The Washington Interlude

Although the Hurricane of '47 has been eclipsed by Camille and Katrina in its destructive fury, it was a storm of some significance to Point Cadet.

My mother's family lost their home on East Howard Avenue -- and everything in it -- to the unnamed storm. Grandpa lost both of his boats, too, which left the family homeless and destitute.

Enter Plan B.

Nona had relatives in Bellingham, Wash., so she, Grandpa and Uncle Michael, who was then about five, temporarily moved up there for 10 months so that Grandpa could make some quick money fishing on the West Coast tuna boats. The rest of the kids moved in with Aunt Marie, who was, by then, married and living on Oak Street.

Living on the West Coast took some adjustment. Everything -- the terrain, the customs, the food, the accents -- was different from what they knew in South Mississippi. Uncle Michael adapted quickly, as kids do, and in no time at all was talking like he'd been born and raised in Washington State. He also delighted in Bellingham's hilly terrain and regularly reported home on the number of steps it took to get to the mailbox, the store, the bus stop and anywhere else he went.

He and Nona learned that unlike Point Cadet, where it was perfectly respectable to refer to elders by their first names prefaced by "Miss" or "Mr.," in Washington, everyone was addressed formally no matter how well you knew them. Nona never could get used to being referred to as Mrs. Soljan by her auntie's friends.

In Bellingham, ladies played bridge at parties where the hostesses all served a new dessert that was all the rage: Floating Island. Eventually, Grandpa amassed enough of a nest egg to come home and rebuild the house and finally bring the family back together under one roof.

They were glad to be home.

Floating Island

The French dessert Ile Flottante or Floating Island - airy meringue islands swimming in sea of creamy vanilla custard -- was the "it" dessert for fashionable hostesses in Bellingham, Wash. circa 1947. My nona brought the recipe back to Point Cadet although it never really caught on despite the area's sizable French population.

3 eggs
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups whole milk

Separate two of the eggs. In top of double boiler, combine 1 whole egg and 2 yolks with sugar, salt and vanilla, beating until smooth. Stir in milk and cook over simmering water, stirring constantly. When custard thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon, remove from heat. (Do not boil. If custard should start to curdle, remove from heat and beat vigorously until smooth.) Cool completely.

In a medium bowl, beat egg whites with electric mixer until stiff. Gradually beat in 4 tablespoons sugar. Pour cooled custard into serving dish. Drop meringue by heaping tablespoons onto custard to make islands. Chill before serving.

The Pecan Harvest

The pecan* tree in my side yard -- after several barren years -- is now loaded with appears to be a bumper crop. The race is on to see who gets them first -- me or the squirrels.

Pecan trees are common in Southern yards -- and recipes. The tree in my grandparents' back yard provided for the pies we ate at Thanksgiving and the pig tails we consumed at Christmas with enough left over to augment the odd batch or two of brownies or pralines.

In summer, we'd squint up into the branches, assessing the expected harvest. A rainy summer meant the nuts would be full with sweet, tasty meat. A dry summer foretold of shriveled nuts that wouldn't even tempt the hungriest squirrel.

The kids were the designated pickers; our young eyes and knees were better suited to the task. We shuffled around in the dried leaves, locating pecans with our feet before dropping to our knees and scooping them into brown paper grocery sacks (crawling around was quicker, but more painful). There was always a contest to see who could pick up the most.

After supper, everyone gathered to shell the nuts. The kitchen table was covered with newspaper. All the shellers were assigned a sack of pecans, a bowl and cracking and picking instruments.

Unlike today's paper-shells, these pecans were hard to crack as hickory nuts. The going was long and tedious with lots of breaks to flex cramped fingers.

The grown ups would start telling stories. Stories about the old hermit that lived on Deer Island ... the unfortunate boy whose head got squished like a watermelon between a piling and a passing boat ... the girl who wouldn't let the doctor remove the strawberry birthmark from her forehead and then bled to death when the blood vessels got caught in the teeth of her comb ... the champion swimmers that swam marathons out to the long-gone Isle of Caprice.

Those colorful, sometime even lurid, possibly totally fabricated stories kept us going through the tedium , sore wrists and fingertips and that irritating pecan dust that settled into cuts and scrapes. Eventually, the last pecan was cracked, the precious nuts divvied up into little plastic bags, the errant shells swept up off the floor and thrown away.

For days our fingertips would be tender and we'd see bags and bags full of pecans every time we closed our eyes.

But it was the stories that always stayed with me the longest.

* On Point Cadet (well in Mississippi in general) and in Louisiana, it is pronounced "puh-cahn" with the accent on the last syllable. Residents of Georgia and Tennessee adamantly insist the nut is a "pee-kan" -- accent on the "pee." I dunno -- sounds kind of unappetizing to me.

