the new orleans deliciousness continues

The inarguable highlight of our second afternoon in New Orleans was a trip to a landmark:

YESSSSSSSSSS! More on that in a second.

Since it became apparent very early on in the trip that consuming enormous quantities of (often fried) food was going to be an essential part of my stay in New Orleans, I decided to just go with it and maintain some peace of mind by walking extraordinary amounts. Our po’boys and daiquiri fueled first day included an impressive 10.5 mile walk. Our second, a beautiful stroll down Saint Charles Avenue to the famous French Quarter and back, 7.5 miles or so. I’ll take it.

Especially when there were praline samples to be had to fortify us on our trip.

And, since Steve was there and needed second lunch, pizza options to explore.

[Don’t we love that casual pizza places in New Orleans have beer pairings?!]

I clearly missed the memo about Gulf shrimp. Again, these were not tiny! These were jumbo shrimp! (Oxymoron alert).

 

Now, back to that first picture… in case you couldn’t quite guess the contents of that bag…

Ohhhhhh yes. The famous Cafe Du Monde.

Let me first say that the walk through the French Quarter to Cafe du Monde is lovely. Beautiful homes and hotels to be seen, the music of street musicians wafting around (particularly amusing was a girl who was playing the accordion with impressive talent accompanied by a dude who sang wretchedly and was clearly stoned out of his mind. It was quite entertaining!), fun little shops to pop into (including the most extensive hot sauce selection I’ve ever beheld at one spot).

And Cafe du Monde, while clearly a tourist attraction, runs like a well oiled machine. (Note! Cash only. But cheap. It’s like $2 and some change for what we got, and if you’re looking at price per calorie it’s epic!)

As for the beignets.. If you haven’t experienced them this description isn’t going to do much for you but they’re… fried dough. With powdered sugar. And SO MUCH MORE. Guys, beignets are… they just… I can’t even put into words how good they are. Doughy in the middle, crunchy on the outside, yeasty, crisp, sweet…. they are just absolute heaven.

On the map I saw a place called the French Market, and I was all excited to meander around it, envisioning handsome men carrying baguettes and cheese samples and the like, but it was ultimately a bit depressingly touristy. No cat lady t-shirts (though there were a lot of places selling things like that in the French Quarter, being a tourist-oriented part of town) but the restaurants looked more designed to please every palate than truly impart the culinary quirks of Nola.

I did enjoy this pun.

Meander meander. On the one hand, I was all, “Look at those exquisite buildings! I would love to live in the French Quarter!”

On the other hand… Bourbon Street. Yelling. Puking. Spilling. Fighting.

It being a landmark and all, Steve and I both wanted to experience it… just to say we had, pretty much. So off we went to indulge in overpriced drinks in the company of the friendly and inebriated.

The first place we ducked into had a balcony (big plus, and why we picked it), live music (semi-plus; I love live music but wasn’t that dazzled by their sound, but according to Steve their between-songs rappeur was “hilarious”. I was in the bathroom and missed it) but no mojitos (big minus; New Orleans is HOT and you really just want a mojito).

Fortunately, the very cool bartender joined us in bemoaning the fact that most of the bars along that strip did not serve mojitos because it’s a pain to muddle lime… then referred us to one that did, Pat O’Briens. And told us which of the (several) bars on their premises to which to bequeath our hard-earned dollars, which he assured us would have the lowest prices.

And the mojitos were ours.

 

With a nice fountain view.

 

I have turned into a real lightweight and spent the entire walk back from the French Quarter (keep in mind, almost 4 hours) spontaneously breaking into dance, blurting out deep down emotional pronouncements, and laughing at Peniston Street. Again.

Fortunately, the absurd effects of my single drink (!) wore off by the time we did dinner with the family.

My sister recommended Ignatius, another lovely restaurant on Magazine Street. Once again, we sat outside.

  

Like many of the restaurant choices in Nola, they had an impressive small plate selection, so I opted for the shrimp and grits and a side of greens.

Lorrrrrrrrrrd those shrimp and grits were good. (Sidebar: have we been taking note of how much shrimp I ate in New Orleans?! Hoping I didn’t have any underlying cholesterol issues prior to this trip!)

The shrimp, per usual, were fat and juicy and cooked just right but WOWZA that gravy was sumthin’. Smoky, tangy, and rich. And the grits, while certainly serving as an impressive butter vehicle, still had a nice assertive flavor and texture of their own. This was GOOD GOOD GOOD.

The greens were my attempt at getting a serving of vegetables in for, oh… the first time on the trip? They were those lovely Southern-style greens. You know, cooked for hours and hours until basically devoid of nutrients.

