From Blue Stilton to Brillat Savarin: All about BS

Update!

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:24:28 GMT

Felipe's in the French Quarter is set to open tomorrow at the corner of Conti and S. Peters. Hooray!

La Divina FQ is now serving lunch. And they have a contest where if you can identify the author of the poem on the chalkboard, you get a free small gelato! Yesterday was Edna St. Vincent Millay. Hooray again, and thank you liberal arts degree!

Royale with Cheese

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:29:41 GMT

Here's what we ate last night: Cous cous Royale with pan-fried black drum and crispy plantains. Mike made everything and it was great. I'm calling the cous cous "Royale" because it was full of goodies: mango, lime juice, olives, mushrooms, a very hot pepper, and probably secret ingredients that I didn't see. The drum was two decent size fillets from Whole Foods, seasoned with Mike's "cajun seasoning" (mostly pepper, I guess). The plantains were sliced, flattened, and fried in olive oil. Very, very tasty.

And shockingly, all the ingredients added up to less than $23, a bargain for Whole Foods. It would have been less than $20 had I not sneaked a chunk of cheese in the cart. Plus we got 10 cents off for bringing a tote bag. And a large chunk of the price was for the fish, about $8. Anyway, that's fairly reasonable for Whole Foods, although pretty expensive for a meal at home.

Black drum is a fish that strikes a perfect balance for me: it's wild caught locally, if you can believe the signs at Whole Foods, which I guess I do. It's got a nice firm flesh and enough fat to be tasty and hold up well to abusive cooking like grilling or pan frying. And it's much cheaper than Foncy tuna and salmon steaks, so you can actually afford to eat it frequently. The downside of black drum (and even moreso its cousin red drum, aka redfish) is it's one of the more Mercury heavy fishes.

BUT, don't worry too much because mercury levels increase with weight, and we only eat the fish on the small end of the spectrum. So the drum that you get in the store is highly unlikely to contain an amount of mercury over the 0.5 ppm threshold level set by the Florida Department of Health. I couldn't find numbers for Louisiana, but I assume it's similar to Florida. Mercury in fish is one of the issues that I choose not to worry about, on the grounds that it can't be worse than hormones and toxins in beef, chicken, and pork; or the insecticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers used to grow vegetables, right? Right. Now get out there and support local seafood!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot the cheese. We had a cheese course of a nice round, grassy St. Nectaire, a fresh peppery Gorgonzola, and a mild, youngish sheep's milk that I can't remember the name of. That last was the one purchased on a whim at Whole Foods. The other two were left over from a Monday St. James run. It was unsuccessful as a cheese course, because the sheep cheese was totally drowned out by the blue and the St. Nectaire. It would have been ok if the St. Nectaire had been a little younger, but it was edging toward overripe and wasn't doing any favors for the mild, young sheep. That I wish I could remember the name of.

Two things

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:13:05 GMT

1. Had Mahoney's for supper last night. May be the last time, as Mike is onto my cunning plan of pretending to want a sandwich when really I only want onion rings. The poboy diversion: It worked for me, it can work for you.

2. They've opened branches of Felipe's (S. Peters @ Conti) and La Divina (St. Peter @ Cabildo Alley, where the Haagen Daz used to be). Actually the Felipe's might not be open yet, but they were putting up the signs this morning. At any rate, I went to the La Divina earlier and got a teeny Azteca, the one with the chocolate, honey, and pepper, aka the most awesomest ice cream in the universe. I went for a stroll with it, and it was tasty but challenging. The wind was blowing very hard and every step I had to choose between having a bite of gelato or risking my skirt blowing up. And I did get some drips blown onto my brand new cream-colored shirt. But I'd say it was still worth it.

BBQ Shrimp

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:29:08 GMT

Dino the Seafood Guy delivers seafood to French Quarter restaurants from coolers in the back of his pick-up. He also sells to the general public, who line up on the sidewalk to purchase speckled trout, redfish, softshell crabs, and so on. I don't know where Dino comes from, or what his relationship is to the seafood he sells. I suspect that he is not a fisherperson, but rather a sort of middleman who buys from commercial concerns at some docks that I imagine to be in Venice. What I do know for sure is that he is a piscian scammer.

Wednesday morning I paid him $20 for 5 pounds of fresh never frozen wild caught gulf shrimp. It was the last bag, and I offered to split it with a lady who was behind me and also wanted shrimp. Dino loudly and repeatedly insisted that 5 pounds wasn't that much and I wouldn't want to split it. The lady declined, and I got suspicious at Dino's interest in my offer to split. Why would he care? So I weighed the bag and sure enough, it was only 4.25 pounds of shrimp. The nerve! If you can't trust a bearded man selling unlabeled seafood out of the back of his truck in the French Quarter, who can you trust?

