The industry is promising a better-than-average crawfish season this year, and this Cajun girl couldn’t be happier.

I grew up in the North where my connection with Louisiana food was mostly through stories I heard from my Southern relatives. It wasn’t until we moved to Louisiana when I was a young teen that I became acquainted with Louisiana seafood.

The marshlands around Lake Charles were our classroom as my dad and our Uncle Howard taught us how to catch dinner from the bayous. The lesson started with wading out into shallow waters with nets and bait.

They taught us how to tie the bait to a triangular net and how to carefully check those nets every half hour.  We were thrilled when we’d pull up a trap and see mudbugs and crabs nibbling on the bait because we knew there was a crawfish boil in our immediate future.

The first time I went to a crawfish boil, I didn’t know what to expect. There was a big gray metal washtub in the back yard filled with swarming crawfish. Some had big claws while some were missing either one or both claws. My dad explained that those were the ones who’d lost the fight, but they would still be good eating.

Between the cooks, there were friendly arguments about every step of the cooking process.Seasoning was the first argument. Some put the seasoning on once the crawfish hit the pot. Others seasoned the water before adding the crawfish. Some added Tabasco sauce. Some sprinkled Tony Chachere’s Cajun Seasoning liberally into the water. Most agreed, however, that cayenne pepper is required.

We were a family that added potatoes and corn-on-the-cob in with the crawfish. I remember the first time I bit into the corn and feeling my mouth catch on fire from the red pepper. My dad laughed and told me the potatoes and corn suck up the seasoning so be careful about taking a big bite without slathering it in butter first.

While we waited for the crawfish to cook, it was the youngsters’ job to cover the picnic tables with old newspapers and make sure there were lots of rolls of paper towels. We also put out small bowls to mix ketchup and Tabasco sauce for those who liked their crawfish extra spicy.

Once the seasoning debate was settled, then it was a heated debate about whether it was better to dump ice on the crawfish to stop them from cooking once they’d turned a deep shade of cinnamon or dump them on the table and watch the steam rise.

We didn’t care what method the grownups used as long as there was a giant pile of crawfish to dig into. When the crawfish were cooked to the chef’s degree of satisfaction, the cooks would dump piles of crawfish along the middle of the table, and everybody pulled a pile toward them.

Our Cajun relatives believed we needed to know how to properly peel and eat crawfish. Uncle Howard taught me how to grab the tail, squeeze the sides, twist it and then carefully pull out the meat.

It was a lucky day if the tail came out intact and an even luckier day if we could take the pincher on the claw, twist it and wiggle the meat from the claw. If we were hungry, we’d put the claws to the side to tackle after the crawfish were all gone and we were waiting for the next batch.

The best parts of a crawfish boil are the Cajun music playing in the background, the hum of the propane tank heating the water and the sounds of cards hitting a table while the grownups play boo-ray for nickels.

My dad and uncle aren’t with us anymore, but their spirit is with me every time I sit down to a platter of freshly cooked crawfish and silently thank them for the Cajun life lessons.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

            Waking up isn’t easy. In the past, people used wind-up alarm clocks until electric clock radios came along. These days, people use their cell phones for everything, including as an alarm clock. But I’m an old-fashioned soul when it comes to coming out of a deep sleep. I like hearing the soothing voice of Steve Inskeep on National Public Radio first thing in the morning.

            Years ago, my mom gave us a clock-radio alarm clock as a Christmas gift, and the dual-alarm setting has come in handy. But over time, the volume knob developed a short and recently would only play at an ear-splitting level or at a whisper.

            Being a sound sleeper, I chose the loud level.

            Finally my husband said waking up to that decibel of doom and gloom that only NPR can deliver was enough.

            So I headed to Target and scanned the shelves for a digital clock radio. I was delighted to see that one of the few clocks offered had a dual-alarm function and an easy-to-read digital display. I came home, plugged in the new clock and attempted to set the time.

            I pressed the buttons. The time never budged from blinking 12:00. I tried pressing different buttons. Still the 12:00 blinked on and off. I got the directions out, read them and tried again. Still no change from the 12:00.

            Defective, I thought, so I returned it to the store and got a different brand. I brought it home, plugged it in and tried to change the time.

            Nothing.

            Every time I pressed the hour button, the radio station changed. After hearing the same rap song a dozen times, I figured maybe the radio needed the batteries installed to effectively change the time.

I hunted around and scrounged up two AA batteries. I put them in and tried to change the time again.

            The numbers 12:00 kept blinking.

            Frustrated, I went for the big guns – my engineer husband. I told him I couldn’t figure out how to change the time on the clock radio and asked if he’d set the time.

            Twenty minutes later, he told me he couldn’t get the time to change either. I headed back to Target and returned the clock radio. I’d exhausted all the models of clock radios they had so I drove over to Best Buy. I found a clock radio but, this time, I stopped at the Geek Squad desk and asked the associate to humor me.

            “This is the third clock radio I’ve bought in three weeks,” I told him and then related the story of my bad luck. He plugged in the radio and set the time, showing me the two steps he used to get rid of the blinking 12:00.

            “Easy,” he told me. “You’ll have no problem.”