Malindi got the same shrimp and grits along with a fried green tomato salad (!) that she shared. And both my mom and Steve got the Jambalaya, which was A+.

Cute story: I thought our waiter was kind of reserved or unfriendly or something, but then as he was clearing our plates, he noticed Malindi still had food left, shot her a grin, and told her to “keep nibblin’”. ADORABLE.

Final note, Steve TREATED everyone to dinner! Thanks pal!

Another crappy night’s sleep, involving a deflating air mattress (…) followed. It was just as well that I didn’t sleep much- more time to see what the lovely city had to offer. I snuck out of Malindi’s dorm room, leaving Steve to get a bit more shut-eye, and made the pleasant stroll to The Chimes once again.

Jill was nice enough to invite Steve and I for breakfast.

Due to a legal system that contains a certain amount of whimsy, The Chimes is not allowed to have any on-site cooking. So, Jill goes down the street to the French Bakery every morning and brings in delicious baked goods.

Nibble nibble nibble. I didn’t eat all of these… but more bread may have happened too :)

Then we were off to another bee-yoo-tiful neighborhood, Bayou Saint John. New Orleans is a little weird with the urban planning- you drive around and you’re on grimy, ugly, strip-mall-y roads, and then you take a turn and drive two blocks and BOOM, you’re somewhere GORGEOUS. It’s all a bit uneven.

This is a bayou. (Secret: I have no idea what a bayou actually is. My little sister spent four years in Louisiana and she does not know either, which makes me feel better).

We originally arrived to attend the Bayou Boogaloo street festival, with live music and the like, and the colorful sign looked promising:

But we turned out to be too early. So instead we took the recommendation of an incredibly friendly local who told us we could find what she considered the best po’boy in New Orleans here:

A LOT of people agreed. I heard some local types go, “Ugh, that’s right, it’s Tulane graduation this weekend.”

*cough* Sorry.

Some of the past visitors were famous!

(Can you imagine trying to eat a messy po’boy wearing a suit and tie?! Reason 203485720835602837502835 I don’t want to be president.)

After a long wait to order and then receive our food, I would’ve eaten just about anything, but these sweet potato fries went down real nice. Particularly, in a fun combination I made after raiding the condiments bar out of simple curiosity, with cocktail sauce.

As for my po’boy, initially a bit enigmatic..

Pulled open to reveal it was comprised of a roll, fried catfish, lettuce, tomato, and pickles…

The bread was only so so. And the lettuce was pre-bagged and seemed to be giving out in the Louisiana heat.

Not to worry. I just ate the perrrrrrrrrrrrfect catfish. Fish and chips lunch, Nola style. It was magnificent and in and of itself earned Parkway Bakery its fame.

Also: back in 2005, Parkway Bakery flooded six feet deep. So a toast both to their perfect catfish and their enduring spirit.

The post-lunch activity could’ve easily consisted of a food coma, but instead we took a stroll, to the City Park. We didn’t make it into the museum, but we checked out the sculpture garden, the old-fashioned amusement park (which was ADORABLE; I was heartbroken it wasn’t open) and peeked in at the film they were shooting (!) (Didn’t recognize anyone)

The best part, though, was the natural scenery. As my mom wisely pointed out, you can see where they got the inspiration for putting Mardi Gras beads on trees. The lovely Spanish moss makes that shape naturally!

More to come!

oot and aboot

I’ve been trying to rein in my antisocial tendencies lately, and it’s been surprisingly nice. My high school friends have graduated (taking four years like normal people) and are now home, at least for the time being… as am I. *Sigh*

Anyway, I’ve been on enjoyable outings.

This afternoon, I headed to Le Matin de Paris. Lest all the Eiffel Tower replicas fool you, this is a KOREAN bakery. I traveled not to France but to Annandale, Virginia, also known as Little Korea. It’s good eats.

There was a vast, dazzling, overwhelming display of pastries.

Let me give you a closeup of that item on the upper left…

Ah yes, the nutrition pound cake. Obviously.

They have oxymoronic baked goods, and they also have very LITERAL baked goods. An example is the banana bread:

Too cute, right?!

What I really wanted was Bingsoo (shaved ice) but stupid Cristina was incubating a cold and didn’t want to share germs, and they are huge and overpriced ($7?!?!?!?!?!?!) so I didn’t want to eat one on my own.

I grudgingly got a pastry- the peanut flavored Saboro bread.

It contained a nutty crisped outside surrounding dough that was sort of like a croissant in terms of lightness but yeastier and less layer-y. If that makes sense. A proper pastry person would be able to describe it better. Yummy!

