So, on to the food! Long post, so settle in with some coffee. New Orleans is pretty famous for its food. Honestly, you don’t go here thinking in any way that you are going to be able to find salads and fat free dressing. This is one of those times that you eat good food, enjoy it, feel no guilt and move on once you get home. Plus you do a lot of walking, so that helps.

This is a compilation of what the 3 of us ate. Not every meal, but the most interesting ones.

 Of course, you cannot go to New Orleans and not have beignets at Cafe du Monde!

These are a French style donut. It’s square and thick – kind of like fried dough and not really like a donut. Plenty of powdered sugar on these. Please do not wear dark colored clothes when eating these.  I lost count of how many we ate.  Okay, I know how many we ate, but that will be kept secret 😉

Bourbon Street is hit or miss with food from cheap bar food to upscale eateries. We went mid level with Remoulade, which is an offshoot of Arnaud’s. I actually had a drink and it was really good, so I will share that. It’s called a Pearl Diver.  It had rum, coconut, pineapple and melon liqueur.

I enjoyed my meal of crawfish pies, which are filled with a spicy crawfish mixture.

Note, when eating in New Orleans, don’t waste stomach space on things like fries or stuff you can get at home.

We also love Croissant D’Or on Ursuline. This place is beautiful inside.

My mother and I had a frangipani, which has layers of pastry and and almond filling.

John had a Napoleon.

 

When we took the streetcar, we went way out of the Quarter into Riverbend and stumbled on the Milk Bar.

What a little gem this place is! I had an unusual sandwich called Yam I Am.  It had sweet potato, sun dried tomato, pesto, feta cheese, spring greens and a balsamic dressing on it (I left off the onions and olives…ewww).  This was a delicious sandwich!

You know I had to find cupcakes, right?  We happened upon the Kupcake Factory and I couldn’t resist.  They had good prices on the cuppies at $2.50 each. Here is John’s Boston Cream cupcake.

Our ‘fanciest’ meal we had was at Eat Nola, which is a newer restaurant in the more residential part of the Quarter. It’s a renovated old home.

 

We started with a bleu cheese and fig compote appetizer. The bleu cheese was very mild and I quite liked this.

My entree was chocon with mustard greens and a side of mac and cheese (made with spaghetti noodles).

It’s basically a barbecue pulled pork. I have never tried mustard greens before. I was expecting a very strong flavor, but they were milder than collard greens, or so they seemed to me. I would not go out of my way to eat them again, but it was fun to try.

John had a crawfish pie with a side of red beans and rice.

He really liked this. The pie actually had cheese on top, which was unusual – and very rich. He also said their red beans and rice were excellent.

 My mother had the barbecue shrimp. Now BBQ shrimp in New Orleans is something different. It is a buttery worchestershire sauce that is pretty spicy. It comes with french bread to soak up the sauce and also a wet towel for cleaning your hands. The shrimp are not peeled. Normally the heads are left on, but Eat served them in shell minus the head.

For an inexpensive and good meal in the Quarter, try The Grill Nola , which is kind of a classic diner. I loved the inside, but maybe because I am partial to the marble countertops.

 

I had a cheese omelet – good for protein in a city that loves its carbs.

John had a catfish Po’boy, which is really a sub, but they call them po’boys.

Really good meal here.

 One of my very, very favorite things is a praline!  We tested a lot of different ones and the 2 top standouts in my opinion are Southern Candy Makers and Loretta’s.  Super fresh:

Yum!!

Another new place to us this trip was Stanley’s.  A companion restaurant to, of course, Stella’s. (Stellaaaaaa!!!!)  It is very affordable and really good!  I loved the atmosphere, too.

I had an eggs benedict Po’boy.

Simple and delicious!

My mom’s dish was a shrimp and crawfish etouffe:

So, I think that gives you a good idea of the cuisine.  Not that it is all cajun/creole since you can find pretty much any cuisine in this city, but you can’t go wrong with these. Now I am still dreaming of the pralines and will have to wait for the next trip there!

 

Here are some of the things we did while we were in New Orleans.  We generally like to stay near the French Quarter, but do venture out to the business district or Fauberg.

