Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

We try to cook some of the food and listening to WWL is good too.....but there is a smell that you only get when you are there and it is so good....if you drive down Carrollton towards the river on a warm night the smell is a combination of plants, like a sweet smell, maybe ivy or oleander, I don't know, and then the smell of garlic and food cooking from homes and restaurants and there is nothing like it in the world.
---
Well, I hate to admit it, but I'm not a cook. In fact, I loathe cooking.
But I sure do love to eat! My mom was a great cook - maybe that's why I
never bothered to learn properly - I knew I didn't have her instincts.
Anyway, the point here is that I CAN produce a decent meal if I put my mind
to it (but with recipes, not instincts!). So one of the ways I deal with
missing home is that whenever we have people over for dinner I cook New
Orleans dishes. Mostly they go over big - especially jambalaya, and bread
pudding with Bourbon sauce. I have cookbooks such as the River Road, the
old Ursulines "Recipes and Reminiscences", plus one of
Prudhomme's - although I refuse to cook "blackened" anything -
no Emeril, either - to me he's still the new kid on the block, and a
transplanted Yankee, to boot! :) Another way I cope is occasionally
listening to Dixieland jazz - especially Pete Fountain - you can't get
more New Orleans than Pete. Also, I have a little connection to a place in
jazz history. My grandfather's first cousin was the drummer with the
Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the group that cut the very first jazz record
in 1917! (I have a CD re-issue of it.) And of course, I run to the
television if there's anything on about New Orleans. But utimately I fear there's no real cure for the disease of "missing New Orleans"!
---
to'ahda dings we did:

1) Spend the paycheck on shipping shrimp ta hava
berl.

2) Make muffalatta's (sp? -sometimes the Yat and American get all
mixed up.
Collecting all the ingredients was quite a chore, expecially the
bread.
Our friends and neighbors just could not understand the excitment
of it all. They wondered what the big deal of a meal was? A MEAL???!!!
WHATAYA MEAN, A MEAL???!!! ITSA SACRED, TIME HONORED RITUAL OF THE HIGHEST
ORDER!
---
I had moved away the beginning of 1970 and lived up north for several
years. Although still in the States, I was just across Lake Erie from
Canada. I missed New Orleans everyday. I was homesick and cried alot. I
yearned for contacts. I searched the radio, and sometimes found connections
like Pete Fountain filling the airways. Then, I would cry some more,
expecially when they played Pete's "Do you know what it means to
miss New Orleans...."

Now, I have lived in some very progressive
cities that did and could still afford better professional opportunies,
city services, education, etc....But no where in the world is there an
energy as rich, creative, sultry, bekoning,and addictive as New Orleans.


I am "me" here more than any place else; more alive, more
intouch, more intune. I believe the energy here is what produces such fine
talent, not the gene pool. Talent of every medium is awakened and nurtured
by the very air we breath, and the powerful electrical charge we all feel.
We are all lured by this decadent and eloquent lady's magnetic pull. New
Orleans is beyond a place on the map, it is a state of mind and being.
---