I ended up splitting what shrimp I did get with a coworker, and making BBQ Shrimp with my 2.125 pounds.

[Here's where the before and after pictures would be if I had a digital camera: A before of a pile of gorgeous plump shrimp draped with peppery butter sauce, and an after of the destroyed remains, shells and heads enthusiastically ripped from flesh.]

It was pretty good. Some of the shrimp were overcooked because I don't have a lot of practice cooking shrimp any way other than on the grill. It's difficult with BBQ shrimp because all the cooking is done over relatively low heat, but they still finish cooking before you have time to add all the butter. Unfortunately, it's the type of dish that a cardiovascularly responsible home cook won't ever get much practice at, since it takes at least a stick of butter per pound of shrimp to do it correctly.

There hasn't been much cheese around the house lately. This could account for my recent feelings of bewilderment and shock.

Bun ga nuong

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:17:58 GMT

Since it's been a month, including an evacuation, here's a list of recent food-related highlights:

1. Discovery of Mahoney's onion rings. Do yourself a favor - check these out ASAP before they get too popular and they start using frozen.

2. Commander's for Tony's birthday. Do yourself a favor - cultivate friends who work or used to work at Commander's.

3. Charlie's reopening. The only onion rings in the city that surpass Mahoney's. Plus wedge salad, bordelaise sauce, and the "small" rib eye.

4. Fleur de Lis Pizza, Baton Rouge. So good, it took my mind off Gustav! What would it take to get them to deliver to New Orleans?

5. Mystery sausage, Harriett's freezer, Baton Rouge. We were given this when she was cleaning out for Gustav. Two big wheels labeled "Do Not Sell," so it was almost certainly some kind of game that the butcher processed for a hunter. We threw it on the grill and it turned out to be venison. Awesome.

6. Pimon Thai, Lafayette. Hottest panang curry ever srsly, even though I ordered it medium. I got made fun of for having Yankee heat tolerance.

7. Baru, Magazine Street. Good food, but maybe not worth $133. That's for two people with no drinks. Just be aware what you're getting into here.

So, I'm back and settled in, and Ike's threat has passed New Orleans so we can all relax. Today is a little wet out; I guess the rain is from the Ike feeder bands. I was watching Saved by the Bell this morning (swear to Ranganathan, it was the Jessie on caffeine pills Very Special Episode: "I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm so...scared") instead of the news, so I didn't know it was going to start pouring until I was halfway to work on my bike. Luckily I brought dry clothes, but unluckily my backpack is evidently not waterproof. So my "dry" clothes have some damp patches.

Regarding the title of this post, we made bun ga nuong for dinner last night, which is just grilled chicken and vermacelli salad but it makes me feel sophisticated to use the Vietnamese words. I'd post a photo but I haven't been getting my donations from my friends for that new digital camera. I guess the mail is disrupted from Gustav. Anyway, it was really good, and also easy and cheap. First you marinate chicken thighs in a mixture of sugar, salt, pepper, fish sauce, and a neutral oil. I used honey instead of sugar, and I used quite a bit because I like honey and it's good for you. Marinate your thighs for 30 minutes or however long you want, then grill them. Get some vermacelli rice noodles, which they have at all the supermarkets now in the international section, or at the Hong Kong market in the regular old food section.  Cook them and add some chopped Vietnamese salad stuff: lettuce, carrots, cilantro, cucumbers, basil, peanuts, etc. Slice the chicken and put it over the noodle salad and voila.

I was going to comment that cilantro and parsley both have a ton of vitamin C and are very good for you, but as I was googling to find a source for this fact, I discovered something interesting. If you google "vitamin C parsley" you get many hits that seem to be DIY abortion instructions.  Check it out! But the fact remains that Vietnamese food is very healthy, and if you're like me and hate citrus fruit because of all that pith, you can just eat cilantro and parsley instead! But not if you're pregnant.

My Favorite Food (other than cheese)

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:56:13 GMT

I finally figured out what to do with the weird Danish/Arabic feta-like cheese, but it wasn't particularly creative. I melted it on thin slices of French bread drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with black pepper. It didn't really melt so well, it just got kind of soft but kept its shape. Tasty, but certainly not groundbreaking.

