More cooking and reading, what a shock

Red beans and rice (stolen & adapted from a friend)

- 1/2 big bag of Camellia red beans, soaked overnight and then cooked til nearly soft
- 4 andouille sausages, chopped up, cooked in own grease til brown
- 2 sliced onions, added to sausages, cooked til light golden brown and limp
- 6 garlic cloves, minced; a few sprigs rosemary, chopped; some pepper powder, some ground black pepper, some salt - add to above and stir til garlic is fragrant
- Add beans to above and cook til totally soft. Make sure to scrape up and incorporate fond.

Strawberry kumquat jam from The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook is AMAZING. Tangy, delicious, somehow even more than the sum of its parts. Also, I did a repeat of the satsuma marmalade and added 2 tsps of Liberian pepper powder to it for my sister - think it will be brilliant with cheese, or as a pseudo-chutney on Indian dishes.

Read a couple more Robin McKinleys - pretty good stuff. Finished Mothers of Invention - wonderfully interesting. Read a mediocre Ian Rankin - why is he only good when he's writing about that grumpy alcoholic detective? Re-read a superlative-as-usual Thomas Perry.

Of course there have also been headdresses, parades, indecently joyous consumption of crawfish, whiskey, coconut decorating, drinks at Tujague's, costume plotting, and the beginnings of carnival revelry.