Eric Wilder's Blog, page 10

French Quarter Fritter Batter - a weekend recipe

If you visit New Orleans for its Cajun and Creole cuisine, you’ll soon discover the many desserts synonymous with the venerable city. The Big Easy is probably the fritter capital of the world. Known in New Orleans as the beignet, the fritter can combine with almost any fruit to create an exquisite desert. Think apple, banana, or cherry fritters. Let your imagination go wild. It all starts with the fritter batter, and here is the recipe. Hey, if you can't visit New Orleans soon, read my French Quarter mystery Big Easy and take a trip in your mind.Ingredients 
·         1 cup flour, sifted·         ½ cup water, cold·         2 eggs·         ½ cup sugar·         1 Tbsp. olive oil·         2 Tbsp. brandy·         ¼  tsp. saltDirectionsSeparate the eggs. Beat the whites into a thick froth and reserve. Add the yolks to the flour, and then beat until very light. Add the sugar and blend well. Add the brandy and beat lightly, and then add water and oil to make the batter the consistency of a thick starch. Add the egg whites and beat well. The batter is now ready for the desired fruit needed to create your amazing Creole dessert beignet. Enjoy!Eric'sWeb
 
 
 
 

Vivian Louisiana, Circa 1944 - a pic

Here is a picture of my grandfather's filling station. The person on the far left is my Uncle Grady Pittman, the man to his left Lee Edge, and directly to his left my Grandfather Big Jim Pittman. I don't know the other two men in the picture. Love the old cars.

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Geese Flying South

After several days of rain, today was unseasonably cool, feeling more like late October than mid-August. On my evening walk, I readied my camera to take a picture of the unusually red sky when I heard the unmistakeable sound of geese coming toward me. I snapped a picture of three geese and barely had time to zoom in and take a picture of the formation that quickly followed. Though they were headed south, it seems a bit early for their yearly migration. Don't know, though. Maybe we're in for a really cold winter. If it is, it'll be the first one we've had in central Oklahoma in a very long time.

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Mama Mulate's Okra with Crawfish and Tomatoes - a weekend recipe

Mama Mulate, voodoo mambo and Tulane English professor in my murder mystery Big Easy, has a garden in the backyard of her house in inner-city New Orleans. Okra is her favorite vegetable and she uses it in many of her dishes. She also grows big, juicy, Creole tomatoes. When she combines Louisiana crawfish with her okra and tomatoes, she creates a unique dish you have to taste to believe. Check it out! While your at it, check out Big Easy for only 99 cents on Amazon, BN, Apple iBook's, Kobo, and Smashwords.

Ingredients 
·         1 lb okra, trimmed and sliced·         1 ½ lbs crawfish tails·         3 Tbsp butter·         1 onion, medium, coarsely chopped·         4 tomatoes, large, peeled, seeded and chopped·         ½ c Balsamic vinegar·         2 Tbsp lemon juice·         1 Tbsp parsley, fresh, chopped·         Salt and pepper·         Hot cooked rice 
Directions Combine oil and butter in a large skillet and heat until butter is melted. Add onion and bell pepper, and toss to coat evenly. Stir in okra and cook, medium heat, until onion is translucent.

Add tomatoes, Balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, parsley, salt and pepper. Simmer and stir until tomatoes soften. Add crawfish and continue cooking for about 5 minutes. Serve with rice.
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Morning Mist of Blood, Eric Wilder's Paranormal Mystery, now just 99 cents

Read Morning Mist of Blood on your Kindle or Nook for only $.99. If you love dogs, cowboys, and things that go bump in the night, you'll love Morning Mist of Blood. MMoB is the second book in the Buck McDivit Mystery Series.

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Big Easy on Sale for 99 Cents!

Big Easy, the first book in Eric Wilder's French Quarter Mystery series, is now on sale at Amazon.com and Smashwords.com for 99 cents. Clarion Review said, "Wilder's fiction is like an icy cold Hurricane slush on a hot Louisiana day." Read it now for only 99 cents and take a trip to the Big Easy.

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A Day at the Beach

While mudlogging for CORE Labs after graduating from college with my degree in geology, I sat a well in south Texas that took about six weeks to drill. It was not that the well was that deep, or the drilling that slow, but it was quite simply the well from hell.

Everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong. The sand-shale sequence through which we were drilling was unconsolidated, the drilling fast and the hole soon crooked. Well bores are never truly vertical because the drill bit rotates causing the pipe to corkscrew. A dogleg sometimes occurs that results in the borehole changing direction abruptly. This was the case in our well and it created worlds of problems every time the crews made a bit trip.

My fellow mudloggers and I only worked when the well was actually turning to the right. Two drilling superintendents had already been relieved of duty because of problems on the well. The new superintendent decided to try to fix the drilling problem before he became number three.

When dealing with problems encountered miles below the earth’s surface, it is impossible to estimate the time it might take to correct the problem. Because of this, the company placed Jack, Art and me on stand-by. This was okay with us because the company paid us and we did not have to work for it.

