letting the good times roll

Sweet holy heaven, do I have a delicious looking series of posts for you.

The setting, as you may have inferred from the title: NEW ORLEANS! Aka the place with the food so good it ruins all other food for you. Forever.

In a decision that was a fun mix of naiveté, kindness, optimism, and my phobia of flying, Steve and I departed to and returned from New Orleans by car in an EPIC 16-HOUR-ROAD-TRIP. 16 hours both ways, that is. Epic. Crazy. The purpose of our voyage was to celebrate my sister’s graduation from Tulane and to have my trusty Camry available to tote her stuff home.

We opted to take a more leisurely pace on our way down, taking in the shockingly lovely scenery of Southern Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Missisippi.

A billboard inspired us to take an EXCEEDINGLY fun detour to the Mayfield Dairy. Question: who among you WOULDN’T love to go on a tour of an ICE CREAM FACTORY?!

The tour was a fun mix of history- the now-enormous dairy company began humbly as the son of a farmer experimenting with dairy farming on a small plot of his father’s land- a look at the astonishingly efficient and mechanized assembly line of ice cream production, and of course, a sampling opportunity.

I had the blueberry pie ice cream, pictured above, and it. was. marvelous. Freshness I’m sure played a role, since the ice cream had been produced literally down the hall. Since the milk gets delivered daily (something in the family of the milk of 20,000 cows. Can you even picture that?! I cannot), it seems a logical inference that it was local and from a recently milked cow. And anyway, it was just exceptionally well-made ice cream. My blueberry pie one was creamy and perfectly (but not excessively) sweet. The blueberries tasted fresh and delicious and the pie crust chunks- which were more like a sugary cookie- were a delight.

Steve got a caramel one that was also incredible- you know the monumental difference between the rich, dark, ever so slightly bittersweet caramel that pools at the bottom of crème caramel and the high-fructose-corn-syrup ice cream topper rubbish you buy at the grocery store? This caramel was in the former category. Mmm.

After a stay at the Bates Motel (well fine there were no dead bodies) in Meridian, Mississippi (a town recommended by my car guy, who’d also road tripped to Nola. Yes, it had lots of hotels but all of them were bafflingly full- apparently a lot of businessmen traveling to work at the local power plant?!) we at last arrived in the Crescent City, motoring in over a multi-mile bridge looking out on Lake Pontchartrain.

With stiff legs, we were immediately raring to go.

My sister led us through her truly beautiful campus. Stunning live oak trees with the most amazing canopy of leaves surround the buildings and lawns. The buildings are lovely and fit perfectly with the landscape.

And, of course, there is a tree completely draped in Mardi Gras beads.

After we assured her we were ready for some authentic New Orleans cuisine, my sister led us to the awesomely named Cooter Brown’s.

On the menu? Po’Boys. Ohhhhhhhhhh Po’Boys. This is not your last look at them.

I opted for the po’boy with fried Gulf shrimp, and oh what an excellent decision that was. The sandwich’s exterior was a long roll generously sprinkled with sesame seeds, perfectly toasted and then drenched in what looked like melted butter. Then the shrimp, which were ENORMOUS (is it just me or are Gulf shrimp supposed to be small? Wasn’t the case here!) were expertly seasoned and had an irresistible spice to them. They were also perfectly fried and not at all greasy. Oh and there were a TON of them. On top was surprisingly fresh lettuce and tomato and perfect pickles.

What a sandwich!

 

During our meal, Steve and I mentioned that we wanted to see some levees to get some context about Hurricane Katrina. Malindi laughed really hard and led us outside. Fact: in many places, a levee is a big pile of dirt. A couple feet high, max. Really puny and entirely useless looking. How on earth the entire city isn’t entirely underwater already is beyond me.

This was reinforced as we strolled around after our meal and saw water… everywhere. The Mississippi… being really huge. The mega-lake. It’s all pretty but it’s also… weird.My mother and my sister, on a previous visit to the city, had taken a hurricane tour. I would’ve liked to’ve had more time to do it, because it sounds like an interesting, if sobering way to see the city. Apparently as you go along the Mississippi by boat, you are looking down from the water into the lower Ninth ward. And, even now, there are many blocks where you can spot a set of stairs leading to… nothing, where houses were entirely washed away and never rebuilt.

Anyway, New Orleans is a different kind of city. In many ways. I will wax philosophic about it more in future posts.

