thinkers (as you can see from their questions); I think it will be a really dynamic, interesting place to see what happens.

It does not, by any means, allow my job search to end... but it is a sizeable step forward.

Thanks to all who have been a part of this ongoing (and continuing!) process with their time, talent, support, and love.

And, above all, I am grateful to those who have made sure I kept my perspective enough that I could laugh... sometimes at myself, but always out loud.

What is the last article or book you read that totally rocked your world. Tell us about
it!

I've been trying to lose weight, in varying degrees of effort/seriousness, for the past year. I've done Weight Watchers, yoga, Couch to 5K running plan. I bought a bike. I try to cook healthfully, limit carbs, and meditate. But for every two steps forward, there's one step back (plantar fasciitis is the latest, but living in a food- and drink-centric town is the penultimate barrier)... and that makes my scale fickle and unfriendly.

All of my motivation and effort changed two weeks ago after I read an article about a study from New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia that found women with waistlines greater than 35 inches are at greatly increased risk of heart disease.

Heart disease?! But I need my heart to work! If there is anything in my life I need to function, it is my giant, giving, wide open heart. I need to be able to love strangers. I need to be able to hold friends' hands when their parents are diagnosed with terminal diseases; I need to be able to hug my boyfriend's little girl. Oh. And to hug him, too.

I need to make a difference! And I can't do that if I don't have a healthy heart!

So. I have begun a practice of clean eating. I make sure that I get 150 minutes of cardiovascular exercise each week. I bike instead of drive whenever possible. I stretch my feet (which is really painful!) so that I can continue to stretch and move my body in ways that will help it heal.

And I will get my waistline to below 35 inches, one day at a time. It turns out that I just needed a number that represented much more than a scale or a dress size.

What is something you’re curious about that is not related to your profession? *

Why doesn't the NFL invest in breast cancer research instead of purchasing hot pink everything during the month of October?

Please share a "How might we" question that you've been asking or would like to begin wrestling with. *

How might we inform students and their families about post-secondary educational and career options?

Open Wikipedia. On the left hand side of the page click on the “random article”
selection. With the question you stated above in mind use the completely random
word and definition that pops up and make associations that help you redefine the
problem. Be creative on this one, we’d love to hear your thought process! (And please make sure to tell us what the 'random article' title was!)

Random article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achel_Brewery

1. BEER!

2. KEG PARTIES!!! Oh. Wait. They're kids, so, hmmm... I mean, it is New Orleans, but...

3. KEG PARTIES FOR PARENTS! Hmmm... while turnout may be great, it's not exactly the marketing message I want to send.

4. Fine. I'll read the article and see how I can tweak this into something legal for those under 21 and meaningful for all ages.

5. Smallest of eight Trappist breweries. Beer made by monks. I like this brand of religion.

7. The abbey was destroyed during the French Revolution. The Germans dismantled the brewery in order to salvage copper during WWI. What needs to be destroyed about "college and career readiness" so that we can rebuild? What can we salvage from the current systems? Will it require a major war, and, if so, who will be the soldiers? Who will be the rebuilders?

8. After an 84-year dormancy, the monks decided in 1998 to start brewing again. Proceeds support the monastery and charities. Well. In the past 84 years, we've largely been successful at keeping low-income and minority children from completing college. We've largely kept people born into poverty in poverty. What can we make or sell that would change this? What charities should or could be involved?

9. And can we drink delicious Belgian beer while we do it?

Please attach a picture of something you have made/built/created, even if you’re not incredibly proud of it. Feel free to add a caption to your photo in the space below.

Photo credit: Anne Berry

Food is one of my love languages. Since Thanksgiving 2010, I have opened my home in New Orleans to other "orphans" (those of us who cannot afford financially or emotionally to visit our families at Thanksgiving *and* Christmas and those who like having an excuse to avoid their families here). This is a picture from last year's Thanksgiving, before we served food to nine people I had spent at least three days cooking/prepping. I am incredibly grateful for my ability to feed others (physically, emotionally, and spiritually) and for the community/family I have created/belong to in New Orleans. 

Bikram cooking

Love languages. I talk about them a lot. It's a theory that we all give/receive love in primarily one or two of the following five ways: acts of service, gifts, physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation. We all give/receive all five, and we all need all five, but you tend to speak/hear fewer.

I think one of my primary love languages is food. I love to cook for people (give). I love to share meals with people (give/receive). And I really, really, really love to eat (receive).

