Enjoying vacation

I can't believe how quickly my vacation is passing! It seems like we just got finished opening gifts and it's already time for me to start packing for the return to San Diego. I can't really complain though, the weather has been amazing (70s and 80s!), lots of time with my family, and of course a lot of good eatin!

I enjoyed playing with Julia and Gavin's presents as much as they did! Julia got a trampoline for Christmas which we of course had to promptly break in. As you all know, I have no coordination whatsoever so I mainly just tried to get as much air as I could. Julia however, could do 3 back flippies in a row!

Gavin got a larger 4-wheeler to replace the one he has outgrown. His feet are still a little small to be able to shift properly, but he had no problems handling his new ATV through the overgrown fields near their house. I had a hard time keeping up on Julia's smaller four-wheeler as I trailed behind him through the fields. Hmm, maybe it wasn't meant for a full-grown adult?!

Friday I drove out to Mobile, AL to visit with Dave while they were in port. He's working offshore for the holidays, but they pulled in to Mobile for a few days. It was a quick visit, but it was nice to have dinner and catch up a bit. Our lives are all so busy we have to fit in little visits whenever we can.

I'm writing this post this morning with a fuzzy head and just slightly off kilter. After having a great time with Nicole & Tim while they were in San Diego for a conference a few months ago, we decided to replicate the shenanigans here in Louisiana while I was in town. It just so happens that they have a limo at their disposal, so the two of them picked up Monica & I and we all headed north to New Orleans for the evening.

We started off with dinner at Drago's Seafood Restaurant (the charbroiled oysters are AMAZING), then cruised over to one of the casinos to dance the night away to the sounds of a Houma band. I thoroughly enjoyed cutting up with my sister and friends; I don't think the laughter stopped all night!

Today's my last day on the bayou, I fly back to San Diego in the morning. I'm trying to remain relaxed for this last little bit of vacation since life will be a whirlwind once I'm back on the west coast. Over the next 5 days, I have to pack out my house, ship my motorcycle :-( , finish up projects at work and move out of my office, get commissioned and get to San Antonio for training. So if you don't hear from me for a little while, know that I'm getting it done!

Stay tuned, the next great adventure is just beginning. . .

A family of foodies

What can we say. . . we're Cajun! And Cajuns live to eat! It makes my heart take flight to see the next generation picking up traditional cooking. I'm especially pleased to see my two nephews learning to fend for themselves in the kitchen. The men in our families down here on the bayou can hold their own when it comes to cooking, but it's usually in the seafood and wild game departments. My Papa Babin made a mean turtle sauce piquante (pronounced PEE-con) and my Pyran Wayne ("Pyran" is Cajun for "Godfather") can cook up deer so tender it would make a vegetarian think twice about their choice!

So when my nephew Philip announced he was making crab cakes for the whole family for dinner, we were happy to be his dining guinea pigs! The basis of his concoction was from a recipe that won a contest a few years ago and was printed in the local newspaper. From the basic recipe, he modified and tweaked it until it had his own signature on it. The end product was so tasty that he's pretty much deemed the official crab cake maker of the family from here on out! I saved a left over one and scrambled it into some eggs for an awesome breakfast the next morning!

Staying on the food theme, my dad and I picked up a sack of raw oysters from the local oyster fisherman in town. My mom committed a cardinal sin of buying some already shucked at the grocery store to make the oyster dressing at Thanksgiving. The general consensus was that they were so washed down there was no taste left. So to avoid a similar disaster at Christmas, we got some fresh from Louisiana waters still in the shell.

It's only later in life that I've acquired a taste for these mollusks raw. I've always enjoyed them fried on a po-boy sandwich or in traditional dirty rice, but somewhere in my twenties I started to appreciate the intensely salty flavor and uniquely fleshy texture. As with most things that Cajuns eat, I often look at it and wonder who gazed upon this mucus-like blob in a relatively ugly shell and deduced that it might make a good meal! Thank goodness for that first intrepid soul!

This last picture is of a beautiful sight. . . what I opened my eyes to after a leisurely nap on the swing in my parents' yard!!! Although it turned cold for a couple of days, we are now back in the upper 70s with a lush humidity level in the 60s. Once again, I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt for the day.

This is pretty much a synopsis of my time back at home so far. I've gone back to the gym with my mom and sister and went to my nephew Philip's basketball game last night. I'm really enjoying being part of their everyday lives, even if it's just for a little while.

