For some reason, now that the dining room is painted (a lovely colour with an uninspiring name - Berkshire Beige!) I am obsessing over furniture that we can't afford. The current object of my affection is the lovely Tolix 1934 A chair, which was originally (supposedly) designed to be used on board a battleship, but were subsequently given to cafes and bars in France by breweries in exchange for stocking their beer. It now epitomises industrial cottage chic, and I really want some. Sadly, they are approaching $230 each. Serious design expenditure.
Here is the Ainsley recipe that I mentioned before:
Prep time: 20 mins
Cooking time: 35 mins
Serves: 3-4 (depending on your appetite, but usually does two of us for two meals)
Ingredients:
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 chilli pepper (he stipulates red, but I've used jalapenos successfully)
1lb (450g) potatoes roughly diced
2 tbsp curry paste or powder (I usually use Madras - I love a bit of heat!)
2 1/4 cups (600ml) stock (veg or chicken)
1lb (450g) butternut squash (or pumpkin)
15oz (400g) can black-eyed peas, drained
2 tomatoes, cut into smallish wedges
Salt & pepper
chopped coriander (cilantro) to garnish
lemon wedges to serve
Instructions
1. Heat oil in large casserole (dutch oven), add cumin and mustard seeds, and cook for 1 minute. When they begin to splutter and pop add the onion, garlic and chilli pepper and cook for 3 -4 minutes.
2. Stir in potatoes and cook for 3 minutes. Add curry paste/powder and stock, bring to boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Add squash/pumpkin and simmer for 15 minutes (or until veg are tender). Add black-eyed peas and tomato wedges and continue to cook for a couple more minutes. Season to taste.
3. Divide stew between individual dishes, sprinkle over coriander (cilantro) and serve with lemon wedges.
Yum!!
Off to take a pic off the new Le Creuset and the stew it contains...
We now no longer have a huge water oak lying across our garden, but what we have instead is a huge gap in the fence where said tree collapsed. This would not be a problem were it not for the fact that it means that until it's fixed either me or The Husband has to accompany the dogs outside to make sure they don't make an escape attempt. This reminded me of when we had to do the same because they were little tiny pups. It was tedious then, and surprisingly no less tedious this time. Also boring because it means paying someone to come and repair it - which in turn means less money to spend on exciting things.I also have to admit to having treated myself to a gorgeous red Le Creuset casserole (or dutch oven, as it's called over here, inexplicably) which was on sale at half price - yippee. I'm so pleased with it I might even be tempted to post a picture of it on here when I get home! I had to make immediate use of it, so I made an old favourite - squash and black eyed bean stew (a delish Ainsley Harriott 'low fat meal in minutes' for which I shall post the recipe when I get home). It tasted even better than usual (I'm sure there should be some research into that kind of effect, if there isn't already). Anyway, off to ride home in the rain - we've had several severe weather warnings, but nothing like North Dakota, which is expecting 41in of snow in the next few days. Chilly.
So, the local council has finally arranged for the huge water oak that came down in our garden during Hurricane Gustav to be removed. So, today was mostly characterised by the unmistakable whine of chainsaws and cracking of tree limbs. It was a monster tree, and had it fallen the other way, it would have taken out half our house. We evacuated to North Louisiana (Monroe, and then a little place by the Arkansas border called Farmerville) for Gustav, so we weren't here to see it come down, but I'm sure it would have been pretty hairy!
It's obviously a significant aspect of life along the gulf coast, that hurricane season can be very disruptive. In fact, we only missed a week of work for Gustav, and the University tries to minimise closures, but most students were absent for two weeks, as some had driven as far as Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas. The tragedy is that there are still thousands of families who are refugees from Katrina, but it doesn't really make the news anymore, and the political will to rebuild New Orleans seems to come from celebrities and non-profits rather than elected officials.