            So I rushed home and plugged in the clock radio before I’d forget how to reset the time. The clock blinked 12:00, and I pressed the buttons, just like the Geek Squad guy did.

            Nothing.

            Twenty minutes later, I gave up and reached a logical conclusion.

            I’m going to join the 21^st century and use my cell phone as an alarm clock. I know it works, I know it keeps up with daylight savings time and I can choose from 20 different alarm sounds. As I unplugged the old alarm clock, I couldn’t bring myself to toss it in the trash after 20 years of faithful service.

             So I gave her a place of honor on the night stand where she’ll still display the time while her modern counterpart sounds the alarm.  

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

             

Recently, I saw an online photo gallery featuring the fashion choices Britain’s Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, has made since she’s come into the royal spotlight.

Fashionistas ooh and aah over her made-to-fit coats, designer dresses, tailored jackets and diamond-studded tiaras that look quite regal atop those long, thick brunette locks. Reporters gush about how Kate has embraced looking absolutely stunning every time she steps out of the royal limousine.

Well not all of us can be a duchess or a princess, but I also dress for different occasions. The main difference is my fashion choices aren’t reported in the news. Also, I don’t think my fashion choices are on the same level as the duchess.

So here’s the Queen of Calamity – it’s just me – reporting on the fashion choices the queens of calamity and clumsiness make as we blunder and stumble through our day.

Here I am at the grocery store on a cold day. The grey sweat pants match quite nicely with the black knee socks – don’t mind the holes — that coordinate with the sweatshirt and the LSU hoodie.

The spaghetti sauce and Ivory Linen paint stains make a nice pairing with the make-up-free face and the “I Believe in Bigfoot” baseball cap.

On summer days, life for the queen is a lot easier. It’s khaki shorts with 99-cent flip flops and a white or red T-shirt. No need to overdress when it’s 98 degrees outside.

Then there’s the go-to-work look. The Queen of Calamity has a variety of beige pants in her closet. She thinks they match everything, so she either wears the khaki-colored pants with an elastic waist or the tan Capri slacks with any shirt or sweater in her closet.

Let’s not forget the going-to-the-movies look. The queen does manage to switch out the khaki pants with the sweat pants for this outing.

Not the same stain-filled sweat pants but the baggy black sweat pants. That’s because they coordinate with the black T-shirt and oversized black purse. Her purse is probably considered vintage since the queen has lugged that suitcase around since the late 1990s.

Since we mentioned the purse, let’s talk accessories. The queen favors that huge black imitation leather purse because she can haul around the essentials – three notebooks for when an interview or the need to write down a grocery list pops up, two boxes of Tic-Tacs and 15 pens. A writer always needs an extra pen, and reporters can’t resist free pens from the credit union.

Queens of calamity also need shoes to match every outfit. There’s the white tennis shoes to wear to work. Then there’s the dirty white tennis shoes to wear with the sweat pants.

There’s also the grease-stained tennis shoes to wear to the grocery store. The queen said that, in all fairness, she must admit that there’s really only one pair of tennis shoes in her closet. She just labels them differently for different occasions.

Special occasions take the fashion choices to a new level. The queen favors the minimalistic look – no fancy jewelry except for a pair of gold hoop earrings. If they were good enough in 1985, they’re good enough to wear today.

Vintage, you know.

In fact, the vintage look encompasses quite a bit of the queen’s wardrobe. There’s the 2012 T-shirt with the kitten on the front. Cotton gets pretty soft after all those years, and who wouldn’t love a soft cotton shirt with a kitten on the front?

There’s the whole selection of holiday T-shirts, from garish orange shirts for Halloween to the red and green Rudolph T-shirt that’s acceptable from Nov. 29 all the way through Dec. 31.

And, for simplicity, there’s a couple of white T-shirts, red T-shirts and black T-shirts that coordinate with every single holiday. All come with stains because the queen of calamity is quite clumsy.

So while Kate Middleton makes headlines everywhere she goes, the queen of calamity goes about her day in quiet anonymity. But if you want to find her, she’ll be the one wearing a stained white T-shirt and that Bigfoot baseball cap.

The queen’s tiara’s at the cleaners.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

 

 

Every Saturday morning, my husband had a ritual he followed without fail – run, shower, eat breakfast and then check the oil, tire pressure and windshield wiper fluids in my vehicle. I have a priceless photo of his legs sticking out from underneath the car accompanied by a 2-year-old’s legs – our youngest boy who followed his dad everywhere. Our 5-year-old grandson follows his father everywhere and is starting to help out with chores, doing things just like he sees his father.

Parents are always teaching their children skills they think they’ll need in life, passing down knowledge they learned from their parents. Most of the time, we parents don’t think the lessons are being absorbed.

But children do watch and learn, and I did the same with my parents.

My dad was a resourceful parent, always full of surprises and bursts of imaginative ways to do almost anything. There were only three things Dad needed to fix anything – black electrical tape, duct tape and a hammer.

My brother likes to tell the story about a lawn mower we had that stopped working one afternoon.

