Baton Rouge Day 2

"Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train
And I's feeling nearly as faded as my jeans.
Bobby thumbed a diesel down just before it rained,
It rode us all the way to New Orleans."

How many times have I heard those romantic lyrics sung either by Kris Kristopherson or Janis Joplin? And here we are in that famous city.
Today we were going to get some music, we planned to be in Baton Rouge for the 'Live After Five' concert behind the Old Capitol building.
So we had a lazy morning and drove into Baton Rouge for lunch, parked and had Crawfish Etouffe in Lloyds, a Po Boy Seafood restaurant (though cafe was probably a more apt description. "Etouffe?" I hear you say. This is the third dish that is famous in Cajun Culture. As per usual the dish is served over rice. It is a roux sauce (oil and flour and milk) with all cajuny bits added. In this case it was their secret spices and Crawfish Tails, (small freshwater lobster). It was very nice.
We then toured the Old Capitol building which was built in 1835, only to be burned out by the Union army due to a cooking accident! The rebuilt in 1880. It has a beautiful cast iron spiral staircase right in the middle of the entrance hall. Apart from that not a lot really. So after that we went for a nice cup of coffee (tea for Sally) and unleashed ourselves into the concert. Curtis Coubello and the Insta-gators. Three guitars, fiddle (sometimes accordion) and drums playing coutry, zydeco and swamp-pop. It was great fun, as we joined about 3000 other people in the small arena area. We talked to loads of people and the music was excellent.
Came home about 7.30 having had a great day.

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Moving On

It's Thursday morning and we are now camped just outside Baton Rouge, in the LSU football RV Park (well its the one everybody uses for the LSU Games). It is very quiet and I am writing this as the sun comes up. But what of Tuesday and Wednesday? Well Tuesday we had a quiet day. We got up to the news that our friend Paula had passed away that morning. Paula was the first of our Soggy Bottom Bunch of Friends, when she had introduced herself to us on the day before Thanksgiving 2007. She was a happy vibrant person who bounded from one activity to the next. She had made us feel very welcome at Soggy Bottom. Sadly she had contracted cancer which had finally taken its toll. This news was followed by Jim and Kathy saying fond farewells as they left us in order to return for their Bike Fest in Destin. We had had a great time with them and they had been very patient with us and our English ways. That evening we heard that they had arrived safely in Fort Pickens, near Pensacola. After the departure of our last link with Florida we used the free laundry facilities to do some washing, then went out briefly to get some cards from a Walgreens. Note: Walgreens is what I call a 'Formula' shop, as every one is almost exactly the same. First, they are built on a corner - they are a pharmacy, but they also sell bits of all sorts of things like a small Woolworths. They are often the first shop to appear in new estates, they are often quite competitively priced and along with their identical competitors, CVS - there are thousands of them.
We ate one of Connie's spaghetti sauces with, surprise, surprise, spaghetti as Sally had managed to get some Sally Legal non wheat spaghetti.
Wednesday, we got up and had something special - Sally made American pancakes, using her, now perfected, diet legal recipe of rice flour and Gram flour. The occasion for celebration? Why our wedding anniversary! - number 37, we think. Well I still love you Sally!!!
We then broke camp and moved on to Baton Rouge, with enough time to watch the sun go down on the Mississippi River and then go out for a romantic dinner for two at 'Sammy's Sports Bar and Fish Restaurant'. We had a great meal there -Sally had sauteed jumbo shrimp and I had Gumbo ( a soup - see From Blue Mountains to Blue Sea, October 2009, Jackson MS), which was completely different to my previous Gumbo, but still delicious, followed by Red beans on rice and pork chops (of which I boxed one,as I was too full). We rounded the night off with a Cold Stone Ice cream, as they have a Raspberry Sorbet, which is Sally Legal. I was forced into buying a coffee ice cream with brownie, pecan, chocolate and caramel blended into it. Again I brought half of it home to eat later.
I have no idea what we will do for the rest of today, but I think that the delights of Baton Rouge are calling.