After passing through Atlanta. . .

After an early start to my Wednesday, my day was quite productive. Major progress in apartment and office packing, phone calls and informing utilities of my upcoming move culminated into settling myself into the flight from Los Angeles to New Orleans with continued productivity on my laptop. Amazing that a 3.5 hour flight would deposit me in south Louisiana and in a car to my parents' house for a late night supper of my mom's cooking! Nice thought, but not so fast!

After circling over New Orleans airport waiting for the dense fog to break long enough for us to land, fuel quantity finally dictated that we divert to the nearest open, unfoggy airport. . . Atlanta, GA! So, at 3:30 am, I found myself in a cab with a lost driver looking for the hotel United Airlines had given me a voucher to for the "night". With 2 hours of sleep under my belt for close to 36 hours, I made it to my parents' house yesterday around noon! Amazingly unphased by the extended journey home, I arrived happy and less stressed than I have been in a long time.

It felt so good to sleep in til 8:30 am today!!! I wanted to get a workout in this morning so my mom suggested I go to the gym with her for her "Silver Sneakers" exercise class. Sure, I was in the mode of organized exercise classes, so why not?! It sounds so innocent and easy doesn't it. . . Silver Sneakers? Yep, it's an exercise class for senior citizens, but after an hour with my mom and a bunch of spry coeds, I had actually worked up a sweat! I have to admit, I couldn't help but smile with good humor as I got my heart rate up with a group of AARP members to the sounds of Neil Diamond and Elvis!!! FUN! After the class was over, I finished off my workout with running a few miles on the treadmill.

Today was a beautiful day that flirted with temperatures between 78-82 degrees! I was in shorts all day!! My dad returned from the camp on Grand Isle with a few dozen crabs that he boiled up for us to eat. Man were they good!!! I realize that I post similar pictures to these every time I come home, but I just can't get enough of boiled seafood!!! For those of you who aren't lovers of these tasty little crustaceans, this close-up picture of the meat in a blue-crab claw will probably gross you out. But for the rest of us initiated boiled seafood addicts, this is tasty treasure from the bayous!!!

Hope everyone is getting to their holiday destinations in spite of the weather and that you end up with folks you really want to spend the season with. I'm looking forward to some down time with my family, and of course lots of great eating and conversation!

Snackage & Nappage!

I'm a Dietitian. That's a fancy word for a Nutritionist with a college degree and credentials! I state this fact only to illustrate how strong traditions are. You see this picture of my nephew Philip's girlfriend Jessica plopping chocolate icing on a piece of cake? Well, she's following the lead of this Dietitian!

My family loves to joke that if I ever get too full of myself, they'll invite the athletes I counsel to Louisiana to see the "other" side of their Nutritionist! I was raised on southern fried and gravies. My grandma cooked with lard and I've blown out pig intestines with a straw to make sausage. It's where I came from. But after 5 years of higher learning and another 5 years in the performance nutrition field, I'm constantly at odds with my upbringing. Both of my grandmothers lived well into their 80s and had diets that I would advise clients/athletes against. It's only fair to say, however, that they both did physical labor their whole lives which played a huge part in counteracting those diets! Nevertheless, most of my Cajun comfort foods are at odds with the way I eat outside of Louisiana.

Pretty much everyone in my family is a chocoholic. I'm not sure exactly when it started, but my nephews and I used to sneak buckets of chocolate icing from my mom's pantry for a snack! As time went on and my parents let the grandkids get away with all kinds of things their own children were never allowed to do, my mom started buying an extra tub of icing to leave next to the cakes she made so that extra could be added. There's only one rule. . . no double dipping! As you can imagine, this prompts us all to seek out the largest serving spoon that is able to fit into the tub of icing for the coveted first-and-only dip into the tub! It gets more and more ridiculous every year!!

The blog title today is compliments of my niece Julia. The couple of days after Thanksgiving was rainy, so we spent a lot of time inside snacking and taking naps! I'd be big as a house if I did this everyday, but for 2 or 3 days at home for the holidays, it sure is fun! My sister thought that this picture of Julia and I in the recliner was the perfect illustration of two generations of "Deg Legs"!

