Back In February, 2018, with the Reader's Digest

 Ant:   a small insect that, though always at work, still finds time to go to picnics.

Turkeysare peacocks that have let themselves go.

Giraffe's were in invented  in 1780 when three horses accidentally ate a ladder.

Barbecue Shrimp - It Came to New Orleans from Chicago

A New Orleans businessman came back from a trip there and when he began raving about a shrimp dish he'd encountered, the people of NOLA (New Orleans Louisiana) had to try it.  To avoid any association with a damn Yankee thing, they made haste to call it New Orleans Barbecue Shrimp despite the fact the shrimp never came near a bbq pit.  

Having heard about it, we had to try it and fell in love.  Not one to be a hog, here's the ingredients and how tos:

New Orleans BBQ Shrimp

2 lbs large shrimp in their shells

1 cup of butter

juice of 2 lemons - 2 teasp - minced garlic

2TWorcestershire sauce 2T black pepper

Wash and clean the shrimp and lay them out on a large baking sheet.  Heat everything else and drizzle over shrimp, adding the squeezed lemon quarters as garnish adding the black pepper.  Bake at 375 for 15 - 20 minutes.

Pascale's Manale is the restaurant, and is well known and since it's delicious, no wonder they're still packing in the cash customers.  Ask them to use shucked shrimp or you'll spend your dinner time peeling - and need I say it? wolf it down

Getting back to my roots - and vegetables, fruits, and restaurants

 Originally this column was my bid at fame and perhaps fortune (Sell ads in the blog for a royalty)  It began as restaurant reviews, hence the title Word of Mouth - cute, eh?  Occasionally a recipe so you could make dishes like Maderna's cheese-stuffed, bacon wrapped shrimp at home.

I haven't done any recipes for awhile - The Virus kept us all at home, and the restaurants, source OF any recipes were closed.

And then house cleaning turned up The Little New Orleans Cookbook by native Gwen McKee.  Which in turn had a great variety of good eats.  Let's.

The only local Cajun/Creole place around is The Ragin Cajun.  One of my favorite things of theirs is corn and crab bisque.

CORN AND CRAB BISQUE  

1/2 lb. butter

3T flour

1 large onion, chopped - more toward minced than chunked

1 quart milk 

1 16 oz can of creamed corn

1 can Cream of Potato soup*  Doubling for Mornais sauce?

1/4teas mace (I think the mace adds that  faintly smoky taste)

pinch of red pepper

1 pint picked over crab meat

1/4 lb. grated Swiss cheese (say "huh"?) 

Melt the butter, sifting in the flour, then the onions  to be soft-cooked for about 10 minutes to get them that way.  When this has all died down, add the milk a little at a time.  The author left this step out, but it makes sense.  

*Bisque could be described as white gravy - Mornais sauce - with a bunch of crab in it.  Picked over crab, of course. 

Strangers In Our House - Welcome!

When I was finally discharged from - either the hospital or physical rehab, Richie was ready to become my sole caretaker but he wanted help.  In various phone calls he discovered an outfit call Synergy, Manhattan Beach.  Their CEO and Office Manager made an appt. and we all met deciding that we would hire their services - light housekeeping - dusting, cleaning, even cooking (!)

We've had a wonderful chance to meet some equally lovely people.  A small sample...Cheyenne  who is a flourishing hip hop artist .  She routinely travels to her shows with four bodyguards, a road manager and any friends who want to come and were able to get babysitters.  When she leaves us at 4 p.m.she goes to the studio, waves her magic cloak and becomes Queenye who is a hip hop performer, artist and who also (if that's not enough) this Saturday night she opens for another artiste named DW Flame at the Honda Center in Santa Ana, 8:30 p.m.

To meet her simply Google  "Queenye" She has an excellent manager because there are tons of videos, songs - and one in an auditorium has a whole bunch of sparkling lights in the audience. 

M is from Poland and I like to joke to myself "Polish who loves to Polish"  M made pirogi and brought it over for us - It was delicious; we loved it.

C is the office manager - great guy - if a worker is unavailable, he fills in without hesitation.  Did a beautiful job on a cabinet, here in the living room.

Richie likes them one and all as do I.  If you need any of the above services, we recommend Synergy.

But This Is Not Racism or Discrimination (shrug) So what the Hell Is It?

 Supreme Court Steven Breyer has announced his retirement from the Court, opening the door to Biden to try to put in a black woman and only a black woman  as his replacement.  

Only black female jurists need apply-- but this is not racism or discrimination.    

When did the world turn sidewise? and how did I miss it?  

Other thing I missed was:  put in the most qualified in the field being filled.  But some idiot would undoubtedly come along and proclaim taking the best candidate  for the job is racist or discriminatory or both.  Win for losing comes dancing into my mind...

My God! Don't Eat That!

 A recent headline in drudgereport.com outlined a quick story on a French cannibal, jailed for killing and eating the tongue and brain of a farmer with a tasty side of white beans.  Flagolais I think they're called.  He was apprehended trying to attack a woman who was walking her dog while in an area of the Pyreneese where Rimbaud was considered the king of cannibal killers.  I wondered if the dog was dessert.

Rimbaud, a 34 year old Afghanistan veteran went right smack back to prison.

In another illustration of cannibalism Disney's new movie "Fresh" illustrates cannibalism, carrying over, evidently , from the days of it's popularity and that would be in the 1500 and 1600 when it flourished all over Europe.

Meanwhile animals can be cannibals - infanticide - among their 1,500 species and people have been known to dine from bits and pieces of themselves!  They are called auto cannibals.

Who is credited with most cannibalism performed?  Jeffrey Dahmer who dined from 1978 to 1991.  He had a specific prey - boys and young men.  17 of them to be accurate.  

What did the poor parents have to bury?  Dahmer's feces?

Goodbye Freedom

The minute you step through the doorway of "your" room you've lost all calls on freedom.  I say your in quotes because all three of the rooms I occupied - you can't call it "living" - had three patients per room.  Not a lot of privacy - if any - to be had.

Remember that you are at their mercy.  They can withhold food, pain medication or, God forbid, a dry diaper and all sense of privacy.  It is normal for a member of the opposite sex to "bathe" the other.

Said "baths" consist of one of the roughest all over scrub downs you will ever encounter.  They apply a lot of pressure in sensitive areas (read: genitals)  And intrusive.  I was reminded of a sex practice of gay males called "fisting" and called them out on it to no appreciable positive affect.

Nursing staff revels in fright - the nurses flip you around on the sheet you are lying on (Kevlar?) and as for privacy normal routine is to approach a patient and the nurse will then bellow, "Dry pants?"  and the hapless patient can only respond, not dive under the bed.  

You can't escape by cutting and running since the beds all have alarms that go off if you so much as remove a toe from said bed.  Your bed is resting on scales and the slightest removal of weight sets off horrendous noises.  

Speaking of noises, my corridor and closer still, my room also held an elderly woman who spent most of a night moaning most plaintively, "Hep me!  Nurse!" over and over and over.  That corridor was quite willing to "hep" her.  Right into a hearse!  If a bed can be wired to an alarm ...