Hurricane Hunger

          If there is one thing Louisianians know how to do, it's cook. We cook to celebrate life. We cook to celebrate death. We cook to celebrate football. We sent people to New York after 9/11 to-- you guessed it-- cook. Most relevantly, we cook to celebrate hurricanes.
          My dad and I continued this tradition today, as we prepared dinner. With the wind whipping the citrus and banana trees beyond an unpleasantly thin window pane, I peeled, sliced, separated, and cried over an onion. The onion was thrown into a pan with a liberally salted and peppered browned pork roast. Our endeavor did not become much more complicated than that, with us adding only two bottles of beer and some water for our meal to braise in. Already, six hours before we planned to eat it, our dinner smelled wonderful. Luckily for us, we have an automatic generator, so our electric oven would keep on humming, even if we happened to hear the boom of a nearby transformer exploding.
           To the people of South Louisiana, especially those who live a few steps inland and don't take the brunt of the storms (bow, bow, thank you very much), hurricanes are not generally a cause for extreme panic or alarm. Therefore, occasionally, boredom sets in after a couple of hours sitting in the house, helpless to affect of the forces of nature. That was where I was when I stepped into the brightly lit, aroma rich environment of our kitchen. Pork sizzled in the pan, stray pepper flakes floated through the air, and yes of course, a knife and an onion were placed in my hands. In short, the small effort put into an otherwise unfilled hour of dear ole Hurricane Isaac, resulted in a meal that was to die for (if I do say so myself.)