Florence Nightengale Made a Difference
Today, in addition to the readings from the Old Testament, New Testament and Gospels, the Lectionary celebrates Florence Nightingale. I had no idea how influential this woman-ahead-of-her-times was in making hospitals safer places in which to treat our wounded and sick. She observed, studied and documented sanitary practices and how changing small things – like changing the linens on beds between patients, clean latrines – could make a big difference. She brought order out of chaos, truly a Godly woman.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
NURSE, RENEWER OF SOCIETY (12 AUGUST 1910)
The commemoration of Florence Nightingale is controversial. On the one hand, she doubted or denied many of the central articles of the Creed. On the other hand, she believed in God and devoted her life to His service as she understood it.
She was born in Florence on 12 May 1820 of upper-class English parents travelling through Italy, and named for her native city. (“Florence” was not an accepted first name at the time. Her sister was born in Naples and named “Parthenope,” the Greek name for that city.) Florence was reared in the Unitarian Church, but later joined the Church of England.
In her diary, an entry shortly before her seventeenth birthday reads: “On February 7th, 1837, God spoke to me and called me to his service.” She did not know what the service would be, and therefore decided that she must remain single, so as to have no encumbrances and be ready for anything. With this in mind, she rejected a proposal of marriage from a young man whom she dearly loved. She suffered from “trances” or “dreaming” spells, in which she would lose consciousness for several minutes or longer, and be unaware when she recovered that time had passed. (Could this be a form of petit mal epilepsy? No biographer of hers that I have read uses the word.) She found the knowledge that she was subject to such spells terrifying, and feared that they meant that she was unworthy of her calling, particularly since she did not hear the voice of God again for many years. In the spring of 1844 she came to believe that her calling was to nurse the sick. In 1850 her family sent her on a tour of Egypt for her health. Some extracts from her diary follow:
March 7. God called me in the morning and asked me would I do good for Him, for Him alone without the reputation.
March 9. During half an hour I had by myself in my cabin, settled the question with God.
April 1. Not able to go out but wished God to have it all His own way. I like Him to do exactly as He likes without even telling me the reason.
May 12. Today I am thirty–the age Christ began his mission.
Now no more childish things. No more love. No more marriage. Now Lord let me think only of Thy Will, what Thou willest me to do. Oh Lord Thy Will, Thy Will.
June 10. The Lord spoke to me; he said, Give five minutes every hour to the thought of Me. Coudst thou but love Me as Lizzie loves her husband, how happy wouldst thou be.” But Lizzie does not give five minutes every hour to the thought of her husband, she thinks of him every minute, spontaneously.
Florence decided that she must train to be a nurse. Her family was horrified. In her day, nursing was done mostly by disabled army veterans or by women with no other means of support. It was common for nurses of either sex to be drunk on the job most of the time, and they had no training at all. It was common practice never to wash or change the sheets on a bed, not even when a patient died and his bed was given to a new patient. Florence was told to go to Kaiserswerth, Germany, to learn and train with the Lutheran order of Deaconesses who were running a hospital there. Back in England again, she used the influence of Sidney Herbert, a family friend and Member of Parliament, to be appointed supervisor of a sanatorium in London. Under her able guidance, it turned from a chamber of horrors into a model hospital. The innovations introduced by Miss Nightingale were, for their day, little short of revolutionary. She demanded, and got, a system of dumb-waiters that enabled food to be sent directly to every floor, so that nurses did not exhaust themselves carrying trays up numerous flights of stairs. She also invented and had installed a system of call bells by which a patient could ring from his bed and the bell would sound in the corridor, with a valve attached to the bell which opened when the bell rang, and remained open so that the nurse could see who had rung. “Without a system of this kind,” she wrote, “a nurse is converted to a pair of legs.”
While working in the poorer districts of London, Miss Nightingale encountered a Roman Catholic priest, Henry Edward Manning (later Cardinal Manning), who was working among the poor of London. She was impressed by the assistance he gave to many who had nowhere else to turn, and they became friends for life. She was greatly attracted by Roman Catholicism, but rejected much of its theology, and so reluctantly decided against joining it.