Our family would never be described as boring. I'm always amused to see how new guests respond to all our rough-housing and bantering. My maternal grandparents were the epitome of jokesters. They set a tradition of cutting-up that endures within our family to this day. Teasing, story-telling and physical antics were, and still are in the repertoire of prompting laughter. This pic of my brother with his son and step-son rough-housing and tickling confirms our belief that a family that plays together stays together!

Another form of great family-bonding is games. If the weather's nice, that means horseshoes, volleyball or football (or shooting guns in the pasture). If it's night or we're confined to the indoors due to inclement weather like we were this holiday, that means board games. With such a wide age range, games like Pictionary or Cranium are perfect for our gang. For the last several years, a highly competitive game of Pictionary between the boys and girls has ruled supreme! Much to the dismay of the males in our family, the girls have once again outwitted (or out-drawn) the guys. Not to be deterred by years of losing, the boys have demanded a rematch over Christmas vacation!

Although this post may seem quite mundane and low-keyed compared to previous posts from far-away lands, this is the stuff I love! It's such a cliche', but there really is no place like home. After a canceled flight from LAX to San Diego and an enjoyable couple of hours hanging out with a WWII vet full of great stories at the airport while waiting stand-by, I'm back on Coronado preparing for the work week ahead. Stay tuned for some new twists in the road. . .

Happy Thanksgiving

Another Thanksgiving come and gone! I ushered in the day by landing in New Orleans just around midnight. My mom has been cooking up a storm for days, so I went to bed with smells of the feast to come. After a cup of coffee and a quick run, I was surrounded by family and food for the rest of the day!

As you can see in this picture, the "kids" are all getting big. I have 3 nephews and a niece ranging in ages from 20 to 5 years old. In the dark and white striped shirt on the left of the photo is Andy who is 20 and somewhere around 6 feet tall and the tall lanky guy on the right is his brother Philip who is 16 and about to 6'3". I'm not sure how tall Julia is (at the end of the table) at 10 years old, but she definitely has the family trademark long lean legs. Although I've taken to pronouncing my last name as "day-gull" over the years for ease of understanding, here in Louisiana it's pronounced "deg". Folks always comment when they see an offspring of the Daigle clan that it's obvious that the kid belongs to our family because they have "deg legs"!!!

And it takes a lot of food to feed this tall family! Although I had moved up to the adult table at some point in my life (probably back when I was married), it's been quite some time now that I've been assigned back to the kids' table. From the smiles on our faces, you can see that I don't mind one bit sitting at the kids' table with Julia! Our family is filled with story-tellers and jokesters, so meals are always a lively event. I don't know if it's the jovial energy expended while dining that makes us all so tired or the overindulgence prompted by the day, but we always end up reclining in some capacity shortly thereafter! Usually everyone is sprawled across sofas and on the floor in the living room, but the weather was so beautiful today (mid-70s!) that we moved the rest-fest under the carport to enjoy the breeze and visit.

It seemed like we were just finished digesting when it was time to move on to the next house on the itinerary for Thanksgiving supper. After more visiting and eating at Dean's house with his family, we're back at my parents' house and hanging out for the evening. What a great, leisurely day filled with love & laughter!

I hope that everyone's day was as peaceful and filled with family as mine was and that it's not hard to think of things for which to be thankful. My brother returns tomorrow from Texas with the rest of his family so I'm sure I'll have more to post about over the next few days before I return to the West Coast on Sunday.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

A weekend on the bayou!

It's funny how my travels always take me full circle! I spent the most amazing two days back in Louisiana with some of the people who mean the most to me in this whole world. What had originally started out as a grandiose plan to gather my friends down in Mexico to celebrate my 40th birthday in January turned into a belated celebration of family and friends on the bayou this weekend.

I love to travel and to experience new places, but my soul and spirit are grounded back in Terrebonne Parish. I wasn't really all that disappointed when the plans for Mexico didn't work out, I only chose that location because it would be warm in January. Things have a way of working out for the best though; we enjoyed two 80 degree days under cloudless skies with only a slight breeze to remind us it was spring.