One key example of the uniqueness of Nola is that after our meal Malindi urged us to get daiquiris. Never mind that it was 1:00 in the afternoon; we were in New Orleans! Land of public drinking, where one can order a drink at a bar to go, then stroll down the streets sipping a daiquiri! Ridic.

Guess which one was mine and which was Steve’s?

 

It was a fun novelty enjoying a pina colada while walking around, but I knew sugar+booze+sunshine could give me one hell of a headache if I kept drinking. So I really only had a little. Steve finished his and was then sugar-stunned for awhile.

We kept walking.So you know how everyone talks about the New Orleans architecture? Yeah, that. It’s amazing.

We strolled along Saint Charles Avenue, a street that’s essentially a series of gorgeous old mansions. Now, I live in the DC suburbs, an area where god-awful McMansions are perpetually appearing, with their tacky vinyl siding extending to the furthest corners of their tiny lots. While these houses were huge, they were also stunning: high quality materials, thoughtful architecture, myriad oak trees and beautiful gardens lending perspective to their size.

I’m not going to lie, it’s a little disorienting seeing such a large, concentrated, publicly available demonstration of affluence in New Orleans, a city where poverty and crime are at a level I consider frightening and wrong. However, it is undeniably beautiful. And even more normal-sized houses have a unique charm in New Orleans.

 

We continued through beautiful Audobon Park, then over to Magazine Street, a great place for eating and shopping. I loved how stores were interspersed with pretty private homes. It was not too commercialized and very walkable. Blocks further down that were crowded with restaurants and the appearance of an American Apparel saddened me; I wish more cities had streets that were allowed to be pretty and distinctive, rather than falling prey to complete and total commercialization.

One of our favorite spots on Magazine Street- and something that I think should be a required stop in Nola for any food lovers- was Sucre, a truly amazing bakery.

 

Virtually everything for people who like sugar was there. Beautiful and uniquely flavored gelato (I once sampled a basil and coconut flavored one that tasted like Thai curry); beautiful pastries like you’d find in a Paris bakery; cupcakes; homemade chocolates. Wanting something light, special, and delectable, I opted for macarons!

Sucre’s flavors were amazing. Along with typical standbys- strawberry, pistachio, coffee and the like- they also had truly innovative flavors. I opted for three (I did share them… sort of): the hazelnut, which was filled with chocolate; the carrot cake (!); and the white chocolate with lavender (!!!!). On our follow-up visit to Sucre (necessary!) I got that white chocolate lavender one again. It is a winner of a combination; the herbiness really cuts that cloying sweetness of white chocolate. I envision some homemade ice cream inspired by this confection in the future.

The night ended with dinner cooked in Malindi’s apartment (our job was to use up her groceries; Steve did his best, eating something like seven hot dogs during the trip); a trip to The Boot, a bar right by campus that does triple shot drinks for four dollars (oh college); and creative sleeping arrangements due to me poorly communicating about a need for an air mattress.

The accommodations were considerably nicer at the bed and breakfast where we brought my mother after picking her up at the airport the next morning.

I mean come on when you go in through the courtyard you know this is gonna be classy.

The story of my family’s relationship with The Chimes, this truly amazing bed and breakfast, is a lengthy one. Some facts:

- We learned of its existence from our neighbor, a man who was in charge of logistics for Reuters during Hurricane Katrina. Reporters and photographers needed a place to stay and post their stories, so Larry arranged to just bring in a generator and rent out the entire bed and breakfast. And they had as pleasant an experience as anyone could during Katrina, because they had somewhere beautiful and harmonious to stay.
- When my sister’s appendix self-destructed last year and I was frantically trying to book flights and accommodations to New Orleans while my mom was frantically trying to tie up loose ends at her office, I called Jill, the lovely proprietor of The Chimes. She assured me that a room was available for my mom for the next two nights, and added that if she needed to stay after that, on a night they were fully booked, they’d just let her sleep in their daughter’s room (!)
- The shower in the room was beautiful and huge and had little pebbles embedded in the bottom of it, so taking a shower was like getting a foot massage; particularly nice with the amount of walking we did
- Carl Kassel’s voice is on their answering machine. Not because they won on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, but because he stays at The Chimes every time he’s in New Orleans
- It is on Constantinople Street. That is awesome.
- Cab drivers LOVE Jill, because she always refers people at the B+B to a specific cab company, because they are the most reliable. One guy, who was giving my mom and sister a ride somewhere, said he was visiting his native country of Barbados and saw some beautiful seashell chimes. He said, “If those don’t cost a thousand dollars, I am buying them for Jill!” They cost 75, so he bought them, and they now adorn the courtyard with many other sets, and the sound is absolutely lovely when the breeze blows.