However, you pronounce it, one of my favorite uses of pecans is in the use of that famously Southern candy, pralines. Again, how you pronounce the name is a matter of geography. Here they are "prah-leens" not "pray-leens." My favorites are rich and creamy, not overly sweet or gritty. This recipe is easy in that you can make it in the microwave. Like meringues and humidity, pralines are best made on a day with low humidity. Good luck with that.

Microwave Pralines

1 lb light brown sugar

2 T light corn syrup

1 cup whipping cream

2 T pure vanilla extra

2 T butter

2 cups whole pecans, toasted

Combine brown sugar, corn syrup and whipping cream in an 8-cup microwave safe bowl. Microwave on high 13 minutes, stirring every 2 minutes. Add butter and stir until well-blended and creamy. Stir in toasted nuts and drop by tablespoonfuls onto waxed paper. After pralines have cooled and hardened, carefully remove them from the waxed paper and store between waxed paper in an airtight container.

My French Connection

Last month, I went to Paris. I love that city. You would think that I must have some French blood in my veins, some atavistic instinct that draws me back there again and again.

But nope, I'm all Croat on my mom's side, Irish/Scotch/English/Cherokee by way of Tennessee on my dad's. Not a Gallic drop in me.

But I do have a French connection.

Years ago my mom told me that her aunt Tonica, my grandfather's sister for whom she was named, had married an artist and lived in Paris. He died. She returned to Croatia. She had sent my grandparents a book of his paintings, but because these included a bevy of nudes, it went on a top bookshelf where the kids couldn't see the naked women. The Hurricane of '47 took care of that book.

In 2008, I came face to face with those paintings in a wing of a museum in the town of Stari Grad. And I felt an instant sense of connection to my great-uncle-by-marriage, Juraj Plancic.

Like my grandfather, he was born into a family of fishermen on the island of Hvar. It became clear early on that he was born with natural artistic talent. Though he originally apprenticed as a barber, he eventually wound up in art school in Split and later studied under the noted sculptor Ivan Metrovic at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. He graduated in 1925 and earned a scholarship to study in Paris. He married his sweetheart, my great-aunt Tonica Soljan, and four days later, in November 1926, they arrived in Paris.

Paris in the 1920s was the Paris of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Of Picasso and Salvador Dali. Was Juraj part of this crowd? I somehow doubt it. Though an incredibly talented artist, he was a Dalmatian boy through and through. Reportedly shy, sensitive and prone to illness, he was also a devoted family man with the strong work ethic of the humble fishing folk he came from.

The early Paris years were lean ones for the young artist and his bride. Paris, so cold and grey in the winter, must have been a shock to them after Hvar with its turquoise waters, olive groves and rosemary scented sea air. Their living conditions were in a word squalid.

Inspired by his memories of home, he painted what was in his blood -- the boats returning from the sea, the vinters harvesting their grapes for wine. However, inspired by his new surroundings, he stretched beyond the pastoral scenes and still lifes of his training to experience the new colors which would become his trademark.

His hard work paid off. He was invited to show at salons, including an exhibition in his honor at the exclusive Gallery de Seine in 1929. His paintings sold. He accrued patrons. He and Tonica moved from the suburbs into the center of Paris.

But he never forgot where he came from.. He wrote home to a friend, "My greatest joy is when I paint our fishermen and our maritime world in general, which lives on land and sea My paintings are full of our merry sailors. These are stories I had heard as a child of my late grandfather, now I extract the fragments." *

In April 1930, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Knowing he had limited time, he painted feverishly up until his death, just four short months later, two months shy of his 31st birthday. He is buried in Thiais cemetery on the outskirts of Paris.

Tonica returned to Croatia with their infant daughter, Alice. She remained in Zagreb the rest of her life. My Aunt Dolores met her there, along with her daughter, grandchildren, two brothers and other family members in 1977.

Juraj went on to achieve immortality as one of Croatia's best-known artists. His work was shown posthumously in Paris and Zagreb. In 1960, the Gallery of Art in Split mounted a retrospective of his work which was hosted in several cities around the former Yugoslavia. In 1963, Tonica donated several of his paintings to the Art Collection of Juraj Plancic (now Juraj Plancic Gallery) located in the second floor of the Palace Biankini in their hometown of Stari Grad. I would see them there 45 years later.

And I was in awe.

* I found this on the blog http://dicocroate2.over-blog.com/article-juraj-plan-i--39573806.html

** For more Juraj Plancic paintings, visit http://wiki.cultured.com/people/Juraj_Plancic/

I Scream, You Scream

Happy 4th! It's a rainy one here in the 'burg, but hotter 'n heck nonetheless -- as the 4th tends to be in these parts.

