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Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to Fearless Fabulous You. I am your host,
Speaker 3: Melanie Young and Happy twenty twenty five at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the year. The show is airing January eighth, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, and I don't know about you, but we're
Speaker 3: all fresh and ready to have a new year that
Speaker 3: we don't know what's going to happen. But do we
Speaker 3: ever know what's going to happen? No. All we can
Speaker 3: do is try to control what's in front of us
Speaker 3: and live life with more intention. If you're joining me
Speaker 3: for the first time, welcome. If you're a regular follower
Speaker 3: and fan, thanks, I really appreciate it. I try to
Speaker 3: talk about life as we know it and face challenges
Speaker 3: head on, handle whatever comes along like this year, and
Speaker 3: live life on your terms. I'm going to tell you
Speaker 3: two stories. First of all, invite you to follow my
Speaker 3: new substack dot com near Melanie Young Melanie Fabulous. I
Speaker 3: am going to really this year try to achieve at
Speaker 3: least one of my resolutions. I've already done two. The
Speaker 3: first resolution is to do something new every month, something
Speaker 3: new and different. I already did that. I marched in
Speaker 3: a Martigaros parade on January sixth. The Joan of Arc
Speaker 3: Crew to Joan of Arc Parade kicked off the official
Speaker 3: festival see the New Orleans, and my husband David and
Speaker 3: I were volunteer foot soldiers to protect the Maiden Joe
Speaker 3: Novarc on her horse as we walk through the French
Speaker 3: quarter for a mile and a half. So not only
Speaker 3: did I protect the Maid of Orleans who helped protect
Speaker 3: New Orleans in the city of Orleons, but I also
Speaker 3: got a good walk in probably over ten thousand steps.
Speaker 3: Another resolution off there, do something new and different, walk
Speaker 3: ten thousand steps every day or try to. Yeah. The
Speaker 3: next one is to start a Subsack newsletter, which I
Speaker 3: have done, Melanie fabulous. I invite you to sign up
Speaker 3: for free before I start charging, and encourage you to
Speaker 3: comment and share, and then I'm going to write my book.
Speaker 3: I have a couple of titles and story lingules on
Speaker 3: along the way. I may just try to write all
Speaker 3: of them simultaneously in different segments. I don't know, but
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do it because I have the time. But
Speaker 3: before launching for into this about traditions and resolutions, I
Speaker 3: want to share a story with you because I had
Speaker 3: in New Year's very different. I try to do New
Speaker 3: Year's Day and New Year's Eve different every year because
Speaker 3: New Year's Day is my birthday, and after many years
Speaker 3: of bad dates, I decided to take matters into my
Speaker 3: own hands. The story goes like this. I don't believe
Speaker 3: in cheating unless it's death. You see. I was born
Speaker 3: on New Year's Day, fifteen minutes after the first baby
Speaker 3: of the year. My parents had to leave their fancy
Speaker 3: New Year's Eve party early due to my mother's water breaking,
Speaker 3: but I decided to make a late entrance at ten
Speaker 3: forty five am later that morning. Maybe that's why I'm
Speaker 3: always fifteen minutes late. My father said I was quote
Speaker 3: pearly engineered and badly accounted for that met no first
Speaker 3: Baby of the Year prizes and publicity and no text deductions.
Speaker 3: And he was a CPA, so life was all about
Speaker 3: tax deductions. So, after years of spending New Year's Eve
Speaker 3: with bad dates, attending anonymous parties with insipid sparkling wines,
Speaker 3: and hanging out with hungover friends the next day who
Speaker 3: really didn't care that it was my birthday, I decided
Speaker 3: at the age of thirty, so I had a lot
Speaker 3: of bad birthdays before that. I decided to take matters
Speaker 3: into my own hands and reclaim my special day on
Speaker 3: my terms, my way. Remember this show is all about
Speaker 3: living life on your terms. I vowed to spend New
Speaker 3: Year's with more adventure, somewhere new each year, a new experience,
Speaker 3: a new location, new people, just something new to set
Speaker 3: the tone and the year old year, set the tone
Speaker 3: for the new year and have a positive outlook. So
Speaker 3: since the age of thirty, over three decades now, I
Speaker 3: have celebrated New Year's even a different place in the world. Really,
Speaker 3: each experience is carefully documented in handwritten diary with my
Speaker 3: annual list of resolutions and a recap of the year.
Speaker 3: It's literally the story of my life in multiple diaries.