Then war broke out in the Crimea (in Russia, on the north edge of the Black Sea), and Sir Sidney Herbert, now Secretary of War, obtained permission for Florence to lead a group of 38 nurses there. Of these, 10 were Roman Catholic nuns, 14 were Anglican nuns, and the remaining 14 were “of no particular religion, unless one counts the worship of Bacchus.” They found conditions appalling. Blankets were rotting in warehouses while the men did without, because no one had issued the proper forms for their distribution. The lavatories in the hospitals had no running water, and the latrines were tubs to be emptied by hand. But no one emptied them, since official regulations did not specify which department was responsible for doing so. The result was that the hospital had a foul stench that could be smelled for some distance outside its walls. Far more men were dying in hospitals of infection than of wounds. The chief concern of many of the Army doctors was that the nurses might usurp some of their authority. Florence gradually managed to win the doctors and other authorities over, and to reform hospital procedures, with spectacular results. Once the medical situation had ceased to be an acute problem, she turned her attention to other aspects of the soldiers’ welfare. For example, most of them squandered all their pay on drink. She noted that there was no trustworthy way for them to send money home to their families, and she set up facilities for them to do so. First, she undertook to send money home herself for any soldier in the hospital that wanted it sent, and the soldiers brought in about 1000 pounds a month. She asked the authorities to set up an official service to do this, and they refused. By appealing to Queen Victoria herself, she overcame opposition to the idea, and the men sent home 71,000 pounds sterling in less than six months. She established with her own money a reading-room with tables for writing letters, and the men used it enthusiastically. She imported four schoolmasters to give lectures, and the halls were filled to overflowing. All this was done despite opposition from officers who said, “The men are hopeless brutes. You cannot expect anything from them.”
At night, she would often patrol the wards, carrying a dim lamp, to make sure that all was well and no one was in need of help. She became famous as “the Lady with the Lamp.”
In April 1856 the war was over, and by mid-July the hospital was emptied and her work in Crimea over. She returned to England a national hero, with a great welcome prepared for her; but she slipped into the country unnoticed and went to a convent that had supplied some of her nurses. There, she spent the day in prayer before coming out to face the public and beginning to lobby Parliament for suitable legislation. She wrote pamphlet after pamphlet, pointing out by pie charts, for example, that the major cause of deaths in the Army was not wounds caused by enemy action but disease caused by lack of proper sanitation. She is perhaps the first person to use pie charts and similar graphic devices to convey statistical information. She obtained the formation of an Army Medical Staff Corps and a Sanitary Commission to oversee military health conditions.
Throughout these efforts, she relied on the help of Sidney Herbert, insisting that he must work hard and long to get the legislation she needed through Parliament. When he protested that she was asking too much, she would not listen. His health broke, and he died in August 1861. Florence prayed God to raise him from the dead, explaining that she needed him for the job. When God failed to comply, her faith was badly shaken. She wrote a book called, Suggestions for Thought: An Address to the Artisans of England, in which she explained that God was less of a Person and more of a Cosmic Force than is generally supposed by Christians. (But note that she was working on this book before Sir Sidney died, and one cannot call it simply a response to his death.) Advance copies were given to a few friends, such as John Stuart Mill, who praised it highly. However, it was never published (I have not seen it, and neither the Library of Congress nor the National library of Medicine has a copy, nor any other library in the United States that I have been able to learn of), since Florence kept revising it — arguably, because her beliefs on the nature of God were simply not internally consistent. Eventually, it seems, God spoke to her again and said, “You are here to carry out my program. I am not here to carry out yours.” She wrote in her diary, “I must remember that God is not my private secretary.”
Before his death, Sir Sidney had gotten her involved in Indian affairs. She served on the Indian Sanitary Commission. In May 1859, she decided that there were insufficient data available in England on conditions in the Indian Army, and she wrote to 200 military stations there, asking for copies of all regulations and all documents relating to the health and sanitary administration of the army. The reports that came back filled two vans. She read them all and summarized them for the Report of the Commission. Her conclusion was that the death toll from disease in the Indian Army was appallingly high (69 out of 1000 annually), and that this was largely due, not to the climate, but to lack of sanitation, and that preventive measures included sanitation not just for army posts but for neighboring villages and, in the long run, for all of India.