But that was just a snack. I don't really care for most of the items I've tried from August Moon, but it's close and cheap, and Mike was craving the fried noodles, banh pho xao, from the Vietnamese section of the menu. So I tried "Rainbow Fish," described on the menu as "Crispy filet of catfish, topped w/ mushrooms, sweet onions and scallions in house special tomato sauce." Well, it wasn't crispy at all, but it was pretty tasty. The flour batter was light and a little sweet. But it was the tomato sauce that made it the best dish I've ever had from August Moon. (That's not intended to be high praise.) The sauce was nicely acidic with medium cubes of tomato. With the onion and the cilantro, it was a simple, fresh tasting meal. Too bad it wasn't crispy though. What a waste to eat soggy fried fish.

Fried catfish is in my top 5 favorite foods, and I'm always on the lookout for it. One of the best and most memorable versions of fried catfish I've had was also from the hands of a Vietnamese cook, but in a much more interesting surrounding than August Moon. One morning, in early 2007, I tagged along with two friends of mine on a sightseeing trip through south Louisiana. They had evacuated New Orleans and eventually wound up at a camp on Cypremort Point, on Vermilion Bay south of New Iberia. This was an ideal refuge, until Rita came along and forced a re-evacuation to points north. That storm did a number on the little peninsula, and my friends wanted to visit and see how Cypremort's recovery was coming along. So we took of down Highway 90. About 2/3 of the way there, we stopped at a convenience store in Berwick, which is just over the bridge from Morgan City.  The people working in the store were Vietnamese, and they had some food on display near a handwritten menu. Everything looked good, so we asked for two orders of the catfish. Instead of scooping some out of the chafing dish, he went in the back and fried up two batches fresh. Maybe I was just really hungry, but it was some of the best fried catfish I've ever had. It had a hot and crunchy cornmeal crust with spices, covering flaky nuggets of wild caught fish.  And the portions were huge, such that the three of us could barely finish one order. We happily drank our Mexican pineapple cold drinks and stuffed ourselves, and chatted with the man who prepared our food and his cute toddler granddaughter.

We then headed down to Cypremort.  The visit was both sad and encouraging.  At the location of the camp where they had stayed, there was nothing left but a concrete slab and a post that had held the mailbox. On the other hand, many camps showed signs of construction and occupancy. The marina seemed to be up and running, and several houseboats were moored there.  I haven't been back since, but I'm sure by now it's back to being a thriving bayside community.

Our next stop was the Lydia, Louisiana Food Mart, where we discovered some locally made tamale boudin. That was a tasty pork treat flavored with cumin in addition to the usual blend of peppers and herbs.  Another treat was a visit to Richard's Seafood Patio in Abbeville, where we feasted on many pounds of boiled crawfish and cold beers. My friend even ran into some relatives there! This was followed by a visit to the original Maurice City Bar, where I picked up a tiger stripe coolie cup that is small enough to fit the 10 oz. beer cans you can still get many places in South Louisiana (they are smaller so that you can drink a whole one before it gets warm). A quick stop in Lafayette for Mello Joy coffee, and we were on our way back to New Orleans.

This reminds me that there's a little convenience store behind (but not connected with) Cochon on Andrew Higgins that sells great boudin. Mike, who is from Lafayette, says it's the best he's ever had in New Orleans.  If you're a boudin fan, get over there and check it out.

P.S. After the catfish, I had a cheese course of a little reblechon and a little comte, with some crostinis. It was a nice tasty creamy reblechon.

Farewell, trusty bexmobile

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:11:55 GMT

I just called Bridge House to arrange for them to come pick up my 1986 Toyota Camry, that has been sitting in front of Mike's old apartment since January 19th. If you're passing down St. Charles between now and Monday, glance down General Taylor just past Rayne Methodist Church for one last look. She's on the corner, right in front of the fire hydrant. A picture? If you insist.

This is in front of my house, sometime last year:

Here she is at her current location on General Taylor:

She's served me well these past 5 years. At least as well as you can expect from a 22 year old car running on 3 cylinders. I will be a little sad, because she was a present from my sister and brother-in-law for my college graduation.

I would post a photo of her awesome replacement, but I don't have any pictures of my bike.

Both of those photos are obviously pulled from the new Google Maps Street View. New Orleans streets went live yesterday morning I guess, and the whole town has been abuzz. Although it is slightly creepy that a stranger could see where you live, I have already used Street View in my work.