Some years the family got together on the 4th, some years we didn't. Sometimes the picinic was on the shrimp boat, some years it was in the back yard, other years we dragged everything -- including the big old heavy ice cream maker -- up to Flint Creek Water Park in Wiggins.

Homemade ice cream was the one constant (other than sparklers and bottle rockets) in our Independence Day celebrations. Ours was an old-fashioned hand-cranked monster that required a team of child laborers working in shifts over what seemed like several hours to crank out decent soft-serve. But, oh, was it so worth the sore arms.

We didn't get exotic with our flavors. Our preferred ice cream was always vanilla, unless someone happened to pick up some good peaches at a farm stand.

After we'd slurped it down (it always tended to be soft soft-serve, the kids hurried down to the Biloxi Small Craft Harbor and onto my uncle's motor boat so we could catch the fireworks display.

The best place to watch the show was in the channel between Fishermans' Wharf restaurant and Deer Island. The fireworks exploded like giant chrysanthemums over our heads and hurtled down like shooting stars into the water around us, as the shore exploded into a panorama of bottle rockets, firecrackers and Roman candles. As hot as it always was, the sight always made me shiver.

This year, it's been so dry (just not today) that most cities have called off their fireworks displays.

But I still made ice cream. I've replaced the ancient behemoth with a nice little electric number that pumps out gourmet sorbet or gelato in less than half an hour.

However true to my roots, on the 4th, I keep it simple. Plain ice cream flavored with farm-fresh peaches.

You can't beat it.

Perfect Peach Ice Cream

3 cups of fresh peaches, peeled and sliced *

4 T fresh squeezed lemon juice

1 -1/2 t pure vanilla extract

1 -1/2 cups granulated sugar

1 - 1/2 cups whole milk

2 -1/2 cups heavy cream

Mix the peaches with 1/2 cup sugar and the lemon juice let the fruit macerate in its own juices for @ 2 hours. Drain fruit, reserving juice and mash half of the peaches.

Mix milk with the rest of the sugar in medium bowl until sugar dissolves (1-2 minutes). Add cream, vanilla, peach juice and mashed peaches.

Pour into ice-cream maker per manufacturer's instructions. About 5 minutes before ice cream is done, add the rest of the peaches.

My preferred way of eating the ice cream is nice and soft, right out of the machine, but if you like it a little firmer, pour ice cream into freezer-safe containers and freeze for about 2 hours (thaw about 15 minutes before you plan to eat).

* This recipe is also good made with fresh strawberries.

Toni the Tiger

My mom, Toni, and I on the day it all began.

I lost my mom nearly eight years ago -- if it is possible to "lose" someone I think about every day, whose mannerisms and expressions I often glimpse in the mirror and whose words and voice, right down to that faint Point Cadet accent, tumble out of my mouth with amazing regularity.

My mother grew up in the middle of large boisterous family in a small, boisterous working class neighborhood in the middle of the Great Depression. Is it any wonder she turned out to be one tough cookie as they used to say?

She was witty, sassy and fierce. Her imagination was vivid and fertile; she spun the most wonderful stories and adventures for my sister and me out of thin air. She could have been a Hollywood screenwriter.

She loved to cook, and could work miracles in a matter of minutes with even the most spartan ingredients. She could have been an Iron Chef contestant.

She had an unerring eye for color, accessories and silhouettes. She could have been a fashion designer.

She had only to lay her hands on a fretful baby to turn it into a cooing angel. She could have run a nursery school (and she did keep children in her home for many years).

She approached life with that clear-eyed, hard-nosed, unyielding Point Cadet pragmatism that could be a little daunting if you weren't from there. She knew when you were trying to pull something over on her -- and she let you know about it with a look out of the corner of her eye that spoke volumes. She could have been a school principal or an admiral in the Navy.

She instinctively knew what to do when bones broke, noggins knocked and stomachs soured. She could have been a doctor.

She kept a cool level head during emergencies. When barely out of her teens, she single-handedly interrupted and foiled a robbery in progress after hours at the Keesler Air Force Base exchange. She could have been a police officer.

She could have been any number of things. But what she chose to be was a mother. A nurturing mother who turned feverish, sniffley nights into opportunities for midnight picnics.

And a fiercely protective mother who went by the name Toni the Tiger. One night she startled a Peeping Tom hanging around outside our bedroom windows. My sister and I stood watching open-mouthed in shock, horror and admiration as she darted out of the house into the night, barefoot and bare-handed, bellowing "I've got you now, you son of a bitch," in a hoarse unrecognizable voice.