 

Of course, there is Bourbon Street, which is a strange mix of bars, strip clubs, great music halls, t-shirt shops and restaurants (some excellent). You do have to experience Bourbon street once, just to say you did.

There is good music to be heard here:

Interesting note – On Tuesday night, there was a huge bang of thunder and the lights went out in the Quarter. We were in a cafe about a block off of Bourbon and it was a bit scary. My mom was safely in the B&B, thank goodness. The staff was saying how this only happened a couple times in 10 years for the Quarter to go dark.  We decided to head home after waiting a bit. You could see down to the business district and see the lights on there.  There were people still in the bars on Bourbon, singing LOL!  Not to mention when we went by Fritzel’s, they were playing jazz still – in the dark! The power came on maybe 45 minutes later?

My favorite place is actually Royal Street. It’s a block south of Bourbon and the street is blocked off from traffic during the day. There is a lot of shopping to be done on Royal from uber upscale shops selling $14,000 chandeliers to small boutiques.  Some shops have courtyards leading to them, like this one:

With the streets blocked off, musicians set up camp and entertain.

You will hear all types of music  and of varying quality…

 

There are shops all over as well.  I found a cute shop called Fleurty Girl and got a purse!  This is actually a textured vinyl purse that is lined (pink) and has a magnetic closure.  I just love the colors.  And shall I tell you it was $16.95? I started using this the minute I bought it, too.

I just love the colors!  Of course, I managed to knock over some stuff trying to get the purse off the rack. I always find a way to embarrass myself. Not sure if John was embarrassed or not – or just used to that stuff when accompanying me places 😀

We took the famous St. Charles streetcar for a long way out to the Riverfront (where we had lunch).

Ding, ding!

My mom was a trooper getting on and off the streetcar.  They were working on the track and we actually had to exit the streetcar, grab a shuttle which took us further up the track, and back onto the streetcar again!

 

This is the Beauregard-Keyes house, which is a historic residence museum.

If you are looking for an apartment in New Orleans, there is this one.

Not haunted, in case that was on your deal breaker list.

I love just seeing all the cool buildings in New Orleans.  Here is the famous Cornstalk Hotel.

The fence gives it the name.

We wanted to go to the botanical gardens, but the last full day we had there was cold and rainy, so we went to the Insectarium.

There was a butterfly garden in there, which made me happy as a clam!

The butterflies were free to go everywhere, including landing on people!

And you do have to be silly.

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Here are some nice shots of the Jackson Square area.

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Same shot at night. I love this shot.

It’s funny, the cathedral is not lit green, but it comes out the way on my camera.  BTW – all of my photos were taken with my windows phone.

I love the Quarter at night.

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The next post will be a post about the food – so stay tuned!

If you missed the Healthy Heart Weekend signup – here is the link!

Hello from New Orleans!  We have just a short trip here.  Can I just say how nice it was to get away from below freezing and tons of snow to warmer weather?

My mom actually joined us for this part of our trip.  She has never been to New Orleans, so we brought her along to show her around.  My dad won’t fly, so he misses out on this (plus not sure he would be a big fan).  We stayed at the Gentry House in the French Quarter.

It has a nice little courtyard in the back:

 

The money frog:

This place is really nice! It had probably 15 foot ceilings, which I loved!  This was our bedroom.

It needs updating in some spots, like the kitchen, but some wonderful original details.

The second bedroom has this gorgeous chandelier and fireplace.

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On Sunday morning, my mother wanted to go to a church service, so we took her down to the St. Louis Cathedral.

She really enjoyed the service. After the service was over, us heathens were allowed to go in and take pictures. 😉

I have never been in a cathedral before (churches – yes). It was beautiful inside.

 

Lovely ceiling:

Pipe organ:

My favorite, of course, was the stained glass:

Since I am posting buildings, here are some more architecture pictures of the Quarter.

 

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And I can’t do a first post without the beignets!

 

Nom, nom, nom!

I will do a few posts even though it was a short visit because I don’t want to blow up your feed with pictures all at once!

