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!

truly random

Want some fascinating insight into the incredibly professional way that I organize my blog content? Because I’m obviously so timely and thoughtful about the pictures and text that go into this blog, a venture that gains me a huge amount of sponsorship and money?

</sarcasm>

So it’s incredibly sophisticated (not). I have a folder on my desktop entitled, rather obviously, “recent blog pix”. Sometimes the pictures I find on my camera organize themselves into fairly obvious themes (though that “Berkeley Springs” folder refers to a trip Steve and I took in, oh, August, which I still haven’t blogged about).

Others, though, get sent to the “random” folder til I figure out what to do with them.

Then some of them end up (sort of) sticking with a similar theme, and I can organize them once again into sub-folders.

Occasionally, though, I end up with something- yes, you can read- “truly random”.

Thus this post.

Some things in the random folder are a single snapshot of a moment I found amusing and/or delicious looking.

Steve and I took a walk on our trail, which goes right by a Whole Foods, where I always always stop to go to the bathroom. If we make purchases there, they are generally predictable- mine are obnoxiously food blogg-y and his are in very large quantities.

I won’t make you guess whose is whose.

 

Sometimes the things I put in the “random” folder encompass a single occasion but are not in and of themselves enough for an entire post. For example, if they’re taken somewhere poorly lit and I am too lazy to get off the couch and take pictures somewhere they’ll look nice.

Like last night’s rather tragic playoff game (if I knew where RGIII lived I would bake him some brownies and bring theme over. Poor kiddo.)

This picture was taken early in the game, when we foolishly believed we were doing great, had tons of positive momentum, etc. (In all seriousness, I care very little about the Redskins and sports. And limited exposure to football has really not properly insulated me to the reality that there are a LOT OF FOOTBALL TEAMS, and only ONE of them actually wins. That’s how the sport works. Yeah, duh, but when you watch football oh, twice a year, you get way more emotionally involved than is prudent).

I hadn’t planned on being hungry for a meal at 4 in the afternoon (…) but Steve brought out some gorgeous sourdough and some delicious apple and strawberry butters he and his roommmate’d bought when they were down hiking in the Shenandoahs.

DANG. My blood sugar spiking never tasted so good (well yes it did.)

  

Steve also made somewhat healthier his and hers parfaits, which involved plain yogurt, frozen blueberries, raw oats, and chopped almonds. I don’t have to say which is which.

The main event, which was mad tasty, was a big platter of stuffed peppers. Steve made up the stuffing which included rice, beans, veggies, and cheese. All pretty standard, til he had the idea to put a fried egg on top.

He was distraught when he broke the yolk of the one going on top of his. I took a picture anyway, plus the one of the filling on mine (I was so full from the other components of the meal I could only eat about half of it).

 

Quite nice.

Another random picture: someone was sick and I made them a tray of hot and sour soup. You know all you really need for hot and sour soup? Chicken broth (or even just veggie), an egg (break it in while the broth is boiling, stir constantly with a fork), soy sauce, hot sauce, and vinegar. Anything else is optional.

   

Here’s a meal I ate a long time ago I’m just now sharing.

Fact: I do well when I make food in advance and I can just reheat. Probably because once I find myself hungry I am HUNGRY. IMMEDIATELY. AND HAVE TO EAT IMMEDIATELY. And when I don’t have that advanced preparation, things like handfuls of cereal too often end up in my mouth.

So I made some whole wheat calzones- yum! You can put basically any leftovers (vegetables are always a good addition, obviously) in calzone dough.

This one involved beef and green peppers, yum. Truthfully I can’t remember if this is one of the ones I made with Mexican seasoning (cumin, tomatoes, etc.) or Chinese seasoning (ginger, hoisin sauce, etc.) Both incarnations were good, and invaluable when eating lunch in a hurry.

Rounding out the meal, I made a salad out of shaved summer squash ribbons (yum), shaved parmesan (yum), olive oil and lemon juice and BASIL, which I’m sure I grew, which shows you how old these pictures are.

Also some kind of yogurt with some kind of fruit puree.

 

And one of my many vices, diet soda. With How to Cook Everything Vegetarian in the background, since it is one of my favorite cookbooks and I read it for fun.

In retrospect, this meal was kind of huge. But I certainly don’t remember having any difficulty eating it.

      

I have seriously no clue what the deal is with these.

Clearly these are dishes of brownies and bread pudding.

I make both a lot.

I have no idea what I made these for. NO IDEA. Hope it was fun. And that people ate them.

Here was a nice family party. My aunt Dena had people over when my cousin Rachel, her husband Richard, and their bambino Jack were in town. They were visiting from Austin, TX, the city where many of my friends and family seem to’ve made a mass exodus. A city with amazing food and even better music. A city Steve is visiting next week and I am not because of stupid class.

Anyway, all the food was (par for the course) excellent.

 

Particularly noteworthy was this dish that’s a specialty of my aunt Kathy: baked brie with fig jam, wrapped in puff pastry (I mean come on…) served with tart green apple slices.

Do I even have to tell you how good this was?

 

Finally, I love Scrabble, particularly since Steve and I quit keeping score. We have an essential difference in worldviews: I like using clever and impressive vocabulary words… he likes getting obscene numbers of points. He’s one of those terrible people who knows all of the two letter words containing q in the dictionary. But not keeping score is where it’s at, man. It resulted in Steve playing this awesome word that I had to photograph.