Cristina’s pastry was craycray!

From the outside in, peanut butter cookie; chocolate cookie; raisins; peanuts; raspberry jam; cream filling!

Quite tasty.

For complicated reasons of business and workness and plans I’m not sharing til they’re finalized, I ate breakfast at 8:30 in the morning and didn’t have lunch til 3. I turn into SUCH A LUNATIC when I don’t eat! I had lunch, but I was still plenty hungry when I got to the bakery. Thus… pastry extravaganza.

Thus, now have stomachache.

Anyway, more merriment earlier in the week.

My bestie just moved to Adams Morgan, one of the bestest parts of D.C. (her building is also right next to the ZOO!) and we all met up and strolled around and stumbled upon the lurvely rooftop bar at Reef.

It was all open air and breezy and you could look down and people watch and there were these pretty poofy things on the ceiling…

… and all that being said you’ll just have to let my words assure you the ambiance was lovely, since the pictures are rubbish!

I tried to get Lyddie, poofy thing, and view in the same shot and didn’t do a great job of capturing any of them.

The best part, however, was that they had FRAMBOISE BEER!

The luscious frothy sweet raspberrylicious not beer-tasting beer! I had it for free at that embassy tour awhile back and I generally hate beer so shrieked with excitement when I saw it on the menu here. I know it is not *standard* at bars but at least it *exists* outside of Belgium (or its embassies)!

Another fun night- there’s this “diner” (it’s a chain, it’s all glossy and corporate, but it’s fun enough) called Silver Diner. I had a coupon cause they’re doing this weird promotion where they’re pretending to be into local food.

So I met up with my friend Indu for dinner.

For eats we split their black bean quesadilla which was new on the menu and was actually shockingly good (super veg heavy and zesty!). Multiply this times two.

Butttttt quite honestly the main reason anyone should ever go to Silver Diner is their milkshakes. As part of their little makeover, they now have “healthy” (not really) ones now made with fat-free ice cream (gross- if you want a fat-free dessert eat a piece of fruit) but we split the real deal.

Behold, the peppermint patty (with Indu, unaware she is being photographed, but milkshake-induced-happy, in the background).

Vanilla ice cream, mint syrup, and crushed Oreos. SO AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS.

And as you can see, a single serving nets you a gigantic parfait glass and an almost-as-full overflow glass:

We powered through :D Man it was good.

Then there was a sudden and aggressive storm and we were like aaaaaaargh umbrellas in cars but then it ended and there was a shockingly beautiful configuration of clouds which I captured only poorly.

classy ladies

My bestest pally, Lydia, recently simultaneously celebrated her college graduation and 22nd birthday. Once I returned from Austin, I had to take her out whoo!

I love this picture of us.

Taken at The Jolly Roger (people who go to the Outer Banks, this place makes the best brunch ever!) last summer at the beach.

Since we are classy ladies, and we like the ladies’ things (anyone who understands and appreciates that link has my undying love),  we headed to Grand Cru, a wine store and wine bar (I guess that’s what Vineria roughly translates to?) in Arlington.

It was quite nice because you could sit outside and admire the trees and flowers and things (er… ignore the “Big Buns” sign… for the record that’s a burger place, no funny business).

*Sigh* if this were Austin, there’d be a band.

The reason the seats are a bit unoccupied is that it was still… a bit early. It was five o’clock… in Newfoundland. Nonetheless, we ordered. We decided this made us “European” rather than “alcoholics”. I asked Lydia to convey this with a pose, and she obliged.

 

House Pinot Noir for her, Chardonnay for me. Nice deal: if you’re on Yelp and mention them, a house wine is $4!

We chatted and caught up for QUITE awhile, then admired the wine selection at Grand Cru’s shop which was impressive but overpriced.

Now, this was a first for me: I was driving home. I have drunk alcohol before. I have driven a car before. But I have not driven a car after drinking. I had one glass of wine and was not at all impaired, but I still felt a little weird about it, mentally.

So we hunted down a delicious snack to soak up the alkie-hol :D

Which led us to Tivoli Gourmet and THIS beautiful thing:

Flaky-crusted, almond-sprinkled, melting apple and raisin-filled struuuuuuuuuuuudel!

Lyddie and I split one- this is a mere HALF.

Scrumptious to the nth degree. All birthdays should be celebrated with wine and pastry, in my opinion (well, all adult birthdays).

Is this picture artfully blurred or just blurred? I hate that all of my posts have at least one picture I am just not satisfied with.

