With such dishes as 'Rescue Me From the Roof Ribs' and 'Entergy Black Out Cake,' a group of friends and relatives cooks up an informal post-storm support group
Thursday, December 01, 2005
By Maria Montoya
Staff writer ~ Times Picayune"As long as there's a New Orleans, there'll always be people eating, drinking and having fun," said Renee Spratt as she walked through a crowd of friends and family mingling in the dining room of her Uptown home last Thursday evening. As Spratt set out the fixings, people peered over her shoulder trying to get a peek, not at the food, but at the name of each potluck dish.
"Tonight, we're having 'Rescue Me From the Roof Ribs,' 'Katrina Cauliflower Au Rotten' and let's see, what is this . . . oh, 'Rancid Crawfish Cornbread,' and I made the 'Levee "Leak" Soup,' " said Spratt, who admits that the names on the menu might otherwise seem odd at a normal potluck. But at the "FEMA Cantina," as her Thursday night gatherings have affectionately been dubbed, nothing's off limits when it comes to naming your recipe.
"We're survivors, we New Orleanians, and a part of surviving is being able to poke fun at yourself," Spratt said. "Who says you can't drown the misery with a good laugh and a great bottle of wine? Not me; we do it each and every Thursday."
Her guests can't help but smile at the truth of Spratt's words. Among the guests there are those who've lost everything to the flooding and others whose lives have been only slightly inconvenienced by Katrina. Still, everyone has a story, and each week Spratt and her husband, Rob, open up their home as a space where tales of woe involving insurance claims and roofers gone AWOL can be exchanged comfortably.
To set the tone for the dinners, Spratt covered her dining room table with a Federal Emergency Management Agency roof tarp and a centerpiece crafted solely out of supplies from the Red Cross. There are rubber gloves, face masks, bleach products, hand sanitizers, cleaning brushes, aspirin and even a fact sheet on how to remove mold safely from one's home. On a nearby side table, the name cards from dishes served in past weeks are set out as reminders of earlier festivities.
"I've been here every week; I wouldn't miss it," said Aline Conley, Spratt's neighbor and friend, whose favorite dishes have included "Dead Plant Parmesan," "Dead Pudding With Mold Sauce" and "Entergy Black Out Cake." "It's something to look forward to each week. It's been fun to see how the dishes and the talk each week have steadily gone from a total disaster theme to more about politics."
But it's all in good fun, Conley said.
Some of the hot-button dishes have included: "Pigs in a Blanco," "You're Doing a Heck of a Job Brownies," "Commandeered Celery Boats" and "Sewell Cadillac Cookies, To Protect and Loot." The fun isn't limited to food, either. The groups come up with a pretty good mix of refreshments that are kid- and adult-friendly.
"Hey, you thought of 'Looter Tooters' -- so did I!" said one male guest to a woman walking in with Mardi Gras-colored Jell-O shots that she had dubbed "Buck Shots, Tetanus Shots and Hepatitis B Shots."
Inside the warmth of the Spratt house, as the friends laugh and share tales, everything seems to be OK with the world. This feeling is what makes such parties so important to the rebuilding of the city, Ariana Ganak said. She said the same feeling of friendship and understanding could never be duplicated at a crowded bar or in any other city, for that matter.
"If you talk to people in other places, they don't really get what is going on here. They can't understand why anyone would want to come back here," Ganak said. "But this is the lifeline to our city. Events like this are exactly why I don't want to live anywhere else. Only in New Orleans could you get a bunch of people together for a party in the middle of such a mess."
For so many of the Spratts' guests, having FEMA Cantina every week is all about getting back to having some sort of routine in their lives. Jim and Cho Womack said they couldn't wait to have something to put on their social calendar. Plus, they said, the Spratts' potluck forces them to be creative in their cooking each week.
Cho said she has been working on making a dish that could aptly be named "Row Vs. Wade." Among the couple's favorite Cantina desserts was a candy tray that had FEMA represented as DumDum lollipops, insurance adjusters as Airhead taffy and Louisiana politicians as Lemonhead candies.
"We were going to make 'Chili Gentilly' this week, but we ran out of time," Jim said. "It's been fun, all the creative things people have come up with. Even if there weren't fun dishes, any excuse to get dressed up and have fun is more than welcome nowadays."
Still, Spratt said she can't keep the Cantina open forever, and she warned her friends that last week's dinner might be the last, at least until the holidays have come and gone. But Spratt said she's still entertaining ideas about offering a monthly event instead of something weekly for her friends and family.
"It doesn't matter, we're all just going to show up at your door next Thursday anyway," Conley said to Spratt. Jim Womack added, "And the Thursday after that, too."
Chances are Renee and Rob Spratt just may have regular dinner guests until next hurricane season. It is undoubtedly their warmth and kindness, not just the fun dishes, that have made the FEMA Cantina an oasis in the post-Katrina chaos. Their home, much like a favorite neighborhood watering hole, is a place where everyone remembers your name and, better yet, can reassure you that you will have mail delivery and electricity again.
"If you can't laugh at disaster, what else are you going to do?" Renee said. "I know that places, the people and the spirit of this city will never be the same as before Katrina. I just can't help but think if we keep some of that great spirit alive, like we're doing here tonight, that we can do anything we put our minds to, including rebuilding our city."
Staff writer Maria Montoya can be reached at mmontoya@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3446.
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