The lump sum of us New Orleanians grew softer after we evacuated for Katrina.  Weepier.  And straight up fatter.  I’m not just talking about displaced chefs forced into eating at faux taquerias in suburban Houston, or formerly happy casino workers taking in their three squares a day at the Memphis Pickle Barrel. 

I mean that yoga instructors, skinny-ass musicians, and bike messengers changed their shapes alongside the rest of us evacuees.  We, the homeless and downtrodden, ate what we could find.  And, oh, did we drink.  We foraged 7-11s for ramen noodles and High Life 40s, built breakfasts around motel vending machines.  Our communal depression manifested itself in new layers of fleshy padding.  We gobbled up garbage food as if it contained some answer for what had happened to us, as if it might resurrect our disappeared neighborhoods.  Down to the last evacuee, we’d lost our ability to cook in our own kitchens.

Sure, a lot of us weren’t in the best shape before the hurricane.  Were we gluttons?  Of course, but that’s because we’ve long known all food cooked well should be savored the same way the flash of fine titties at a parade is truly a thing to behold, no matter the barer.  Here, gravy po-boys exalt our senses alongside charcuterie.  If, as some said, New Orleanians deserved the hurricane that battered us for our sinful ways, we certainly revered what we’d had beforehand.  Hammy lima beans to Eggs Sardou, we loved every bite.

Most of us probably didn’t miss our stoves immediately.  We were the lucky ones not to drown in our attics.  We understood we’d survived.  Given the right perspective, sometimes a tube of Pringles can be the most glorious meal going, a 60 oz. handle of Jim Beam a thing to protect with a gun.  We’d made it.  Still, post-Katrina, we had no idea how to quell our appetites in the evacuation hinterlands.  We wanted to host crawfish boils.  We wanted to crack open blue crabs and deep fry turduckens.  We wanted to gather on our crumbling porches and commune over our food.  It’s what we’d always done.

A week after the storm, I got back into the city.  What I saw unhinged me.  Few of the images should ever be paired with food.  But when I happened upon a refrigerator perched high in the branches of a tree in the Lower Ninth, I couldn’t help but acknowledge the overt symbolism of it.  A fridge up in a tree.  One of the inanimate objects we’d all held so dear was out of reach, literally. 

These days?  Some of us are still fatter, and some of us have shrunk.  It’s hard to say if our recovered ability to cook has anything to do with that.  But one way or the other, we have kitchens again, and we use them.  Plenty.  We choose to cook now because we couldn’t then.  And when we cook well, really well?  Hey, it’s a triumph.