This morning I needed to find out some architectural details of a house on Burgundy, and I was able to view the Creole Cottage without stepping out into the oppressive August atmosphere. Then I needed to check whether the Governor Nicholls address written on a photograph was correct. 20 seconds later I confirmed that it was indeed. So I'm all for Street View, because it allows me to be more accurate in my cataloging descriptions. I guess I'm that creepy stranger looking at where those people live.

Monday Adventures

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:57:18 GMT

Monday is fun because it's the second day of my weekend. Tony and I have a somewhat permanent lunch date, and yesterday we went to Shogun Japanese Restaurant and Steakhouse on Vets. We both had Teishoku, the businessman's lunch box. Tony had tempura, and I had saba, a whole head/tail on grilled mackerel. Teishoku comes with many small dishes in addition to the "entree". You get a bowl of rice, miso, tsukemono (pickled things), that slightly sweet marinated eggplant stuff, seaweed salad, and few slices of sashimi (we had salmon and some kind of whitefish).

The mackerel was very good. Usually restaurants use smaller fish for whole grilled entrees, because they are perceived to be a higher-quality product. (Larger fish will be filleted and used for sushi or for grilled boneless fillets.) My mackerel had a great crispy skin and tasty flesh, but there were a lot of small bones. Due to my limited chopstick skill, it was difficult to pick out the bones from the slippery flesh. Eventually I was able to pull out the whole vertebra, but many teeny spines remained. So basically I looked like an idiot picking fish bones out of each bite, and then out of my mouth. Also I accidentally ate some of the grosser internal organs. I guess you're supposed to stick to the white stuff. Who knows, sometimes the colored innards are tasty. On crabs they call it "mustard" and it is considered a delicacy.

After that debacle (I'm surprised that Tony, who lived in Japan for several years and let's just say he knows his way around some Japanese food, wasn't so embarrassed that he stranded me in deepest darkest Metry, but he's a nice guy), we went by the Byblos Market. Here's a place you don't want to bring your MasterCard if you are tempted to try every Bulgarian goat cheese that's legal for import, and some that probably aren't. I showed some restraint and got one Danish cow milk semi-soft rindless cheese. I can't tell the name because most of the label is in Arabic, but it's a fairly young (maybe 5-8 weeks) cheese kept in brine. It's similar to feta, except cow rather than goat and a little softer. Texture-wise it's harder than cream cheese but it doesn't crumble. Anyway, it's good. I'm not sure what to do with it though. I think it would be good on pizza and salads. I guess basically you'd want to use it the same as feta.

I also picked up some Halloumi, which is one of my favorite treats. It's a Cypriot sheep and goat milk cheese that you most often find on the menu at Mediterranean restaurants as "drunken halloumi" or "fried cheese". The texture of the cheese when raw is rubbery with some tooth to it, but it's composition allows it to be heated up for a short time without melting, which is why it's knows as the cheese that grills. I wouldn't risk actually throwing it on the Weber, but a good way to cook it is to cut it into 1/4 inch thick slices and flambe it in some ouzo, or gently fry it in a pan with olive oil. Halloumi is especially delicious served with watermelon and mint in a tasty salad.

Byblos Market also carries several kinds of imported candy. In addition to my very favorite candy ever, the Cadbury Crunchie bar, they also have Kinder Bueno, a wonderful Italian chocolate wafer bar filled with a hazelnut creme, and Kinder Eggs, a hollow chocolate hazelnut egg that contains a toy with very small parts that you assemble yourself. They're made by the Ferrero company, of Ferrero Rocher fame. Anyway, Kinder Eggs are illegal in America because of the law that forbids children's candy from containing multiple teensy plastic choking hazards (the 1938 Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, according to wikipedia). To be honest, the chocolate egg itself isn't really even that good, but the thrill of eating contraband sweets I think was the highlight of Mike's day yesterday.

UPDATE: Another Kinder Egg sighting! Mike just alerted me to this.

The Luckiest Girl in the World!

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:08:36 GMT

I totally forgot to record for posterity the Major Award I won last month! There's this food blog Blackened Out by these two lawyer-type dudes who just eat and drink the crap out of some food and liquor in New Orleans, and then write about it. They've been going at it for a little less than a year I guess, and I don't remember how I found the blog in the first place. In the spring they wrote glowingly about St. James, and I became an even bigger fan. So imagine my surprise and delight when I got a load of this:

http://blackenedout.blogspot.com/2008/07/history-was-made-today.html

I was the 5,000 visitor to the blog! They offered me a free meal, so I of course disregarded everything I'd ever been taught about not meeting strangers from the internet. Their offer was basically the cyberspace equivalent of a shifty man in a dark sedan pulling up next to my toddler self on the sidewalk, and offering me a lollypop to help him find his lost puppy. But I told the Blackened Out guys that I thought it was unsafe for me to come unaccompanied, thereby cunningly securing a free meal for Mike as well.

