I cooked my first meal for Andrew a month before we got engaged. Thinking the night I cooked would be the night we were getting engaged, my nails were painted in the perfect shade of pink, "Bubble Bath". Telling Andrew I'd cook on the Friday night, I asked my sister for her "Easy Crawfish Étoufée" recipe. I strategically left out the word "easy". If I recall, I played it off as laborious. He was impressed. I was too. I was 25 and a real woman, cooking and all. Me and my Bubble Bath nails enjoyed the chilly November night with no warmth of a diamond on my finger. Not just yet. 1 pound crawfish tails, seasoned with little red...
It's my sister, Ashley Beth's, birthday today! As with any double named southerner, her name isn't Ashley; it's Ashley Beth. But as family often does, we have shortened names and given nicknames. If you don't have some sort of nickname in south Louisiana, you may not be loved. So we called Ashley Beth "ABs", "A.B.", "The Beth-mister", and most often just "Beth." My affectionate names were "T-Whit", "Whiterino", "The Whit-mister", and most often just "Whit." As sisters do, we fought. Mostly Beth and me. Adrienne was too consumed with more civilized things like high school parties, learning The Freeze, and getting the bass setting right on her karaoke machine. Ashley Beth and I were fighting in the living room when...
