Power has been restored!

That is all.

Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Irene blew through Massachusetts this weekend, and it was largely a non-event--except that we lost power.

We still have no power.

In a way, it's not a big deal. I've been through hurricanes/extended power outages before. I had all the necessary supplies--batteries, flashlights, lots of candles, a propane camping stove, lots of non-perishable food. I hauled out the coolers and filled them with ice. We're currently in the process of eating through what was in the refrigerator, so that we lose as little as possible if the power is out for an extended period of time.

And we still have water. Trust me, no power is a cakewalk compared to no power AND no water. We even have hot water, thanks to the gas-powered hot water heater.

We didn't have any damage to speak of--lots of fallen branches, a few tomatoes blown off.

However, my stepson has apparently never been exposed to a power outage of any kind, much less an extended one. The good news is that he's reading a lot more. The bad news is that he keeps complaining of being bored. (I finally got tired of it, and sent him into the backyard to pick up all the fallen branches. He was very helpful at that, if by "helpful" you mean "running around the backyard flapping your arms at all the fallen branches and yelling 'I'm a robot!'".) I promised him s'mores tonight, roasted by candlelight.

Also, I have a freezer full of meat that I'm worried about. Everything in there was frozen solid, so it all should be good for another day or two. But if the power still isn't on then, I'm not sure what to do about it all. It's too much to eat all at once. I can handle losing some of the eggs and the chicken broth that was in the fridge; I can't handle losing alligator sausage and crawfish.

The power company claims I will almost certainly have power by 10 PM on Saturday.

Which is supremely unhelpful.

But I saw a power company truck perusing the neighborhood today, and the guy told me this was the largest block without power in my town, so I'm hopeful we will actually get power back within the next day or two, and not have to wait til Saturday.

My BFF and her kids are visiting this weekend, and I'd really like to have power for them.

Earthquake!

By now I'm sure you've heard of yesterday's 5.8 earthquake in central Virginia that rattled buildings all over the East Coast. My husband claims to have felt it at his office in Rhode Island (I didn't). Everyone I know is fine, no injuries or damage.

My parents, oddly enough, were in Gettysburg when it happened. They visited last weekend, and decided to stop off in Gettysburg to do some sightseeing on the way home. It was a lovely visit--we did some sightseeing in Boston, drove to Newport, RI to ogle the mansions, and ate a lot. My mother brought me approximately 12 metric tons of food, which she always does. I'm still working my way through it all.

In other news, waiting tables is going well--I should be able to actually earn money by the end of this week (as opposed to training). My BFF and her kids are visiting next weekend, which I'm very excited about. I seem to have reached the end of the chipmunk infestation; so far the Death Buckets have gotten 15, the tomato carnage has stopped completely, and I haven't seen or heard a live chipmunk in a couple of days. The tomatoes, incidentally, are ripening beautifully.

Plans are going ahead to move to Rhode Island in pursuit of much cheaper rent. Our current landlord seems willing to negotiate our rent down, perhaps considerably--but my husband's work is offering moving assistance and cash in hand. I've been poking around the closets, culling a few items, getting things ready for the inevitable packing.

The economy strikes again

Well, loyal readers, I am once again the victim of corporate layoffs.

On Wednesday, I was involuntarily relieved of my job and given a month of severance in its place. I had to sign a bunch of confidentiality agreements to get the severance, so let's just stop there. I don't want to talk about it anyway.

But you know what? I don't even care anymore. I care very much about losing my paycheck, don't get me wrong, but that's the only thing I'll miss. I've done this before--been laid off suddenly, regrouped, etc.--and my life was better because of it. Remember the road trip? (Sigh. Good times.) So fuck 'em.

I take this as a sign from God that I'm done with corporate America. I was burned out on the business world, anyway. Instead, I'm going headfirst into the restaurant industry, to see if I can turn that into a much more intellectually stimulating way to make a living.

Yes, this means I'll be waiting tables again. (So tip your servers well, please.) But frankly I'd rather wait tables at a nice establishment (or two) than sit behind a desk all day, trying not to look bored. I've already been hired on at two upscale joints near me, one of them very upscale, with a great wine list. They were impressed with my food and wine knowledge, and impressed that I knew my way around the restaurant industry--all those previous years of waiting tables, plus dining at some of the world's finest, plus all my involvement with underground restaurants, plus the fact that I know how to cook and pair wines--meaning, I hope, that I can eventually leverage a simple serving position into a) enough money to live on, the most important thing, and b) restaurant management and/or bartending/wine buying.

