Didja Ever?

Every year, we have a Friends & Family Halloween Cruise. For Halloween 2011, we flew from all over the country and met in Miami to embark on a 7 day Eastern Caribbean cruise. 


I'd cruised before. Several times. I knew what to expect. But I was surprised on the third night of the cruise when we settled into the main dining room and had a big friends & family dinner. On the menu was something new, called a didja. As in the picture of the menu above, the didjas were all things that you may have heard of, but never tried. We missed it on the first two nights because we didn't eat in the main dining room, but I personally made sure we didn't miss it after that. Here's what we had:


Night 3 Alligator
Night 4 Oysters
Night 5 Shark
Night 6 Escargots
Night 7 Frog Legs


I am proud to say that I tried almost all of it. 


Now duck may not be as rarely eaten as some of the above, but until recently, I had never had it. I enjoyed it the last two times I'd had the opportunity to try it (once as hors d'oeuvres an another time I tasted a friend's entree).


I'd never cooked it before, so I decided to give it a whirl. 

That's no latke...

That's me and my pop on his motorcycle in 1986. Back in simpler times. The things I remember about those times were Smurfs after gramma's General Hospital, my 5th birthday party with a ginormous piñata, my nickname Robbie, and my mom's home cooking. The days before a McDonald's value meal was cheaper than a ground beef meal with fresh veggies on the side.

I may reminisce about these days, and take a lot of my cooking inspiration from my mother, but there is one thing that I will never forgive my mother for: The Potato Pancake Day. 

It was roughly 1990. I was eight years old and we were living in San Antonio, Texas. It was a weekend, and my mom awoke to the three of us kids hungry as ever. Back to the Future II was on HBO, but the distraction wasn't working. Mom needed to cook us breakfast, and quick. We were out of cereal, out of bread, out of breakfast meats/eggs, and out of pancake mix. Somehow, a bag of potatoes = pancakes to her though (??) and she began to whip up something that looked relatively passable as pancakes. Once she got done cooking it all, she went to get the syrup. 

Well, have you ever been in a house with 3 kids and an open bottle of syrup? There might be a point at which the kids have a sweet tooth and can find nothing else but the syrup. To them, it's liquid candy. So yeah, we were also out of pancake syrup. 

No mind! Mom has a fix! She has a bottle of corn syrup in the cabinet, which she plunks down on the table in front of us. I grab a pancake, dress it with margarine, grab the corn syrup and pour it on. I take a big, huge, hungry-eight-year-old bite. 

And spit it out. 

It was quite possibly the grossest, dullest, most flavor-lacking pancake I'd ever had in my life, coupled with the ridiculously, overpoweringly sweet, flavorless gunk called corn syrup. I may have only been 8, but I am now near 30 and have never had potato pancakes or corn syrup since that day.

So how would brown rice pancakes turn out?

It's all some hoo-doo voo-doo.

A few weeks ago, for the first time ever, I went to Mardi Gras. Mr. Flairy and I drove about 1200 miles to New Orleans to experience the music, parties, drinks, beads, parades, port-a-potties, and FOOD!


I wasn't gluten free yet, but I knew it'd be my last hurrah before cutting wheat out of my diet. So I went nuts. I couldn't get enough red beans and rice. I got it from fancy restaurants, average restaurants, sketchy restaurants, and even street vendors. It was crack, and I was an addict.


On Fat Tuesday, we'd been in New Orleans nearly a week and were almost Mardi Grased out. We attempted to stay away from Bourbon Street and skim the edges of the French Quarter perusing shops, cafes, and anything else that caught our fancy. There was just one thing on the to-do list: check out a voodoo shop that was an authentic locals destination, and not some touristy "look at all our voodoo dolls" place. The very first thing we realized in our travels is that just being in New Orleans meant sh!t was going to get crazy. We had barely crossed Canal (the "border" between the business district and the French Quarter) some 6+ blocks north of Bourbon and had to pick our jaws up off the ground as we watched roving bands, mini-parades of people just dancing in the street (some to imaginary music!), costumes the size of 2-story buildings, and an atmosphere that was downright intoxicating.


We're not sure if it was some hoo-doo voo-doo that eventually got us there, but we finally landed on the front stoop of a circa 1760s home that had been converted into a shop. Inside, all manner of items could be found. There were jars and vials atop a glass bar with an attendant ready to measure out your brew-making ingredients, dried plants and grasses for your burning and cleansing needs, and of course the obligatory voodoo doll. 


One thing I hadn't counted on was a shrine to Loa (the spirits of Louisiana-style voodoo). Physically speaking, it was a non-working fireplace. Inside the fireplace were various religious texts, so that one could use the shrine for their flavor of god. Atop the mantle, a small wall had been built on the perimeter to keep offerings from falling off. There was a small pencil and scraps of paper nearby. Inside the mantle box, from end to end and front to back, those tiny pieces of paper with all sorts of wishes were wrapped around offerings like cigarettes, beads, marbles, and even cash. For a moment, I wanted to read some, but I am too firm a believer in karma. I did give the only thing I had on me -- a piece of gum and a Bacchus (nonsense & tomfoolery) parade coin. My wish was for a successful journey into a gluten free lifestyle. 


The spirits responded.