The only two things on our agenda for the whole weekend were a crawfish boil on Saturday and the Boat Blessing (AKA Blessing of the Fleet) on Sunday. We did our best and were quite successful at sticking to the itinerary! We chuckled all day Saturday about how the only effort we expended the whole day was to eat and to move our chairs to chase the sun or shade depending on your preference. The first of our two-day retreat consisted of eating breakfast, eating boiled crawfish and birthday cake, playing horseshoes, laying around in hammocks, riding in the back of a pickup truck a couple miles up the road to get snowballs, go to "town" for supplies for Sunday, then eat dinner. Whew, it almost makes me tired just repeating all we got accomplished! As you can see in the picture, Kathie awarded me with a tiara graced with the number 40 which I proudly wore all day long. The fact that I allowed Kathie to put it on my head and then kept it there all day left many of my friends and family perplexed and wondering if this fourth decade will see a softer Karen! I wouldn't count on that just yet! I was so happy to be home and surrounded by all these people who love me (although most of them think I'm a little crazy!) that I would've worn a dress and glass slippers and would not have batted an eye! OK, I might have taken them off when we went to the back bayou to dump crawfish shells and to skip rocks!

Sunday turned out to be just as relaxing and extraordinary as Saturday. After a leisurely breakfast, we headed "down da bayou" to Chauvin for the Blessing of the Fleet. The tradition of priests blessing shrimping fleets started in Europe and was carried to Louisiana by Catholic immigrants. The Boat Blessing in Chauvin dates back to the 1920s. The ceremony is quite simple: there is a Catholic Mass followed by the priest sprinkling holy water on the shrimp boats and saying a blessing for a bountiful and safe season. The priest then rides the lead shrimp boat and blesses boats along the bayou as he makes his way towards Boudreaux Canal. The bayousides are lined with friends and families gathered with food to celebrate the day and take in the sights. Oh, and are there some sights! Only in Louisiana can you see a Catholic priest on the lower level of a shrimp boat casting holy water in the direction of boats lined up along the banks while teenage girls in bikini tops and cut off shorts dirty dance on the deck above!

It was a small procession of decorated boats that made their way along the bayou yesterday. I assume that the rising cost of diesel didn't do much to lure the dwindling number of Louisiana fisherman and shrimpers out for a day of cruising and merry-making. The offshore season, which applies to the waters off the central Terrebonne Parish coast, is set to open tomorrow so there's not likely to be much change in prices before then. The opening dates for the inland spring season will be decided by officials on May 1st according to an AP report released last week. Hopefully diesel prices will come down to help keep the operating costs of the fleet reasonable.

Thanks for checking in and feel free to scroll down to view the two slide shows of pictures from my trip home. If the slideshows take too long to load, just click on "view all images" and it will come up in another window. Thursday I'm off to Lexington, Kentucky for an Equestrian event. I'll post again soon- Have a great week!

40th Birthday Bash: Cajun Style (Part 1)

40th Birthday Bash: Cajun Style (Part 2)

Down home eatin'

I'm often asked what a Cajun holiday meal looks like. Somewhere between my grandparents' day and what we eat now, the Christmas meal has become very similar to what the rest of America eats. The traditional turkey and ham is accompanied by peas, corn, broccoli casserole and candied yams. The method of deep frying a turkey was developed some time while I was in the Navy I guess, because I don't remember ever having fried turkey until coming home on leave one holiday.

A few uniquely Cajun dishes add local flavor to our traditional American Christmas meal. The centerpieces of both Christmas and Thanksgiving meals are gumbo and dirty rice. Dirty rice is a combination of white rice, ground beef and pork meat, gizzards and giblets. If you have a squeamish stomach you may want to skip ahead to the next paragraph. . . Gizzards are the ground up parts of a digestive organ found in poultry (we use chicken gizzards). Giblets are ground up organ meats from the chicken, especially the liver. We almost always have two varieties of dirty rice (AKA rice dressing) at the holidays; with and without oysters. I didn't like oysters growing up, but I've developed a taste for them as I've gotten older. I'm even eating them raw on the half shell now (with a little dash of Tabasco sauce!).