It's a good thing I already had one serving job lined up when I got laid off--I was able to transistion into it right away. It'll take a month or so before I start to earn real money at both places (training, you know), so I hope that by the time the severance runs out I'll be earning enough tips to replace most of my former salary.

However, we are taking cost-cutting measures. I think we'll be moving closer to my husband's job, letting go of the house we now rent when the lease runs out in November. We're hoping to get at least a 30% rent reduction by switching cities--his city is much cheaper to rent in than Boston. I'll then wait tables there--possibly we'll even be able to get rid of one car. I fear we'll have to give up a backyard, which means I wouldn't be able to garden next summer. But then, at least I wouldn't have to worry about killing chipmunks. (I'm up to 14, by the way.)

We might also cancel the vacation to Costa Rica (which is already mostly paid for, largely with points, so keep your fingers crossed it doesn't come to that).

So, lessons learned:
1. You can't depend on anything. Life can, and will, change on a whim.
2. Every time I think I'm starting to get on top of the debt repayment situation, something like this happens. It drives me nuts.
3. But this time, I have a loving, supportive husband, and enough of an emergency fund cushion to keep me from panicking.
4. I will find a way to be successful at this, to do something I actually want to do.
5. If my back and my feet don't give out first. It's been five years since the last time I waited tables, and trust me, five years in your thirties means the next time you start waiting tables it will HURT. But it also means I'll lose 20 pounds like that, and have a firmer ass to boot.

Gardening update (warning: with death)

I've declared war on all rodents.

I discovered, just as the tomato harvest was coming in, that squirrels and chipmunks were devastating the harvest. They were stealing and eating as many green tomatoes as they could carry. So far I estimate I've lost at least 25 big beefsteak tomatoes and who knows how many cherry tomatoes, and that's just counting the tomato carcasses I could find.

I mean, just look at those big beautiful heirloom tomatoes up there. Those are MINE. That I've labored over since FEBRUARY. Those squirrels and chipmunks can SIT AND SPIN, and that's putting it nicely.

Here are the bullet points:

1. Squirrels and chipmunks will eat all your tomatoes.
2. Repellents, mothballs, cayenne sprays, and individually Ziploc-ing all the tomatoes will not stop the slaughter.
3. The only thing that works is to kill them.
4. Rat traps and Death Buckets work best for this. (As an added bonus, I've been getting some mice, too. The fact that there are mice around outside mean I will very soon be putting mousetraps back out inside the house.)
5. Death Buckets = fill a 5-gallon bucket about halfway with water. Float about an inch of black sunflower seeds on top. (They float.) Place a board running up the side of the bucket to the top. The chipmunks (and mice, apparently) will run up the plank, see the sunflower seeds, think it's a solid base, and jump in. Then they drown.
6. So far I've nabbed 10 chipmunks, 2 squirrels, and 4 mice. The tomato carnage has dropped precipitously (though it still continues).
7. Don't worry, I brought all the rat traps inside when children arrived. I've been relying solely on the Death Buckets since then.

Unfortunately, rat traps will not automatically kill squirrels--just slowly suffocate them. My husband, bless his heart, obliged by putting them out of their misery with several well-placed shovel blows to the head. That took a little piece out of both our souls. I was hoping to find a more, erm, efficient way to dispatch them, but in the absence of the rat traps, the squirrels are getting especially brazen. They chewed two big holes through a metal mesh screen to get inside the sunroom, whereupon they devastated the bag of sunflower seeds. They're also eating all the seeds out of the Death Buckets (even when there are, you know, bodies in there--ewwwwwwwww), and generally being a giant pain in the ass. I think I will have to put the rat traps back out, and just drown them after they're caught.

(And no, I can't humanely catch them and re-release them somewhere else. That's illegal here.)

The good news is that my cat killed a snake. My blind cat. Killed a garter snake. He was so proud of himself. He finally earned his keep.

The other good news is that things are finally starting to come out of the garden. Tomatoes, a little, but also zucchini and tons of herbs, including the long-awaited basil. The cucumbers and peppers are coming along nicely, I should have something from those plants soon, and the corn is starting to tassel out.

Here's part of the tomato garden, shored up with extra twine:

Here's part of the squash patch and some peppers:

More peppers:

A baby butternut squash!:

A baby pepper!:

Next year, to prevent this kind of wholesale carnage, I think I'll plant one big garden patch (rather than lots of locations all over the yard), plant onions all around the outside, and continue the trapping throughout the winter. If I'd known the chipmunks were going to cause such a problem, I would have done something about the exploding population a long time ago.