Results: http://blackenedout.blogspot.com/2008/07/tell-her-what-shes-won.html

I think MiLa is really stunning. They have a lunch special of 3 courses for $20, which is probably the best deal in the city right now. It's not even tied to the summer COOLinary menus, so you can get it year round. At least, you can until the place really catches on and they don't need this type of promotion any longer. MiLa is totally vege friendly too.

Also, you can catch Blackened Out in Offbeat starting in September. I assume they're writing about food, but they seem like pretty versatile guys so who knows? Maybe they're the new string testers.

No cheese news today, but in other awesomeness we got a new grill last night. We celebrated with grilled chicken thighs and asparagus, and non-grilled Rice-A-Roni. Whatever haters, it's the San Francisco Treat Ding Ding!

Novelty

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:54:32 GMT

I got some new glasses yesterday. They're pretty awesome.

So this photo is valuable for several reasons. First, you can see my new glasses. What you can't tell is that they're fresh tortoiseshell with glam grass green in the back. Plus two silver racing stripes down the arms. The second thing is my pimple. Gross! Lastly, you can see the cubicle room where I work. I should have taken it facing the other direction, because I sit right by a big window overlooking Chartres Street so I can watch all the craziness going on outside. And I have no restrictive cubicle walls fencing me in. I'm like Office Space, except I didn't gut a fish at my desk. I just refused the cubicle.

The last thing this cell phone photo illustrates is that I really need a digital camera. I used to have one but it bit the dust some time during grad school, or maybe even earlier. Used to be I didn't care about taking photos, but now I really want to have evidence. I wish all my friends would donate $10 towards a fund to buy a cool camera. I know, where am I going to get a camera for $45 (I have one half friend)?

If anyone has any camera buying advice, throw it this way. TIA!

Today in cheese: Last night we had bison burgers! With cheddar cheese on top. Plus leftover macaroni and cheese from Rocky & Carlo's. And salad to make it healthy. Awesome!

Eight Things

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:45:33 GMT

Damn you theredpanther!!!!

RULES:
* 1. Post these rules.
* 2. Each tagged person must post 8 things about their self on their journal.
* 3. At the end, you have to choose and tag 8 people
* 4. Go to their pages and send a message saying you tagged them.
* 5. No tag-backs.

ABOUT ME:

1: My favorite cheeses are sheep's milk blues, like Roquefort and especially Beenleigh Blue.

2: I really like to travel to new places, but I always worry that I'm doing something touristy or inauthentic. This is why I don't really want to go to Venice: everything there seems touristy and inauthentic.

3: I didn't have a date to senior prom. My dad made a corsage from daisies he picked in the backyard.

4: I love to read, but I'll watch almost anything on TV. Unfortunately I only have rabbit ears, not cable, so I often end up watching Spanish shows or the New Orleans cable access/tourist info channel on 54.

5: I work in the French Quarter, which is cool, except it makes me never want to come out down here at night.

6: My favorite books are Brideshead Revisited and Jude the Obscure.

7: I have bad taste in music, according to pretty much everyone I know. I'm always two years behind the curve.

8: I don't like fennel.

There you have it. But one of these things isn't true. It's up to you to figure out which one.

Panic! At the Library

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:50:04 GMT

Last night after getting home from darts (I'd rather not talk about it), I was slightly tipsy and trying to get to sleep when I experienced one of those Scary Life Moments when I realized no matter how hard I try, I'll never be able to read all the good books in the world. I get these moments once every year or so, and I start making resolutions to read the Top 100 Novels of All Time Forever (not counting anything by Ayn Rand).

Some obstacles to the Read Everything on Earth goal are surmountable. For example, I truly believe that one day my attention span will expand to the amount of time and concentration necessary to read Ulysses. However, I'll probably never learn to read Japanese, so there's a whole body of literature that's almost certainly cut off. I've pretty much come to terms with the language barrier, so I'm going to concentrate on Western or translated works that have been deemed by respectable bodies to be Great Literature.

Working from the ubiquitous Modern Library 100 Best Novels list, I've decided to try to read ten of the Top 100 Best Novels by year's end. That's ten of my choice, not the top 10, and of course no repeats unless I feel I missed the point the first time.

1. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

I know nothing about this book, but it's allegedly the 11th best book ever so now it's on my NOPL request list.