Gumbo is the other unique dish you'll find available at a Cajun holiday get-together. It's ubiquitous at Thanksgiving and Christmas meals and comes in may forms. Although we all love shrimp/okra gumbo, we usually have chicken & sausage gumbo for the holidays. As you can see from this picture, authentic (at least authentic to Bayou Blue and the Daigle family) gumbo doesn't look like what you're usually served for gumbo outside of Louisiana. For some reason, non-Cajuns insist upon putting too much rice and leaving the okra in huge chunks. The okra in our our okra gumbos are cooked down so much, you can hardly distinguish the okra in the liquid. It's more like seeds and greens left over. Depending on which bayou you're from, the gumbo can be brown or red. My family never adds tomatoes to their gumbos making it red. My aunt who is of Italian lineage however, grew up with her momma's gumbos being red. The one mandatory gumbo side dish is potato salad! Quite a few folks down here like to mix their potato salad into their gumbo, but I'm a purist and like to keep them seperate. They can mingle in my stomach if they want to, but not on my taste buds!!!

The holiday variety of desserts includes pecan and apple pies, chocolate cake and cookies. The favorites in our household is usually the peanut butter and chocolate fudges, peanut brittle and pecan pralines. My sister Monica's birthday is Christmas Eve and she always requests my mom make an apple pie for her!

Whenever I get a chance while I'm home, I like to make a trip to New Orleans. Andy and I love Cafe du Monde beignets and cafe au lait, so getting him to accompany me there isn't usually a problem! Andy, his girlfriend Lauren and I all piled into the car and headed north to the city. Unfortunately, it ended up being a disappointing culinary day in New Orleans. We ate at a restaurant in the French Quarter called The River's Edge because it was directly across the street from Cafe du Monde. Lauren had a nondescript fried shrimp po-boy while Andy tried to spice up his bland gumbo and bisque with Tabasco sauce. The cup of red beans and rice I tried to eat was the worse I've ever had. How can you screw up red beans and rice? And in New Orleans!

The saving grace of the whole meal was the half of a muffuletta I ordered. The muffuletta sandwich is the delicious result of Italian immigration into the French Quarter in the early 1900s. Muffuletta is actually a Sicilian bread much like focaccia. The round loaf is sliced in half then piled with various forms of Italian meats. The version I had consisted of salami, provolone cheese and the heart of an authentic French Quarter muffuletta; a marinated olive salad.

After dutifully consuming a lunch, we marched across the street for the long-awaited beignets and cafe au lait. Man do I love that light, airy fried dough covered with powdered sugar. I used to bring Andy here every time I'd come home on leave just to wait until he got the beignet close enough to his face that I could blow the powdered sugar everywhere! After finally placing our order, we were presented with the coveted beignets. I picked one up- hmmmm, this feels kind of heavy. I take a bite- hmmmmm, it's not supposed to be crunchy! This was the ultimate disgrace of New Orleans cuisine, a bad beignet! I looked around and suddenly felt sorry for the hordes of tourist sitting around in their newly bought beads draped across their football team t-shirts. This was probably the only time they would get to taste this uniquely New Orleans original! And it was terrible. This was an affront to all that is good about the Crescent City. A so-so meal is one thing, but bad beignets?! Ughhh!

After that, we didn't have the heart to do much sightseeing. We drove back home and decided that we had better gumbo and beignets right here on the bayou. We didn't need to drive an hour for them! We did our part for New Orleans' economy, but next time we'll pump our money into Terrebonne parish by buying some of the best beignets on the bayou at Big Eddie's!!! Not to worry though, I've still got another 4 days down here, I'm sure I'll eat enough great food to diminish my disappointment over the New Orleans cuisine dissapointment!

Not sure if I'll do another post while I'm in Louisiana. I'm enjoying spending time with my family and may have to post when I get back to California!

Home for the holidays

My parents have never asked much of me, but coming home for the holidays is one of them. During my overseas Navy years, that was a hard request to fulfill, but now that Uncle Sam doesn't determine my geography, there aren't a whole lot of things I consider to be more important than for me to be in my parents' house for Christmas! As you can see by this picture of my mom & dad, they are happiest when all their chicks are in the nest (kids and grandkids)! In fact they've picked up more "chicks" over the years; Dave came with them to the airport to pick my up last Thursday! I love the way my family and Navy worlds have meshed together over the years!

In our house, Christmas morning has always been about the kids. For the smaller kids, it's all about the gifts. Julia & Gavin must've been really good this year; it seemed like they opened gifts for a solid 15-20 minutes! For the grown-ups, it's all about enjoying the rare event of having all of our immediate family in one place for a joyous occasion. I'm still not sure that I'm a grown-up though since I ended up at the kids' table for Christmas dinner again this year!

