Everybody’s complaining about the cold winter weather in New Orleans this year. There’s no doubt that snow from Texas to Georgia is unusual this far south. But not unheard of. Browsing through old photos on Commons.wikimedia this morning, I came upon this postcard of Canal Street, New Orleans, after the St. Valentine’s Day snowstorm in […]
I’ve not seen this fast and delicious cake in any cookbook dating back to the 1880s, but surely good cooks in that era knew the fastest way to mix a cake was to melt the butter and milk together and add these to dry ingredients. The first mention of this cake in a cookbook was […]
Mary reporting. A recent blogpost suggested more than 400 ways to kill a character, listing every possible calamity from avalanche to tropical fevers. My writing partner and I had to kill three men before chapter 1. When we outlined The Willing Widow, our first romance in the Love in New Orleans series, we created widows […]
The term jambalaya, essentially a stew of rice and fowl somewhat like Spanish paella, was first mentioned in a poem in 1837. Though its origins are hazy, the term comes from jambon, the French word for ham, and the term yaya, a African word for rice. Like gumbo, no two jambalayas are the same. The […]
Mary Reporting. The glossy covers of magazines devoted to brides display one white wedding dress after another as wedding season 2014 approaches. Most brides today follow the tradition of a white dress, be it long or short, straight or full, strapless or sleeved, with or without a train. We owe the white wedding dress, for […]
