Travel

Only in New Orleans

By Sharon Keating, About.com GuideNovember 25, 2006

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Well we here at the Keating household have had another great Thanksgiving holiday. The weather was perfect, the food was great and almost all invited made it home to celebrate. We start cooking in the early afternoon of the day before Thanksgiving. I make the oyster dressing, and my sister-in-law makes the mirliton with shrimp and crab meat, both as essential to a New Orleans Thanksgiving as the turkey. My daughter makes the pecan pie and my grandchildren make cupcakes, cookies and brownies. We depend on the rest of the family to bring the dirty rice, candied jams, other desserts, and necessities on Thanksgiving day. The grandchildren all spend the night with my husband and I and wake up on Thanksgiving morning to a breakfast of Grillades and Grits and homemade bisquits. Then the day begins. We fry two turkeys, roast two and bake a ham. Our traditions are many including my brother-in-law's rendition of the Thanksgiving poem he learned in the first grade, and my sister smashing peas through her teeth at another sister who hates them. My husband goes through the things we as a family are grateful for and we all say a prayer of thanksgiving. At the end of the day, my eight-year-old grandson looked at me and said, "you know MiMi, Thanksgiving is the second best day of the year." When I asked him what was the best day of the year, he looked at me as though I were teasing him and said what he thought was obvious. "The best day of the year is Mardi Gras." Only in New Orleans would Christmas come in third. I guess that's why I can never live anywhere else.

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November 26, 2006 at 8:11 am (1) stacey griffin :

Given all of the despair still in New Orleans following Katrina, I wanted to share my story of hope.

I am a female business owner in Uptown New Orleans and a clinical social worker. I graduated from Tulane School of Social Work 10 years ago and opened my own psychiatric facility 7 years ago. I worked hard to build this business and then lost it to Katrina. However, over the past year, on my own and while raising a 3 yr old with no childcare, I have rebuilt it. It is stronger than ever serving children in our area with severe psychiatric illness (homicidal and suicidal) and has received accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Rehab Facilities (same one used by Touro Hospital).

In addition, I have founded an exciting new company a few months ago, to have as a “plan B”, given how quickly the psychiatric facility was wiped out last year from Katrina (in preparation for any future disasters).

This company was simply an idea I had to improve my own child’s life—creating a juice box filled with 100% pure water. I worked diligently on this the past 4 months–usually very early morning hours (3:30am-7:30am) before my 3 year old woke up and my day as the owner of a psych facility and “mom” began.

But it has paid off!! The product was manufactured on this past Friday and will hopefully be on grocery shelves all over the nation within the next few months! It is called AQUA2GO and is being marketed to people of all ages. By using aseptic packaging and a reverse osmosis process, there is a 5 yr shelf life and a guarantee of 100% purified water. I have already been contacted by SYSCO, Disney, airplane caterers, and many more re the sales of our product by their companies. We have been selected as the first ever beverage to be a part of Amazon.com’s fulfillment profram online. I have also begun to receive correspondence from national magazines re feature stories on female business owners, new exciting products, etc.

So, no one can say that the spirit of New Orleaneans has been broken…on the contrary, I am more motivated than ever to make both companies succeed. I have even decided to give a % of profit from AQUA2GO sales to a hurricane assistance program here in tNew Orleans! If my product receives the national attention that we are hoping for, I plan to use it to help rebuild New Orleans in any way I can.

Thanks for hearing my story and I hope it can serve to motivate and encourage others in our city…….

stacey griffin—-social worker, administrator, mom, wife and now the owner of lots of water boxes

http://www.milestonesmha.com

http://www.wateronthego.com

September 10, 2009 at 3:11 pm (2) sandrar :

Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. Cheers! Sandra. R.