She was a friend of General Charles George Gordon, who captured the British imagination when he and his troops were beseiged at Khartoum in the Sudan, and finally captured and killed. After his death, Florence wrote to a friend that suffering, disappointment, and lack of success are the tribute which it is the soul’s greatest privilege to present to God. In Gordon’s death, she wrote, we see “the triumph of failure, the triumph of the Cross. With him, all is well.”
She met the scholar Benjamin Jowett, who was translating Plato into English. They became fast friends, and she contributed to the translation. She also began an anthology of mystical writings, called “Notes from Devotional Authors of the Middle Ages, Collected, Chosen, and Freely Translated by Florence Nightingale.” It was her contention that mystical prayer is not just for monks and nuns, but should form a part of the every-day life of ordinary persons.
Under the strain of ceaseless overwork, her own health broke, and she was an invalid for the latter half of her life. On Christmas Day when she was sixty-five, she wrote: “Today, O Lord, let me dedicate this crumbling old woman to thee. Behold the handmaid of the Lord. I was thy handmaid as a girl. Since then, I have backslid.” She wrote a manual called Notes for Nurses, and a set of instructions for the matron in charge of training nurses, emphasizing the importance for a nurse of a schedule of daily prayer. A few years before her death, she was the first woman to receive the Order of Merit from the British government. She died at ninety, and, by her directions, her tombstone read simply, “F.N. 1820-1910”.
Florence Nightingale died on 13 August 1910, and is commemorated on this day on the Lutheran Calendar. The Episcopal calendar commemorates Jeremy Taylor on 13 August, and accordingly has shifted the commemoration of Nightingale to 18 May. I am not sure of the significance of this date, but it is the date (or nearly) of the opening of the Nightingale Training School for Nurses in 1860. [Note: the current date in the Episcopal Church for her commemoration is 12 Aug.]
by James Kiefer
Salmon Piccata; Reward for a Long Week
As we sat down for dinner last night, I reminded AdventureMan that when he retired (maybe the second or third or fourth time) he said he wanted to learn to cook seafood, maybe he’d like to take a class.
All on his own, with recipes from the Barefoot Contessa, the Pioneer Woman, Southern Living, the Pensacola News Journal, how-to videos on YouTube and all kinds of other internet sources, his dream has been realized. Not only can he cook seafood, but he does it really well.
Last night was the end of a long week; a week with the grandchildren, a week of continuing organization and efforts for upgrades to the house that give us pleasure, a week of errands in preparation for an upcoming trip and the normal duties of every day life. As a special treat, AdventureMan volunteered to make a Salmon Piccata, which I adore, and he also roasted green beans and tiny potatoes in oil and garlic, and put together a beautiful green salad.
To top it all off, he found a gorgeous Sancerre to go with it. I can’t drink a lot of wine any more, not just due to being diabetic, but also because as I age, I seem to be developing a smidgeon of better judgement. If I can only drink a little, I want it to be something I like a lot. AdventureMan has found the perfect formula; for every really good bottle of wine we buy, he writes a check for an equivalent amount to the Salvation Army, to feed, house and care for the poor. It may not work for everybody, but it works for us.
Sometimes happiness is looking back and seeing how far you’ve come. Sometimes being content is finding joy in the everyday incremental refinements we make in life. A man who will create a magical dinner on a hot summer’s day when I am exhausted is my kind of guy.
Tales from Before the Blog
Tonight we were eating Indian food, and talking about some of the truly great Indian restaurants where we had eaten in Doha. Our two favorite had separate veg and meat sections, and one, The Garden, even had them on two separate floors. The other, the Welcome, was a wonderful place, a place I would never dare to take my mother but a place we often went with friends. Once, we took another couple we liked, and we started with chots and dosas, and then ordered entrees. When the bill came, AdventureMan picked up and the other man objected – but only momentarily; AdventureMan showed him the total bill was 44 Qatari Dinar – somewhere around ten dollars.
Both The Welcome restaurant and the Garden were torn down to make way for a grand new walking street going down to the Souq al Waqif. We never saw prices like that again, or that kind of Indian-comfort-food-at-low-prices.
One story led to another.
“Take Her! Take Her!”
AdventureMan preceded me to Doha; I stayed behind and packed out, found new renters for our apartment, sold my car and arranged for my diabetic cat to fly with me to Doha.