The opportunity to rebuild genuinely sustainable and affordable housing in NO is unmissable - if we let it pass, we will have sqaundered the future of a truly extraordinary city. The picture above is of a 'Katrina Cottage' - the prefab houses that are supposed to be the solution to the problem.
I was talking to a native of NO the other weekend (sitting in a cafe opposite St Louis Cathedral) and she said that those who live there describe it as 'a high functioning third world island off the coast of America'. I like that description because it seems to capture something of the crazy mix of high and low culture that makes it so intoxicating a place.
It's lovely properly spring-like weather here at the moment - we've had several gorgeous days in the seventies with no humidity (which is the killer). However, the consequence of this is that the garden's slightly sorry state seems to be a constant reproach. We've done very little since we moved in (a combination of ignorance of the local flora and feeling overwhelmed at the size of the plot), and whilst it still looks presentable, it's nowhere near what it could be. So far, all I've managed is a bit of pruning and general tidying. We have several huge old trees (magnolias, red oaks and pecans, as well as a couple of camphors and crepe myrtles) which keep it from just looking like an unkempt bit of grass, but the lure of more exciting things is very strong.
I'm super keen to have a veggie and herb garden, but not at all sure I've got the wherewithal to keep it together. I think I need to start small...if Michelle Obama can find the time, surely I can.
In these economically rollercoasterish times it becomes even more important to know how to do more with less. This is a general approach to life that our grandparents would not have to think twice about, but we seem to have left it behind as if being profligate were some kind of badge of honour and progress. I think that attitude is now showing itself to be just as shortsighted as our grandparents would have said it was. So, I am doing more than usual in the area of cooking thriftily with good quality but relatively humble ingredients treated well. Many people from all corners of the world know all about this kind of cooking - at the moment I'm particularly interested in Indian and Italian.
So, with that in mind, this evening I set out to make aloo mattar (potato and pea curry), accompanied by tarka dhal (lentils). I was improvising on a theme using some especially good quality madras curry powder I found on offer in the local supermarket looking lonely on the clearance shelf. I love those kind of finds! The husband seemed very happy with it, and I must say for a first stab it was quite pleasing. The only downside is that the house will now smell of curry for at least the next two days - fine on the evening you eat it, not so much the morning after.
I have the prospect of delayed coverage of the 6 Nations matches on Setanta this weekend, so it will be curry and rugby for a couple of days. Not bad really - although I'm sure that most of the people I know around here would be bemused by both aspects of my weekend plans. If I were to try and integrate it would be tailgating and the NCAA top 28 March Madness games (that's college basketball for the uninitiated). A different world.
Okay, so I've been meaning to get this thing underway for over a year, but what with one thing and another (new house, new job, new country) it's only just begun (resisting the temptation to break into song here...). I thought that it might be of interest to me later, and perhaps to one or two of my friends and family, plus any hapless surfer who finds themselves reading this. Whilst there are lots of us Brits living in the US, they tend to be concentrated in the main (glamorous) cities like NY, San Fran and LA. There are not that many of us in Lousiana, and even fewer here in Lafayette (capital of Cajun country).
Work has brought us here, unexpectedly, but we're trying to make it feel like home.
This part of the US has a very distinct culture, cuisine and even language (most people outside the main cities speak French - though not the kind you learned at school!). It's not really part of the so-called Bible Belt, as the predominant religion here in Southern Lousiana is Catholicism (rather than Southern Baptist, as in most of the rest of the South). This is a historical artefact from the time that France and Spain owned this part of the US (not at the same time, obviously). It is also, just as you might imagine, extremely conservative (this is the only state that voted more strongly Republican in the most recent election than in the previous one - make of that what you will).
I have no intention to upset anyone, or be more than my usually critical self - but this blog will record my reactions to living here, both positive and negative. It'll be an account of the ups and downs of living thousands of miles away from home in a country that although it shares our language can be as foreign as anywhere in the world. It feels like a good time to be in the US, with lots of optimism and momentum for change - we'll just have to see if that change is realised, or simply fades away. Here's hoping for the former.
