next week in NY

So I have a big week planned in New York next week and if you know of anyone who lives there, please pass on some info about the goings on...I will be assisting my friend Jamie Tiampo as he is guest chef at Google headquarters and after eating too much, then I will head over to the Astor Center where Doug Duda is having a fundraiser for us at the Astor Center for Wine and Spirits. Susan Spicer will be there, signing her new cookbook, Crescent City Cooking and dishes from her cookbook as well as some delicious wine and spirits will be available for the hungry. For tickets, you may visit http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/31233 for tickets. So that's Tuesday. On Wednesday, I will be teaching a class at the Culinary Center at the Whole Foods in the Bowery. It will be about sugar and I'll have teach recipes for pralines, candied citrus peels and bourbon balls. So I'll be busy. Hope to see you there.

New Board Members

I am very happy to introduce two new members of the SoFAB Board: Rick Ellis, food stylist and food historian, and Tom Head, writer and consultant. These two gentlemen have long and successful credentials in the world of food and drink, and they are also generous of spirit. We are honored that they have decided to officially join our Board and lend their names and energies to our endeavor. Both of them are award-winning in their fields.

Construction continues at our museum space. Very soon, the actual installation of exhibits will begin. It is really exciting to be able to see the transformation into a museum. We will be sharing a photo very soon.

We can also share with you the exciting news that we have selected a SoFAB Store manager. He is Joe Sunseri. If you have products that you think belong in our museum store, please get in touch with us. We are making our selections for opening right now!

Company

Whenever I have company coming, I go into total Southern hostess mode. Well, sort of. I intend to make a strata or buy a king cake or at least have milk for coffee. I usually don't. In fact, while Meryl Rosofsky was here from the NYU Food Studies program working on her thesis which is about New Orleans food organizations and how they have contributed to the rebuilding of the city, I came dangerously close to running out of toilet paper. Martha Stewart I ain't. But I do know how to show people a good time. We hit Dick and Jenny's, Parkway Bakery and Tavern, Commander's, The Amite Oyster Festival, Middendorf's, Dickie Brennan's Bourbon House, Tipitina's, The Howlin Wolf and The Clover Grill. SOmewhere in there, Meryl actually interviewed people about her project. And she left yesterday and now Jamie Tiampo is on his way here, also from NY to scout out locations to photograph the ingredients in gumbo for a book to benefit the food museum, which will be shot by IACP food photographers. And he's staying here too. And nope, I still have nothing for breakfast (except the Babka from Russ and Daughters that Meryl brought me) though I did pick up some TP. Why am I writing this? Because the reason these guys are staying with me is because of work. I count them as friends, but also colleagues. I want to show them a good time, but I'm also still working as ambassador of New Orleans and want to make sure they leave able to talk about the food scene (and all the other scenes) as articulately and accurately as possible. And even though it's been hard to get the writing done I need to (like, um, this blog for instance) I keep reminding myself that when I'm slurping oysters, dancing the two step and knocking back I mean sipping Sazeracs, I am also working! Man my job is great.

Sweet and Plentiful

We are being asked to speak about SoFAB now that our opening is imminent. June 7 is right around the corner and we are moving at warp speed. Recently I spoke about sugar at the Rural Life Museum in Baton Rouge, LA. Next week-end I will be moderating a panel at the Tennessee Williams Festival in New Orleans.

In April Elizabeth will be traveling to Memphis to install Restaurant/Restorative and to party in Memphis. She'll also be going to New York to go to the Astor Center and Whole Foods. I'll be attending the Invitation to the Southern Table in Natchez at Twin Oaks.

We are also beginning to receive requests to have parties and receptions in the new SoFAB. Keep those requests coming. We want to share with everyone.

If you want to volunteer - become a docent, help in construction, work on exhibits, do anything - please let us know. In any case, join now! We'll see you in June!

We've Started!

I can finally announce that real work - the kind that stirs up dust - has begun in our exhibit spaces. This week-end we will begin setting up the library and uncrating the artifacts that have been in storage, and really beginning to plan the flow of the museum. People are beginning to join - at our specially discounted pre-opening rate - and they are beginning to volunteer. It is so exciting to see all of our dreams for a fabulous institution materialized.

In addition to the tangible progress that we are experiencing, people in other cities in the South and out of the South are offering to help through fundraising parties and through opportunities for us to appear and speak. And books are coming into our library. And photographs and other documents are being offered for the archive. Menus continue to be collected.

And we are making international connections to France and England. We hope that these connections will grow and reach into other countries.

We've Started

I can finally announce that real work - the kind that stirs up dust - has begun in our exhibit spaces. This week-end we will begin setting up the library and uncrating the artifacts that have been in storage, and really beginning to plan the flow of the museum. People are beginning to join - at our specially discounted rate pre-opening rate - and they are beginning to volunteer. It is so exciting to see all of our dreams for a fabulous institution materialized.

In addition to the tangible progress that we are experiencing, people in other cities in the South and out of the South are offering to help through fundraising parties and through opportunities for us to appear and speak. And books are coming into our library. And photographs and other documents are being offered for the archive. Menus continue to be collected.

And we are making international connections to France and England. We hope that these connections will grow and reach into other countries.

Thanks to all of you for your support, your ideas and your imagination.

authenticity

I've been working on creating the Louisiana food exhibit, which is daunting and I am constantly reminded of what I haven't covered and then realize I can never cover it all and even if I could, it wouldn't all fit in the space and somehow that is comforting. Anyway, I am working on the Red Beans section and have consulted notes from a talk I gave at Satchmo Fest last summer on red beans where I served Louis Armstrong's recipe for red beans, and was remembering the experience. And questions from that talk got tangled up with talks I used to give at Hermann-Grima where I did hearth cooking demonstrations. And people would ask "Is that authentic?" and I wanted to ask them "For when? For whom?" Because even cooking over a hearth cannot be "authentic" when you store your cold ingredients in a refrigerator. But it especially cannot be authentic when you are a free white woman cooking in the 21st century and not an enslaved black woman you get to take the food home with you to your air-conditioned house when the volunteering is over instead of serving them to the family who owns you and then making something else for yourself over that same hot hearth.

And asking whether these beans taste like the beans Louis ate is impossible for me to answer, but I'd hazard to answer "Yes and No." Because with this type of cooking, one rarely follows a recipe exactly. And when you cook with sausage, every pot tastes differently because every link is different. But mainly, I think that every time we eat something, even if we make it the exact same way as our mother or grandfather or Louis Armstrong, if we were there to watch them do it, every time is different because our circumstances are different. Food tastes different if you are happy or sad or with friends or alone or sober or drunk or if the weather is lovely or hot or freezing or you are worried about paying your obscene Entergy bill or tax bill or are happy because you just got a raise. And that's why it's culture and that's why it's art and that's why we get to build a whole museum around it. Well, all we have to do is build it. Back to the beans...