When I got to Doha, I showed the veterinary papers showing Morgaine had the veterinary papers in order, but, as it turned out, I had not requested permission from the Qatar Department of Animal Health to bring in my cat, so I would have to leave her until I got permission. I discussed this politely with the customs official, a young soldier, and then I started pulling out my packets of syringes and vials of insulin, and I explained to him that she needed X amount of insulin injected at such and such a time, two times a day.
He looked at me in utter horror and said “Take her! Take her!” and I didn’t wait a single second but got everything back in my bag and walked out as fast as I could with my unpermitted cat. Things were easier then; there were always men with carts eager to take all your bags, so all I had to do was grab the cat and run.
“She’ll Have to Sign a Waiver”
No sooner had I arrived in Doha than a car showed up at my villa, a car I hadn’t requested nor chosen, but I guess the car I was meant to have. I had to learn to think in a whole new way. It was a really good thing I had the car because Operation Enduring Freedom was breaking out, and I knew I might not see my husband again for a while. He took an hour off the day after I arrived to show me where two grocery stores were; the one near us for the basics, and the French Carrefour, across town, but worth the drive.
But the company was horrified I wasn’t leaving. “We’ll pay your passage!” they said. “You can go anywhere! You don’t want to stay here, war is breaking out.”
I had just gotten to Doha. I was settling in. I had my abaya and scarf from our time in Saudi Arabia, and I knew the way to the airport; I could walk if I had to. My niece, Little Diamond, was coming to stay with me. We both spoke some Arabic, she spoke more than I did. I wasn’t afraid, and I didn’t want to leave.
“She’ll have to sign a waiver,” they told AdventureMan. I signed the waiver.
There were some dangers. While the USA and allies were gearing up to help the Kuwaitis take back Kuwait from the Iraqis, not everyone was on board. We learned to alter our body language, to walk and speak quietly, not to draw any attention to ourselves. We did our shopping calmly and efficiently. Even so, on occasion there was an occasional shop clerk who might ignore me and refuse to wait on me, but those occasions were rare, and the occasions of great hospitality from local citizens were many.
The day the war started, my sweet cat died. She had problems breathing early in the day, so I took her to the vet. Going to the Vet in Doha was not like any going-to-the-vet I’ve ever experienced before; you go, you sign in, you sit, if there is a chair left, and you wait your turn. It doesn’t matter how sick your animal is. It was chaos. Many people got very emotional and wanted to be taken out of turn. When I got to see the vet, who was always very kind, he gave her a shot and said “Now she will feel better.” I told him I thought she was close to the end, and he said maybe or maybe not. I took her home.
About three hours later she came and lay next to me quietly and I knew she was saying goodbye. She started gasping again, so I put her n her cage and drove as quickly as I could to the vet, but it was Friday afternoon, the day everything closes for mid-day prayer, he was closed, and could not be reached. By the time I got home, she was dead.
So the war is starting, my cat has died and I am not in a rational place. AdventureMan called and my niece talked to him. I think she told him the cat had died and I thought there was a chance it might just be a fit and she might come back to life, which was true. AdventureMan came home, I don’t know how he did it, but he did, and we drove out to the desert and buried our cat. He brought me back home and went back to the base and I didn’t see him for a while, except on television; as the CNN reporter stood in front of a sign at the press center on base, my husband sauntered behind him and gave me a wave. We still laugh about how he took a break to bury our cat just when war was about to break out, but managed to get back in time for the opening. He showed up when it mattered.
Welcome to Doha.
Afghani Interpreters Begin Arriving
First group of evacuated Afghan interpreters arrives in US
from BBC News
(This morning, Adventureman’s heart is lighter. He is a Vietnam vet, and for many years has carried the guilt of our country having left behind so many people who worked with our forces so loyally, and suffered terribly when we pulled out. While we believe Afghanistan was not a winnable war (just look at history), he had anxiety that once again we would leave our allies behind.