Speaker 3: You know, I've only repeated three locations for New Years,
Speaker 3: all for special reasons. The first was when I was
Speaker 3: diagnosed with breast cancer and I had to cancel a
Speaker 3: trip to Asia for my New Year's birthday because I
Speaker 3: had started chemotherapy. And even though I argued with my
Speaker 3: oncologist and said I'm available after January fifteenth, mind you,
Speaker 3: it was November when we had this conversation, she looked
Speaker 3: me straight in the eye and she said, Melanie, that's
Speaker 3: not how cancer treatment works. You are in my hands
Speaker 3: now and not on your terms, and you will start
Speaker 3: chemotherapy in December, and you will not go to Asia
Speaker 3: for your New Year's birthday. Tail between my legs, I
Speaker 3: canceled the trip and ended up at a friend's house
Speaker 3: in the Hampton's, where I had already spent in New
Speaker 3: Year's But she said, here are the keys to my house,
Speaker 3: go out there, because I was feeling rather low. Can
Speaker 3: you can imagine? So I spent a New Year's twice
Speaker 3: in the Hamptons. I gave my New Year's Birthday to
Speaker 3: my husband David, spending a repeat trip in Switzerland for
Speaker 3: his fiftieth birthday. That was my gift to him, giving
Speaker 3: him my special birthday. So we spent New Year's in Davos,
Speaker 3: Switzerland with friends, which I had already done and it
Speaker 3: was fine. We had a good time. We were in Zurich.
Speaker 3: That was a little different and I was happy to
Speaker 3: do it. This past New Year's I actually spent spent
Speaker 3: it celebrate in New Orleans. Now I had done this
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago. I think two thousand, I
Speaker 3: don't know, sixteen seventeen eighteen, of lost track, it's all
Speaker 3: in my diaries. But we did it differently. We went
Speaker 3: to a really nice dinner party with friends. No fireworks,
Speaker 3: see we just could hear them off the back patio
Speaker 3: of their uptown home in the Garden District. But it was,
Speaker 3: you know, a quiet dinner party. And then my birthday
Speaker 3: was at Commander's Palace. I took a walking out of
Speaker 3: the park. Was New New Orleans the way I love it.
Speaker 3: But we decided this year to spend New Year's again
Speaker 3: in New Orleans. But do it like you were like
Speaker 3: a tourist, like a real like I've never experienced New Orleans.
Speaker 3: New Orleans is our new home. We're trying really hard
Speaker 3: to embrace every season and feel planted here after living
Speaker 3: two years on the room, as you know if you
Speaker 3: follow us. And so we were in Jacksonville, Florida, visiting
Speaker 3: David's mother and older brother. We drove over to the Panhandle,
Speaker 3: across the Panhandle and landed back in New Orleans, and
Speaker 3: I got to tell you, it actually felt right. I
Speaker 3: wanted to come back home. It's been a long time
Speaker 3: since I called anything home. So we did that, and
Speaker 3: we decided to immerse ourselves in the zany decadence celebratory
Speaker 3: spirit of the French Quarter. At the stroke of midnight,
Speaker 3: I dressed in sequence head to toe. My husband David
Speaker 3: were his Texedo. We headed out with the good friends
Speaker 3: Who's on or a celebratory multi course dinner at Memmou,
Speaker 3: which is one of my favorite New Orleans restaurants. It's
Speaker 3: located at the edge of the French Quarter off Ramparts
Speaker 3: Street and serves really fabulous food with a French accent
Speaker 3: and has a terrific wineless and boy do we im vibe.
Speaker 3: We felt great. We brought a special bottle of lonju
Speaker 3: Champagne Grand One, the owner porter some burgundy we loved
Speaker 3: that restaurant. Sometime after eleven, probably around eleven twenty a pm,
Speaker 3: and we walked over to Jackson Square, the historical heart
Speaker 3: of the French Quarter, for the New Year's Eve countdown
Speaker 3: and fireworks extravaganza over the Mississippi River. It's really quite
Speaker 3: beautiful and they lower a Florida Lee much like you
Speaker 3: lower the ball in Times Square, and it was just wonderful.
Speaker 3: The crowd was festive, not unruly, I mean it can
Speaker 3: be in the French Quarter. The air was filled with
Speaker 3: energy and elation. We did the countdown police officers on
Speaker 3: foot and on horseback line in the streets. I felt
Speaker 3: so safe, and I walked and thanked many of them
Speaker 3: and wished them Happy New Year for their service. After
Speaker 3: the fireworks, we navigated the crowds on Bourbon Street and
Speaker 3: walked over to a place called the Bayou Club, where
Speaker 3: our friends Husan already had left, and we listened to
Speaker 3: a really terrific small Cajun ban and danced. In fact,
Speaker 3: at some point of the night, Shusan put a Cajun
Speaker 3: washboard on me and I was strumming a washboard. Wow,
Speaker 3: something else I've never done. Check it off the never
Speaker 3: done less play a washboard with a Cajun band. My
Speaker 3: husband David, as he always does, stood guard to watch
Speaker 3: my belongings so nothing disappeared. He is my protector whenever
Speaker 3: I decided to let my hair down, and I do
Speaker 3: like to let my hair down on New Year's Eve.
Speaker 3: Oh the things you do, you know. So around one
Speaker 3: forty five pm, I mean am so one forty five
Speaker 3: in the morning, we walked over to Bourbon and Canal.