I cannot believe all that we crammed into today.  After that breakfast at CC’s this morning, we headed out to the French Market:

I found fresh fruit!

This market has everything from fresh foods to handmade items to total made in China junk.  It’s a gamut!  I got a couple souvies for myself.

Our lunch stop today was the Praline Connection in Faubourg Marigny.   John and I split a cup of Gumbo Zaire, which had crawfish and greens in it.  Plus a side of homemade cornbread:

Excellent soup.  I have only had greens once in my life at home, and never in soup.  Quite good!

Then some red beans and rice:

These were decent, but I think they needed some sausage or something.  After eating, I picked up a couple pralines at the attached candy shop.  Didn’t get those pictured, though.  Bad blogger.

We did some strolling around.  Passed by the most photographed place in New Orleans, so I will add to that tally:

The famous cornstalk fence.  I wonder how nice this hotel is inside.  It is very beautiful outside.

Then a stroll around the Riverwalk, where one of the paddleboats was on it’s way out:

Some beignet snackage happened near here

As we were doing some browsing, we bumped into another parade!  This was some sort of cross dressing/Saints celebration parade.

There were so many people!  It was crazy.   John wanted to rest, so we headed back to the hotel, but then I popped back out because I really wanted to try an absinthe drink.  The place to get that is the The Olde Absinthe House.  This was a strange green brew that had a strong anise flavor and something else I couldn’t put my finger on.

This was really strong and hit me like a ton of bricks!  Now that I have tried one, I don’t think I will ever have another.  😕

We have walked so many miles today.  Too bad it isn’t enough to burn off all the food! LOL!

We had some trouble deciding on where to have dinner, but ended up at Deanies.  This was a most excellent choice!  It has a bit of a retro feel to it:

Our server brought us out not bread, but some boiled cajun spice potatoes:

These were fun!  John and I decided to split an appetizer and then split an entree.  That helps with budget, but also because of portion sizes.  We started with some grilled oysters:

Topped with garlic butter and parmesan cheese.  Yum!  Our entree was a crawfish quartet.  It had crawfish balls, etouffee, au gratin, and some fried crawfish.

We didn’t bother eating the fries.  They were good, but I didn’t want to wast stomach room on them LOL!  This picture isn’t the best – but this was the best meal

Listened to some great Dixieland music tonight.  There is always something wonderful going on in this town!  Tomorrow we will spend some more time in the city and then board the cruise ship.  Guest post coming up tomorrow, so please enjoy.

I have to say I just love New Orleans. It’s so much more than Bourbon street. The French Quarter is by far my favorite area. The architecture, the food, the people – it’s wonderful.

These are some pictures of the area and the food! You can read more details about the food on my food blog over the next few days as I organize the photos.
The first thing we did was hit Cafe du Monde for beignets and cafe au lait. I won’t tell you how many times we went here over the 4 days :D.

I’m very taken with the shotgun houses there:

The beautiful Moonwalk along the Mississippi, where we went jogging:

This year is the 100 year anniversary of the Zulu krewe, and they were having a big party the night we got there. It was an outdoor black tie event, and some of the Mardi Gras parade props were out. They are huge!

Parades pop up out of seemingly nowhere during the Mardi Gras season. After dinner, there was this outside:

The ubiquitous tshirt shops, which my sister couldn’t get enough photos of for some reason:

St Louis Cemetery 1 – the above ground cemeteries are very fascinating here. They are like miniature cities.

Probably *the* best thing we ate all weekend: Chocolate bread pudding with dark and white chocolate sauce:

So much more to this city. I really think I could live here.

Just got back this morning. One of the legs of our flight was canceled due to weather in Chitown, so we had to stay last night as well.

We had an awesome time!
I ate way too much, but it was so good!
I love New Orleans. My sister hadn’t ever been, so I was the tour guide of things to do, see, and eat 🙂

Lots of food, but we did jog for a 1/2 hour each morning (at around 6:30 am!!), plus tons and tons of walking. And the hotel we were in last night had free weights, so got in a weight workout, too! My first in a week.

I’ll be posting some pics later, I’ve been up since 3:15 am, and I am beat!