We have a soft spot for Afghanistan. While we worked with the Department of State, way back before the Taliban, Afghanistan was considered by many to be a great post. The Afghani people were educated, and had a long and fascinating history. Afghani food is delicious. Day trips around Afghanistan opened people’s eyes to new ways of thinking and doing things. Even the Afghan clothing was comfortable and loose, perfect for the great heat of the summers. Friends who had served in Afghanistan shared wonderful stories and memories, and would gather for “Afghan Night” where they would prepare food for 100 of their best friends, of which we were honored to be included.
So to read that the first flight of interpreters and their families have arrived gave us great hope. Hope for a new group of citizens in our country who will work hard and share the gifts of their heritage, hope for their wives and daughters who we know to be amazing women, and hopes that one day there might be an Afghani restaurant in Pensacola!)
About 200 Afghan interpreters and their families have arrived in the US – the first of a group of 2,500 Afghans being evacuated as the Taliban advances.
The interpreters are being resettled under a visa programme for those who worked with the US during the recently ended 20-year war with the Taliban.
They arrived in the early hours of Friday morning and were taken to Fort Lee military base in Virginia.
They are expected to stay there for around a week while they are processed.
In a statement, US President Joe Biden called the arrivals “a milestone” and “the first of many” as US authorities work to relocate eligible Afghans out of harm’s way.
Afghans eligible for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) will be transported either to the US, American facilities abroad or to third countries while they finish their applications. The most recent arrivals have already completed an extensive vetting process.
On Thursday, the US Senate approved more than $1bn (£719m) to pay for the evacuations, including housing and transportation.
The bill would also loosen applicant requirements and allow for 8,000 more visas in addition to the ones already allocated for.
The Taliban have been advancing Afghanistan following a decision by Mr Biden to withdraw the remaining American troops from the country.
With those advances have come danger to those who worked alongside US troops during the two-decade conflict.
Since 2008, approximately 70,000 Afghans have been resettled in the US on an SIV .
Last week, a senior state department official said that the total number of visa applicants now stands just over 20,000. About half have yet to complete the first steps of the process.
Those yet to go through the process face potential threats in attempting to secure a visa. Mike Jason, a former US Army battalion commander who was deployed to Afghanistan, told the BBC that travelling across Taliban-controlled areas with the documentation needed for SIVs puts interpreters in “mortal danger”.
“That’s basically an entire confession that you’re an interpreter working for the Americans. We’re asking them to travel with the evidence,” he said.
Not-for-profit group No One Left Behind estimates that at least 300 Afghans or their family members have been killed for working with the US.
The Taliban were removed from power by the US-led invasion in 2001, following the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York.
Fighting between the insurgent Taliban and Afghan government forces has increased over the past two months as international troops pull out of the country.
AdventureMan Does Yoga
“Move your spine in all directions at least once a day,” AdventureMan’s new yoga-instructor-via-Netflix advises.
AdventureMan has a whole new cadre of bossy women in his life. He has Julia, his Netflix advisor, he has Petrina, his expert masseuse at the YMCA who can tell just by touching him what he has been doing. She can be much more direct, and expects results. AdventureMan, who is a man who will not be bossed, is amazingly docile when it comes to these two women.
He also objects to bossy males, so when our yoga-naturals, Ragnar and Uhtred, join him in his exercises, we just laugh. They can bend in ways he can never aspire to, get their heads between their legs, roll and curl backwards. They love it when he cranks up the computer to do his spinal exercises. Cats have certain advantages doing yoga.
It all started months ago during COVID when I couldn’t swim at the Y and felt the need to DO something. I got out my mat, found a good program and started in. It was Yoga for Beginners, with Adrienne, very relaxed if you are not me. I used to do ballet, form is everything, and you strive for exactness. Trying to do yoga exactly is sort of the opposite of all intents, so instead of feeling relaxed when I finished, I had a migraine from trying too hard.
But AdventureMan watched and was intrigued. He likes privacy. He also has issues I don’t have, aches and pains that gentle yoga can help. He got a beautiful yoga mat for Christmas. We did yoga together a couple times, and then I was back swimming laps and he got into walking and yoga. To my surprise, it is July, and he is still faithful, both to Julia and to Petrina. He has lost weight. He has gained some balance and stability, and his spine is more flexible. I join him occasionally in the spinal tape; it is gentle and doable without pressing my OCD button.
No, these photos are not AdventureMan, just images that give an idea what the gentle art of yoga can help people do to develop strength and balance.
