Beech Tree News Network

On Thanksgiving Day, I drove alongside bayous lined with shrimp boats, I followed trucks piled high with sugar cane, and I passed front yard trees loaded down with satsumas (a citrus fruit similar to a tangerine, but seedless and much sweeter).  Our daughter, Natalie, went north to Michigan with her new husband, Scott, so Garey and I went south to Louisiana to visit our daughter, Nikki.
    Nikki’s husband was offshore for the week, so his mom, Jean, invited us to her house in LaRose for Thanksgiving.  LaRose is about an hour and a half from Nikki’s and Thomas’ place in Covington, which is about 30 miles north of New Orleans.
    If you’ve never had Louisiana fare, I hope you get to eat a meal like we had on Thursday, some time before you leave this earth.  The food started in the utility room as we entered Jean’s house, and continued through the kitchen then out into the dining area.  Jean has a small house, a fact that grieves her, because before she and Thomas’ dad divorced, she always had a large house for family gatherings.  But Jean is one of those people who could entertain in a card board box.  She takes what she has, works wonders with it then offers it up with a heart of thankfulness.  I have never felt as welcome as I did in that house over that meal.
    Let me tell you what we had.  There was huge pan of bread pudding with a pie server and dessert plates laid out on the washing machine in the utility room.  In the kitchen, Jean was working on two lattice-style apple pies, drizzled in caramel sauce.  She was finishing the pies on the kitchen island, because every counter top and stove surface was covered in food.  She was a bit crowded on the kitchen island, because it also held plates, cups, silverware, carrot soufflé she had just taken from the oven and a spinach, walnut and feta cheese salad on its way to the dining table.  On the stove was a steaming pot of gumbo, white rice, a beef roast with gravy—cooked on top of the stove, not in the oven like we’d do—pork fried rice, and a noodle and spinach stroganoff she fixed for a vegetarian member of the family.  Nikki made some homemade cranberry sauce and I made glazed sweet potatoes.
    You wouldn’t think all those flavors would work together, but somehow they do.  It was a wonderful meal with wonderful company, and I will never forget it.  Jean sent enough left-overs with us to supply two more large meals. 
    On the way back to Covington, we stopped at a roadside market—one of many in the area.  We bought a bag of Satsumas, muscadine jelly, peach with pecan jelly and fig preserves.  We were going to get a bag of pecans, but this year’s crop failed because of all the rain, and whole in-the-shell pecans were going for $20 per bag—a bit rich for our blood.  
    When we got back to Nikki’s place, I crashed on the couch with her dogs, Dexter and Zissou, and her rabbit, Bob. The four of us finally dragged ourselves up when it was time for bed.  The perfect end to a perfect day.