The quick fix to the drilling problem did not occur and by the third day, the three of us were tired of hanging around Weslaco. We decided to take a field trip to South Padre Island for a little fun in the sun. After icing down several six packs of beer, we headed for the beach. By the time we reached sun and sand, we were all “two sheets to the wind,” as they say.

Jack was the senior man but he was only about thirty. What bad habits that Art and I did not already possess, we learned from Jack. Art and I worked on the beer while Jack had a bottle of Jack Daniel’s that he tippled straight from the bottle. Jack was smart enough to let Art drive while he sat in the front seat giving us directions from a tattered Texas road map.

South Padre Island is a barrier bar that parallels the Texas Gulf coast and stretches for miles and miles. We were looking for a beach with lots of gorgeous and scantily clad females but after miles of driving, we continued to see only bare sand. Art finally spotted some people sunning on the beach and frolicking in the surf.

“I don’t see a road,” he said.

“There are no trees or ditches,” Jack said. “Just cut cross country.”

This seemed like a perfectly good idea to both Art and me. It was not. Within fifty feet, we were stuck up to the hubs in sand and thirty minutes of effort beneath hot Texas sun failed to extricate us.

“Leave it here,” Jack said. “I’m hot as hell. Let’s take a swim.”

This also seemed like a good idea to Art and me. Following Jack to the beach, we proceeded to strip down to our boxer shorts and dive into the surf. In the manner of all good Texas oilmen, we were loud, boisterous, brazen and very drunk. Within minutes, the crowded beach cleared leaving only the three of us to frolic in the surf.

We had no towels, no umbrella and no swim trunks. Our cold beer in the trunk was a hundred yards away through ankle deep hot sand. After an hour in the humidity and beneath the south Texas sun, we had all begun sobering up. A good thing as we were able to free the car when we finally returned to it.

Down the road, we found a recreation area with a hotdog stand and many souvenir shops. Even though we had our clothes back on, the crowd reaction was pretty much the same. They all apparently saw us for what we were – “oil field trash.” We ate a few hotdogs, ogled ever girl in sight and then headed back to Weslaco.

I awoke the next morning with a pounding head, queasy stomach and painful sunburn. Worse, we learned the well was drilling again.

I wish I could say that I learned a valuable lesson from this experience. Well maybe I did. I realized that it's a bad idea to leave behind an ice chest loaded with beer even though you intend to go little more than a hundred yards away.

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No Global Warming in Oklahoma This July

It's 67 degrees and raining in Edmond, Oklahoma, and feels more like early April than mid-July. I love it!

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Happy 4th of July

I awoke this morning with the strange feeling I needed to start drinking beer and eating hotdogs. Then I realized what day it is.


The kids are all out of town, working, or somewhere else. Doesn’t matter with Marilyn. She has enough food for an army, in case one shows up. She’s grilling burgers on the back porch on a $5 dollar Hibachi grill she bought at Wal-Mart. Bet everything will still taste wonderful.

Still smarting about her favorite cook’s recent social problems, she prepared Paula Deen’s famous potato salad. There’s also watermelon and strawberries for desert. No Vidalia onions at the store for some reason. Oh well!

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY, everyone! Hope you are having as much fun as us.

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Prolog to Black Magic Woman, Eric Wilder's New French Quarter Mystery

I'm about a third finished with Black Magic Woman , the fourth novel in the French Quarter Mystery Series featuring Wyatt Thomas. I've often wondered what it would be like to visit old New Orleans, during the days of French or Spanish rule, slavery, and yellow fever. Wyatt finds out in BMW when he travels back (circa 1840) to enlist the assistance of Marie Laveau, Queen of Voodoo. I hope you like this little teaser.

Black Magic Woman
 a novel by
Eric Wilder

 Prolog

A late December chill had fallen on the French Quarter, vapor blowing from the horse’s nostrils as he pulled a carriage onto the cobblestone path leading to Esplanade Avenue. Zacharie Patenaude was no happier to be out on the blustery night than the horse, or the driver of the carriage. It didn’t matter. He had a package to deliver, and it was necessary to complete his mission before morning light appeared.

Bayou Road was the oldest thoroughfare in New Orleans. The Indian path leading from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain had been there long before the city existed. The reason Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville had chosen the area that would become the city of New Orleans. Gaston, Zacharie’s driver, slowed the carriage when he reached a house that occupied much of a large tract of land.

Though he strived to look regal in his coachman’s uniform, Gaston was too old and squat to pull off the charade. He also walked with a noticeable limp from where a horse had kicked him, shattering his leg. After hitching this horse to the cast iron railing, he helped Zacharie out of the carriage.

Unlike Gaston, Zacharie looked regal with no effort. His polished boots, silk pants, top hat, and greatcoat custom tailored in France marked him as a gentleman, and one of the city’s elite. While not classically handsome, his dark hair and brooding eyes always attracted the attention of the city’s females.

“Will you be long, Sir?” Gaston asked.

“I hope not, but please wait for me if I am.”

Zacharie entered the gate, knowing Gaston would be there when he finished his business, no matter how long it took. The residence he approached was much larger than his own, a replica of a Haitian plantation house, complete with encircling porch and slanting roof to block spring rains and summer’s heat. A woman of color answered the cypress and cut glass door after his first knock.

