Good evening, Kibitzers! This week, I’m writing my diary on Sunday night in a charming hotel in the Boston area. I was supposed to be driving home tomorrow, Monday, but my plans have changed a bit and I’ll be driving Tuesday instead. It would certainly be an unusual drive if I did not make it home by the time this diary posted... So consider this to be in the “break a leg” school of might-not-be-here warnings.
Last week, I posted the first half of my modest collection of photos taken during Netroots Nation in New Orleans two weeks ago (spellcheck’s suggestion: “Beetroots Nation”). I saved out the food pictures, and a few related ones, for this week. Fair warning: if you need a snack before looking at food porn, please get one now.
As I mentioned last time, please take note that next year’s Netroots Nation is in Philadelphia on July 11-13, 2019 (presumably with C&J Dinner on July 10), and that you can register now and save money on the limited early-bird rate, available until September 1. (Special hotel rates will open up later.) Please come! It’s fun!
As you may know, the actual NN convention opens on a Thursday morning, so it’s become traditional for kossacks to attend the Cheers & Jeers dinner held on the night before, i.e. the Wednesday of that week. As NN has become a much broader event than “just” a Daily Kos meetup, the C&J dinner has really become a full-on Daily Kos dinner, although Bill in Portland Maine and Common Sense Mainer are still kind enough to host.
So that means that if you really want to get there early, you have to get there on Tuesday. Accordingly, some of us got there Tuesday and went to dinner at Tujague’s.
I posted the picture of the dinner group last week, and I’ve seen it way too many times since, so instead, here is nomandates’ gorgeous Chicken Bonne Femme. This is not even on the menu; she had inside information that they’d make it on request. She graciously let us taste. Yes, those are fresh house-made potato chips on top.
On Wednesday, we needed brunch, so we went to The Ruby Slipper. (By “we” in this diary, I mean an ever-shifting group of kossacks that I happened to be with at the time. Here, smileycreek, paradise50, and nomandates were my co-brunchers.) I had a form of Eggs Benedict involving a barbecued meat called “pork debris”, and also a Ruby Slipper, which is a mimosa rubified by a splash of pomegranate. I did not photograph a scrap of this wonderful meal, although I did buy the t-shirt. Yes, there was a t-shirt for my brunch dish, so that tells you something right there.
Here’s the text of the sign:
What’s in a name? The Ruby Slipper Cafe was inspired by a powerful sense of homecoming when we returned to New Orleans after Katrina. To be back with family and friends again in the city we love, well, Dorothy said it best… “There’s no place like home.” We feel that gratitude every day for our home, New Orleans.
On Thursday, nomandates and I ate brunch near the convention center, at the well-regarded (and packed) Two Chicks Cafe. It was worth the wait.
On the way back to the convention center was a tiny park, St. Mary’s Park, where a public market used to stand. It contains this colorful 1992 cast concrete work by Terry Weldon, River Stones.
On Thursday evening, dinner was at New Orleans Creole Cookery, for which I’ll refer you to Chrislove’s diary since he remembered to take pictures of the food and I did not. I had the same thing as side pocket, and it was excellent.
On Friday morning, the time had come to make the mandatory trip to Cafe du Monde for beignets. Cafe du Monde is open 24 hours a day, but you’d better be hungry for beignets, because that is literally the only food on their menu. They’re very tasty! Many cultures have realized that dough fried in deep fat and served hot, sprinkled with sugar, is good — funnel cakes, zeppole, donuts. Beignets are no different, except they apparently single-handedly keep the powdered-sugar market thriving.
These tiled signs tell what the Spanish called streets in what is now the French Quarter. This one, outside Cafe du Monde, shows that Decatur Street was once called Camino Real y Muelle (“royal road and pier”). After that, the French called it Rue de la Levée because that’s where the levee used to be.