Other things I'll do: not plant so many beefsteak tomatoes. They seem to like those way more than the sauce/cherry varieties. Not plant cauliflower or carrots (I lost those to the rabbits first thing). Not plant so many peppers--it doesn't seem to get hot enough here. Plant more kinds of squash and green beans. Get a dog.

The economy sucks, so I got another job

That is to say, I got an additional job.

Waiting tables.

I don't doubt that we are headed for a Lost Decade just like Japan's. Another recession, no growth, massive unemployment. The shenanigans with the debt ceiling have only solidified my opinion that the government will never pull its head out of its collective ass long enough to shore up education, infrastructure, and healthcare, which means we will slowly fall farther and farther behind the rest of the world and they will blame it on terrorism, or gay marriage, or abortion, or possibly a combination of all three, rather than just, you know, not being dumb-asses.

So, given that, I'm really really nervous.

Not about our two jobs, per se. Just that we're still carrying so much debt, and that if God forbid something should happen to one of our jobs, we're not yet at the point where we could live on one income. So I want to make that debt go away as quickly as possible.

So I got a part-time job waiting tables, at a wine bar/upscale pizza joint just down the street from my day job. I don't mind waiting tables again, as all the money I make doing it will be purely extra money. All that will go straight to debt repayment, along with all the other money we're throwing at debt repayment. It's not like we need it to eat or anything. And I don't mind working my ass off for a year or two, if it means that then I won't have to work at all.

I'll report back, once I start. My feet and back are a lot older than they were the last time I did this, and I shudder to think of next year's tax bill, but the thought of paying off a bunch of stuff in short order makes me very, very happy.

Update

So, since we returned from vacation:

My stepson has arrived for a month of summer visitation. I've laid in a supply of hot dogs and juice. He's grown several inches since the last time I saw him (and, thankfully, all the extra weight he was carrying has now translated into height), gotten a deep California summer tan, and--most exciting of all--has actually deigned to try new foodstuffs. In my presence.

Not a lot, mind you. But he tried homemade bread, cinnamon bread, zucchini cake (I was shocked, normally he wouldn't touch anything with visible green flecks) and chunky tomato sauce. He's also eating salad and carrot sticks. It's so great to watch him eating, and actually enjoying eating. It's a long cry from the days when he would literally go 24 hours without eating.

Speaking of Stepson, we opened a 529 for him. I feel so grown-up and responsible and stuff.

My sister-in-law and her family visited. It was great to see them again, and great to see my stepson playing with his cousins. The house was loud, and messy, for several days, but who cares. We ate, we drank, we wore deep grooves in the lawn with a Slip-n-Slide. Good times.

Speaking of family, my parents are coming to visit this weekend. They'll be able to spend some quality time with Stepson while he's here.

I'm getting some more pre-cancerous bits cut out of me. Wear sunscreen, people.
I've declared war on all rodents. I discovered, just as the tomato harvest was coming in, that squirrels and chipmunks were devastating the harvest. They were stealing and eating as many green tomatoes as they could carry. So far I estimate I've lost at least 25 big beefsteak tomatoes and who knows how many cherry tomatoes, and that's just counting the tomato carcasses I could find. I'll post a longer, more detailed garden update, but here are the salient points:

1. Squirrels and chipmunks will eat all your tomatoes.
2. Repellents, mothballs, cayenne sprays, and individually Ziploc-ing all the tomatoes will not stop the slaughter.
3. The only thing that works is to kill them.
4. Rat traps and Death Buckets work best for this.
5. Death Buckets = fill a 5-gallon bucket about halfway with water. Float about an inch of black sunflower seeds on top. (They float.) Place a board running up the side of the bucket to the top. The chipmunks (and mice, apparently) will run up the plank, see the sunflower seeds, think it's a solid base, and jump in. Then they drown.
6. So far I've nabbed 10 chipmunks, 2 squirrels, and 4 mice. The tomato carnage has dropped precipitously (though it still continues).
7. Don't worry, I brought all the rat traps inside when children arrived. I've been relying solely on the Death Buckets since then.

My cat killed a snake. My blind cat. Killed a garter snake. He was so proud of himself.

