© Lovisa Photo 2020    The other night we were watching the Stanley Tucci series Searching For Italy. In this one, he was looking for Florence. When Tucci started talking about the bread there, I casually mentioned to Carol that Florentines bake their bread without salt, the result of a medieval-era trade war with Pisa, […]

Photo Credit – Carol Madigan    This year the streets of New Orleans on Mardi Gras day looked like scenes from an episode of Life Without People. While, personally, it would have been “the best Mardi Gras ever” to be able to walk the streets completely empty of Fat Tuesday drunks, I have mixed emotions […]

Photo Credit: Carol Madigan    Carol and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary on Saturday. It’s called Paper. I mention that only because I’m hoping a joke or smart ass remark about it will occur to me before I get to the end of this.    And yeah, virtually this whole first year was spent […]

Photo Credit: Lovisa Photo    Carol had stumbled across an old blog where I’d recorded that Carolyn had once told me I was the most romantic man she’d ever met. “Wait,” Carol said, “she thought you were the most…etc., etc…” The incredulity that hung in the air was so thick you could hit it with […]

Photo credit: Lovisa Photo    The other day Carol referred to “our” new air fryer as “your” new air fryer. Later she returned from running errands, and said, “I took ‘my’ car to the car wash.” And she added, “By the way, did they deliver ‘your’ wine order?” Maybe it’s the quarantine, but I’ve found […]

   It happened again, just the other night. I’d gotten up from the couch, a rare enough daily occurrence that it prompted a comment from Carol. At the time, I was headed for the freezer to take out some cornbread for dinner that evening. The cornbread was to go with the red beans and rice […]

   We were walking back to our hotel from a wonderful Florentine restaurant following an enlivening and lengthy happy hour near the famed Domo. In other words, we were buzzed, Carol had to pee, and then soon, we were lost.    I’ve written before about the hidden discoveries one can make while trying to find […]

   I’ve written earlier that having grown up in the Deep South, the first rule of cooking is, if you don’t know what it is, fry it. In the bayou country of Louisiana, where my family comes from, that maxim is a little more refined: if it moves, fry it.    Thus it was, I […]

   There was the time I walked into a theater with Carol for a showing of The Book Club. A youngish woman (I’ve attained the age where they’re all more or less youngish) who passed me in the aisle said, “You’re like the third dude in here.” I didn’t know whether to feel special for […]

   Back when I believed in reincarnation, I announced to anyone who’d listen that I wanted to come back as an Italian. “A tile and grout man, I really don’t care, as long as I have an Italian grandmother.” In other words, I wanted to reincarnate for the food. That’s why when I saw that […]