Speaker 3: We debated whether to have a final nightcap at the
Speaker 3: hotel monoleone carousel bar, wonderful bar in a historic hotel,
Speaker 3: and it literally is it's a boar that goes around
Speaker 3: and around very slowly, but it goes around and around.
Speaker 3: We decided not to. Susan walked home. David and I
Speaker 3: decided to call an uber or check a cab, but boy,
Speaker 3: it was so expensive. What is it with search rates?
Speaker 3: It was like ninety dollars to go home and it's
Speaker 3: a thirty dollars cab, right, So being frugal, another resolution
Speaker 3: to be fabulous and frugal. I said, yeah, let's just
Speaker 3: wait it out. So it wasn't too cold of a night.
Speaker 3: But we walked over to the lobby of the Ritz
Speaker 3: Carlton Hotel on Canal Street, not far from Bourbon Street,
Speaker 3: and waited in their lower lobby until the taxi rates
Speaker 3: went down, and we just sat and did social media.
Speaker 3: There were other people doing the same thing. We scrolled
Speaker 3: our phones. We wish people Happy New Year. People were
Speaker 3: starting to wish me Happy Birthday. Around two twenty in
Speaker 3: the morning, we finally got an uber. Back to our hotel,
Speaker 3: I mean our home. Excuse me, back to our home,
Speaker 3: which is in Lakeview. It's a very quiet neighborhood off
Speaker 3: City Park, not too far from Lake Ponte Train. Many
Speaker 3: locals called sweet and suburban. You know what, that's okay?
Speaker 3: I kind of like sweet and suburban these days. We
Speaker 3: went to bed, went to sleep. Unbeknownst to us, at
Speaker 3: three point fifteen in the morning, a crazed man wearing
Speaker 3: military gear turned his white truck off Canal Street and
Speaker 3: inner Bourbon Street, accelerating full force with the intent to
Speaker 3: kill as many people as possible. Now we had just
Speaker 3: left this corner of Bourbon and Canal, mind you, forty
Speaker 3: five minutes earlier. In the end, thirty five people were
Speaker 3: injured and fourteen innocent people were dead, plus the perpetrator.
Speaker 3: Most were young revelers with their lives still ahead of them.
Speaker 3: The driver's name was shamsu Din Jabbar. He was an
Speaker 3: American born resident of Houston, Texas who had been radicalized
Speaker 3: and had posted some fairly radical videos. We don't know why.
Speaker 3: We don't know anything, and he's dead, so you know,
Speaker 3: the FBI is then the FBI's hands. But we don't
Speaker 3: know why he decided to come to New Orleans to
Speaker 3: mow down revelers on Bourbon Street on New Year's Eve.
Speaker 3: But obviously he wanted to make a big statement. It's
Speaker 3: all senseless and it's all tragic, and I had no
Speaker 3: idea that this had happened. Just forty five minutes after
Speaker 3: leaving the corner of Bourbon Canal, David and I were
Speaker 3: safely asleep in our bed and we were woken like
Speaker 3: really early, like crazy early seven thirty in the morning.
Speaker 3: Our phones started beeping and jumping and beeping and jumping,
Speaker 3: and we're like, who is calling us so early? And
Speaker 3: I kind of thought, in my you know, mumbly sleep, Wow,
Speaker 3: people really love me. They're calling to wish me happy birthday.
Speaker 3: I ignored everything and kind of reached over and put
Speaker 3: everything on silent. But then David's phone started going and
Speaker 3: I'm like, why are people calling David? It's not his birthday.
Speaker 3: And then we checked our texts and there were many
Speaker 3: saying are you okay? Because the last photo we posted
Speaker 3: from Bourbon Street was that just after two five in
Speaker 3: the morning, and everybody was like they could have been there. Well,
Speaker 3: fortunately we were safe in bed and we missed the situation,
Speaker 3: the terrible incident, by forty five minutes, maybe an hour.
Speaker 3: Reflecting on that tim being, I realized it was a
Speaker 3: pretty close call. We were deeply sickened by the act
Speaker 3: and sat by the killings, and thankfully it wasn't my time,
Speaker 3: and I hopefully have more trips around the sun to
Speaker 3: celebrate in different places of the world. But I thought
Speaker 3: long and hard about those fifty people young and old,
Speaker 3: celebrating the new year on Bourbon Street. I could have
Speaker 3: been one of them. It wasn't the first time I
Speaker 3: felt like I had cheated death. I could have been
Speaker 3: attending a meeting at the World Trade Center on September eleventh,
Speaker 3: two thousand and one. My client was the restaurant wind
Speaker 3: Is on the World. We were planning a huge anniversary
Speaker 3: and another client finds from Spain was planning an event
Speaker 3: at winds On the World to occur on October eighth,
Speaker 3: two thousand and one. Sadly, Windows On the World was
Speaker 3: destroyed and the terrorist attacks and many wonderful people died,
Speaker 3: and I went into action to do whatever I could
Speaker 3: to help with rest, you know, help support in any
Speaker 3: way I could. That was the first time I felt
Speaker 3: like I cheated death. I also felt like I cheated
Speaker 3: it during chemo therapy for breast cancer. I had a
Speaker 3: severe allergic reaction to a chemotherapy drug called pack of taxil.
