Pickled Peppers and Parrots Muffuletta

Excerpt from a recent trip report on New Orleans, Louisiana:

-- 18 restaurant visits this time. 19 if you include Napoleon House muffuletta "to go" for the plane ride back. Which is a fearsome thing in an airplane seat. Juicy olive salad, miscellaneous pickled peppers with wills of their own, like cats or parrots. But worth the effort. --

Let me illustrate that last comparison. Among other birds over the years, 20-plus years ago I looked after a pair of eccentric Amazon parrots for friends when they traveled. These birds resembled oversized pickled peppers in shape and behavior. (Posted about them online at the time.) The female, Phinney, was very fat -- the only bird that left me with a stiff arm after sitting on my hand for a while -- and spoiled; while the male, Frankie, was deranged. Frankie was short for Frankenstein (he had been inexpensive). They were not a couple, in fact Frankie would try to eat Phinney, in an unplayful way, given the chance. Phinney was let loose indoors but this caused hapless visitors to the house to complain "That thing went for my jugular!" when Phinney was only being friendly. (People who do not know parrots sometimes over-react.)

Anyway, Phinney's sport seemed to be to dive into dark and dusty places. An embarrbutting old couch against the wall, badly in need of vacuuming behind and underneath, was her playground. She would plunge behind it and revel in the dust balls until I reached down and fetched her out, like a used feather duster but animate, sputtering indignantly against dustus interruptus. She would then sneeze for hours from all the dust, while commenting incoherently and calculating how to return.

The pickled peppers from the Napoleon House sandwich on the plane had much in common with this.

In other regards it's a model New Orleans muffuletta: Round Italian loaf (or large roll) about 25cm (10 inches) diameter, split and filled with sliced cold slami and ham, a little sliced cheese, warm spiced olive salad, and the aforementioned psittacine Pickled Peppers. Normally quartered and sold in quarters, one full sandwich feeds four moderate or two hearty appebreastes. The American Heritage Dictionary (fullsize 3rd ed. anyway; many of these supplemental notes are gone in the 4th) characterizes it, unlike its local cousin the Po'boy, as "one of the few large American sandwiches not made with a long crusty roll." The Central Grocery is another respected source, credited with the sandwich's invention there in 1910.

-- Max