New Orleans, Part II

Phew! I think that covered all the restaurants we hit in NOLA. :-)

Though I'm an old pro in Gulfport/New Orleans (I think this was my fourth time there), it was my husband's first. His verdict: steamy (in the humid way) but fun. The swamp tour was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. The steamboat tour, however, was exactly as touristy and boring as I thought it would be.

The highlight of the trip, of course, was seeing my family and my now-one-year-old niece. Next year we'll have to work in an equivalent amount of time with my in-laws.

New Orleans: Cochon

And last but not least, Cochon.

This was our first meal in New Orleans and my husband's favorite. Cochon and I go way back, I've eaten there every time I've ever been in the city. (It was my second favorite meal of this trip, next to Patois, but Cochon will always be my favorite NOLA restaurant in general.)

The best way to eat there is to split a bunch of the lovely appetizers. Here's what we shared:

fried rabbit livers with toast and pepper jelly
fried alligator
fried boudin balls
pork cheeks with spoon bread
rabbit and dumplings
peach pie

Seriously, doesn't that all sound divine? It was, too.

One of the things I like most about Cochon (other than their devotion to all things pork) is that they have whisky and moonshine tastings. That's right, moonshine. As in that stuff that normally comes out of a Mason jar and tastes like paint thinner. I grew up in Virginia and I guess naturally assumed that all moonshine was illegal, since it was there--but it turns out moonshine, at least in Louisiana, is perfectly legal and in fact comes in a) flavors and b) actual bottles (not just Mason jars).

So I got a moonshine tasting, featuring--what else?--Virginia moonshine. Specifically, Virginia Lightning from Culpeper, VA, which ironically enough cannot be bought or sold in Virginia. I also had a cocktail with cucumber vodka, strawberry moonshine, and Barritts. My husband, having lived in Culpeper for a time and still being scarred from that experience, opted for the whisky tasting and proclaimed the George Dickel #12 the best.

Random notes: we both split a cocktail called the Swinekiller, with Hendricks gin, rhubarb bitters, and limeade. Our favorite cocktail of the trip.

Also, Cochon has opened a deli just around the corner called Cochon Butcher, featuring a meat counter and sandwiches. We got sandwiches to go on our way out of town and they were, of course, really good. (Their pickles are surprisingly tasty, as well.)

New Orleans: Coquette

We didn't actually have a meal at Coquette, but I'll make sure we do next time. We stopped in as we were walking through the Garden District, as a thunderstorm was threatening to blow in. We spent a lovely couple of hours lingering at the bar, sampling their wine list and artisanal cocktails and enjoying a lovely cheese platter and plate of beignets. What better way is there to pass a rainy afternoon?

New Orleans: Patois

Patois, I think, was my favorite meal of the trip.

Here's what we ate (in order of photos):

sweetbreads
grilled octopus
charcuterie plate
rabbit
quail
Creole cream cheese semifreddo

Along with a bottle of Emeritus pinot noir and a martini made with pickle juice.

Isn't that just, like, the most awesome menu ever?

Seriously, I love menus like that. The food was great, needless to say, but I really appreciate when a restaurant is willing and able to feature the more esoteric ingredients like sweetbreads and octopus. It means they're not afraid to tackle the weird stuff, and more importantly, that their clientele isn't afraid of it, either. (A restaurant wouldn't list octopus if no one ever ordered it.) And a clientele that isn't afraid to order octopus, is a clientele that is probably cultured, well-educated, and hip to good wines. Which means a) a great restaurant, but also b) a fun neighborhood to go out in and c) interesting people to talk to at the bar.

The inside was pleasantly casual, with two stories and a wood floor, our waiter was so accommodating it was almost funny, and the courses were perfectly timed. My only quibble is that we were whisked away immediately to our table, so that we didn't get a chance to linger at the bar. I do love lingering at the bar and chatting up the bartender, to see what he/she knows about their craft. (I tried that at Cure, only to be offered a drink already on the menu and then ignored. Great drinks there, but not the chattiest bartenders--which I wouldn't have minded, if we hadn't been the only ones there.) But that's a minor point.

Verdict: Go. Then go again.

New Orleans: Brennan's

Brennan's is one of the old French Quarter stalwarts, still serving turtle soup and bananas foster after all these years. We stopped in for their traditional breakfast, which was a) expensive, b) nothing but tourists, and c) really delicious.

I started with a baked apple in cream (top photo), accompanied by a "Creole" Bloody Mary with pickled green beans. Note: it's hard to find a really good Bloody Mary. I've had too many Bloody Marys that were merely vodka with tomato juice and maybe some Worchestershire--not spicy, not complexly layered with flavors, definitely not tasty. Brennan's is one of the very few Bloody Marys I've had that were up to my own standards. It was spicy, complex, and I wouldn't have changed a thing about it (except maybe the price).

