The cuisine of the Sabine women

Nov. 1 – Orange, TX

We found Orange to be a warm, welcoming town. It's clean and tidy; the lawns are manicured and the fences in good repair (which is only fitting for a town that got its start as a lumbering center). Not many buildings seem to be vacant, and those that are are having prompt attention paid to them. Our hotel welcomed us with bags of peanuts, bottles of water, and cookies. We were greeted at our venue with a home-cooked dinner of tossed salad, gumbo, oriental cole slaw (!), fruit salad and garlic bread. The audience was about as receptive as any so far. Even the weather was accommodating: sunny and warm, in the 80s. It was a good evening in Orange, TX.

Orange has a couple of claims to fame: it survived Hurricane Rita in 2005, and it is home to the highest exit number in North America. That's Exit 880 on Interstate 10 by the Sabine River at the Louisiana state line. It's been almost three weeks since I passed by Exit 0 on the same highway, way over on the New Mexico border, on my way to El Paso. The east and west borders of Texas are closer to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans than they are to each other, and comparing the bayous and gumbo of Orange to the chaparral and mariachis of El Paso, I'm not the least surprised.

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