Rest in Peace, Donald Rumsfeld
You can admire a man without agreeing with him. Donald Rumsfeld gave me one of my favorite quotes:
Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.
I always thought he said “it is the latter category that bites us in the butt,” but maybe that was the unofficial version.
Kids Eat Healthy in New Orleans
There are times when AdventureMan and I take a grown-ups trip to New Orleans, and at those times, we eat in restaurants where the food is too rich and we come back hating ourselves. On occasion, rich is tasty, wonderful and delicious and you can’t resist.
Fortunately for us, most of the time when we head for New Orleans we have our grandchildren with us, and we have to behave ourselves.
A good friend told us about The Parkview – a historic inn, perfect for us in so many ways. We buy an annual membership to the Audubon Zoo, which is almost next door. There is a really cool park for children just across the street. There is parking on the street, and cookies every day late in the afternoon. The St. Charles streetcar stops right in front of the hotel, going in both directions. The lobby is full of fascinating exotica – stuffed peacocks, antique furniture and countless clocks. Their brochure welcomes “well-behaved children” and our grandchildren take that to heart – they want to be welcome at this hotel!
We are not always adults who behave responsibly, but when we are entrusted with our grandchildren, we are on our best behavior.
We have been delighted to find that there are places in New Orleans which welcome children, treat them respectfully and offer some healthy options.
While we have (after some hilariously awkward situations) learned to avoid the French Quarter with children, we have found some work arounds that make it a more acceptable adventure.
Felipe’s Mexican Taqueria
301 N. Peters Street New Orleans, LA 70130
This is not a fancy place, not at all. This is a place where you order at the counter, and carry food to a condiments stand and then to your table. There are no tablecloths. It is full of French Quarter workers finishing their shift providing hospitality for New Orleans visitors, tired, hungry and knowing where to find a good meal at a reasonable price, and a glass or two or three of beer. Chips and salsa, tacos, burritos, beans and rice – the basics, done well. Our grandchildren can always find something or order, no one cares if something spills, it is a little noisy and chaotic – a great place to take kids, and enough on the edge of the French Quarter as not to be a problem.
Louisiana Pizza Kitchen, French Quarter
95 French Market Pl, New Orleans, LA 70116
There are several Louisiana Pizza Kitchens, and this is the one we really like. It has so much more than pizza, and it has raw brick walls, a fun vibe, and you can take the trolley from the end of Canal street all the way to the French Market Station and avoid a lot of the FQ tawdry experience. Our grandson ordered a calimari dish that knocked our socks off, and the desserts were fabulous. When you add it all up, it’s not a cheap meal but we had a refrigerator and the kids loved having pizza for breakfast, too.
So much for the French Quarter. We don’t spend a lot of time there with children.
two locations:
901 Convention Center Boulevard
or
920 Gravier Street
You can see both Two Chicks Cafe’s on the map above. The one at the convention center, near the WWII Museum, has better parking. At the one on Gravier, you will probably have to pay to park in a lot or on the street, if you can find a place. It is handy from several of the hotels. The line forms early! They have unhealthy food, but they also have fresh juices, fruit, crepes, eggs in a variety of ways to your command; you can eat healthy if you wish. The kids find this place fascinating, and more than a little French.
Just as St. Charles turns right into Carrolton, La Madeleine is on your right, just on the corner. There are other locations, one up in Metairie near Drago’s. It is a sort of French-ish cafe that also serves meals, cafeteria style ordering offering a large variety of salads, soups, chicken, salmon, small sandwiches, you can eat healthy. Once ordered, cooked meals are delivered to your table, salads and soups are prepared as you wait in line. Of course, we always ruin it by allowing the children to choose a French pastry for dessert, but eh! We are in New Orleans! One time my granddaughter went to wash her hands and didn’t come back; I found her speaking French along with the language tape playing in the restroom. Not fancy, but a very comfortable place with children.
Our grandchildren love this place. So do their parents. So do we. Great food choices for grown-ups and for kids, some of them healthy. We started going there where we found their name on an article written for parents bringing children to NOLA; Superior Seafoods was a top listed restaurant for kindness to children. We have been there many times and the wait staff is unfailingly courteous and patient, and we are unfailingly grateful. Here, they learned to love grilled oysters. And profiterole. Huge fish sandwiches. And they don’t even realize they are learning a whole lot about how to behave in a restaurant which will, we hope, be handy for them later in life.