On Friday night, five of us (smileycreek, paradise50, Chrislove, nomandates, me) were wandering around looking for a place for dinner and of course everywhere was crowded and a table for five was a crazy wait. We'd just been told two hours by the hostess at Galliano, and trudged out again, when the owner? manager? popped out the door and called us back, saying he could seat us immediately. It looked as if someone had blown off a reservation and he was done waiting for them to show up. Their loss, our gain.
I was delighted on Saturday to have lunch with Crashing Vor and cv lurking gf. They took me to Mulate’s, where Cajun food is served, and I had a gorgeous salad with roughly a million skewered grilled shrimp on top. It was delicious and yet, being salad, made me feel less bad about the chocolate cake, so win-win! And then cv lurking gf drove me around to her art studio, detouring to show me magnificent old trees and other extra things, and I got to see her beautiful ceramic work in person (and buy a couple of little pieces). I commend this work to your attention! (The first video’s below, and here’s the second video.) Kosmail her if anything calls to you.
New Orleans is hot and humid, and I hate that weather. I’ve never wanted to go back to somewhere like that, except New Orleans. I did not see nearly enough, didn’t hear enough music, didn’t eat enough food (despite the evidence of this diary). Don’t know when I’ll be back, but I will.
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
|
🌟 GOTV 🌟
🌟 POSTCARDING: If you are looking for a way to help and can’t do things like canvassing or phoning, consider hand-writing postcards asking people to vote. It’s easy because you’re given specific talking points from the campaign you’re working with, so you don’t have to think up what to say, and no one will be coming back at you with questions. And if you like to color, you can get creative decorating the cards. Note that you are responsible for buying postcards (and stamps if you don’t use pre-stamped ones.) Postcard stamps are 35 cents each; pre-stamped postcards from USPS are 39 cents each; two pretty designs. To get started:
🌟 CONFIRM YOU ARE REGISTERED, REPEAT REGULARLY, AND GET YOUR FAMILY AND OTHERS TO DO THE SAME!!!
- Many kossacks have been surprised to find that their or a family member’s registration has mysteriously disappeared, even though it had been active. Don’t wait until too late to catch and correct this bullshit.
- HEADCOUNT.ORG will direct you to your state’s Department of State/Division of Elections (or similar) webpage, which is the horse’s mouth, as it were. My state page shows me as registered at my current address, for example.
- VOTE.ORG looks you up in its own database, which they admit is older than states’ databases. They do not show me as registered at my current address.
- Or, google something like “am I registered to vote” plus your state, and go to your state government’s page directly.
🌟 FOLLOW Yosef 52: Several times every day, the dauntless Yosef 52 posts GIANT resource diaries, containing links for virtually every Democrat who is running this November for just about anything north of dogcatcher. At the end, there are links to online tools for taking a wide variety of action. Please rec and share these diaries as you can, to get more eyes on these resources, and also, don’t forget to make use of them if you’re looking for a candidate to help or a way to help them!
|
It is now Day 75 of the new hurricane season.
Puerto Rico has already sort of dodged one hurricane. They’ve already been told there are only 25 customers remaining without power, when that is manifestly, screamingly not true.
PLEASE FOLLOW Denise Oliver Velez and the SOS Puerto Rico group for the latest news about developments in Puerto Rico and the USVI. Denise’s most recent Puerto Rico diary is here. She generally collects resonant tweets at the top of her comment threads, as well, and in the APR’s thread most mornings, to make it easy to retweet. If you tweet or FB, please share something about Puerto Rico and USVI regularly.
PUERTO RICO and USVI DISASTER RELIEF DONATION LINKS
The Daily Kos community has its own project: Puerto Rico resident Bobby Neary (newpioneer) leads a small team dedicated to helping a specific rural elder who was left by the storms without power, water, a roof, or any belongings but a moldy mattress. If you like to see concrete results, this is the project for you. See newpioneer’s diaries for ways to help. See this one in particular, and this comment with photos. See also his lovely and heartbreaking poem.
(🌅 = most recently recommended by Denise)
|