trite things first. the baklava came out well, it's very easy and the glaze smells like the best honey tea when it's simmering. it seems that no amount of cream cheese frosting can really help those banana bread things. it's just not meant to be. in the cooking realm today i have to find a way to use pattipan squash, the extra phyllo, and a few cups of cream cheese frosting. squash tartlets...uhm...with frosting? hmmm. i also have an unreasonable amount of sliced provolone cheese to dispose of. the problem with breaking the no buying food rule is that you totally forget you have food and so it never gets eaten. probably i should keep an inventory on the front of the fridge, with dates. like a syllabus of meals.

cooking drama out of the way, history lesson onward.

we start today early in the war. the union army is getting trampled in virginia and is very, very slowly moving out from their capital into hostile territory. we know that as a rule, early in the war, the Confederate Army had more "talent" in their ranks that did the U.S. Army. the Navy was a completely different story.
the U.S. Navy did not lose a whole lot of sailors to the confederate cause. one, they were on US Naval vessels and didn't have much hope of staging individual insurgencies, and two the navy was more of a northern tradition anyway. Shipping and boatbuilding were simply more prominent in the north. where the army was short of successes early on in the war, the navy had a much better record.
the us navy instituted a blockade on southern ports that was almost immediately effective. the effect being to prevent the inflow of imported goods and the export of cotton* and putting a stranglehold on the confederate economy. there were ofcourse blockade runners to cuba and other nearby ports, but prices for runner's goods were generally so inflated that only the very wealthy could afford them. what the fuck does this have to do with new orleans, well very little really. we're getting there.
NO was a port city, obviously, but since the blockade did not immediately effect the mississippi river trade still floursihed up and down the river. being a patriotic city, most of the city's available fighting age men were away at war. however, the city was by no means defenseless. canon shown down on the mississippi protecting the city and the only open trade route from the threat of the US Navy. as both sides are equally guilty of underestimating eachother, it won't break any hearts if i say that the defenders of NO weren't all that vigilant since those northerners aren't all that bright. it came as quite a surprise to them to find that one morning a union warship had disquised itself as a cotton barge and came up river under cover of darkness. the battle of NO was very short and turned the tide of the war in the favor of the north earlier than they are ever given credit for.
the best part of this whole story is not that NO was taken easily, but what happens after. as we've discussed, the inhabitants of the city are about %90 female maybe %80 if there were alot of old men and slaves still there.
the union officers who patrolled NO were under the impression that it was still one country and we're all "americans" and put in a great deal of effort to treat the city not like it was captured but that it was uhm...being watched just until the war was all over. the women of NO had differing opinions. they crossed to the other side of the street if a union officer was walking their way. if there was a chance encounter they spat at the officers. respectable ladies did not spit in the 1860's. in short, the women of NO made it abundantly clear that the US was not welcome, fighting the war the only way they knew how.
'course the occupying forces instituted a law that any woman who behaved as such to a union officer would be arrested as a prostitute. but that's not really the point. NO is a proud city and i totally understand why some folks refuse to abandon it.


*no selling cotton, no money. also no cotton for england and all their haughty shirtwaists so they started planting in india. when american cotton was again available, they'd already found cheaper prices and so begins one of many southern recessions.