Speaker 3: Literally I passed out. I went unconscious, although in the
Speaker 3: dark depths of my mind I kept saying inside, don't
Speaker 3: go to sleep, don't go to sleep, it's not your time.
Speaker 3: I was revived. I think people. I think they shot
Speaker 3: me up with a lot of betterer doll I really
Speaker 3: don't know. I was kind of When I finally came
Speaker 3: to I was like, WHOA, what happened. But the feeling
Speaker 3: that you've cheated death makes you value life even more.
Speaker 3: And that's the lesson. I have had too many friends,
Speaker 3: way too many friends in the past few months in
Speaker 3: their fifties and sixties drop dead and just suddenly and
Speaker 3: I'm like, wow, well they're like my age and younger. Wow,
Speaker 3: that could be me. You know. That's why I'm going
Speaker 3: to live twenty twenty five doing new things and living
Speaker 3: with more intention and not sweating the small stuff because
Speaker 3: the silly things you complain about and worry over no
Speaker 3: longer really seem important. You sip and save your foods
Speaker 3: and beverages without worrying about your long term health or weight.
Speaker 3: You take risks and try new things because if not now,
Speaker 3: when you don't hold back on your life or your emotions,
Speaker 3: you speak your mind because do you really care what
Speaker 3: other think about you? Other people think about you, not really,
Speaker 3: And at my age sixty six, I got to listen
Speaker 3: to me and what I think is right for me. Oh,
Speaker 3: I'll listen to my medical doctors because I do believe
Speaker 3: in doing that. But hopefully knock wood, they haven't told
Speaker 3: me anything that I already didn't know. So I woke
Speaker 3: up on January first, twenty twenty five, to a morning
Speaker 3: filled with brilliant sunshine and blue skies, and a day
Speaker 3: filled with friends and good food. I was grateful to
Speaker 3: be alive and for the ultimate birthday gift an abundant
Speaker 3: life to enjoy in good health and lucky timing. So
Speaker 3: take that to heart as you plan twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: You don't know what lies ahead, and you don't know
Speaker 3: how long your life will be. But really it's not
Speaker 3: about the length of your life, but the quality of
Speaker 3: your life and how you live it every day. I
Speaker 3: know people who live there. My mother in law's ninety two,
Speaker 3: and she's very happy in her long life and doing
Speaker 3: fine for ninety two. My mother was eighty eight when
Speaker 3: she died. She was a bit bitter and depressed. I
Speaker 3: don't want to be that person. I have had friends
Speaker 3: who are living wonderful lives. They were cut down too soon.
Speaker 3: I don't know when my day will come, when my
Speaker 3: life will end, and I'm not going to think about
Speaker 3: it too much because I'm going to think about what
Speaker 3: I'm going to do after I finished recording show That's fun, right,
Speaker 3: because it's about having fun. Now, speaking of that, I'm
Speaker 3: going to switch gears a little bit and share with
Speaker 3: you a tradition that I love, just to kind of
Speaker 3: give you an essence of how I live my life
Speaker 3: and why I do funky, fun things I do believe
Speaker 3: in traditions. Like I said, I keep it New Year's Diary.
Speaker 3: I love my New Year's Diary. I'm very careful about
Speaker 3: protecting it. When we packed up our house, the New
Speaker 3: Year's Diaries were like Melanie's life in a box, don't
Speaker 3: touch super super special. So I'm going to tell you
Speaker 3: about another fun tradition I have that is also why
Speaker 3: I am here in New Orleans. And it really is
Speaker 3: a story about a food awakening and what really became
Speaker 3: the essence of me. I call this reconsider the Oyster
Speaker 3: because when I was eleven years old, my parents took
Speaker 3: me to New Orleans for a grand tour diny experience.
Speaker 3: It was my father's fortieth birthday celebration and my initiation
Speaker 3: into Creole cooking and the beauty of the Crescent City
Speaker 3: on the Mississippi River. And I just want to stop
Speaker 3: here and say, if you've never visited New Orleans, please come.
Speaker 3: Screw terrorist tacks, screw this and that, screw hurricanes, come
Speaker 3: to New Orleans, the beautiful city. Don't let bad things
Speaker 3: prevent you from doing good things and experiencing the world. Okay, lesson.
Speaker 3: So during this trip, we stayed at the Royal Sinesta
Speaker 3: and Bourbon Street. We had dinner at all the beautiful
Speaker 3: famous restaurants, Dinner at Galatoise one of my favorites, breakfast
Speaker 3: at Brannan's, Brunch at Commander's Palace by the way where
Speaker 3: David and I were married in the garden. We had
Speaker 3: Begnet's and Cafe Ole at Cafe Dumont, many other treats
Speaker 3: and meals. Throughout the entire time we were in New Orleans,
Speaker 3: I just loved every minute. My eyes were wide open
Speaker 3: like saucerers when I saw all the bars with the
Speaker 3: dancing girls, all the beautiful oak trees, the beautiful architecture.