*

My godmother's daughter will deliver some truly well incubated twins tomorrow. My godmother and my mother are in town for the occasion and to help out wherever possible, since Leslie is currently full of almost 13 lbs of baby.

It's a lot of baby.

And since I have the luxury of plenty of free time these days, I decided that I would cook for them. I plan to bring five dishes frozen, a box of produce from Hollygrove Market, my Crockpot/Cuisinart/Microplane, and all of my favorite cookbooks.

I started planning meals on Monday night, making lists which turned into one Google spreadsheet and one Google document. I went to three different grocery stores to get everything I wanted, and I started cooking yesterday afternoon. Pozole turned out much spicier than I intended, and meatloaf turned out much blander than intended. This morning, I made ribollita. My father's braised short ribs will come out of my oven when I finish writing this, and then I will start making his chili. The recipe calls for a (one.) beer, leaving me with five delicious Shiner Bock to partake of.

I've earned it.

For those of you who have houses with insulation or air conditioning that evenly cools your whole house, allow me to explain to you what it's like to be in my kitchen in New Orleans in August. Especially when the oven is on.

It's like Bikram cooking.

Additionally, when I say I'm using my father's recipes, you need to understand:
1. my father is a really excellent cook, and anything I make of his will merely mimic the original;
2. my father's recipes are crazy ridiculous in the amount of effort they take, from grocery shopping for ingredients the store clerks have never heard of to getting stew meat cut especially for you to using twine to hold together bacon, celery, herbs in a "bouquet."

All of these are demotivating factors, but that's how much I love my mother, my godmother, Leslie, Leslie's husband, and these giant twins.

Oh. I forgot to mention Leslie's husband. He doesn't eat produce of any kind, except for iceberg (if that counts) and fried okra (because Alabama). So I'm cooking a lot of meat for him and a lot of vegetables for the rest of his household.

I have frozen or will freeze the soups in one cup portions. That way you don't have to heat up an entire pot of chili when you just want a cup of soup. I made the meatloaf in a muffin tin (that I had to borrow from a friend, because that's how little I bake), so they are also in single servings.

Knowing that the twins' helpers might have allergies or that the twins themselves might develop them, I have labeled each of the ziploc bags I have frozen: name of dish; whether it contains egg, dairy, or gluten; and SPICY across the pozole.

*

I like to think that food is a love language I speak well, and I hope the twins first days at home are filled with the kind of love they'll live their whole lives knowing.

recovery

On Friday night, I had just come home from a 60-minute walk/jog interval set with my brother. In houses built in the early part of the 20th century, two showers can't function at the same time, so I let Andrew go first.

I called my friend Kyle back. Kyle and I have been friends since college. This means that, for better or worse, we've known each other for approximately one decade. We've watched the other make atrocious academic, professional, and romantic choices. And we still love each other.

(I'm pretty sure he's the only guy besides my brother who does not, nor ever has, misinterpreted "I love you" to mean anything other than "Thank you. I mean it.")

The only time in the history of my life I have ever left a bar tab open?
Walked right out of a bar, to my car, and left my credit card behind?
The night Kyle called and told me his mother had died.

That's the kind of friends we are.

So. Friday. I call Kyle to chat. He asks about my recent attempt to regain healthiness, and I describe my workouts/menus/failure at sobriety.

He tells me that he's been Paleo for 18 months, which automatically makes me question my loyalty, since I'm pretty sure that a life without dairy is a life not worth living.

And then he tells me: "However you recover from your last workout affects your next workout. So eat, even if you're not hungry."

*

"However you recover from your last ______ affects your next ______."

Heartbreak. Confession. Credit card bill. Job loss. Meditative session. Failure. Lie. Workout.

Eat. Even if you're not hungry.
Date. Even if you feel like being alone is the best solution.
Spend time with whatever God can or does or will mean to you. Even if you can't trust or don't know how to have faith.
Pick yourself up and move along. Even when you're sure it will kill you.

