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Y’all remember my friend RJ, right? Well we’d sorta deliberately lost track of each other (long story) . . . but a couple of weeks back he calls and invites me over to his new digs for some down-home, Noo-aaaawwwwwlins style Mardi Gras cookin’. So I decided to sign on again.
I never knew much about the Mardi Gras thing myself, so while we were chatting about the food, I figured I’d ask him about that, too.
RJ leaves the front door open while he’s entertaining, and it’s not unlike him to lean out from time to time and hail the neighborhood in his megaphonic drawl:
“Y’all need to get on ovah h’yeer and try some a this dirty rice!”
A surprising number of people actually take him up on his invitations. In the short time I was there, half a dozen folks dropped in and out of RJs kitchen, including the mailman, RJ’s wife, and a few other apparently random guests.
Oh! And another thing I should tell you . . . RJ is the kind of guy who, when you show up for dinner, will hand you a stirring spoon, point you to the kitchen, and tell you to keep an eye on the beans.
“Gotta get us some dinner rolls,” he says, slipping past you through the front door. “Ya know you cain’t have Mardi Gras dinner without the dinner rolls.”
“There’s some beer in the fridge. Hep yassef. I’ll be back in a little while.”
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RJ on his front porch. “Nobody else in my neighborhood has put up, by any means, carnival masks, or something that says ‘Happy Mardi Gras.'”
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DBP: “Hey, did you just make a gang sign?”
RJ: “Ha-ha. Yeah. Huh. No, what? Oh no! No! That’s an M. An M for Mardi Gras.”
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RJ and his wife, Red.
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New Orleans Style Chicken Gumbo
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Here’s RJ and me talking about Mardi Gras, Lent, Gumbo, and Wild Women:
(About three-and-a-half minutes.)
In truth, I don’t really care that much about cooking. Or religion.
But Wild Women? —Well, hey! That’s kind of universal, ain’t it?
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