(Speaking of prices, they had the balls to charge us $4.95 each for coffee and hot tea. Now, I can understand charging for the Bloody Mary. But really, shouldn't coffee come free with the meal, especially if it's three courses for $45 a person? I mean, come on.)

Then I had the Eggs Sardou, which is poached eggs in artichoke husks on a bed of spinach with hollandaise sauce. The eggs were divine, but that broiled tomato in the middle? Was a hard, tasteless, barely pink supermarket tomato. In Louisiana in the middle of the summer, and they can't get a better tomato than that?

Dessert was--what else?--bananas foster, flamed tableside.

Verdict: generally excellent. Too obvious they're catering to tourists with the breakfast, what with the high prices and charging for coffee and crappy tomatoes and all. Next time, I'll get breakfast at a diner--it probably won't be quite as delicious, but coffee won't be $4.95, either, and who needs breakfast to be a gourmet meal?

New Orleans: Bacchanal

We were only at Bacchanal long enough for a couple beers and a cheese plate, before heading off to Elizabeth's for dinner, but it was still fun. I love the concept of this place: retail wine shop in front, hang-out joint in back. The retail wine shop sells cheese and beer, as well; you can make your selections and then consume them in the backyard, which is filled with mismatched tables and chairs. Most nights there's live jazz back there; many nights there is also a guest chef, cooking up something hot and delicious.

Like I said, we were there in the afternoon, so I can't speak to the jazz or the guest chef. But just look at that great selection of beers we were drinking!

New Orleans: Elizabeth's

Ah, Elizabeth's. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

First, you are the home of praline bacon. Second, you are the home of praline bacon. Third, you are casual, hip, delicious, and cheap. Fourth, you have a bar and free parking.

Did I mention the praline bacon?

OK, I've visited Elizabeth's before, and had the praline bacon, and the New York Times has written about them, and blah blah blah. We went back for dinner with my sister and her husband and you know what? Still delicious.

Unfortunately, I did not order the most delicious thing at the table (my brother-in-law did), which was the andouille-and-shrimp crusted drum. I had the fried green tomatoes and the soft-shell crab stuffed with crab, which was lovely, but covered with a Sriracha-based sauce that was so hot it overpowered the delicacy of the crab (deep-fried though it was). Also ordered: the scallops and the rib-eye. No disappointments.

Also, there was praline bacon.

New Orleans: Bayona

We had an excellent lunch at Bayona (chef/owner Susan Spicer is, btw, one of the food consultants for my new favorite TV show, "Treme" on HBO). Not sure it was worth the price, but lovely nonetheless.

The best part of the whole meal was the pork belly salad with watermelon (top picture). Pork belly with watermelon, avocado, red onion, arugula, and a balsamic thingey. Really, really delicious, and one of the better salads I've had in recent memory.

Next came scallops with crawfish dirty rice. Dirty rice is traditionally made with chicken livers, but here gone uptown with crawfish. Also yummy, though it only had two scallops.

Dessert was a lemon-lavendar semifreddo with a rolled almond cookie thing. I also had a cucumber julep.

So, the takeaway: go for the pork belly salad. Have two, in fact. I think I will add "scallops with crawfish dirty rice" to my home cooking rotation, to ensure I get more than two scallops, so that's a win in the "recipes for later" department.

New Orleans: Crescent Pie & Sausage

This was one of my favorites. We stopped in for a late lunch with my family; I wish we could have spent more time there.

Crescent Pie & Sausage makes their own boudin. That in itself is enough reason to stop by, but they also make a variety of other sausages. And they have a great bar--a lot of craft cocktails and infusions, rare beers, that sort of thing. In short, right up my alley.

I had the homemade boudin and merguez (lamb sausage) along with their housemade parmesan-and-truffle-oil chips. Wins all the way around. I also tried their bacon-infused-bourbon Manhattan, complete with bacon garnish, but I couldn't pick out any overt bacon-y-ness. A little smokiness, but nothing that was like "hey! bacon!"

But a minor point. I loved the rest of their menu, I'd really like to go back one day and sample more.

New Orleans: Acme Oyster Bar

Different kinds of oysters taste different.

This may seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people think an oyster is an oyster is an oyster. Case in point: ocean oysters vs. Gulf of Mexico oysters vs. Chesapeake Bay oysters.

