O'Gara's Jambalaya or laissez les bons temps rouler

So I was thumbing through the recipes the other day and I found one for jambalaya.  I actually have a very good recipe for jambalaya given to me by my cousin who lived in New Orleans.  I love it so much the printed out email is crackly from greasy water damage.  I don’t really need to look at it, honestly.  She gave it to me seven years ago… and it’s a favorite dish to cook at this time of year or in the last waning days of summer.  My favorite part of that recipe is the suggestion to have a beer while cooking it.

But this is the recipe that I found in Gram’s box.

O’Gara’s Jambalaya
(Only Gram would have an Irish version of jambalaya.  Though to be fair, O’Gara is specifically Diane O’Gara from 1972)
1 lb. sausage
1 lb. cooked ham
2 c. cooked shrimp (or frozen fresh)
1 clove garlic minced
2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp. butter
1 onion chopped
1 bunch shallots (minced with tops)
1 green pepper chopped
4 tomatoes chopped and cut down
2 c. rice (vary as to occasion)
3 c. water

Brown sausage.  Cut sausage and ham into pieces.  Melt butter in heavy saucepan or Dutch oven.  Add onion, garlic, green pepper, shallots, and cook 10 min over medium heat, stirring frequently.  Reduce heat to low and add tomatoes, sausage, and ham.  Stir until all ingredients are blended.  Add shrimp, water, rice – judge for amount of rice needed – salt.  Stire 1-2 times.  Cook slowly!   1 hour or until water is absorbed and rice is tender.

I adjusted this because I make jambalaya often enough.  Firstly, I used expensive ham to avoid nitrates.  I eat ham like twice a year, so I figured whatever.  I used Andouille sausage because that’s what I always use for jambalaya.  Then rather than use butter, I just cooked the veggies in the juice/oil from the sausage.  Instead of salt, I used a Cajun seasoning mix I had.  I also don’t much like rice, so I cut it in half.  It’s still cooking slowly (!) now… but smells sooo good.

This time of year, actually, is the reason I have any mind to cook jambalaya.  After Hurricane Katrina, I started hosting Mardi Gras parties.  It was my first committed effort to hosting theme parties… and also a desire to take my career in fundraising home.  The first year was a pretty decent affair, with food from NOLA.  The next year I took the party up about five notches, when my cousin’s husband brought his band to play in our living room. 

We charged a cover and sent the money to support jazz musicians still recovering from Katrina.  I had intentions of growing it… but I moved, life changed… and I got sidetracked by other things.

But that party in 2007 was a helluva party.  One very special night I will always remember on so many levels.  Probably the highlight of my life at the amazing apartment I had in Washington Park, the highlight of time with that group of friends, and a memory of my grandmother... wearing a boa.

I thought of this photograph the minute I saw that recipe for jambalaya.  I thought of how she came to my party, supported my evening, supported my cousin’s band, and… even at 86 years, she liked a night out.

As I was thinking about what I would write in this blog, I heard her telling me – as she often did – that her grandchildren and children made life interesting.  She did say that or some other version of that phrase often.  I often nodded and shrugged, not convinced my life was that interesting.  There was a variation to that statement about how she learned things through us.  I thought about that statement and how willing and appreciative she was to come to our parties, our concerts, our plays, our graduations, our homes across the state… the country… a book signing, a fundraiser, a new home, to see a new baby, go to a museum, a garden, a favorite restaurant… and always with such joy and gratitude.  There were often hand written notes of that appreciation the week after.  Or a newspaper clipping… because she was always thinking of us, always proud in her own way of what we did… and glad to be a part of it.

When we cleaned out the pieces from her house a few weeks ago, there was a newspaper from 1996 folded up with the pictures of our little Olson family.  It was from a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which I played Helena.  She kept that all those years.  And I know there was something from all of us, whether it was a program, a recipe, a photograph, or something with which to remember a small adventure she took to learn more about the world and the world of her grandchildren.

A phrase that is often used in Mardi Gras is “Laissez les bons temps rouler (let the good times roll).”  I think Gram did that with every day of her life.  She let them roll with every patronage to her offspring’s homes, performances, and celebrations.  And they keep on rolling.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies or How I Discovered My Wings

So Massachusetts was prescribed a snow day today.  I thought it best to use the afternoon to do some baking, as I have promised my friend Cheryl some goodies for her bookdrive on Sunday.  I thumbed through recipes this morning, wanting to match up the required ingredients with the contents of my cupboards.  Not to mention that paranoia about offering nuts in a public setting.  So gauntlet set upon the ground.

