Grand Opening Sparkle!

The Grand Opening Gala in New Orleans was so FABULOUS that it has taken the New Orleans Times-Picayune 4 days to come up with enough adjectives to publish an artice describing its grandeur!!! It was a VERY flattering article, and Miss G was thrilled to find her Kate Spade Handbags, Coach Shoes, and several other pieces of her FABULOUS merchandise prominantly features! Gawd, she had to grovel to get KS into that store!! She would have included a link to the actual article online, but, alas, it was nowhere to be found on the Times-Picayune website (http://www.nola.com/) If anyone can find it, please let me know!

Playing 'Possum

We're very used to possums around here. They love to live in the crawl space under the house, and for years they have come up onto the back porch to eat cat food. When they start coming around, Miss Ginger baits her live trap with a Little Debbie Oatmeal Cake (possums love those and you can smoosh them onto the trigger so they can't steal the bait!)

Catching them is like shooting fish in a barrel, and the next day I call the city and they come in a truck, pick the possum up, and take him to the city's "possum playground". At least that's what I tell myself. They're kinda of gross but they are warm-blooded animals and I have a hard time thinking of God's creatures as "disposable". And it's not like they come in the house are anything.

Miss G caught 5 of them last spring, and we thought we were done for the year, but this fall apparently a new family has moved in. They always come up on the back porch and eat Nog's food, but now this one is sleeping in his bed!!!

Is that some unmitigated gall, or what? Guess we'll have to get the trap out tomorrow!

FABULOUS Day in Texas!!

Today is one of those days that makes one "Thank their lucky stars they're in Texas"! The weather is FABULOUS and makes up for the eternally hot summers, the sloppy, wet winters, and the the unpredictable hurricane season we endure each year. It was cool and and breezy this morning, and even after the sun came out it stayed cool and never rose above 70 degrees. Unheard of for this time of year! After the sun went down tonight it got quite chilly, so we actually got to use the fireplace!



It's not a real fireplace, but one of those gas ones where you push the button and "poof!" the fire lights. Better yet, when it gets too hot or you want to run out of the house, you can push the button again and it goes off. No smell, no embers, no burned up kitties from getting to close! The whole thing is enclosed in glass, but you can't tell by looking at it!



The kitties love this weather, too, especially when they get to have their fireplace!










It's a perfect night for one of Miss Ginger's southern favorites: shrimp and grits.














Miss G didn't grow up eating shrimp and grits- Momma Ginger only ever made grits for breakfast. Shrimp and grits are most common around Charleston, and thoughout the Carolinas and that part of the south. Miss G discovered them during her travels to Atlanta, and eats them there whenever she gets the chance.

Gala Recap and Home, Sweet Home!

Miss Ginger is Home, Sweet Home after 6 tiring weeks and 3 really exhausting days! You know Miss G was REALLY nervous about having to walk her Senior VP (the one with the Miranda Priestly reputation) through the store. Well, she couldn't have been lovelier or more complimentary of both stores, so all those nerves were for nothing! Last night, all the hard work paid off with the Charity Gala benefitting NOCCA, the New Orleans Concervancy for the Arts. Miss G is not speaking out of turn to recap the Macy's presentation of a gigantic check to NOCCA for $250,000 dollars to help them establish a culinary arts programs to supplement the performance and visual art programs they already have. The Emeril Legasse Foundation also announced a donation, bringing at least half a million dollars in funding to NOCCA's program!

But Miss G is getting ahead of herself! It all started when Special Events teams from Atlanta, New York, and Houston all converged on the store to transform it from retail hotspot to Gala Central!

They tented, carpeted, and air conditioned a large section of the parking garage to create a FABULOUS ballroom, which Miss Ginger immediately dubbed the "GarageMahal". There was a special red carpet reception for the visiting celebrities and the "high dollah" guests in the tent, and then there was entertainment, food, drinks, and celebrity appearances all over the store. Tommy Hilfiger in mens, Martha Stewart in housewares, Russell Simmons in mens, Steve Madden in shoes- it goes on and on. After the "in-store" cocktails and buffets, all of the guests were ushered to the GarageMahal for Miss Ginger's favorite part of the night- a cooking demonstration by Martha Stewart and Emeril Legasse.

It started with Emeril showing Martha how to make a sazerac, with ensuing discussion about Peychoud Bitters vs. Angostura Bitters, blah blah blah.

Once Martha had her sazerac in hand, she never put it down! Girlfriend sucked on that sazerac for the rest of the demo! She showed Emeril how to make homemade shrimp boil, and I'm sure most in the audience noticed that between blabbing about bitters and sucking on sazeracs, they boiled the damn things for like 8 minutes, which surely meant they were like rubber by the time she took them out!

Miss G was so busy trying to get these great pics of Martha and Emeril for you that she almost didn't notice that Tyler Florence was standing like 5 feet away from her!

She managed to snap one shot before his handlers came to wrangle him into position. Dayum he is a cutie!

After the cooking demo, there was a FABULOUS fashion show created by the FABULOUS Lenny Matuszwski, who produces some of the greatest fashion moments anywhere. The white tent runway show was spectacular, as always! Miss G has worked with Lenny and his team on so many events she can't event remember the first!

Once the show was over Miss G and some of her teammates dashed out to dine, since they were starving! After an italian feast, it was off to beddy bye, and all we could think of was "WE GET TO GO HOME TOMORROW!!!"

This morning was marching bands, speeches, confetti cannons, ribbon cuttings, and mobs of shoppers as the 2 locations had their "official" public grand openings. Now the regional team has left their little birdies to fly on their own, and we have flown home as well!