Speaker 3: This trip honestly changed my life, and it changed my
Speaker 3: relationship with food and where I lived. Actually, after that
Speaker 3: trip to New Orleans, I went back to my hometown Chattanooga, Tennessee,
Speaker 3: and it felt rather mainstream and dull, kind of like
Speaker 3: a relationship you grow out of and long to leave. Right.
Speaker 3: I hope you don't have that, but we all have
Speaker 3: at some point, you say. Back in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 3: when I was a young girl, fine dining, as I recalling,
Speaker 3: Chattanooga presented like two options which my parents patronized regularly.
Speaker 3: One was a family one restaurant called Fens, known for crispy,
Speaker 3: shaking baked style chickens served with a baked potato, a
Speaker 3: green vegetable, and a side salad with your choice of dressing.
Speaker 3: I liked the blue cheese, but my mom, who was
Speaker 3: always worried about weight hers and mine, wanted me to
Speaker 3: have vinagrette or dressing on the side. Now to this day,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to find the Fens fried chicken recipe. It's
Speaker 3: not really fried, it's more baked fried chicken, because I
Speaker 3: actually don't like fried food. I have fear of frying,
Speaker 3: probably because my mother and grandmother are always worried about
Speaker 3: their weight and therefore worried about my weight, which you're
Speaker 3: going to find. As I continued this little theme here,
Speaker 3: the other restaurant that we went to on Sunday nights
Speaker 3: the whole family was called Town and Country. It was
Speaker 3: a steak place steak of potato, and we had our
Speaker 3: own waitress named Chris. She had a whip of red
Speaker 3: hair piled high on her head and we were always like, hey, Chris,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure my grandfather tipped her generously. She really
Speaker 3: liked us at this restaurant. My mother always wanted me
Speaker 3: to order the filet mignon because the smaller portion in
Speaker 3: the less fetticat was better suited for young ladies to
Speaker 3: maintain our girlish figure. Now, mind you, I'm like not
Speaker 3: even a teenager yet, so I don't have a figure
Speaker 3: at all. But I was already being taught to eat
Speaker 3: like a lady and not eat fattening food because my
Speaker 3: mother hated bad people. I'm sorry to say that, but
Speaker 3: older in life, she really resented her weight problems and
Speaker 3: really resented people who couldn't manage their weight. It's kind
Speaker 3: of same anyway. I kind of liked the Hamburger steak personally,
Speaker 3: or the Salisbury steak, but I was told to order
Speaker 3: the flat mignon, and so I did. Elsewhere in Chattanooga,
Speaker 3: there were a lot of casual restaurants that served fried fish,
Speaker 3: usually catfish, shrimp, or fish sticks. Fish was rarely fresh caught,
Speaker 3: always overcooked. I hated the smell of the fried fish
Speaker 3: and the taste as well. And lo and behold, all
Speaker 3: that emphasis on eating skinny, eating to stay skinny really
Speaker 3: kind of enforced me into turning into someone with an
Speaker 3: eating disorder. For a while. As I started to develop
Speaker 3: and my body started to plump down and fill out,
Speaker 3: I stopped eating. Fortunately I outgrew that, fortunately, but it
Speaker 3: did happen. So that trip to New Orleans when I
Speaker 3: was around eleven, opened my palate immensely. It introduced me
Speaker 3: to fresh gulf fish, simmering and savory sauces with flavors
Speaker 3: i'd never taste. We always ordered it with fresh crab
Speaker 3: meat on top, and I still do that when I
Speaker 3: go out. You always can order, you know, your golf
Speaker 3: fish with fresh crab meat on top, and boy do
Speaker 3: I ever because fresh crab meat is kind of expensive
Speaker 3: at the supermarket. I learned to crab crabs, slip wile
Speaker 3: oysters and suck on crawfish. And when you eat a
Speaker 3: oil crawfish, it's crawfish season just started. They say, suck
Speaker 3: the hells and squeeze the tips. I know that sounds
Speaker 3: a little carnal, but that's what you do, and it's
Speaker 3: a lot of fun and they really are good spicy.
Speaker 3: I tasted oysters rockefella, a dish where oysters are coached
Speaker 3: on top with wonderful cream spinach. It's like one hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty five year old dish that was created at
Speaker 3: Antoine's restaurant, and boy is it good. Palm sou flee,
Speaker 3: These incredible puffed up potatoes, thin as like like they're
Speaker 3: like potato balloons, crunchy potato balloons. Gallatoise get the mcgallatowise
Speaker 3: is where they're the best Eggs sardau or breakfast at
Speaker 3: Brennan's and tenardslice steak with Marshan devine sauce at Commander's Palace.