“Monsieur Patenaude. Dr. John awaits.

The young woman was tall, the regal turban topping her head making her seem even more so. Her indigo dress only heightened the illusion.

Zacharie followed her through the entryway, into a large, living area, burning logs crackling in the stone fireplace. He blinked, his eyes adjusting to the room’s dimness, lighted only by flaming logs, and the smoky radiance of a single coal oil lantern. Children of both sexes were playing jacks on the polished, cypress floor in front of the fireplace. There were at least five women of varying ages sitting on chairs and divans. Some were knitting. One was shelling peas. They all were talking, seemingly unmindful of his presence.

The temperature in the room was warm, but felt comfortable following his unheated carriage ride. Zacharie smiled. The first time he’d met Dr. John, the voodoo man, was at a tavern on Bourbon Street. He supposedly had many wives and more than fifty children. The women and children in the living room did little to contradict what most citizens probably thought was obvious rumor.

The city was home to many free blacks. Not long after slaves started arriving in the colony, French and Spanish landowners began taking black mistresses. Aristocratic families often treated children born from these liaisons as family, and invented terms to describe the amount of white blood they possessed. 

The attractive woman leading him to Dr. John’s office was, he decided, a quadroon—a person that was one-quarter black. French law did not allow such racially diverse women to marry white men. The law did not stop many rich white men from having mistresses of mixed blood, housing, supporting, and usually bearing children with them. Zacharie had his own lover he’d met at a quadroon ball. His French wife hated the state of affairs, though soon learned there was little she could do about it.

He wondered if the woman he followed was one of Dr. John’s wives. He had no time to ask her as she led him to a door that was like no other he had ever seen. Voodoo symbols decorated its thick glass, and a blue, ephemeral glow emanated from within. It looked almost alive. Maybe it was, he thought.

“You may go in, Monsieur,” the woman said, smiling and gazing into his eyes as she opened the door to Dr. John’s office for him.

Zacharie entered the room lighted even more dimly than the living room he’d just walked through. The man sitting on the floor smiled at him when he entered.

“You like Elise. I can tell,” the man said.

“She is very beautiful,” Zacharie said. “Your wife?”

“My daughter,” he said.

The man sitting on the hardwood floor was Dr. John, New Orleans’ most powerful hoodoo priest. He claimed to be a Senegalese Prince. The ceremonial scars on his forehead, neck and shoulders, seemed to suggest he was telling the truth. Set free by his master, he had migrated to New Orleans, working on the docks as a longshoreman.

Dr. John’s skills of divination soon became widely noticed. He also had other skills, and the rich and gentrified citizens of New Orleans began paying serious money for his services. The large house he, his wives and children now occupied was testament to his abilities.

The room was like a hoodoo museum, animal and human skulls occupying shelf space on the walls. Bottles of unlabeled herbs and pickled scorpions populated the shelves and tables. A live scorpion was crawling up the wall. Dr. John didn’t seem to notice.

Several black candles burned on the voodoo altar dominating the far wall. A giant boa constrictor lay coiled around his master’s neck. Zacharie took a deep breath to try and slow his racing heart.

“Don’t be afraid. This is my baby.”

“I’ve never seen a snake quite so big,” Zacharie said.

The voodoo man was grinning. “She won’t eat you. You brought something for Dr. John?”

Zacharie handed him a small package wrapped in a cloth of silk. Dr. John smiled as he began unwrapping it.

“Is it what you need?” Zacharie asked.

“I asked for hair and nail clippings,” he said, fingering a clump of dark hair, and another object.

He grinned when Zacharie said, “I brought you the whole finger.”

“You have something else for me?” Dr. John asked, holding out his hand.

Zacharie removed a leather pouch from his greatcoat, handing it to the hoodoo man. When Dr. John loosened the leather strap and dumped the contents on the floor, coins flashed in the light of the ceremonial flame.

“Twenty gold coins,” he said.

Dr. John smiled but didn’t reply. Taking the hair and the severed finger, he attached them to a straw doll with a piece of twine. Adding aromatic wood to the pyre at the altar, he placed the gory objects in a cup carved from obsidian. After pouring a secret concoction over the finger and hair, he voiced a magical incantation and lighted it with sparks surging from the tips of his fingers. An explosive flame, and then a mushroom cloud quickly rose toward the ceiling.

“My job is done,” Dr. John said as the two men watched the fire blaze brightly, and then grow dim.

“How do I know I can trust you?” Zacharie asked.

Dr. John picked up the handful of gold coins from the floor and extended his hand toward him.

“Take your coins if you do not believe. Just realize that you are taking them from Damballa and not Dr. John.”

Zacharie smiled. “Keep them. I trust you.”

Elise appeared at the door, ushering Zacharie back down the hallway, through the living area, and to the door from which he had entered. Gaston was where he had left him. Reentering the carriage, he waited until the coachman had unhitched the horse and turned back towards Esplanade Avenue. As he glanced at the sky, he saw the blush of flames topping the French Quarter.

Feeling a surge of satisfaction, Zacharie smiled. Something was on fire, and burning out of control. He didn’t have to ask to know what it was.

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