St. Bernard Parish : The Idiot’s Guide to Disaster Relief
Rich Weinroth
I’m CJ which is short for Cranberry Juice ....a favorite.
And I love you all.
There were so many resident volunteers on site that I hadn’t even met yet and my first Circle, especially the introductions, seemed like a neverending Al Anon meeting. I’m Bill and I’m an alcoholic was all that was missing. Once we’d gotten through the introductory portion of Circle, business would commence. Everyone then got to chime in on any aspect of operations and any random matter of subjects about which they were tragically ignorant, uninformed and opinionated. Therefore sparking debate with other ignorami and sometimes even those with an actual clue, however rare that may have been. It takes a Village? I learned how difficult it is to get anything done by committee. Dictatorships are much more efficient, though often less well-intentioned. I was invited to a Safety Meeting, and being new, I assumed it would be wise to attend. It was a Disaster Relief Board Meeting.
Post Katrina New Orleans can be a dangerous place. But I learned that a safety meeting isn’t really necessarily a safety meeting. It turns out, that it meant that we should go smoke a joint. I didn’t feel any safer, but it did twist my perspective a bit, as it tends to do, and we all laughed like the stoned do and stood over the following day’s menu board and deliberated over menu options and choosing recipes and sides.
The Disaster Relief Board Meeting’s are fun.
If you’ve got an idea, cook it and we’ll all hope it’ll be good. It was great that the meals were five courses, everybody got to try to make something great. Chad’s Ginger Crack Carrots were spicy sweet and buttery, Chris Mamma’s Stir Fry, Lulu’s Salsas, Jess rocked breakfast, John in the Smoke Pit was a Master. Kiki’s Red Beans and Rice was so much better than that of the local who’d been coming down to make it. We made pizza for 700 people one day for lunch when Beal and Turtle made dough from scratch and totally by hand. It was an amazing thing how people from all over were pulling out all the stops for perfect strangers in need. My first chance at a creation was something I’d made once before on a much smaller scale that seemed appropriate in a land where breakfast without grits is unthinkable. I made hush puppies. My recipe stretched for 600 people yielded the right amount of batter and I added orange zest and green chile, scallions and cilantro and they were the greasiest most disgusting display of Deep Fried Glory ever to hit disaster relief. Deep Fried Glory would be a great name for a band, too. They were a hit and though my recipe yield was right on and they were great, I’d forgotten the labor intensity of the project. 1800 pieces in two fryers which each ran out of propane after the pilot lights had gone out twice and three hours later even I could sit down and enjoy the fruits of my labor.
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