Skip to main content

Rain On My Parade, Please!

This will be one of those "be careful what you wish for" moments, but we do need rain here. However, let me you in on a perverse benefit of having a lawn consisting of St Augustine grass. Seems this stuff can live off of the moisture in the air and the dew in the morning. Rain or no rain, it grows and therefore must be cut weekly.

We made our first trip OSL (Other Side of the Lake). I booked tickets at the Theaters at Canal Place to see Ricki and the Flash. But before we were slightly disappointed in the movie, we ventured into the Garden District. Spared from major damage in Katrina, this is a neighborhood of diverse, wonderful, and historic dwellings.

So you took pictures, Jeff?  You would have to have remembered your camera to do that. NO PHONE IMAGES ON THIS BLOG! We'll catch up on this in a future post.

The Garden District is an area of some of the more expensive and desirable homes in New Orleans. The anchor here is proximity to downtown, the universities (Tulane, Loyola, ULNO), and Audubon Park. One of the main corridors is the route of the Streetcar Named Desire on St Charles Street. The neighborhoods start with beautiful larger homes in the University District and transition to cozy "shotgun" homes in the back streets. The density is intensely magnified by the small lots and the extremely narrow streets. Like most older cities, these streets are jammed with cars as very little was done to accommodate automobiles when these neighborhoods developed. There is the intermixing of retail and commercial properties; however, most of them are restaurants, bars, and boutique businesses. We did spot the occasional hardware, grocery, or bakery.

A check of real estate values showed that it isn't difficult to spend that million and a half you have burning a hole in your pocket. Those of us used to the very affordable prices for homes in Milwaukee will get a lump in our throat when we see how little three to six hundred thousand will get you in this area.

After our motor tour of The Garden district, I was reminded that future tours should include bringing a real camera and a walking component. Hence, the driver also gets an opportunity to see the scenery. We went to Mothers for an early dinner.

Mother's, established by a family in 1938, touts the best ham ever. Basically, it's is long-standing downtown tradition. Mother's is a delicatessen. You go to a cash register, order off the menu, put your paid receipt on the table; the wait staff will scoop it up and quickly deliver your meal. The wall is littered with memorabilia ranging from autographed pictures of the military who helped put order back to the city following Katrina and President Bush.

Maria had the famous ham plate, which was accompanied by three sides. She chose the green beans and tomatoes, french fries, and beans & rice. She found the ham a little salty, the beans and tomatoes and french fries very good. By prior agreement, she gave me her beans and rice.

My ham "po boy" was made with deli ham, not the baked ham they feature. I would rate it very average. Frankly, what saved it was the french bread it was served on. The beans and rice were good.

I haven't found my favorite beans and rice yet. It is a common dish down here and is found on almost every menu. One of the good points in Mother's beans & rice dish was they throw in chunks of ham. This is not unique. Many recipes call for smoked sausage or ham. The beans, red or black, are usually in a thickened sauce resulting from the cooking process.

Next time we go OSL, we're going to tour the neighborhood that Brad built. No, not my son Brad. Brad Pitt, the Actor, and Activist, who, with his wife Angelina Jolie, helped rebuild a neighborhood in New Orleans.
I'm particularly interested in this project because, outside of the fact that this was an individual driving and financing the project, it mirrors, in many of its facets, the methods used by Common Ground in their effort in Sherman Park.

I'm also following my friends Ken Karr and his son Kyle with Jeff Waldorf as they motorcycle in India. Their goal to motorcycle to the highest altitude possible is so much a guy thing, but a good thing. You just have to be pulling for them.

Great start to the Packer's trip to the Super Bowl. I know this will get Milwaukee sports fans positive something to talk about. Didn't I hear the Cubs swept the Brewers twice this season?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ring The Bell

 It appears there is a tradition in the radiology department at Ascension Hospital that patients, upon completing their course of treatment, ring a bell. ( We know not for whom this bell tolls.) Ring the Bell with My Sweetheart Jeanne. Jeanne drove me to all but two of the appointments. Pam Frautchi took me to the other two. Today, after being zapped thirty-two times, I rang the bell. This begins a roughly one-month recovery period where the effects of the radiation abate and, I'm assured, a return to normalcy occurs. In my case, I anticipate more energy and greater awareness. Books, Books, & More Books I am simultaneously celebrating the end of the third year of volunteering for the All Saints Hunger Book Sale. Next week, we will wrap up the preparation for the sale and open our doors on August 3 for the public. I ran into this humourous but quite accurate cartoon on a T-Shirt that shows most of the volunteer's sentiments at this point. If you think the printed and bound p...
One of my latest efforts. Sketch: The Lady Is Blue Gouache 9 X 12 Reporting: I enjoyed a pleasant evening with my friend Michelle Mooney. I took her out for dinner to celebrate her birthday and to thank her for the many first-rate haircuts she's given me. We were surprised at the number of people who dined alfresco in the balmy night air. Whatever we've done to please Mother Nature, she had deemed acceptable by giving us a shot of summer just when late fall weather was wrapping her fingers around our throat. If I have one complaint about the friendly confines of The County Claire, it's the noise level that makes it difficult to converse. The rumble is an acoustical problem with the customers speaking in normal conversational tones. This is without audible TV showing some game or background music selected by a dance DJ.  I know! We should have eaten outside, where the only noise is the occasional 14 bus snorting by.   Maybe It's Me Since my two soccer teams are not doing...

It's time again.

It started in 2004 when we moved to our condo off Downer in Milwaukee. Then we mover to the Westside of Milwaukee when we rented from Ken Karr, the former landlord, now a current friend on Highland and 29th St. Then we moved to Mandeville Louisiana for a little less than a year. Returning to The Fox River Valley, we rented a home in Fox Crossing, formerly The Town of Menasha. When the tree fell on the roof, and the landlord felt no urgency to fix it, we moved to W. Commercial in Appleton. Here is a shocker. Are you sitting down? We are moving. No, I don't mean off the couch and out to the patio. There are too many damn mosquitoes for that to happen. No, we are packing our stuff, or at least the stuff we unpacked from the last move and moving to a home Maria purchased on Mason and Glendale in Appleton. Let me unpack that last sentence (pun planned for). We are moving at approximately the end of September to a house. The house has been in t...