Are You Sick of it Yet?

Here's more info on the Store Openings that you may find interesting...

Info on the Gala from NOLA.com

From NOLA.com- the website of the New Orleans Times-Picayune
High-powered cooking: Martha Stewart appears with Emeril Lagasse in New Orleans
Posted by Judy Walker, Food editor, The Times-Picayune October 23, 2008 4:44AM
Categories: Breaking News, Living: Food, Top News

AP file photo
Martha Stewart presents celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse with a birthday cake made entirely out of Rice Krispie treats, in New York, Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2008. The cake was fashioned in the shape of a golf course green after Emeril's passion for golf.In February, Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse cooked up a business deal. On Friday, the two will cook -- really cook -- together for the first time in New Orleans.

At a gala to benefit the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, they will prepare a recipe from her new book, "Martha Stewart's Cooking School." The gala is being held in conjunction with the opening of two Macy's stores here, at Lakeside Shopping Center and at The Esplanade. And Stewart and Lagasse are just two of the mega-watt stars of the culinary world coming to town for this weekend's festivities.

But it is Martha Stewart who has become an icon in her own time. Who else is invoked as the epitome, as in "My friend is the Martha Stewart of neighborhood shrimp boils," or "I'm not Martha Stewart, but I like to arrange flowers"?

During a telephone interview to promote her appearance for the department store, which carries a line of her housewares, linens, dinnerware and cookware, Stewart's famous voice was calm and modulated.

She said she has not been to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.

"I'm anxious to come down and see that things are getting back on track, as I hear they are," she said.

But it is primarily a business trip. In addition to doing the Friday cooking demonstration, Stewart will sign her book from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Macy's Lakeside.

She and Lagasse, the area's own high-wattage culinary star, teamed up earlier this year when he sold his line of branded products (retaining his 11 restaurants) to her company, Martha Stewart Omnimedia, for $45 million in cash and $5 million in stock.

"It's working out very well," Stewart said of the partnership.

"Emeril is working very hard, as usual. He's very entrepreneurial, a very hardworking man. He and Tony Cruz, his partner, are wonderful additions to our company. We look forward to all his products, and we've been working with him on the development of his new series of books he's doing for Harcourt Brace.

"The reason he and I work so well together is we can bounce ideas off each other. We're not competitive. We're very cooperative. He appeals to a different audience. I think we broaden our audiences by this liaison."

In September, Stewart's company announced that Lagasse and HarperStudio are collaborating on a multiyear, 10-book project. The first book, on indoor and outdoor grilling, will be published in time for Father's Day 2009.

While she's in Louisiana, "we'll have a shrimp boil, which is one of my favorite things in the whole world," Stewart said. "I'm going to visit my little haunts, go to Lucullus, which is one of my favorite shops." Patrick Dunne, the owner of the culinary antiques shop in the French Quarter, is an old friend, she added.

"I'll just look around and eat some good food," she said. "And have a Sazerac or two."

Her own new book is accompanied by a new "Cooking School" segment on her TV show, "The Martha Stewart Show," which airs at 1:05 a.m. weekdays on WGNO-TV. Episodes are repeated the following weeknight at 7 p.m. on the Fine Living Network, available locally on Cox (Ch. 356) and Charter (Ch. 158) cable, DirecTV (Ch. 232) and the Dish Network (Ch. 113) satellite.

The new book, at 504 pages, was a long time in the making, Stewart said. Each recipe in it, she explained, "teaches a technique or a point or an important lesson in the preparation of food that, once mastered, everybody will be able to cook."

And being able to cook healthful meals at home is more important now, in the current economy, than ever before, she said.

The recipe for salt-crusted fish uses three pounds of kosher salt, which used to be 89 cents a box, Stewart said. Now, it's about $3 a pound.

"You have to use that good coarse kosher salt, which isn't as salty as regular table salt. And the fish is just so succulent and tender and wonderful. And it's easy. This is an easy dish," she said. "And when you bring it to the table, the presentation just astonishes people."

On the telephone, Stewart's voice reflects her enthusiasm also for her blog, www.marthastewart.com. She takes most of the pictures for it herself.

"Isn't it fun?" she said. "We are very interested in giving sort of educated information to our readers and our Internet users. .¤.¤. So the blog is really my way of giving them a glimpse of what I do on a daily basis that's not necessarily public or well known."

The day of the interview, she had taken a tour of all the new barns in her neighborhood, she said, and was planning to blog about interesting techniques different barn owners had used.

Besides Lagasse and Stewart, other familiar foodie figures who will be on the red carpet at the Macy's opening gala are chefs Tyler Florence, Dave Lieberman and Cat Cora, who is an American Iron Chef. They also will do tastings and sign their books Saturday at

At tomorrow night's Gala, Entertainment Tonight has their own tent set up to do celebrity interviews and coverage of the event! Isn't that wild! I'm not sure which reporters they are sending, but you can bet Miss Ginger is gonna march up to that tent and demand to be interviewed! Of course her fans want to see her on the red carpet!!!

But that's tomorrow night night at Lakeside. Before that, we have to "entertain" the Senior Management Committee at the Esplanade store, with no specific agenda. That means the Senior VP in charge of Miss G's areas will be picking through the store, fixture by fixture, wanting to know "where's this? Why didn't you do this? What's up with this?" ARRRRRRH!!!

We call our SVP "Miranda Priestly" because A: she looks just like her and B: she acts just like her!

So Miss G has to get through all that, then get back to the hotel to get "gussied up" for the big event! At least she finally gets to go home Saturday!