The boy ain't right in the head

[racheld]

In my hurry to skim through, I just now took another look at that glorious pate'. Is that aspic I see on top? Homemade? Wow. A hundred years of garden clubs and WMU meetings bow down and call you blessed.

And tell about how you got it to silky perfection---hand blender, sieve, what? Seasonings?---nutmeg? Mace? It's just a marvel of itself. Nicest one I've seen in years. Lovely silky velvety stuff. Hard to make and perfectly done. And how on earth did you turn it out without getting little snicks in the sides? That's not a smoothover I see, that's one gentle plok onto the lettuce, with no imperfections.

Perfect. Just perfect.

And the brisket ain't bad, either...Wow again.

Get rested up and send out those recipes.

[whatsup1]

Can someone point me to the recipes, please? I have been check Recipe Gullet often, but haven't found them.

[Mayhaw Man]

That's because all of them are not in there yet. I will try to get this task completed this week, with the help of a certain angel from Mont...no, wait.....Angel from Minnesota.

I apologize for the delay. It has been a really, really busy month.

[racheld]

Just had a hankerin' to try that beautiful pate' but can't find the recipe in recipe Gullet under any incarnation of the word.

And are there still more pictures?

[racheld]

Is there any possibility that you've had another party in recent memory? I just keep going back to this one from time to time, great hankerings for a lawn tea of my own urging me to at least get out there and snip some of the wild limbs from the arbor. That would be a start.

I just loved this party, and it brought back some lovely memories.

[Mayhaw Man]

Funny how life works, if you look at it the right way.

Several months after this thing, we had a couple of weather issues that changed everything. The house that is in the photos had about a dozen people in it on the night of the 28th and they had to spend three days cutting their way out of the long leaf pines that came down on the property. No power, no water, no nothing. Just a couple of chain saws and a lot of really tired folks. A couple of weeks later, something similar happened. That's life here, I suppose, but alot of things changed for all of us thanks to those storms.

The boys who were having the party have now graduated from high school, and all are going to college. The tall one that belongs to me, Miles, is now taller at 6'6", and on his way to LSU. He got into the landscape architecture school, which is a really big deal, and we're all really pleased. The one with the spike in his head, Gram, is now a student at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts and I am really pleased about it, as I will get to see him regularly and often as I live not too far from there. It's an amazing place and we are really lucky that he managed to, on his own steam, get in there-spike in the head and all.

My house, about 5 miles from the house where the photos are from, got pretty much mooshed by pecan and pine trees and it took about two years to get it back together, though today it is, by any standards, really lovely in a rebuilt 125 year old small hotel kind of way. Sadly, I don't live in it anymore, but Robin and the boys do and they love it. The hurricane took alot of lives that week and left alot more in confusion and conflict. In my case, it ended a marriage and started a new path in life for all of us. It's sad, but we are hardly the only ones in this boat and I suppose more time should be spent, by all of us, concentrating on what we have and not what we have lost.

Now that that's all out of the way, we can move into the current and the recent past. I moved to New Orleans, bought a really nice, small, classic sideporch shotgun house in Uptown (oddly located just down the street from a freezer that contained 90 grand that may or may not legally belong to my congressman, Bill Jefferson), and have a wonderful partner in my life that I don't know how I ended up with or deserve in any kind of way. She cooks in DC and is kind of a big deal in that world, but I go, or she comes, back and forth alot and it seems to be working for both of us. I like DC, and Delaware, and she loves it here. We have friends on both ends of the line that we care about and are close to, and, when they are sober enough, are good folks to have around. We're luckier than hell in that regard. We have some plans that are slowly coming to fruition in the food world up in the Delta and it's likely that we will both end up there, together, sooner rather than later. Time will tell, I suppose.

Enough of that. To answer your question, yes, I am still doing this for other folks. I am lined up to do two late summer things as going away parties for folks and one of them will not be dissimilar to what's above this post. I also have taken up baking as more than just a passtime and have been selling a few cakes on the side for good money and for good reviews. Also, thanks to my friend and confidant Pableaux, we also started this Monday night salon and bean fest that became much more than a cheap meal and some dependable Monday night laughs. The whole thing kind of morphed into something much more and, for a while anyway, everyone who was in town working on a story came by to see what the stormtards were up to. If you're gonna be depressed, angry, confused, and at loose ends, you might as well do it in the national press, I suppose. That kind of fed into some big holiday meals and, oddly, those meals fed into a piece that will appear in Southern Living in November. It's a little bit staged, but, beyond that, it's dead factual all the way down to the food. The only thing that's fake is we generally aren't that well dressed and I rarely have my hair (what's left of it after I managed to knock off the top of my head in a biking accident last August) as neatly coiffed. We're all very handsome. Look for it. It should be pretty funny, if nothing else.

As I type I have four butts and two briskets going on my newly constructed pit out back. Excepting one of the briskets, they're all for someone else. I wasn't going to do this but thanks to the idiots at Delta Airlines (started in my hometown, and I'm loyal, but this is getting silly) I wasn't able to go to DC this weekend and I kinda really wanted to see Guy Clark, an acquaintance from a long time ago and, other than James McMurtry, the best singer songwriter currently working on this planet out on the mall and follow that up with the Marine Corps band shooting cannons during the music. Oh well, next year. They don't seem to ever run outta ammo, so I'm sure that I will get another chance. My way better half (she owns, among other things, Johnny's Halfshell on Capitol Hill) is at work selling picnic lunches to the lazy swells who didn't want to make their own and I wish that I was there helping. It woulda been fun.

I also have a couple of Crack Cakes in the oven (it's a coconut cream layer cake with a bad nickname, thanks to the fact that there is never any left in the morning after a party) and am making squash casserole and some okra and tomatoes to take to an event tonight after the fireworks out on the river.

Overall, not a bad day or, now that I think about it, a bad life. I think that I'll spend the rest of the 4th concentrating on that and not the fact that it's raining and hot outside. Thanks for the note, Rachel. I needed to think about some of this stuff and I don't do it often enough.

Life goes on, and, well, you're better off with something good to eat.

Best,

B

Edited July 4, 2008 by Mayhaw Man (log)

[racheld]

AWWWWW, Brooks.

You just made my cloudy, too-cold-and-wet for the parade this morning, I-HOPE-it-doesn't-rain-out-the-fireworks day!!

I knew, when I reached for the little light blanket to throw over my feet as we watched TV last night, that sump'n just wasn't RIGHT about doing that the night before the Fourth of July.

And so, paradeless and chilly and finishing the percolator all by myself, I took nostalgic comfort in scanning back over threads with Summery parties and shady lawns and pretty food. And this was one of the most memorable in all the history of eG.

I hope that graceful old house is all right---ladies of a certain age need a little cosmetic help on occasion, and that one was a beaut.

Thanks for the update, and I hope your upcoming entertainments are as wonderful as this one was. And I'd STILL like to know how you got that pate' with aspic and all, out of the pan and onto that decorated platter, without smicking up the sides or getting fingerprints into the glaze.

ETA: I meant to add: I hope you'll soon part with WHERE and WHAT in the Delta---my old homeplace is still there, right near Memphis, and I hope whatever you're doing will be wonderful and successful and BRIGHT for you in every sense of the word.

Edited July 4, 2008 by racheld (log)

[CaliPoutine]

Coconut cake is my favorite. Care to share your recipe?

[Abra]

Wowsers, Brooks. I'm glad to see that even though you've been through it all you've come out sweetly on the other side. Your new life ought to make for lots of good stories to share with us, and I look forward to them.