Speaker 3: Oh it douns so good and I don't even eat
Speaker 3: meat anymore. Desserts and chattango were usually jello mulled. My
Speaker 3: mother and grandmother loved jello and felt that it was
Speaker 3: the right dessert for young ladies who wanted to maintain
Speaker 3: their girlish figures. Are you getting it? The men got
Speaker 3: cake and pie a la mode at one side of
Speaker 3: the table, and the women got the fruit cocktail or
Speaker 3: the jello or the jello with the fruit cocktail in it.
Speaker 3: I swear to God that's the truth. We had the
Speaker 3: men's desserts and the women's desserts. But in New Orleans
Speaker 3: I indulged in bread pudding with bourbon sauce, bananas, Foster
Speaker 3: Chocolate debersh Cake. It's like an amazing cake of umpteen
Speaker 3: layers of chocolate cake oozing with chocolate clam Oh so good.
Speaker 3: And then there's the mile high pie at the Pantcha
Speaker 3: Train Hotel. It's still there and I'm dying to take
Speaker 3: my husband David. It is so good. And even now
Speaker 3: they have a mile high pie. King Cake Kincake season
Speaker 3: storted January sixth, and the entire city is going nuts
Speaker 3: for kincake known as Gela Doi. It is. You go
Speaker 3: in a grocery store and there's just box boxes of
Speaker 3: kingcake and I'm having my first one tonight for dinner.
Speaker 3: But you know what, the one thing I ate that
Speaker 3: seduced me most of all oysters. That's right, oysters on
Speaker 3: the half shell. See, my father, who never really ate seafood,
Speaker 3: decided he liked oysters and he wanted to go to
Speaker 3: New Orleans and eat his age and oysters for his
Speaker 3: fortieth birthday. I don't know why, but he did. So
Speaker 3: we went to one of those amazing fish shack restaurants
Speaker 3: that were standing back then overlooking Lake Ponta Trains. Sadly,
Speaker 3: most of them were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. But they
Speaker 3: were wonderful back then. And I watched him gulp each
Speaker 3: bivalve with unbridled pleasure, the juice running down his chin.
Speaker 3: And I tried a dozen myself, and it was messy
Speaker 3: and yummy and fun, and I love the cyllinic taste.
Speaker 3: My mother didn't have the oyster she cheered us on,
Speaker 3: but she tinted her hand and food off to everyone
Speaker 3: else because again she had to keep her wait in check.
Speaker 3: But you know what, when the desserts came around, she
Speaker 3: happily ate dessert. So oysters. You know, I have some
Speaker 3: friends who won't touch them. You know, everyoney's worried about coronavirus,
Speaker 3: not coronavirus, neurovirus, excuse me, neurovirus. There's people are afraid
Speaker 3: that oysters are not good for you. They may come
Speaker 3: from dirty waters. They're squeamish at the thought of an
Speaker 3: oyster slithering down their throat. But not me. I find
Speaker 3: the experience eating oysters sensuous. I like to say I
Speaker 3: prefer my oysters nude, you know, fried, steam, stewed, and nude.
Speaker 3: I choose nude that means adorn with nothing other than
Speaker 3: a squirt of lovin, or maybe a small dip of
Speaker 3: mignonette sauce. You know, you sometimes eating them the news
Speaker 3: fun too. I like oysters that way because I want
Speaker 3: to taste the salinity and the minerality, that kind of
Speaker 3: stony shellish taste, the essence of each oyster. The writer
Speaker 3: Ernest Hemingway, who I love, referred to the metallic taste
Speaker 3: of oysters as coppery in his book A Movable Feast,
Speaker 3: one of my favorite books of all time, A Movable Feast,
Speaker 3: Please read it. But I always like to compare that
Speaker 3: cool mouthfeel to when I was a baby and probably
Speaker 3: sucking on my Tiffany sterling baby rattle when I was teething. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I found that baby rattle packing up my box. In
Speaker 3: her seminal book, the author M. F. K. Fisher Mary
Speaker 3: Francis Kennedy Fisher as her full name was, wrote in
Speaker 3: her book Consider the Oyster, which documents what she calls
Speaker 3: the lowly, humble life of the oyster. She says her
Speaker 3: initiation into eating oysters was quote a strange, cold succulence.
Speaker 3: I totally get that. In fact, I love this book,
Speaker 3: and I totally recommend any book written by Mary Francis
Speaker 3: Kennedy Fisher aka m FK. Fisher. They are classics. They
Speaker 3: will make you change your whole outlook on food and
Speaker 3: ex sensuous appeal. Let me tell you it was MFK.
Speaker 3: Fisher that made me go eat sardines in the South
Speaker 3: of France by myself. That's right. After reading her she
Speaker 3: wrote two Talents of Provence. Off I went, so, I'm
Speaker 3: with MFK. Fisher eating when oysters can deliver a carnal pleasure,
Speaker 3: especially when Champagne and Cavey are involved on the side.