For those reasons and many more, we love The Chimes.

This is how my dream house will be decorated:

Once we got my mom settled, lunch was in order. Malindi continued her winning streak of restaurant recommendations by leading us to Baru.

We lucked out with a lovely table outside.

Looking out at gorgeous flowers (which were everywhere in the city).

The restaurant had lots of fun little things to combine into meals, which is absolutely my favorite way to eat. We began with a buncha small plates to share:

Trio de Causas

Chilled Tuna and potato salad / avocado / quail egg / peruvian olive aïoli 

 

I mean really?! Along with being stunning (lovvvvvvvvve the purple potatoes) the flavor was great. It offered the nostalgia of a deviled egg but had an extra dimension of flavor that was wonderful.

 

Mazorca

Roasted corn/ salao cheese/ pink sauce/ potato sticks 

Looked like a pile of french fries at first, but digging revealed the other ingredients!

Ostras

Deep-fried Louisiana oysters/ cilantro aioli/ caramelized onions 

Sauce on the side, for my cilantro-hating sister. LOVE oysters. Wish I could eat them every day. These were spectacular, especially with those amazing onions on top.

For my main dish of sorts (was already feeling pretty darn satisfied by the dishes above) I got one of their tacos, which involved big fat awesome shrimp in a remoulade sauce; avocado; and pickled onions. Fab.

 

Steve got their fish taco, which had a special sumthin’ sumthin’.

I couldn’t really handle day drinking for a second day in a row, but these sure looked good!

I think that’s quite enough for one post, so I’ll conclude with a spectacular display of immaturity.

Two pictures from the general vicinity of Tulane’s campus, presented without comment:

 

More Nola posts to come!

Have you been to New Orleans? Did you luuuuuuuuurve it?

happy pills

Hey pals!

I am writing this in my FUTURE HOME, North Carolina. More specifically, the Triangle (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill). More ideally (if things go my way), I’m in a super cool coffee shop in Carrboro, the cutest. town. on. Earth. Reminds me a lot of Austin with the bikes and the local food and the music venues and the gazillions of cooperatives.

Toured my FUTURE SCHOOL (in an ideal world, of course; caveat must be stated that it is the school at which I have not yet been accepted; but cmon, I just beautifully executed that clause with a beautiful preposition in the middle, not the end. They’d be fools not to accept me). Well not toured in the official sense; toured in the wander around campus looking at all the pretty buildings and pretty trees thinking how nice it was, then toured the general neighborhood admiring all the cute cafes at which I wanted to dine someday.

Hung out with my ONCE AND FUTURE FRIEND Andrea, with whom I attended summer camp at Duke University back when we were dramatical teens. We spent a cumulative six weeks together in high school but our friendship is legit. We’re excited we’ll be living in the same place!

Basically, my life is in a good place. Certainly I have more than my share of nerves about all the changes I foresee in the next few months, but I’m excited for what’s coming next.

Also, my brain has gotten happier and I think it may have something to do with these:

Went to a new doctor where I was immediately stripped nekkid for an EKG (which was jarring but confirmed my heart is in good health) and also tested for scads of vitamin deficiencies. Lo and behold, I was lacking in Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D, both of which are associated with general mental… goodness. Or rather, both of which when lacking can produce mental… badness. Not gonna lie, between allergy meds and hormone things and so on, with these supplements I am now up to taking FIVE PILLS A DAY. Which seems extreme for someone ostensibly “healthy”. And yet, I appreciate that I can just swallow two little things and enhance my well-being in different ways.

And now for some of the randomness you have all grown to crave from my blog.

Pancakes! I LOVE the organic frozen wild Maine blueberries at Trader Joe’s. Cute and tiny, great flavor, melt quickly in yogurt bowls (mmm) and made the cutest pancakes.

 

Pickles! We got scrumptious Persian cucumbers at the farmer’s market (er, that’s an oxymoron. Persian-style, I spose I should say). They’re great, but you do have to watch them because like any cucumber they go a little soft.