What exactly she had him with was not then, and is not now, apparent. But there was no doubt in her mind, nor his, that she did indeed have him, and if she got her bare hands on him, the consequences would be dire.

Because you just didn't mess with Toni the Tiger.

Going "Eastering"

I must preface this post by noting that I am -- and always have been -- a girly girl. The kind who had a pink frilly canopy bed, every Barbie ever made by Mattel, a pet toy poodle AND a Persian cat.

I also loved getting dressed up -- even when it wasn't necessary.

Easter was a thrilling event -- for the goodies the Easter Bunny left in my basket and because I got to go shopping for a "dressy" dress.

Easter 1964 found my family living in Edgewater Park, the subdivision adjacent to the enclosed shopping mall that had opened just the year before -- Edgewater Plaza Shopping City.

It was like living next door to heaven. There was so much to do and see there. That year we found two prospective Easter dresses for me: a pale pink chemise with a delicate, scalloped collar and embroidered pink rosebuds on the placket from Goudchaux and a puffed sleeve whisper of a dress in pale, pale yellow voile with a sash at Gayfers'. After much agonizing, we went with the pink.

But I couldn't get the yellow dress out of my head. Two days before Easter, my daddy came home with Gayfer's signature shopping bag. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper was the yellow dress.

Mama scolded him. I was already spoiled, and I had no where to wear both dresses. Obviously, we couldn't save one as I was sure to be up a size by the next Easter. She urged him to return it.

Nothing doing. I already had worked out the perfect solution: I would wear the pink dress to church and to Nona and Grandpa's house for Easter dinner, and he yellow dress for "going Eastering."

Noting my parents' perplexed expressions, I patiently explained that Eastering was the springtime equivalent of trick or treating (a gig I had just discovered the autumn before). Instead of wearing costumes and carrying plastic jack o'lanterns door to door, children dressed up in their Sunday best and carried their Easter baskets around the neighborhood collecting chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, robins eggs and marshmallow peeps.

Believe it or not, they indulged me (probably because in a few short months I would no longer be an only child). My mother gave the relatives and few neighbors a "heads up" phone call and I, wearing my yellow dress, went Eastering.

I got a pretty good haul, but I never went Eastering again. Surprisingly, my idea did not sweep the Nation. I can't imagine why. I still maintain that it's a darned good idea.

I get one every 20 years or so.

Happy Easter!

What He Knew About the Restaurant Business and Its Secrets

One of the most treasured items on my bookshelf is a 40-year-old brown leather tome with faded gilt lettering. The cover is scratched, the binding warped, the pages water-stained. Most of my books that went through Katrina had to be discarded and replaced. This one, however, is irreplaceable.

The title: What I Know About the Restaurant Business and Its Secrets. The author: my dad, Jerry Willis.

The pages are completely blank.

A colleague gave him the book as a birthday present. My father, the eternal joker, adored it. He placed it at eye level on the shelf behind his desk at the restaurant so that any visitor, whether the mother of a bride discussing reception catering options or a distributer on a sales call, had to look right at it.

The scenario always played out the same way: Eyes idly skimmed the titles on the shelf, performed a quick double take, then hungrily zeroed in on the bait. Daddy would make some excuse to leave the room, then after a suitable, yet briefer than expected pause, returned and caught ‘em red-handed. It always got a laugh.

It is, perhaps, appropriate that the pages are blank. Fact is, Daddy did know quite a bit about the restaurant/hotel business – and more than a few secrets which he discreetly kept mum. Movie stars hooked up at raucous on-location parties. Prominent businessmen and politicians entertained voluptuous clients and constituents in hotel suites.

A now-well-known female country music star threw a hissy fit when asked to vacate the ballroom she had appropriated for a practice session. Daddy gently, but firmly stood his ground. He needed to set up for a wedding reception, and no diva, however talented, was going to ruin a bride’s big day.

Not all celebrities behaved badly. He had nothing but praise and respect for evangelist Rev. Billy Graham -- who he said was warm, sincere and truly charismatic.

American film icon John Wayne also proved to be a great guy when he and Daddy shared an early morning coffee or two during filming of The Undefeated in Baton Rouge. Mr. Wayne, who then had young children himself, admired the school photos my proud papa showed off and provided not one, but two, autographs.

Years later, “the book” still reels in the unsuspecting. My father, who would have turned 90 this week, would be delighted.

Happy Birthday, Daddy! Hope you’re still having fun. And if you and “The Duke” ever meet up for coffee again, tell him I’ve gotten over his misspelling my name with a “K.” Story of my life.