Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!

Farmer Jeff and I are heading off to New Orleans and the Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium in Oxford, Mississippi. We will be eating ourselves silly, taking lots of pictures, talking about food to anyone who will listen and enjoying the time we will spend together.

We will report what we see in NOLA. We have told our pup, Tasso, that we will be visiting his homeland. We have arranged to visit the 9th ward and see what Katrina hath wrought. A good friend of ours will be in New Orleans at the same time building houses through Habitat for Humanity.

We have found a guardian angel for our menagerie, lovely Jessica, so they will not be alone and fending for themselves. Be good, kids!

Our Silver Lining From Hurricane Katrina

It is hard to believe 2 years have passed since the horrendous Hurricane Katrina disaster. We are reminded on a daily basis of said disaster by the joy that the presence of our little Katrina rescue dog, Tasso, brings to us.

I am not aware of the existence of many silver linings because of Katrina. Dear friends of ours escaped New Orleans to Dallas just before the flooding, but they didn't outrun the personal devastation. Our dear friend died of a heart attack 9 weeks later. We know of many folks that have died in the subsequent 2 years, not to mention how many families are still displaced.

It will take years to resurrect New Orleans to its former glory. I pray that it will, once again, be a vibrant, fun, diverse and economically sound city. We will head to New Orleans in October to visit the city before arriving in Oxford, Mississippi for the Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium. I promise to take lots of pictures and share our experiences from our visit.

In the meantime, we thank our lucky stars for our little boy, Tasso. We call him The Kid, Scooter Pie, Little Brat Child, Junior, but most of all, he is our little Katrina boy. He has his issues (gets a little mean when guarding his food dish, has to "mark" every single bush/tree/chair in the yard, has to be on the top of the highest object) and we love him for all of his idiosyncrasies. He is teaching us what it is to have "joie de vivre/Joy of Life".