(Note: these taste differences are only really apparent when you're eating them raw. If you're not eating them raw, well, you might as well be eating fish sticks.)

Ocean oysters (and yes, there are differences between Pacific and Atlantic oysters) are dense, pale, meaty, and taste like the ocean. Ideally, anyway. Like a faintly sweet mouthful of ocean water. These are the best.

Chesapeake Bay oysters (what I grew up on) are smaller, browner, and not very briny at all. They taste more like a mouthful of seafood; sweeter than ocean oysters. (But "sweet" in an oyster way, not in a dessert way.)

So while in Louisiana, I decided to get some Gulf oysters at Acme Oyster Bar.

I was disappointed.

Now, I know it's not oyster season. (You're only supposed to eat oysters in months with an "R" in them, because during the summer they put all their energy into reproduction and not into tasting good.) But hey, these were fresh, right out of the Gulf that morning, so I gave them a shot.

They were brown. Not oyster-colored. Brown.

And they tasted like mud.

Not like the ocean. Or like seafood. Or even really like an oyster. Just like mud.

Fortunately I was able to eat a crawfish po' boy instead.

Anyway, I still highly recommend eating raw oysters. Just stick to ocean oysters, and preferably cold-water oceans at that. (Maine/Massachusetts/maritime Canada/Washington State produce the best and most delicious oysters.)

Acme Oyster Bar itself is a bit of a tourist trap, as evidenced by the huge line of tourists at the front door waiting for seats starting at 5 pm. Go in the off-hours, sit at the bar, drink some Abita beer, and watch the oyster shuckers first-hand. If the oysters look muddy, get the crawfish po' boy instead.

New Orleans: The Joint

I ate at a lot of restaurants in New Orleans. Fancy places, oyster bars, gastropubs, you name it. But one of our favorite meals was the most unlikely one, at a hole in the wall in a questionable neighborhood.

On our last night, we went to Vaughan's to see Kermit Ruffins play. We were there for the better part of two hours before we learned he wasn't actually playing that night. And Vaughan's isn't a bar you'd go to for any other reason. It was smoky, grimy, cash only, and the building looked like it would fall apart with a strong wind. You had to be buzzed in, for goodness' sake, you couldn't even just walk right in. Anyway, disappointed, I didn't want to have wasted the cab ride all the way out to the edge of the Ninth Ward (yes, that Ninth Ward), so we decided to walk two blocks down to The Joint for a second dinner.

My sister had recommended this place; otherwise it would never have occurred to me to go inside. This building was similarly ramshackle, with a bunch of mismatched chairs out front, with an open dumpster to the side, with empty 40s of malt liquor scattered around. Classy. But man, it smelled good. So we went inside to tackle the barbecue.

Best. Barbecue. Ever.

And I don't say that lightly, having lived (briefly) in Memphis. I had the ribs, my husband had the pulled pork, we both got Abita beers and ate until we were sweating barbecue sauce. Then I got a piece of homemade peanut butter pie to go (I had it for breakfast the next morning), only because I was too full to eat it there. The ribs were tender, juicy, and I had to debate for a couple of days whether I liked them better than the dry rub ribs at Rendezvous, but eventually these won. Cheaper, too.

So if you're going to New Orleans, go to The Joint. Eat the barbecue. Ignore the neighborhood. If you're there on a Thursday night, go to Vaughan's and see if Kermit Ruffins is playing. Otherwise, go to Bacchanal and see what they have going on. But go.

New Orleans, Part I

Whew! So much vacation to tell you about!

Seriously, it's a lot, so I'll be posting in batches. This week we're uber-busy catching up at work and prepping for a batch of houseguests.

We had a great time. My now-one-year-old niece is the cutest ever, and I got to spend lots of quality time with my parents and my sister and her husband. The one downside was the weather--it POURED every day. But we were still on vacation, rain or not, so whatever.

The 24-hour drive there and back was grueling, as usual. Our ability to do that kind of balls-out driving is going to be severely limited soon, we're both just too old and creaky to be able to do it for more than a couple more years. But we were able to bring back a carload of goodies (Abita beer, gator sausage, Zapp's chips, etc.), and for close to 3,300 miles in driving, we spent $239 in gas. Way cheaper than two plane tickets.

I've already posted about the swamp tour; I'll be cross-posting from Broke Foodie throughout the week, as I write about all the restaurant experiences there. Stay tuned.