A little background – my Dad never bought anything brand new. A born salesman, Dad loved haggling with someone to get the best deal possible. Hence the reason we always had second-hand lawn mowers and vehicles.

One afternoon, the old mower stopped working. My brother tinkered and sweated over that mower, and then Dad came over to see what was going on. He said he needed a hammer to fix the problem.

Long accustomed to Dad’s ways with hammers, my brother thought the old guy would come back from the tool shed with one of his beat-up hammers.  Dad did better than that – he came out with a sledgehammer, gave the lawn mower a ringing blow and, low and behold, the mower started.

Inventiveness was Dad’s strong suit, and most of the time, he’d solve the problem. But sometimes, his ideas were off the chart.

Years ago, my parents lived on a corner lot with lots of trees. There was an old pine tree near the driveway, and one of the bigger branches, in Dad’s opinion, needed to be removed.

The branch was high up, so Dad hauled out his rickety metal ladder, pulled his van up underneath the branch and then put the ladder on top of his van.

I glanced out the kitchen window and saw him sawing on that branch and realized what was going to happen – when he finished sawing all the way through the branch, the heavy branch would fall directly on his windshield.

Instead of going outside and sounding the alarm, I called my sister, barely able to tell her what was going on because I was laughing so hard – seeing my Dad on top of his van standing on a wobbling ladder as he sawed away was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen.

But I realized I needed to tell him what the end result would be, so I ran out, stopped him and explained what was going to happen if he kept sawing. He looked at the branch, looked at the tree, looked at his windshield and agreed I was right.

So he leaned the ladder against the trunk of the tree, moved his van, tied a rope to the branch and told me to pull hard as he went back to sawing.

I did exactly what he told me until I realized that when he sawed all the way through, I’d be pulling on the branch and that huge hunk of wood would hit me square in the face.

I immediately yelled at him to hold up, and he thought I’d lost my mind for stopping him on while carrying out an incredibly good idea.

Once again, I explained the laws of gravity. He saw what would happen and then grudgingly agreed to let the branch fall to the driveway on its own.

I thought about that afternoon when I was standing on a kitchen chair last night and grabbed the hammer to use the claw end to retrieve something from the top shelf in my closet.

My dad would be so proud.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 

 

            Our niece is getting married this summer, and there’s a wedding shower in a couple of weeks. Like most brides these days, Kayla and Nolan are registered at a gift store, so I checked the registry to see what they needed and wanted.

            No surprise, my niece is going for a clean, crisp look. The appliances and items she’s chosen are pretty, practical and useful. I’ve shopped on this site for other couples requesting $50 salt-and-pepper shakers and shook my head in dismay, thinking that couple’s in for a rude awakening.

            Starting a family is expensive. New couples need everything, and not just big items. There’s the little things we take for granted after years of being married, but new couples start from scratch.

            Spices, condiments, drinking glasses, cleansers, trash cans, foil, breakfast cereal, frozen pizza – the list goes on and on. So helping a young couple get on their feet is a tradition most of us embrace and do our best to get them set up so they don’t have to worry about eating from take-out containers because there’s no plates in the cabinet.  

            As I looked over their list a little more carefully, I realized the things new couples really need aren’t listed on any registry and can’t be found in any store.

            Trust. A man and a woman who take their vows to love, honor and cherish for the rest of their lives have to trust that the other person really means what they promise at the altar. They also have to trust that if one breaks the covenant and asks for forgiveness, forgiveness will be given.

            Friendship. Husbands and wives have to be friends, not just lovers. Friendship in a marriage allows you to plan a vacation together so, at the end of the week, you’re still talking. When you’re married to your friend, you know if there’s a problem at work, your spouse will be there. They’ll patiently listen to you whine, complain and gnash your teeth about a situation they can’t fix.

            Tolerance. Let’s face it – we all have habits we don’t realize could cause someone to raise their eyebrows and question your upbringing. These include clipping your toenails while sitting on the living room couch, reading magazines in the bathroom and leaving facial hair and leg hair all over the bathroom floor.

            A blessing on all spouses who overlook the little annoyances.

            Amnesia. We all make mistakes, and nobody wants to be reminded of those mistakes for the next 50 years. Forgetting that your wife lost the debit card on vacation and never reminding her about it is gold in the bank. Casually forgetting that your husband bought an expensive video game he never plays is one of those purchases you need never bring up.

            Teamwork. Marriages are often described as partnerships. In a true partnership, each partner gives 50 percent and each partner contributes something different to the entity to make it work. In a marriage, it’s never even. Sometimes one will be giving 100 percent while the other regroups. Perhaps his job’s overwhelming, the kids are demanding or other family members need your wife’s attention. A functioning team understands that the team often works like a see saw, but in the end, balance is always sought and usually restored.

             Laughter. When the toilet’s overflowing and you’re both mopping as fast as you can while the buzzer’s going off in the kitchen, the phone’s ringing and your 2-year-old waddles in with a dirty diaper, you can either scream at each other or laugh. Take my advice on this one – laugh then cry and then laugh some more.

               The stuff – pots, pans, towels and coffee makers – are what you need to set up a household. The intangibles – trust, laughter and tolerance – are what you need to set up a home.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.