Writer documenting life in New Orleans 9th Ward. I'm eating 500 po boys at 500 different restaurants, gas stations, corner stores and cafes in New Orleans

Month: July 2025

A Recipe For Couche Couche

A Recipe For Couche Couche

I grew up eating couche couche but it had a different name in rural Kentucky.

Up in Appalachia it’s called cornmeal mush but the backbone of the dish is identical.

You fry up a pan of cornmeal batter in bacon drippings, and as it’s setting up you take a wooden spoon and stir it around a bit til it’s all crispy bits mixed with soft white bread.

A Recipe For Homemade 7UP With Stevia

A Recipe For Homemade 7UP With Stevia

A few years ago I realized I had to make a change. If I was going to be able to keep on eating all the cake, pie and donuts I wanted, I was going to have to figure out how to get a chunk of sugar out of my diet or I’d be dead from the diabetes by the time I was 40.

Rest In Peace: Russell Reeves Sr

Russell Reeves Sr.

Russell Reeves Sr has died

How To Smoke Five Pounds Of Grocery Store Pork Chops

How To Smoke Five Pounds Of Grocery Store Pork Chops

When I was a kid growing up in the Cumberland Highlands of rural Appalachia, it was common practice to walk out behind my grandparents farmhouse to grab a slab of cured hog meat out of the smokehouse.

Hot 8 Brass Band Celebrates The Life Of Tuba Man Bennie Pete

Bennie Pete Birthday Celebration at New Orleans Jazz Museum

Jazz historian Dr. Michael White on Bennie Pete:

“For over 20 years one of the most popular and visible funk-style brass bands in community parades and funerals has been the Hot 8 Brass Band. In 1996 sousaphone player Bennie Pete was instrumental in merging two former Fortier High School student groups, the High Steppers and the Looney Tunes Brass Bands, to form the Hot 8. The players grew up together and maintain strong, family-like bonds and regular membership. Most of them were born between 1975 and ’87 in a generation that grew up hearing mainly modern-style brass bands in community functions.”

I would hesitate to say how many times I’ve seen Hot 8 play live. In the neighborhood of 200 times I reckon.

Bennie Pete passed away in September of 2021. The Treme neighborhood funerary second line that honored him saw thousands of people take to the streets in waves of joy. That’s how we grieve in New Orleans.

Tomorrow, July 10th, 2025 at 6pm, Hot 8 Brass Band will perform a ‘heavenly birthday’ celebration for the big man. Hope to see y’all come out.

Bennie Pete Birthday Celebration at New Orleans Jazz Museum

Thursday, July 10, 2025
5:00 PM – 8:00 PM
New Orleans Jazz Museum
400 Esplanade Ave.
New Orleans, LA

Corbin Kentucky Native Reveals Colonel Sanders Original Kentucky Fried Chicken Recipe

Corbin Kentucky Native Reveals Colonel Sanders Original Kentucky Fried Chicken Recipe

Several years ago the Chicago Tribune broke a story that still has the state of Kentucky in an uproar. Joe Ledington, a Corbin, Kentucky native who is a nephew to Colonel Sanders shared the original Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe with a writer for the paper.

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