Speaker 3: So I had a tradition. I don't know him anymore
Speaker 3: because I mean I still have the oyster reading tradition.
Speaker 3: But when I was dating man, meeting men, and I
Speaker 3: was considering them to enter my life, I had something
Speaker 3: called the four questions. Now, my father also had four questions,
Speaker 3: but his four questions and my four questions were very different.
Speaker 3: My four questions were one, how do you feel about
Speaker 3: eating raw oysters? Obviously, if he said they are gross,
Speaker 3: not my thing, he was not going to be in
Speaker 3: my life. You had to like raw oysters because that
Speaker 3: meant you were an adventurous eater. You had a resentsuous eater.
Speaker 3: You didn't get squeam as you tried things. Okay, if
Speaker 3: you must know the other three questions, and I bet
Speaker 3: you're wondering here they are. Well, I would say where
Speaker 3: do you like to travel? And do you have a
Speaker 3: passport bonus if you remember a frequent flyer clubs. The
Speaker 3: next was do you like small white dogs? Because I
Speaker 3: had a little white Maltese My mother had white Maltese.
Speaker 3: You had to like small white dogs my orb and last,
Speaker 3: and no surprising, what's your favorite color? And if you
Speaker 3: said purple, you were the one. Fortunately, my husband David
Speaker 3: answered all the four questions correctly. He didn't quite answer.
Speaker 3: He kind of answered my dad's four questions as well,
Speaker 3: which were, I'd go, Dad, I have a friend coming
Speaker 3: to dinner. That's kind of how I introduced David. I
Speaker 3: have a friend coming to dinner. My parents were in
Speaker 3: New York for the James Beared Words, and I never
Speaker 3: brought friends to dinner. But I said I have a friend.
Speaker 3: Dad would go a special friend. I said, yeah, and
Speaker 3: Dad would go man or woman. I was like, man
Speaker 3: Jewish or non Jewish. My dad was Jewish and David
Speaker 3: was I said, not Jewish. Sorry, he's from the South.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about race, black or white or brown or Asian.
Speaker 3: I said, he's Caucasian. Yeah, you're straight, He's straight, And
Speaker 3: Dad's like okay, And then forget to tell my mother. Now, mother,
Speaker 3: there's four questions were completely different. Mothers Who's and she
Speaker 3: would ask him whenever I bring a guy home. Where
Speaker 3: where did you get your degree? What college should you attend?
Speaker 3: And what was your degree in? And do you have
Speaker 3: an advanced degree? What is your line of work and
Speaker 3: how long have you been in it? And what are your
Speaker 3: plans with your career? What arts do you support? Talk
Speaker 3: to me about the theater, music and dance. And lastly,
Speaker 3: do you like to travel because we all like to travel?
Speaker 3: And where do you go to spend your vacations? Very different,
Speaker 3: very different, four questions. Anyway, David passed My husband, David
Speaker 3: passed the four questions on my side. My dad's said
Speaker 3: did okay with mom? Not great? Anyway, After that trip
Speaker 3: to New Orleans, my dad never ate his agent oysters
Speaker 3: again and said he turned to hot Futch Sundays and
Speaker 3: banana splits until the day he died. He would eat
Speaker 3: them on his birthday. He would eat them in hospice.
Speaker 3: In fact, at the end of his life, that's all
Speaker 3: he wanted to eat was hot veudch side days, and
Speaker 3: he did until he died at the age of seventy
Speaker 3: nine on November two, two thousand and nine. But I
Speaker 3: continue the tradition eating my age and oysters and my
Speaker 3: January first birthday because I remember that great experience with
Speaker 3: my dad, and David likes to eat raw oysters too.
Speaker 3: We share that along with our passion for wine, we
Speaker 3: also enjoy our oysters raws, but also roasted, chargrilled and
Speaker 3: plumply floating in soups. Don't call it oyster su MFK fisher.
Speaker 3: My muse said, this is not that, and that is
Speaker 3: certainly not this. And at the same time, an oyster
Speaker 3: stew was not stewed, and although they are made of
Speaker 3: the same things and even cooked almost the same way,
Speaker 3: and oyster soup should never be called stew, not nor
Speaker 3: stew soup. So I this year started my January first
Speaker 3: birthday with the full intent of going the full three
Speaker 3: but we went to one of my favorite oyster happy hours,
Speaker 3: Superior Seafood. Oyster happy hours are awesome. It's like half
Speaker 3: priced oysters in this case, it was a dozen for
Speaker 3: fifteen dollars. They are so expensive. In other places. The
Speaker 3: oysters are so big there they're golf oysters. They were
Speaker 3: like super sized oysters. I could barely get through it.
Speaker 3: I got through a dozen, and then I said, you
Speaker 3: know what, I don't think I could do another dozen.
