Recuperating

Monday, July 26, 2010 Day 26
Today was a take-it-easy day. I slept until 9:00, then got up and started laundry. There was almost nothing in the house to eat except for some veal stew which Roger had made while I was gone. I had a bit of it for a late supper when I got in last night, but didn’t want it for lunch. So we set out for the local grocery store, this not being a market day. Roger got some ham for sandwiches and I got some soup in a box, along with some bread, some crackers, and some cookies. When we got home and were putting up the groceries, Roger handed me the box of crackers and asked if they should be refrigerated. I said “no, they are just crackers,” and he asked me to touch the box. Once I did, I understood the question. The grocery store is very cold, and the items we bring home from there are quite cold as well. Nice for the produce and milk and such, but it even makes the paper boxes of crackers, soap, etc. exceedingly cool. Roger had a sandwich for lunch, and I had my soup. It wasn’t bad – a puree of mixed vegetables. This afternoon we did some more laundry, then napped for a while, romped a bit, and napped again.

We went out for dinner, and Roger ordered something called andouillette. That translates on the quick Google translator on the phone as sausage, and since LaPlace is the Andouille Capital of the World, he thought he was pretty safe. Little did he know! He ordered it, and didn’t particularly enjoy it. He decided it was a sausage casing filled with tripe. I am not familiar on a personal level with tripe, but I would tend to agree with him – it had an earthy, organ-meat taste to it, but was in little odd pieces. I had goat cheese ravioli, which was rather bland. Later, he checked on the meaning and learned that it is a coarse-grained smoked tripe sausage made with pork (or occasionally, veal), chitterlings, pepper, wine, onions, and seasonings. Andouille in southern Louisiana is also a coarse-grained sausage but it is made of largish chunks of pork (as opposed to ground meat), salt, pepper and garlic: No tripe or other intestines. Poor Roger! He really doesn’t care for organ meats and he keeps managing to order them!