New Orleans


We've been busy.

We have wandered ourselves to the New Orleans area.  We are on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, and have been exploring.

Last Friday, we took a food tour of New Orleans.  We invited some friends, and headed off in the morning.  We met our tour guide in front of the St Louis Cathedral.  Yes, our tour took us through the French Quarter.  I really had no burning desire to visit the French Quarter, but we had a great time, probably because we went during the day.

We started with coffee, beignets, and calas.  You've probably heard of the first two.  Beignets are fried dough, smothered in powdered sugar.  Basically, doughnuts.  Calas are about the same, but the are made from leftover rice, rolled into balls, and fried.  Both were really good. We sat, eating and drinking, and listening to our tour guide tell us about them, and a little about the history of New Orleans.


Little beignet shop, also used as a gathering place for tours.

Our next stop was for gumbo, and it was delicious.  It's surprising how European the French Quarter streets are.  It shouldn't be; it was built by the French, and rebuilt by the Spanish, after a fire.



You want to enlarge this next photo; to see some of the "Europeanness" outside the window.



After gumbo, we stopped for charbroiled oysters.  We are not fans of raw oysters, but these were delicious.  In fact, the tour guide asked me why I only had one; didn't I like them?  Well, actually, when I reached for my second, the entire dozen had been polished off by my compadres!  That was OK: they also served us a delicious bread pudding, and I had a gin and tonic to wash it down.  If only I had taken a picture there...

We wandered through the streets. You can see it's Carnival time!  Mardi Gras is a huge thing, down here.  



We saw some street music. 


 



We also went into a gallery.  It was the kind of gallery where, if you have to ask, you can't afford it.  But things were lovely.  This walking stick was part of an exhibit, and the little duck face was too cute.



We ended up at a poboy shop. In 1929, the New Orleans streetcar motormen and conductors conducted a strike, and the sandwiches were born in an effort to support these "poboys" who now had no income, and were hungry.  They are all over New Orleans, and the region, and we've had a few.  Never had a bad one, yet.

Oddly, we were NOT in the shop for a poboy, but for a muffaletta.  Olive salad, genoa salami, ham, cheese...what's not to like?  Actually, I am not a fan of most olives, but this sandwich was amazing.  And HUGE.  There was no way we could finish one on our own; we split it 4 ways.



We ended our day going inside the cathedral for a look see.  Do any of my Catholic friends know if you get more time off of Purgatory by not just doing the Stations of the Cross, but translating them from the French?  Wondering for a friend.

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