On the same map, above, you can also see Saba, on Magazine Street, La Boulangerie, also on Magazine, and Shaya. These are also options if your children are accepting of less familiar foods. Saba and Shaya are both “Mediterranian” or Israeli, offering Middle Eastern foods – rice, plain meats, flat bread, dips – most children can find something to eat while the grown-ups enjoy more sophisticated taste treats.
Drago’s Metairie: Home of the Charbroiled Oyster
While last, Drago’s is not least. Metairie is not that far if you have a car, literally minutes. The chargrilled oysters make this restaurant worth a trip. Children are everywhere, this is a huge restaurant, and very much a family gathering place. They have all the rich Southern and Cajun staples, and a few salads and gumbo soups and bisque, not particularly healthy choices. They do offer some non-fried fish dishes, entree’ salads and vegetable sides.
You’ve been so good! Creole Creamery is not a healthy option, but you can order a very small scoop, or you can order a sorbet, or you can tell yourself it is a reward for good behavior with all the healthy eating you have been doing 😉 The children will love this place – and so will you!
Origami Restaurant: A Happy Accident in New Orleans
I will spare you all the details of our latest trip to New Orleans except for one happy accident. As we were leaving the Audubon Zoo, we all decided we would like Japanese food / sushi for lunch, and we’ve been to a couple on Magazine which we considered less than stellar. Normally, I’ve done my research. Not this time. In desperation, I Google “Japanese restaurant near me” and up pops Origami, 5130 Freret St, New Orleans, LA 70115, just seven minutes away.
With no further recommendation, we decide to take a chance. It is close. We are hoping parking may be easier than on Magazine. It is between us and the nearest entrance to I-10, which we will be taking after lunch to get back to Pensacola.
We get there in six minutes. There is parking right on the street. There are customers leaving and customers entering who look a lot like us, except we have children with us.
Once inside, we love it. The waitress approaches and shows no dismay that we have children. She shows us to a spacious booth.
It is a popular place, full of locals, regulars and relaxed people. They have a huge board on the wall with daily specials, and a menu so large that as I started reading, my hungry husband pointed out that there is a lunch menu and it would be faster just to order from that.
Once we had ordered, we all went to wash hands. Washing hands was a treat! The bathroom was actually very clean, and granddaughter pointed out the flower arrangement.
So many beautiful things to look at! I love it when a restaurant creates a sensual experience beyond really good food!
A huge flock of Origami cranes!
This is exactly the kind of experience we love to have with our grandchildren – lots to look at, tactile, visual, and a great way to spend a few minutes while we are waiting for our lunch.
We all love miso soup, even though it is good for us.
I am embarrased to tell you, this is my order. So much food! It is more like a complete Bento box, with soup and salad and rolls and even the seaweed salad I adore. Sadly, we couldn’t take it with us. I shared, but it was too much food. I later saw on the menu I could have ordered just the tempura; that would have made a better meal for me. Ah well, next time 🙂
Our grandson ordered a special roll called Bye Bye Katrina. He is like his grandfather, very adventuresome.
My granddaughter was also very adventuresome, she ordered the snow crab roll and assortment. It was healthy and delicious! She tried everything.
AdventureMan had the three roll assortment. It was too much food. One reason we ordered too much was that the prices were so reasonable we thought there must be less food. Not so, our grandson informed us, a friend of his parents had told them that you will always get generous portions in New Orleans, it is part of the whole Bon Temps and hospitality thing.
The waitress offered us boxes, but we were headed out on a three plus hour drive back to Pensacola without refrigeration on a hot and humid day . . . we had to decline.
We are thrilled to add this restaurant to our “healthy places to eat in New Orleans where they are also kind to children.”
5130 Freret St, New Orleans, LA 70115
MomFest in New Orleans
Didn’t we just have a fest in New Orleans? On Saturday, AdventureMan and I were having chargrilled oysters at The Original Oyster House, our favorite seafood place along the Spanish Fort causeway going into Mobile.