2. Lolita

Although originally written by Nabokov and published in English, I'm still counting this as Russian Literature.

3. The Grapes of Wrath

East of Eden is one of my favorite books. Not sure how this one slipped by me.

4. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

Again, never heard of the book or the author. Clearly a gap in my education.

5. The Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. Farrell

How can there be so many Great Novels that I've never heard of? Clearly my night terror was justified.

6. The Golden Bowl by Henry James

James has like 12 books on the list. I chose this one because maybe it will be like The Golden Compass.

7. Tropic of Cancer

I think this one's kinda porny, so it will have been stolen from the library.

8. From Here to Eternity by James Jones

Is this the Sinatra movie where they make out on the beach? How confused am I?

9. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch

Why are there so few female authors on this list? Note to someone, I'm sure: Evelyn Waugh was a dude.

10. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

Any chance this novel is about spies and disguises?

Ok, as I said, I've already requested Under the Volcano. I'll track my progress and let you know how it turns out.

Totally unrelated: for supper yesterday I made grilled brie, green apple, and spinach sandwiches. They were awesome.

Minneapolis: You Betcha!

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:42:56 GMT

Yesterday, I got back from America's Most Literate City, where I didn't meet Prince. Or Bob Dylan, Soul Asylum, Hüsker Dü, or Mary Richards. I include Mary Richards in the list of musicians because of the Mary Tyler Moore Show's awesome theme song. Unless I'm confusing it with Laverne & Shirley. At any rate, since childhood I've pronounced it "MinneANapolis", rhymes with Indianapolis. Not a coincidence: That part of the country has a rich Native American history. In fact, the city's name is based on the Dakota word for water, "mni'. Just kidding, that's actually Dakota for "I totally forgot about Hüsker Dü."

Minneapolis is Target World Headquarters. The eponymous red symbol can be seen all over downtown MPLS (their answer to NOLA's catchy acronym). One afternoon I went into what I hoped would be the flagship store, like our Targets but way bigger and cooler, like how I would imagine FAO Schwarz to be compared to that wire bin of rubber kickballs by the checkout at Winn-Dixie. It wasn't really like that though. It was the same as our Target, right down to the escalator with the cart carrying mechanism.

As you can imagine, I was disappointed to be so close to Wisconsin but not get any cheese. There wasn't time to make the trip, even though Wisconsin is pretty close to Minneapolis. There wasn't time because I went to the St. Paul Science Museum, where they had a Star Wars exhibit.

That's a roundabout way to get to the photo of me with Chewie, but now that we're here, enjoy!

Most importantly, Mike and I went to the wedding of two of his best friends from College and since. Timmy and Jenna planned one of the most beautiful weddings I've attended. It was held in the Japanese Garden at the Como Zoo and Conservatory in St. Paul, right in front of the waterfall you can see in the photo in the link. Almost best of all, the attendance was limited to close friends and family, and the ceremony was short and sweet. Best of all was the reception held in a small room high among the fronds in the Palm Dome of the Botanical Garden. It was like being in a dream tree house, with free-flowing booze and a decent steak.

The food of the Twin Cities was overall pretty good, and the high was Hell's Kitchen, a breakfast/lunch spot in Downtown Minneapolis. It was so awesome that we went there all three mornings that we had a chance to eat breakfast. I'm trying to think how to describe it in comparison to any New Orleans eateries...A better Elizabeth's/Surrey's comes to mind. There were 5-7 of us eating there each morning, we all got different things and shared, and no one was ever disappointed. The first morning I had a fantastic corned beef hash, the next I had an a la carte feast of a trio of breakfast meats (bacon, bison sausage, and ham) and french fries, and the last I had a stunning crab-shrimp cake Benedict. If you are ever in Minneapolis, or Duluth, where they have another branch, go to Hell's Kitchen.

All in all, it was a great trip. Minneapolis is a beautiful city with a thriving downtown from which New Orleans could learn a lesson. One thing did remind me of home though: a barefoot pregnant lady smoking and asking for change.

Black Gold

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:09:06 GMT

Greetings from the dreary, stinky French Quarter. The 9,000 barrel oil spill downriver is wreaking havoc all over, but for me it's an olfactory experience. It smells in HNOC as if the barge was tied up right outside and was leaking oil directly into the building. I expect to see dark viscous puddles creeping under the doors at any moment. Plus there's a thunderstorm, so a bolt of lightning will probably ignite the river at any second. Is that possible? Do you think this will effect gas prices?