Speaker 3: I actually did a half a dozen. So I realized,
Speaker 3: as I grow older, eating madge and oysters is a
Speaker 3: little harder. Because it's now five and a half dozen.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of oysters and when sitting, so I'm
Speaker 3: doing an oyster interval eating. I'm eating my oysters and
Speaker 3: intervals a dozen here and a dozen there. I'll take
Speaker 3: the month of January. Fortunately, oysters are great in the
Speaker 3: winter months. I went to Custimentos, another place I love,
Speaker 3: and had the oyster soup. I had six up ones there.
Speaker 3: I'll keep eating my raw oysters, and I will do
Speaker 3: it with utter pleasure and abandonment because it's my special tradition.
Speaker 3: I never fear getting sick from an oyster, and notqwould
Speaker 3: never have thus far. I realize that the Center for
Speaker 3: Disease Control and Prevention cautions Americans over sixty five. My
Speaker 3: peers to refrain from eating raw oysters because some may
Speaker 3: contain a bacterium called Vibrio vulnifugus. They can cause severe
Speaker 3: illness even death for anyone with certain underlying medical conditions. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's the Debbie do Dinner message about raw oysters. But
Speaker 3: then you can also have Debbie Donner messages about eating
Speaker 3: other raw things like sushi, sashimi, crudo, and a lot
Speaker 3: of raw vegetables and other things that may be planted
Speaker 3: with fecal matter, because what is going on with our
Speaker 3: food system anyway? But I can't worry about that. I
Speaker 3: can't worry about that. I can't worry about really policing
Speaker 3: when I eat and drink too much, because you know what,
Speaker 3: I don't want my last meal to be salad, That's right.
Speaker 3: I don't want my last meal to just be a
Speaker 3: big fat salad. I want to go out with a bang,
Speaker 3: eating wonderful things like oysters and kevy or and mashed potatoes,
Speaker 3: and maybe mashed potatoes and French fries. I just want
Speaker 3: to like enjoy my food and not be fearful of it.
Speaker 3: And that's the way I feel about life. I don't
Speaker 3: want to be fearful about anything. Yeah, there could be
Speaker 3: another terrorist attack. Yeah I could drop dead in the street.
Speaker 3: Yeah my cancer can come back. Yeah the world could
Speaker 3: come to an end. But you know what, I'm not
Speaker 3: going to worry about it. I'm just gonna worry about
Speaker 3: what am I doing today and how am I enjoying
Speaker 3: my day and give myself maybe three things I used
Speaker 3: to be five to accomplish. So oysters are kind of
Speaker 3: like a symbolism, but learning to eat without fear and
Speaker 3: with raw pleasure, to be adventures and experimental and just
Speaker 3: to say I want to have fun. And while I
Speaker 3: may reconsider the number of oysters I consume for my
Speaker 3: next several birthdays as we get into six dozen, I
Speaker 3: won't give up my tradition. I'll just do it with
Speaker 3: more a more time, and more pleasure and allow myself
Speaker 3: the time and the pleasure to savor the moment without
Speaker 3: feeling pushed or pressure to do it all at once.
Speaker 3: And we should do that with life. We should not
Speaker 3: try to get it all done. You may have a
Speaker 3: lot of resolutions you want to knock off your list,
Speaker 3: your to do list may be too big. Hey, sit out,
Speaker 3: enjoy the pace. Life is not a race. It's about
Speaker 3: your pace. I got out of the rat race when
Speaker 3: I left New York. I was in the rat race
Speaker 3: for a long time. Eventually I got sick because I
Speaker 3: forgot to take care of myself. So I am all
Speaker 3: about taking care of myself, but not to the point
Speaker 3: where I'm fearful about what I eat and do this
Speaker 3: and that and that. You know, not me. I maybe
Speaker 3: will eat less. I'll eat until I'm hungry and not more.
Speaker 3: I will drink in moderation because these days I'm feeling
Speaker 3: that alcohol and me love my wine and love one cocktail,
Speaker 3: but I can't do a lot. Now. I know my
Speaker 3: metabolism is different. I know my husband's metabolism is different.
Speaker 3: So we're learning to repace, reconsider, rewire, and rethink, but
Speaker 3: not give up. Never give up, just reconsider, repace, and rethink.
Speaker 3: So as you start twenty twenty five, give that some
Speaker 3: food for thought, and don't overthink things. Just let things
Speaker 3: come as they will. Embrace serendipity. Embrace serendipity, Embrace the
Speaker 3: sensuous side of life, and savor every moment. I'm Melanie Young.
Speaker 3: This is another edition of Fearless Fabulous Shoe. I invite
Speaker 3: you to follow me on Melanie Fabulous on Instagram, follow
Speaker 3: my substack Melanie Fabulous or Melanie Young and sign up.
Speaker 3: Please recommend others join me for another episode of Fearless
Speaker 3: Fabulous Shoe and always remember you have the choice to
Speaker 3: live life on your terms, not other people's. Choose fearless
Speaker 3: and fabulous. Thank you,