For dinner (once I finally regained my appetite- conveniently my mother worked late so we ate on European time), I decided it had been far too long since I made this lovely pasta recipe with the classiest (and most delicious) vegetable of all time: Anna’s pasta with artichoke-walnut-lemon zest-parsley topper. NO WORDS! I slightly ghetto-fied it by not bothering with the breadcrumbs and just tossing it together as a nice cool pasta salad. It is such a great weeknight meal.

It takes twenty minutes tops and it is CRAMMED WITH FLAVA. And no wonder because it contains what I would argue are two integral ingredients for adding tons of flavor with no work- fresh herbs and lemon. Yummers!

  

Classy: that’s a tablecloth from Greece. Slightly less classy: we took it out and put it on our dining room table… for Easter. We just haven’t bothered to put it away. We so rarely use the dining room… except for blog photographs!

stupid cereal

I had an exceptionally horrible 10th grade English teacher, and the only thing that got me through her class was the snarky comments made by me and my obnoxious friends who (naturally) sat in the back of the room. One day, after a particularly incoherent ramble, my friend Stephanie shot her eyes up to Miss Jones, then looked straight at me and said, “She woke up one morning, ate a box of stupid cereal, and never recovered!”

It became me and Steph’s slang (our version of “drink the Koolaid”, if you will) and it’s handy.

So I ate the stupid cereal today. By erasing all the pictures on my camera. Yep. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. In general, I’ve been stupid a lot lately, and having so much free time due to joblessness, I have very little to think about other than the stupid things I do. It’s unpleasant. Thank God I got a summer internship before my real job starts!

Sooooooo after a lovely day I have one decent picture:

At least it was really good! Sweetgreen frozen yogurt in Georgetown (that’s Francis Scott Key park in the background, not far from the Exorcist stairs!).

Sweetgreen serves organic yogurt, has compostable packaging, uses wind energy, etc. etc. They’re great! As is the FroYo. I usually don’t get toppings, but it’s included in the price ($4 for the small size seen above) so I got my yogurt (they do only the tart flavor mmmmm) with blueberries, cinnamon cooked pears, and candied walnuts (!)

Rewinding to before I ate the stupid cereal, I beheld the “Mix Up Your Day” trail mix sent to me YouBar and thought to myself, “Most of those ingredients sound like rockin’ overnight oats!”

I took out the savory ingredient (oat bran sesame sticks which were AWWWWWWESOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMME for anyone looking to customize their own trail mix- crunchy and crazy flavorful!) and was left with what remained: coconut, goji berries, dried pineapples, cashews (raw, boo), and almonds.

I like making two bowls of overnight oats (one for me, one for my mama, who is now a confirmed addict). It takes the same amount of time as one and you can split up ingredients and I’ve come up with proportions I really like.

Each bowl received:

1/2 a cherry yogurt
1/2 cup oats
1 T Ruth’s Chia Goodness, apple cinnamon flavor
1/4 apple
1/2 a packet of the trail mix

So how’d the trail mix fare as a topping? I was SO SO SO CORRECT! This was the best bowl of o.o.’s I’ve had in recent memory! The goji berries are SERIOUSLY nummy, and the coconut added an awesome new textural component. The dried pineapple was also great, and my only complaint is that there wasn’t more of it!

Apologies for the lame artificially-lit picture. I took it last night. I took more this morning, but… yknow. The cereal.

Also, I’m particularly vexed about this picture:

Split the Honey Cashew YouBar (also a gift from YouBar) as a hiking snack and got a decent picture of it, but… stupid cereal! But saved a little bit because we were full (it’s vair filling!) so got a picture after the cereal bonanza.

But it was so so so intensely good that I’m hoping the enthusiasm of this review will make up for the lameness of the picture.

To that end: HONEY CASHEW YOUBARS TASTE LIKE DELICIOUS DELICIOUS COOKIES! Despite being bars with 10 grams of protein, they somehow taste like buttery crumbly slightly crisped COOKIES! Ingredients are simply cashew butter, honey, whey protein (also a plus! I get skeeved out by the ominpresence of soy), and Perky’s Nutty Rice Cereal, which has a name that cracks me up but a sublime texture that makes me happy.

Finally, I know this is a food blog, but I was reading the Times this morning and I noticed a map of where the protests and violence have been taking place in Bangkok.

Notice that green dot? I added that. It’s the location of the hotel where we stayed, a mere four months ago.

In Bangkok, I was overwhelmed by the hospitality and kindness of the Thai people. There was a general disdain for politicians but a genuine love for one’s neighbor. I’m praying, and I hope others are too, that the violence is quickly resolved and that the country is able to come back.