As usual, we were having a discussion about words. I had decided that Saturday would be the beginning of Mother’s Day, and as we were meeting up with our son on Sunday, and heading to New Orleans for Monday and Tuesday, it would end up being a four day celebration. AdventureMan wondered what a four day celebration would be called. I suggested a four day weekend, and he said, no, MomQuad. I didn’t like the sound of that, so I announced, definitively, that we would call it the MomFest, which had a less legalistic and more celebratory flavor.
Sunday, too, was lovely, having time with our son where we could hear about his life and his adventures in prosecution. His accused was very sure he would not be convicted – “If they have no face, they have no case!” but our son, by his careful and painstaking work, proved him very wrong.
And Monday we headed to New Orleans, hitting the road around 0830 for an anticipated 1130 arrival.
Oops. Not so fast. Just out of Mobile we ran into massive thunderclouds and shocking bolts of lightning, and torrents of rain rushing up from the gigantic wheels of the trucks who drove hell-bent-for-leather to get their cargos in on time in spite of the weather.
The storm was easing up as we crossed the causeway into New Orleans, and by the time we got to Magazine Street, it had stopped raining and the sun began to peep out.
We love the variety available on Magazine street, and we haven’t had Ethiopian food for weeks :-).
Yes! Cafe Abyssinia, here we come again, a family tradition when we hit New Orleans just in time for lunch. Our waiter this time was delightful, a man from Chicago, related to the restaurant owner, who has actually been back to visit family in Ethiopia. He had great stories to tell about his family there, how they love hearing about America, and how they made him feel so welcome, and a part of a much bigger family.
Then on to Zito’s and to Enrique’s to pick up items we had left to be fixed, polished or mended. Always a good reason to come back. We had a good visit, then headed to Creole Creamery on our way to The Parkview. Usually when it comes to ice cream flavors, AdventureMan and I go our separate ways, maybe sharing small bites with one another, but this time we both landed on the same flavor: Bittersweet Chocolate Torte. It was divine. We had to eat it sitting out in our car, as no one is allowed to sit inside and even the numbers who can come in are limited, but we were lucky. When we went back the next day, there was a long line of people outside, waiting for their turn to go inside.
I did look at VRBO for this trip, but it’s just an overnight, and oh, we love The Parkview. We love the parking, we love the park, we love the proximity to the zoo, and we love that you can catch the streetcar going in either direction just outside the front door, on St. Charles.
We had a different room this time, and I didn’t think I was going to love it, but we did. It was on the main floor, near check in and the breakfast room, but because of COVID, and in spite of the fact the hotel was fully booked, it was not noisy, the bed was huge with a good mattress and linens, and we had plenty of space.
So this was our bed. AdventureMan noticed it had a face on it, which after he described where it was, I could see it. But I also saw a heart, which he did not, and another stylized face high above, on the crown over the bed.
We had dinner again at Superior Seafoods; we split the grilled oysters, each had a salad, and AdventureMan had grilled shrimp, while once again, I exercised poor judgement and had the rich and satisfying BBQ Shrimp. We had a 45 minute wait to get in – New Orleans high schools, Loyola and Tulane are having graduations, and the place is a madhouse – but we had a delightful conversation with a young couple, she was just finishing graduate school and the two of them were on a quest to eat as many oysters as possible before leaving New Orleans for Nashville.
When I say I exercised bad judgement, it is not a reflection on the food. The food was marvelous. I am diabetic and I have no reason on earth to eat injera (Ethiopian pancake-bread) for lunch, really creamy ice cream at midday, and grilled buttery oysters and buttery BBQ shrimp for dinner. It was very foolish of me. Oh well, every now and then I allow myself a little bad judgement.
When we hit the road the next morning, the heavens opened and torrents of rain followed bolts of lightning. Traffic was a little lighter heading east. Our sweet and caring daughter-in-law texted us to fill our tanks before leaving Mississippi, as on top of the pipeline hack for ransom, a major Pensacola gas distributor had failed an EPA requirement and many Pensacola gas stations were dry. Even as far back as Biloxi, gas stations had cars lined up. We did manage to fill the tank, and we turned off the air conditioning for the rest of the drive. The situation seems to be easing in Pensacola, but there is such a fear of a gas shortage that people are panic buying.
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