*

I love you. Thank you. I mean it.

diary

8/19

went for a jog along the main drag of palm springs
realizing that i'm in much better shape in the desert
where it's hot, but the air is dry enough
that you can breathe.

brunch: huevos rancheros + bellini
at a five-star diner
because life should be delicious

headed to the grocery store with my mother
upon our return, my father had entered the beginning stages
of anaphylactic shock
and asked that we take him to the emergency room

(my father is a physician.) (he is never ill.)

immediately upon checking in, he was admitted.
my mother and i sat in the ER waiting room
fearing the worst
("really, God? i come to vacation in california and my father dies of an allergic reaction to something we cannot identify? before he's 60?!")

we were called back
just as his veins were filled with benadryl and pepcid

mom and i sat and read
once we realized that he was out of it
he was tired of being fussed over
and his monitor had stabilized

our neighbor
on the other side of the curtain
was an elderly gentleman who had fallen and broken his hip and arm
his partner read an article to him about julia child
in the kind of loving voice
that you want to have in your life always
but especially in the twilight of your life
because it means you hopefully spent forever
with someone who loves you

four hours later
we went to the pharmacy
and then home for a simple dinner of grilled meats and roasted broccoli

i skinny dipped in the jacuzzi
and a star shot

8/20

jogged to the house clark gable shared with carole lombard
drove around on a self-guided architectural tour
drank a martini before dinner
at a restaurant that hasn't changed its menu since 1975

8/21

PSP --> LAX --> MSY
fixed leaky tires at the tire store.
therapy: focused on relaxation techniques.
yoga.

8/22

breakfast at a place that used to be ours

school site visit to the first school i ever visited here
sept 2008: metal detectors
aug 2012: AP classes

social media presentation
po'boys
a conference call with a woman who believes in my work as much as i do
drowned in email

happy hour: sat a a girlfriend's new house
she and her fiance found together
drank veuve. snacked on crudites.
celebrated her birthday and her engagement
and laughed honestly

8/23

work.
work meeting at starbucks.
sushi.
more work.
pelvic exam.
impromptu overnight visit to baton rouge.

8/24

meetings in the capitol
trying to support a state whose policies are inconsistent with practice
where the flagship university has a 58% six-year graduation rate
but at least they can proudly boast:

LSU is proud to have the highest graduation rate of any public university in Louisiana.

congratulations?
(also, really? that's the picture of graduation rates you want to use for your students' profile?!)

the bank.
the DMV.

my bed, for a glorious two-hour nap.

to the house a girlfriend is sitting
long talks about relationships, work, transgressions
and why not to give up

and i realized that the past five days epitomize
why to keep fighting
what justice looks like in my world
how to love.

wake

Tonight, I had a lovely girl date: first to a fundraiser to benefit local farmers, and then, when they ran out of food and things became too crowded (which is always, always a thing at any of the tasting events in New Orleans), we picked up a bottle of wine and go cups and headed to The Fly.

The sun had already set, but the sky was still several shades of deep corals and blues. Venus appeared. We watched tugboats; my date noted they should be called towboats, because they push, not pull.

Then I started to think of currents, tides, how the Mississippi is somehow as close as my life gets to waves these days. How last May, we'd almost flooded, and we would have, if the government hadn't flooded a portion of Louisiana further (farther? I can never remember) upstream.

We talked about weddings. Specifically, how we envision our next ones. I want fewer than 100 people in a wee chapel. I want a very formal 7:30pm ceremony, with champagne, dessert, and dancing afterwards. On a Friday night, so that for the rest of the weekend, y'all can explore the destination. Because we've all been to too many destination weddings where you never get to destine or vacate.

Then we talked of evacuation plans, with the eminent hurricane season, and how it's really the worst time to be alone, not because you can't do it, but because you want someone to talk through plans with, share responsibility for, protect you.

And I listened to the "waves," reminded myself that I lived through more hurricanes growing up on the coast of North Carolina than my ex, who was raised here, and I exhaled to the universe: let it be.

Let me enjoy one of the last evenings to be outdoors until September;
let me be grateful I can push against currents, pull moonbeams across my bed, tug this load;
let me relinquish, for a bit, my need to plan out every detail;
let me relish this moment, this friendship, this love.

chardonnay

Last night, my beau took me to MiLa for dinner. I had previously had their tasting menu with my mother when she visited earlier this month, and I was pretty excited about tasting the menu again. We ordered our 6 courses to be paired with wines; I really enjoyed everything. The final course came with Abita root beer sorbet, which I hope I can talk my friend Lindsay into recreating.

The third course was a seared scallop, and it was paired with a “French-style” chardonnay. Beau looked quizzically at the bottle, which was entirely en francais, and asked the waiter what “French-style” meant. I responded, “not buttery and oaky and gross.”

It reminded me of another date I had, several lifetimes ago.

*

chardonnay

"do you prefer red or white?"

he asked politely

genuinely inquisitive

"either, as long as its light"

was my honest response

the waiter brought

an unfamiliar bottle

to our table

and as I swallowed

the thick, buttery tones

with hints of grapefruit

I guessed he knew his wines

about as well as he would know

my bed.

5 June 2003