So…. I just pickled ‘em! A not at all scientific mixture of soy sauce, rice vinegar, chili garlic paste, salt, sugar.

 

And served them with the most amazing faux-gado-gado. (Say it out loud. You know you want to). This was sort of a healthier, hippie-er gado gado.

Basically, it was vegetables as a peanut sauce vehicle, actually.

Well and ACTUALLY the peanut sauce was sunflower seed sauce.

Enough new paragraphs, this is just a disjointed recollection now. Whatever.

I made some quinoa to mix with the gado gado, cause I’d gotten new red quinoa and that seemed as good a reason as any. I hardboiled eggs, which I consider the essential element of gado gado. I roasted some random vegetables we had around the house. Roasted vegetables are not authentic to gado gado; I simply prefer my carrots and beets roasted. I put some spinach on a plate, followed by the veggies and egg. Then I made my “peanut” sauce- I used sunflower seed butter because I’ve grown to find it too sweet on its own and I thought it’d be niced mixed with other things in a sauce which, SPOILER ALERT, it was. Sunflower seed butter, coconut milk, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and chili-garlic paste.

Dude, it was so good I ate it with a spoon the next day.

 

But this all together is a nice well-rounded meal, nutritionally and flavor-ally (especially with the pickles!) and texturally.

Another fun invention! Sweet potato quiche crust. Whoooooooa.

I blended up part of a baked sweet potato, some flaxseeds, some walnuts, some oats and a little olive oil in a food processor. Couldn’t tell you the quantities but I’ll definitely make it again and get a solid recipe because HOT DAMN THIS WAS GOOD.

With ‘sparagus and ‘shrooms atop, and then a haphazard amount of beaten up eggs and cheese atop that.

I never follow recipes with quiches, which becomes a problem when I overcook them and get gross rubbery eggs. I did it just right this time; cooked it at a nice low 300 and pulled it out when the middle was JUST set. So the egg department was good and the crust department was GREAT! I prebaked it a bit before adding the eggs. For… awhile (this is so obnoxious of me, talking about a great thing I made and making no effort whatsoever to make it reproducible). And when the crust came out of the oven it was just so great and sweet and rich and chewy. Not like typical crust but… awesome. Unique.

   

A final fun thing was dog sitting! I have lately been harboring (unwise) fantasies of getting a dog. And lucky me, I got to borrow one, and it was an exceptionally nice one, AND I was paid RIDICULOUSLY GENEROUSLY for the privilege AND got to use a really boss grill.

Well mostly Steve grilled. And Zia supervised.

   

Annnnnd then things got a little messy with the grill. And we decided the pizza already had some beautiful char so we’d move operations inside. Where, as an added bonus, there was better (er, any) light.

Toppings included mushrooms, green pepper, fresh tomatoes, and slab mozzarella.

 

Supervision continued.

 

Pizza was bossy.

 

And served with a hastily thrown together Whole Foods salad bar salad I only bothered to photograph outside.

I’ll have more to write about various life things later, but let me sum up in saying that the portrayal of your twenties in the mass media is RUBBISH. Sure, maybe you’re young and good looking, but WOW it is a DIFFICULT time. Particularly during the Great Recession.

In my chemistry class, which is filled with tiny little 18-year-olds, one of them was saying how she wanted to get married when she was 21, and my 37 year old classmate and I said NOOOOOO. Not to belittle anyone who got married young, of course. Just, as I put it to her, you have to give yourself the time and space in your twenties to go a little crazy. No, I’m not talking about boozing face or snorting coke necessarily (I mean, sure some people do but I certainly didn’t). I’m just talking about all the cognitive… messiness that comes with your twenties.

I’m not all the way on the other end of it, but I’m feeling retrospective about certain forms of my twenties craziness, which is a relief. And I’m excited for the next phase!

how to feel good

I think many of us share the sentiments The Onion shared this week (note- contains profanity!)

Thank goodness some of the awfulness is behind us (though it all felt a bit Fahrenheit 451-esque yesterday, watching the manhunt- literally seeing a Google Earth image of the house where the shootout was happening). Texas and the US Congress are still a mess.

So here are some things that make me feel better, this week and generally.

Hugs.

If you are lucky enough to love someone and have him or her in hugging distance, give ‘em a solid one. Hugs are great. Particularly if you are blessed with a boyfriend with really great arms.

