The Big Easy

Whilst cruising to New Orleans we got to drive through Jackson, Mississippi a place made famous by this little ditty...

Nawlins fun facts
- They merge the word to come up with the name Nawlins! The first night we cracked some champagne in our baller double room then headed to Mother's restaurant for the infamous jumbalaya, gumbo and an Oyster Po boy I've heard so much about and it was so delicious then it was time for Bourbon St and a hand grenade!

Lovely view

Sipping on some Cristal

Gumbo - my fave! it is a stew/soup served with rice. It is the bomb diggity!

Jambalaya - similar to paella with the goodness of Louisiana with a side of southern baked beans and mashed potato

Oyster Po boy - deep fried oyster with pickles, shredded cabbage, Creole and yellow mustard... approach with caution may end your raging night abruptly...

Brownie!

Hand grenade drinking guide

Drank #1

Election Day! Na na na naaaaaa

as you can tell by the title of my blog I was obviously barracking for Obama...see what I did there!

Today was one of the optionals I was most looking forward to New Orleans School of Cooking!

Chef Big Kev in action and defying gravity, like a boss!

hahaha psych its a roof mirror never thought it would be used for this did you...

Hot Tip: The difference between Creole and Cajun

Creole - is a type of cooking combining French, Spanish, Portugese, Italian, Native American, African and general southern goodness

Cajun - Similar to Creole with the main distinction being that Cajun arose from rustic French cooking adapted by the Acadians* using Louisiana ingredients whereas Creole uses more classic European styles adapted to local ingredients and food.

*Acadians French Canadians who settled in Louisiana later known as Cajuns

Pralines

Pronounced prah-leans, super sweet and chewy

Gumbo

Foodgasm! I had 3 helpings! As mentioned earlier it is a soup or stew, the main ingredients are strongly flavoured stock, meat or shellfish, a thickener and the holy trinity* of seasoning vegetables

The Creole version is includes shellfish, tomoatoes and a thickener.

The Cajun version generally includes a dark roux with shellfish or chicken. Oh and yeah they served us beer as well, I'm on holidays okay!

*Holy Trinity - celery, capsicum and onions

Jambalaya
Deliciously fragrant and with a beautiful moist texture (not gluggy at all). It is traditionally made in three parts consisting of meats, vegetables, stock and rice. The Creole version is the most popular including tomatoes, holy trinity, chicken or sausage such as andouille or smoked sausage, stock and seafood. The dish contains very little spices because the sausage contains so many spices and flavours that expel through the dish once the stock and rice have been added. The Cajun version contains no tomatoes and the meat is browned first in a separate dish.

Banana Foster

Highly flammable and amazing! a caramelized banana delight with liqueur served over vanilla ice cream, droooooool

Getting some love from Big Kev!

Then I destroyed the gift shop for some lovely ladies at home!

After cooking school it was time to get down in the swamp land!

Tommy boy!

The beautiful swamp lands have no map the guide does it all by memory, so when someone is stranded they call the police who calls the coast guard who calls these guys. Out there they have 24 hours to find them or they wont be found. They also work on controlling reproduction of gators because if they didn't there would come a time where there would be more gators than people.

The trees are covered in Spanish moss - a curvy curly flowering plant that grows on larger trees. It has been used for various purposes such as insulation, packing material, mulch and mattress stuffing which is where the saying "don't let the bed bugs bite" started.

Some say the story behind the moss is a Spanish traveler came to a plantation near Charleston, South Carolina in the 1700s with his beautiful bride to be who had long flowing hair, the colour of a raven. As they were walking over the plantation making plans for their future a band of Cherokee (Native Americans) attacked them. As a final warning to stay away from the Cherokee nation they cut off the long dark hair of the bride to be and threw it up in an old live oak tree. As people came back in the days and weeks that followed they noticed the hair had shrivelled, turned grey and begun spreading from tree to tree. In the years to come the moss spread from South Carolina to Georgia and Florida. To this very day you can see moss jump from tree to tree and defend itself with a large army of beetles.

Just casually pulling a friend out of his pocket

Belly scratch! It must be love

Yep I got to hold the lil fella!

Gator nest

Eliza and I

Albino gator

For our first dinner of the night we headed to the French Quarter, the oldest neighbourhood in the city of New Orleans. The city was originally centered around the French Quarter and is now a National Historic Landmark.

Muffaletta at Camellia's Grill

540 Chartres St

New Orleans 

Camellia's Grill is an old school counter top diner, open since 1946. The waiters/cooks wear white chef uniforms with black bow ties, oh so cayute! 

In our cooking class big Kev quizzed a woman who had been living in Nawlins for 3 years just to test how she was assimilating, one of the questions was do you have more than one dinner? and I instantly knew Stacey and I were Nawlins folk! As stated above this is a sandwich made famous in New Orleans. This one contains corned beef, sliced ham, swiss cheese and olive dressing the consistency reminds me of a chunky olive tapenade this is half a slice! It was amazing!

 Then it was time for dessert at Cafe Du Monde. Originally established as a coffee stand at the New Orleans French Market in 1862, they have come along way!

