Superfine

Owen is playing tonight at Superfine, an upscale Mediterranean restaurant in Brooklyn Heights that has occasional live music, with Country Man Dan.

Jean and Ella are flying up, to see the show. Ella is looking forward to riding in a horse-drawn carriage, in Central Park.

I don't know anyone in New York City to tell.

I told Tina Aridas and James Reams, The Barnstormers. They live in Brooklyn, with Aaron.

I wish I could go see them but it's out of my range.

I made a tape of James's latest CD, Troubled Times, and am listening to it in my car, as I drive around the Northwest Florida Gulf Coast. I like it more the more I hear it.

Aaron is older now.

We're all older now.

I remember living in New Orleans off Walnut Street, by the levee, and Audubon Park Zoo. Our neighbor, a black man, drove a horse-drawn carriage in the French Quarter.

He kept his horse in a stable beside his house, and had hens, and a rooster, so we could wake up to the sound of a rooster crowing and smell horse shit, bacon cooking, eggs frying, you could imagine a pot of Dixie Lily grits on the back of a wood cookstove.

Tina and James co-wrote a couple of sings on Troubled Times.

Here's a recipe for Lindsay's Cheese Grits, from the Mount Dora Historic Inn bed and breakfast. Mount Dora, Florida. Cheese grits are especially good with fried mullet.

We had fried mullet and cheese grits at our wedding dinner at The Oaks, in Panacea.

Ingredients:

4 cups water
1 cup Dixie Lily Regular Grits (can use yellow or half yellow/half white, do not use instant)
3/4 teaspoons salt
dash fresh ground pepper
1/2 cup milk (as it came from the cow)
1 stick butter
8 ounces cheddar cheese
2 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon minced garlic
1/8 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
2 ounces peach schnapps

Bring water to boil in microwave. Add grits and cook for 10 minutes on 50% power (stir to the bottom at least twice or grits will be lumpy). Add butter, garlic, and cheese and fold in until dissolved. When temperature on grits gets below 135 degrees, add milk and eggs. Fold into grits. Place into ramekins or casserole dish. Cook at once or freeze.

Drink peach schnapps.

Cook at 350 degrees for 50 minutes (70 minutes if frozen) or until top browns. Serve at once. Do not admit they are grits until after everyone tastes them.

Serves: 8 normal people. Serving size: 1 heaping ladle.

Only thing that would make cheese grits better is to add a little shrimp.

Janis Owens has a recipe for cheesy shrimp grits from a Panama City literary gala at Owens at Home.

The gala was connected with booksALIVE 2005!

I attended, saw Janis Owens, had a booth, but wasn't invited to the gala.

I love them trade fairs.

I remember when Brenda and I first moved to New Orleans, we went to a bar and restaurant show, in a convention center, near the riverfront, in the French Quarter.

I had a cup of Dixie beer in one hand and a sample-sized bowl of jambalaya in the other and the Onward Marching Band came through the curtains, from another room, playing "When the Saints Go Marching In," at a stately pace.

I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.