And thus concludes the January 2013 randomness dump. Based on my attention span and sense of humor, I have no doubt there will be many more to come.

my family loves food

Meet Jack. He is the newest member of my family.

Like all members of my family, he loooooooooooves food.

We had a “Yay! Rachel and Richard are here and now they also have a cute baby!” Rachel and Richard live in Austin, TX, my favorite place (you can see me rhapsodize about some of my visits in which I got to go backstage with the flaming lips, ate the best brussels sprouts ever which I've been subsequently trying to recreate, got a dirty sanchez (it's a taco! read the post!), got the most flattering picture that's ever been taken of me and generally, like many people before me, discovered my latent Austin powers. Oh and also brunch with chickens).

So, we were excited to catch up with them and BABY!

Like any family event, that meant huge quantities of food.

  

It was all really good and I hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep the night before and man that makes me eat a lot!

Here are some pictures I selected to take that are in no way representative of quantities.

An excellent sammich:

Cheese tomato and pesto.

And my grandmother’s signature plum cake (which appeared to also include peaches, mmm).

 

Oh, I need to amend the eating claim cause of Kayla. My wonderful and precocious but entirely too picky cousin, who was also visiting from out of town (she lives in Denver.) With the feast on that table, from what I can tell, all Kayla consumed was this Izze:

And then some Ben and Jerry’s. Calcium for growing bones?

Also growing bones! He is all adorable and bouncy and happy.

 

Well, although. Poor guy. He was still largely adorable and bouncy and happy two weeks later, yesterday, when we celebrated our Easter (as I mentioned in my previous post, we Greeks are on a different schedule, so ours was a week later than everyone else this year), but poor little Jack was also quite jet lagged, having spent time in England with his other relatives. So… waking up at 1am meant waking up at 7am! He was ready to go. Both baby and parents looked a little beat.

Fortunately, there was GREAT FOOD to wake them up! (My family. loves. food.)

A small sampling of the selection:

 

For me the highlight was the LAMB! I didn’t eat meat all of Lent. And honestly, even if I had, lamb is the best. Theeeee bessssssssssst.

For some reason, I also opted to photograph this attractive tray of pickled veggies. All were great.

This is a general overview of what I ate that was savory.

 

(lamb with tzaziki; succulent and lamb-y roasted potatoes; beet greens; pickled turnips; a piece of pita with taramosalata, which is a dip made of whipped up fish roe, bread, and lemon juice; salad; manestra which is orzo cooked up with lamb drippings; and spanikopita)

But the sweets, ohhh, the sweets.

I had been selected to take home a veggie tray leftover from a work event, so I had massive quantities of baby carrots. To me, that meant, obviously, I should make carrot cake!

I began with this highly rated carrot cake from Cooking Light.

And then, I didn’t have any cream cheese icing. But obvi, the cake needed something atop it. So I selected this butter packed glaze (halfed the recipe for an 8 by 8 inch pan).

As seems to be my habit when I make anything these days, I then made… caramel. Why does that happen?

But it wasn’t burnt caramel, so I persevered.

Pulled the cake out of the oven…

… glazed the cake

NO. DON’T DO THAT.

Take the cake out of the oven, then PUT IT ON THE SERVING PLATE, THEN GLAZE IT!

Otherwise you will remove the cake from your serving plate by breaking it in half, as I did, and have yourself a canyon cake.

Which is too bad, as it’d been beautifully decorated with carrot shavings and “leaves” made out of mini Christmas tree sprinkles.

C’est la vie. It was still delicious (the butter glaze perhaps negating the healthiness of the Cooking Light cake)

We had quite the dessert collection (and this was before the mini cupcakes arrived!)

Here’s a NOT AT ALL EVEN REMOTELY REPRESENTATIVE picture of what I ate. It’s just an overview of the selection!

At 2:00, my cake. Then kadithopita, made by my aunt Dena, which is sort of an amalgamation of cracker crumbs (she used Melba toast) bound into a cake, then thoroughly soaked in a wonderful honey-sweet glaze; one of the mini cupcakes which had wonderful orange-y frosting, and half (yeah right) a piece of koulouraikia, a wonderful eggy Greek cookie.

Again, not remotely representative.

We’d also brought baklava (my poor mom spent hours making it the day before and then had a horrible migraine on Easter and missed all the festivities. UGH.) I didn’t have any of that only because I’d had roughly fourteen pieces earlier in the day.

But WAIT.

My aunt and uncle (Rachel’s parents) were nice enough to give her and Richard a night at a hotel and their babysitting services so that they could go out and have fun and then get a good night’s sleep sans baby.

And they invited Steve and I (and my cousin Lara) along to join them for drinks, which we got at Brabo tasting room.

We all got drinks, and then Richard wanted a snack and ordered cheese and pate, of which I then proceeded to eat a ton as well because they were OH MY GOD SO GOOD.

Particularly great: that blue cheese with the quince. Oh and the goat cheese with the honey. Oh and everything.

MEAT. SO GOOD MEAT!

And then we all went up to their glamorous hotel room (they got a free upgrade to a suite with a balcony, a claw footed bathtub, and a private staircase, among other perks. What?!) and we played a delightful round of cards. And I was reminded that my family is amazing, in matters culinary and otherwise.