I decided to make the chocolate mint brownies again.  Brownies and mint frosting with a chocolate shell never go wrong.  I bought some chocolate chips in my hasty pre-blizzard grocery store run, so I figured I would justify that weather induced shopping spree.  Of course, her recipe collection has several varieties of chocolate chip cookies and bars and assorted desserts.  I picked up one, assessed my butter supply, and then decided on the oatmeal combination.  Because a. it requires shortening and b. it requires oatmeal.

I’ve recently started ordering from my aunt’s co-op.  This is my most recent supply of oatmeal.

Chocolate Chips + Oatmeal Surplus =

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

½ c. shortening
½ c. brown sugar
½ c. granulated sugar
1 beaten egg
1 Tbsp water
½ tsp. vanilla
¾ c. sifted flour
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 ½ c. oatmeal uncooked.
1 ½ c. chocolate chips
Scribbled in the middle is a note to add wheat germ. I didn’t.  You can, apparently.

Cream shortening + sugar
Stir in egg, water, vanilla + sifted flour + dry ingredients.  Add choc chips.
Drop by teaspoonful  on greased cookie sheet.  Bake 350° 10-15 minutes.  Switch during baking from bottom to top shelf to prevent scorching.

This is one of the first times in a while I’ve baked cookies without using a stone.  So I have to admit my nuance was a little off.  I guess they did in fact scorch a little…. But mostly because there are so many chocolate chips they tend to cook a little fast.  That said, the one that broke in my attempt to loosen it from the cookie sheet tastes pretty swell.

Obviously, I embrace any opportunity to share Gram’s sweet recipes.  It saves me from the temptation of eating a whole batch.  It allows me to share the deliciousness I associate with childhood bliss.  But, there is definitely something very appropriate about these recipes providing refreshment for a book event.

My dad is quite a reader.  I’d say the only thing comparable to his record collection is his collection of books.  A literary gluttony I have inherited.  But as much as baking and gardens make me think of my grandmother, so do books.

When I didn’t have any companions to play with in the attic, I would try to set up a solitary game of house with the tea set… but I usually used up my storyline pretty quickly.  Or I would simply get distracted when I found myself seated in front of the large bookcase between the eaves and the window.  

The library was one of my favorite places to visit as a kid.  But this bookshelf – a mere four or five packed shelves – was enough of a temptation to make me want to push outside of my supposed reading level.  I remember seeing my first copy of a Little House book on those shelves, making me realize there was more to Laura Ingalls Wilder than Melissa Gilbert.  There were Nancy Drew mysteries.  Fairy tales.  Dickens.  A weathered copy of Sybil.  And a paperback of Catcher in the Rye that I still have on a shelf somewhere…

Being able to take home one of those books was being able to take home a piece of treasure from that magical attic.  It was also a bit of victory knowing I was reading something that my grandmother might well have read herself.  

And that pendulum swung back again.  My most favorite gift to wrap up for her on Christmas was usually a book.  Whether it was about local history, essays, something about gardens, or a piece of well written fiction, it was a delight to share it with one of my most favorite readers.

Those books were scattered throughout the house.  Eventually that shelf in the attic stopped collecting volumes… or enough borrowers retained the copies for their own libraries.  But as I started collecting images of the house before it disassembled, there were books in nearly every room.  Her bedroom, the back two bedrooms, the living room, the dining room had a few volumes tucked into the music stand and desk, the kitchen had books carefully displayed on a shelf above the door, the cellar, and the tv room – where she sat for much of her last year – had several stacks of volumes… including the one I wrote.

A picture of her paternal grandmother, Mary McCourt, reading

In the last few weeks, the pieces of that house were collected into rooms so different members of the family could come and take something for our own homes.  It really is not surprising that a whole room was devoted to books.  Children’s books.  Novels.  Garden books.  Cookbooks.  Books given to her.  Books she gave to us.

I took home a few volumes to add to my shelves.  But really, at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s merely those bound copies or the ones I took from the attic in my younger days that are most significant.  It is the fact that she shared that passion for reading.  Even in her last days, we would talk about books and writers and things she found interesting because she read them.  And I suspect that is a lot of the reason her mind was sharp to the very end.  

So really, if you think about it, she didn’t just give me the recipes to inspire this blog.  She gave me the love of words and vocabulary and a good story.  Or maybe this quote she kept taped to a shelf in the cellar describes it best.

She gave me books.  She gave me wings.