If you have a pet, hug them. Stroking an animal reduces your blood pressure and floods your brain with oxytoxin, the happy bonding chemical.

And let’s be honest we crave time with animals at times of stress. I spent some of Friday texting back and forth with my friend Eireni, who was trapped inside in Boston. She opined how much she wished she had a puppy with her. I, glued to the TV news at my aunt’s house, snapped a cell phone picture of her Scotties and sent it back. I hope it helped!

Cats are also very cute, obviously. Sheila continues to obsessively monitor her “bunker”, the hollow, dug-out area under the front stoop into which she squeezes and hides out from time to time.

The Movie Pitch Perfect

Good Lord! That movie is really funny! When I saw the ads I thought it’d be a singing version of Bring it On but it is- and I mean this in the best possible way- absolutely bizarre. I loved the fact that some parts of it echoed the real world (aka most of the people in it looked like REAL PEOPLE, not Hollywood automatons; and they really captured some of the little details of college, even things as stupid as watching movies on laptops with friends in your dorm room). And then parts of it were not at all real like nighttime alleyway sing-offs between a capella groups.

It made for a great, girlie movie night with my cousin. Probably don’t subject someone who isn’t a slightly weird music enthusiast to it without prior warning.

Deep Dish Pizza

If you are in the greater Chicago area, you can buy one. If your only option is the Pizzeria Uno’s at the mall, make your own. From this absolutely succulent and astonishingly easy King Arthur recipe.

It makes for a very fun date night, making deep dish together.

Get started with the dough and whatnot, take a walk or something, then start putting it all together. Note that since we don’t have a deep dish pizza pan, we ended up using two eight inch cake pans and one nine inch pie pan. We also made our own sauce  and pizza seasoning just with dried herbs and some crushed red pepper flakes. For toppings, we opted to use spinach and mushrooms and since Steve prefers them raw we didn’t bother to saute. And in the FINAL change, we added just 1 cup or so whole wheat flour because we simply ran out of white flour.

 

It. was. awesome. We agreed that the crust was a mite oily and could’ve stood to be a little less soft; and that we’d enjoy adding more cornmeal just because both of us are partial to the deep dish at Gino’s East in Chicago and theirs is delightfully corn-y and crunchy. That being said, it was far and away the best homemade pizza I’ve ever tasted; a near perfect replica of the restaurant stuff and yet surprisingly quick, easy, and intuitive to make.

 

Whimsy.

My family is Greek Orthodox Christian and we’re on a different calendar so our Easter isn’t til May 5th. My sister was trapped at CVS waiting for a prescription, and, in an excellent example of making lemonade out of life’s lemons, the theme of this post, she used the opportunity to buy greatly discounted Easter candy and eggs.

And hid them around our house, making for a very very fun few weeks. Fun and chocolatey.

 

The resilience of nature

The pansies planted in our little garden box in the front have colonized the most inhospitable parts of our property.

   

The ones on the lawn have subsequently been mowed, sigh. I really look forward to leaving the suburbs soon. People care way too much about their lawns.

Gardening!

This is the most exciting thing on the list, and exceedingly topical for April. When I left my aunt’s house, she sent me home with some leftover seeds she had from planting her garden!

Zucchini, basil, mint, two kindsa heirloom tomatoes…

 

… plus a random pack of dill seeds I got in a Triscuit box!

So I got to planting. Planting seeds is one of the most pleasant, relaxing activities there is.

I opted to give my little seedlets a gentle beginning to their life, nurturing them in smaller containers indoors til they sprout, then bringing them outside. (Steve is doing something similar with the cutest little greenhouse kit he got as a gift from a friend. He’s been diligently moving the plants in and out of his apartment to give them daytime sunshine and nighttime warmth).

Lacking a cute little greenhouse kit, I grabbed some random containers from the recycling bin (strawberry containers work particularly well, as you’ll see when you take a look at the planter) and stabbed holes in their bottoms for drainage.

Then I sowed the seedlets per package direction (er, for the ones that had directions… on the other ones I guessed!) and covered them up with moist soil. (Obviously, I did this part outside… then moved them back in).

Labeled everything, since I haven’t the slightest ability to differentiate different plants’ leaves.

As in my tomato growing adventure last year, I will undoubtedly document this year’s garden journey with the same unrelenting obsessiveness.

What brought you joy during this sucky week?