The Trolley Song

Monday. It is a little know fact that New Orleans has electric trolleys (trams), Even less well known is that it is the oldest continuously operated trolley system in the world (1823). So today (Monday) is our chance to ride the trolley.
We had intended to return to the Audobon District to wander through the park, and perhaps go to the zoo. However as we passed the trolley terminus at the Leonidas district Jim suggested we ride the trolley. Seemed like a good idea, so we parked the van and jumped aboard a waiting trolley. The Trolley we are on is known as the St Charles Trolley as it travels down S Carrollton and then swings east and travels through the Loyola Univ., Audubon, Uptown, Touro and Garden Districts, past the Lee Circle and terminates at Canal St. These areas were built in Victorian times and have lots of grand houses fronting on to St Charles Ave, which is a wide boulevard lined with massive live oaks. The trolleys travel on an Up and Down line in the central reservation (US = Median)., so you can get a good view of all the houses we pass. As well as the Audubon Park and the Loyola University. Having taken the first part of the route, we jumped out at the start of St Charles Ave and bought ourselves a Stone Cold Ice Cream each. Stone Cold ice cream is a delicious ice cream, you choose the flavour and then choose what goes in to it, they then take your ingredients and blend them together with the ice cream. So I had Coffee with caramel and heath (dime , now Diem, bars) crushed in it. Sally found a dairy and wheat free Raspberry sorbet, which was very good. Jim had straight banana ice cream (no the bananas were not straight, the ice cream had nothing else in it) and Kathy had a green one, which could have been either mint of pistachio. Having had a break we hopped back on to another trolley and trolleyed right along St Charles Ave. We passed some wonderful big colonial houses, as well as some newer Art Deco houses. Many houses were decorated for Halloween. We had planned to go all the way to Canal St, but there were repairs being made to the track so we had to change from trolley to bus and it seemed to be a better idea just to get the trolley back, which is what we did. After this we were getting ready to eat, so instead of coming back to the trailer and cooking shrimp BBQ we went to a seafood restaurant called Bordreux's and has a seafood dinner, Sally had the dish of the day - rice and red beans with catfish, I had jumbo shrimp stuffed with crab. Both of them were delicious. After returning to the trailer we sat and watched Jim and Kath's home football (NFL) team the Jacksonville Jaguars lose badly to the Tennessee Titans. A great day.

Sunday in New Orleans

Sunday was another wonderful day weather wise - clear blue skies and constant sunshine. We drove across the Mississippi by another bridge and travelled along the north bank to get into downtown New Orleans. This lead us through a very nice district, obviously old, with huge, beautiful houses lining the streets. I thought they were real Pollyanna style houses - wooden slatted with huge porches and massive front doors - some had wonderful stained glass windows. They were very grand and, I imagine, you would need a fortune to buy and maintain one. They were next to a college- apparently a very old and distinguished college- which was housed in some magnificent buildings and opposite to a beautiful park. Eventually, we arrived in Lafitte Square in downtown New Orleans where there was a Blues Festival in progress. Thank goodness for my Blue Badge which enabled us to park in a handicapped space as there was nowhere else to park nearby. The square was shaded by very old and magnificent live oak trees which provided much needed shade - the temperatures being in the 80'sF (30C). There were two stages giving a platform for some very loud, but good blues bands. People were either sitting on their lawn chairs or wandering round looking at the many craft stalls displaying everything from photographs, jewellery, paintings to musical instrument's. Down one side of the square were the stalls selling food - creole, Mexican, burgers, BBQ, etc. We ate our lunch there listening to the music and just enjoying the atmosphere of local New Orleans enjoying their Sunday outing. After a couple of hours, we moved onto the French Market which is located on the river bank near the French Quarter. This market is on 7 days a week and is worth wandering through. They sell lots of touristy things - T shirts, masks, voodoo paraphernalia etc. as well as food and drink - but at a price!!! It really caters for the tourist but it was still worth a visit. We had a drink at a street cafe while listening to a live band - they were good! Kathy bought a hat - like a man's trilby but she looks good in it.
On our way home, we stopped at the fish market again and bought shrimp for our tea. Terry had a lesson in how to prepare fresh shrimp for cooking and then was initiated, by Kathy, into the secrets of making Shrimp In Brown Gravy Over Rice. It was delicious and the huge pot that was prepared disappeared in a trice!!! Thank you, Kathy and Jim for a new recipe added to the Phillippe menu! Tonight we are going to BBQ jumbo shrimp and cook them on the grill. Kathy and Jim leave us tomorrow and travel back to Destin, FL to attend a bikers meet. Jim rides a beautiful Harley Davison and they often go to bikers meets and meet up with fellow Harley Davison enthusiasts. We have very much enjoyed our time with Kathy and Jim - thank you for putting up with us!!