Beignets pronounced ben-yay.  A square French style donut covered in icing sugar. They were delightful!

Then we headed back to the hotel to pick up Eliza for our last meal together as she was leaving the tour  =(

We headed to SoBou restaurant aka South of Bourbon street, for an array of Nawlins tapas delights minus gator because they were out and I was sad. 

Heirloom tomato salad

Grilled green and white asparagus, cherry tomatoes, sugarcane "caviar" and smokey tomato vinaigrette. Delicious! 

Pork Cracklin to dip in Cajun Queso ( Pimento cheese fondue)

Sticky Pork Belly

Steen's molasses lacquered pork belly, served with dirty rice calas (similar to arancini), grilled green onion and ham hock stewed Louisiana red bean puree. Drooooooooooool!

Duck Debris & Butternut Beignet

covered in a foie gras fondue and chicory coffee ganache

these were and insane mixture of savoury sweet and I loved it!!!

The famous Antoine's established in 1840 the state's longest operating restaurant and the nickname for my BFF Antoinette!

Then we headed out for our last night in New Orleans and farewelled a good part of our posse.
Just a few of the contiki crew

Phoenix and Piri

~JBomb

Walkin in Memphis

En route to memphis we came to a triangle of states called Texarkana this is the point where Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas meet and an excellent photo opportunity!

Arkansas fun facts
- President Bill Clinton is from here
- Walmart started here
- Milk is the official state beverage
- A person from Arkansas is called an Arkansan

Then we arrived in Memphis, Tennessee to some hard core rain it was a nice change of pace and who doesn't love a free shower. With no time to waste we got dolled up and ready to eat and cruise down Beale street!

Memphis fun facts
- Known as the city of blues
- Elvis Presley's home, Graceland is located in Memphis. It is the second most visited house in the country
- Martin Luther King Jr was shot here
- Beale street is the Mecca of partying
- Famous drink, the hurricane
- FedEx was started here
- Birthplace of Justin Timberlake, Aretha Franklin, the lads from Kings of Leon and many more

Our first stop was Kooky Canuck's for dinner and I tried my first piece of catfish and an infamous southern appetiser deep fried pickles with honey mustard dipping sauce! A true southern experience om nom nom I thoroughly enjoyed it as well as my larger than life summer sunset cocktail! After that we (the wolf pack) hightailed it outta there to Beale st and found this awesome little bar with this crazy cat called big daddy singing a song called stroke it (100% naughty innuendo) and then he did a johnny cash cover which was to die for! After that we cruised down the street to a few more bars ending up at Silky O'Sullivans where you could buy a bucket of punch to destroy your life or the world famous hurricane consisting of:
Captain Morgan spiced rum, dark rum, passion fruit juice, mango juice, sweet & sour mix and a lime wedge aka Delicious!

Then we got up bright and early to visit the last home of the king, Graceland! The house itself was not as big as I thought it would be but nevertheless the decor was amazing each room had its own personality a lot of gold trim on block colours such as purple and blue I thought it was classic for the era. My favourite rooms were the jungle room and the pool room. The jungle room was literally shag carpet and the furniture was decked out in animal print. The pool room walls and roof were covered in multicoloured curtain similar to a chandelier spiralling from the roof down the walls it was so 60s! My other favourite part of the house was the awards hallway filled with every single gold record and a room full of all his movie posters, his Saturday midday movies were always my favourite! Then it was time to head back to town.

We headed to the Civil Rights museum which is attached to the motel where
Martin Luther King Jr was shot. This museum was so in depth and extremely moving you got to walk through the specific changing events of African American history that took place such as Rosa Parks sitting in the white section of the bus and the sit ins that took place throughout the south protesting segregation and the non violent marches led by Martin Luther King Jr. Then came the chilling moment, where you walk through the back of the motel room he was staying in and you can stand behind the corner of the balcony where he last stood before being shot on April 4, 1968. This museum is so important for everyone to understand the history of how people behaved in the past and the mistakes that were made to ensure that future generations never repeat these horrific acts of inhumanity ever again.

I then ventured to the rock n roll museum. There are many famous musicians who were born and/or started their career in Memphis, I found the introduction video the most interesting part of the museum and hearing the famous artist through the jukebox, there is also the Sunset Studios museum where artist recorded their music but I ran out of time getting to that one.

For dinner we headed to our bus driver Jerry's recommendation, Gus's Fried Chicken, World famous! It was a simple little restaurant pretty bare with the classic checkered tablecloth and food served in plastic baskets I thought it was really authentic. Obviously we had to order some deep fried pickles as appetizers and the family fried chicken meal for 4 with slaw and beans on the side (don't worry there was 4 of us) it was divine I particularly loved the smokey BBQ baked beans as baked beans are a staple for me back home of course I over ate and indulged in the refill lemonade but it was worth it!

For our final night we headed to BB Kings House of Blues to listen some awesome bands and have some dranks. I highly recommend checking this place out if your ever in Memphis it has an awesome energy. For our last stop we hit up the infamous Coyote Ugly bar this was the first time I didn't get up and dance on the bar true story.

No rest for the wicked it was time to head to Noleans! (New Orleans)

~JBomb