Busy Day in New Orleans - Part One

Today is Saturday and we are planning to be out and about today. Our first stop is the Westwego Jambalaya Cook Off Festival,then later we will adventure out after dark into French Quarter of New Orleans
Westwego is the town which is at the entrance to the Bayou Segnette State Park we are staying in. It is a sleepy suburban town on the other bank of the Mississippi, i.e not in New Orleans.
When we arrive we had seen the advert for the Cookoff today, but knew little about it. So bright and early we set off to find it. We found it. Following Katrina, Westwego built the equivalent of a town meeting place. It is a small outdoor arena (100yards x 50), grassed and paved, with a stage at one end. Round the edges are what look like decorated garages, with no front or back. There are toilets and small rooms as well. Here they can hold concerts, meetings, family events and COOK OFF'S, which is what we are going to.
A Cook Off comes in a variety of forms. I have seen Chile Cook Off's, BBQ Cook Offs and Chicken Cook Offs, but you could have one for any dish you like. It is a team event, so you have 2 -4 people per team who enter to make a large quantity of a dish. People come in and taste each team's offering and then judge which is the best. It is usually meant as a money raiser for local charities and often the Fire Department feature prominently. I am assuming that the teams pay for the Jambalaya ingredients themselves, as their part of the money raising.
Well this cook off was a Jambalaya Cookoff, so each team was making a huge pot of Jambalaya, using a special, huge pot. The teams area from all sorts of places, perhaps one family, a business, the local Fire Squad, or a church. They just kept making it all day.
For this cook off each team is assigned one of the areas round the edge of the arena. We paid $10 entry to the event. That meant that we could then go to every table and eat as much as we wanted to. The Cook off opened at 11.00 and went on until 10.00 at night. As well as the Jambalaya there was food and drink available (you paid for that), music on the stage, fire trucks to look at and lots of people to watch. Everyone brings their lawn chair, finds a favourite place and sets up, then wanders round tasting each Jambalaya being offered, talking with the teams, trying to find out their secret ingredients and generally having a great day out with the family. Frankly, I do not know of any parallel in England, except maybe a local Horticultural show (where you get to eat the competition entries).
Well we had a great time, eating and drinking and talking in the warm sun, with clear blue skies overhead.
As for the Jambalaya, well. Jambalaya is a rice dish - basic ingredients pork, sausage and rice, but individual recipes vary, garlic, secret seasoning, chile, tomato, mushroom, onion, chicken, dozens of local sausage - we are not talking Walls Pork here, there are dozens of locally made sausage,from pepperoni style to gator tail sausage. Even when a standard sausage, such as pepperoni is used, there may be a dozen different pepperoni sausage styles. Westwego is known for its seafood (shrimp), but almost everyone makes their own sausage.
Consequently no two Jambalaya taste the same, so of course the best one is down to personal taste and how nice the makers are. Oh yes it is great fun and a cheap way to get dinner. Well, we had a good old mooch around the festival at Westwego, doing lots of eating, listening to the bands, and people watching, but after a couple of hours we thought it time to move on into New Orleans to see the sights there.

Westwego

Because of the trouble on Wednesday, on Thursday we made a big push to get to New Orleans, over 250 miles! we pulled into The Bayou Segnette State Park by about 4.00, it is situated just by the little township of Westwego, which is to the Southwest of New Orleans, on the East Bank of the Mississippi. It has well spaced sites, good basic facilities and is quiet during the week, but book for a weekend. Also has free laundry. Boat ramp nearby, also water park in the state park with wave machine. $20 per night. Westwego is squeezed onto a strip of land about one mile wide between the Mississippi to the north and Bayous (swampland) to the south.

It is not a well to do sort of a place. However it does have a small fishing fleet and a fish market. Friday was a rest day, but in the afternoon we took a short trip to see the fish market. Fortunately, our friends, Jimmy and Kathy, who are travelling with us, are experts on all things to do with fish. Jimmy actually worked on a shrimp boat and both he and Kathy did a lot of big game fishing when they were younger - I mean serious competition stuff, they had their own team, big boat everything. (their policy was strictly catch and return).

So we wandered round the little circle of huts which made up the Fish market, stopping to cast an expert eye over the fish for sale. This was mostly shrimp and crab. The shrimp are huge (about 3-4 inches long), the crabs are blue and small (3-4 inches long). Jimmy and Kathy were excited by the prices, as we were able to buy shrimp for $2.75 per pound, which is about 1/3 the price they are in Florida.

While we were in the fish market, we stopped at a little cafe and had what they called 'Shrimp plate' which was just fresh deep fried small shrimp in seasoning and French Fries. Simple but delicious. The cafe was full of all sorts of fishy type foods and seasonings, I have never seen so many different types of seasoning. After our meal we returned to the fresh shrimp stall and Jimmy collected a bag of fresh shrimp to take home.
When we returned to the trailer Jimmy showed me how to prepare the shrimp, by removing the heads and freezing them in water, in freezer bags, ready to take back home to Florida. Then how to de-vein them, to make sure they have no grit in them. We plan to buy more shrimp tomorrow and then we will be instructed on how to cook shrimp on a BBQ. There did not seem to be so many mosquito's tonight.