As usual, Christmas was an all day event of eating and visiting. Dwayne brought Julia & Gavin over in the morning and we played with their new toys until the rest of the gang showed up for dinner (that's lunch for those of you not from the South!).

You know your getting older when the nephews have to split their time between here and the girlfriends' families homes! Andy & Lauren and Philip & Jessica hung out and played board games well into the evening with us. It's become a tradition that the girls take on the boys in a round or two of the game Pictionary on Christmas evening. For the third (or is it fourth?) year in a row, the girls have been victorious. My sister's boyfriend Dean thought this would be the year for the guys, but I think he wants to switch to a sports trivia game next year. Now, now Dean, how about a game that involves mechanics in some way just to keep it fair?!

With Christmas 2007 behind us, I'm savoring my last week at home leading up to New Years. On the first, my mom will be flying back to California with me to help me unpack all the boxes and set up in my new apt. on Coronado.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and a low-stress week before New Years!!! For my foodie friends out there, not to worry- I'll post some pics of home cookin' later this week!!!

Back on the bayou

The day before I left, a couple of friends and colleagues accompanied me to Houma to see something of Louisiana other than just New Orleans. I'm so lucky to have a family that enjoys introducing "outsiders" to our way of living. My dad and brother boiled over 100 pounds of crawfish, crabs and shrimp for Nanna and April to sample! They were both great sports and dug right in. Peelings flying and juice dripping down your arms to the elbows- now that's eatin!

Along with eating boiled seafood, April and Nanna got to see a couple of gators in our back bayou. They didn't understand why I took them in a truck and on a four-wheeler instead of walking until April encountered a big fat snake on the ride back to the front! I think all was forgiven once they got to experience "visiting" Southern style!

I picked up a magazine titled Louisiana Life at the airport that had a cool article about the history of crawfish. I know, I know, I'm such a foodie geek! I love learning about the origins of different foods and some of the history surrounding them. Anyway, I learned that it wasn't until the mid-20th century before crawfish were elevated from a striclty peasant-food only consumed in times of food scarcity to the icon of Cajun food that it is today. This picture was taken along the front bayou at my parents' house and is of a crawfish hole. Here's an excerpt from the article that explains this interesting architecture:

Crawfish are aquatic crustaceans with gills that allow them to live outside water for exteded periods, so long as their gills remain moist. In order to survive [rising and falling water levels], crawfish burrow into the ground in search of moisture and to escape predators. As crawfish excavate their burrows, they bring balls of mud to the surface and build chimneys to protect and seal their homes. Crawfish mate in open water before entering their burrows to wait out the dry season, but females lay their eggs in the burrows and many are hatched there.

Wow, now I feel really bad about kicking over all those chimneys when I was a kid! I hope you enjoyed this food lesson and the other posts on my Louisiana trip. My next scheduled travel is to Milwaukee in a couple of weeks. I don't think there will be time for much besides work, but I'll try to find something interesting from the trip to post about!!!

New Orleans

The sport science conference was at the convention center right next to the New Orleans River Walk on the Mississippi River. I actually didn't go out and about too much while I was in New Orleans because I preferred to spend my free time back home with my family. Luckily, there's a satellite site of Cafe du Monde right in the River Walk, so I managed to get my beignet fix a few times without having to go all the way to the French Quarter!

Of course, a visit to New Orleans just isn't complete without a walk down Bourbon Street! The last night of the conference, a few colleagues and I went to a great restaurant recommended by my Uncle Doug who lives in the city. We ate at GW Finn's right off Bourbon Street where we had some scrumptious seafood dishes for supper. It was more of an upscale restaurant so I refrained from pulling my camera out and taking pictures of the food like I usually do. OK, actually I was too into the food to stop and take a picture of it!

Not exactly fine dining, but Lucky Dogs have been on Bourbon Street for as long as I can remember. Since I was frequenting Bourbon Street well before my 18th birthday (18 was the drinking age back then), it's been at least 20 years! The joke back then was that you'd better like the looks of the Lucky Dog because chances are you were going to see it again before the night was over! I don't remember how many of these Lucky Dogs came back up over the years, but quite a few of them went down before I became a Dietitian!

Our stroll down Bourbon Street inevitably ended at Pat O'Brien's! For those of you who haven't been to New Orleans, Pat O'Brien's is a famous bar that serves a drink called a hurricane. This flame is part of the outdoor patio that connects St. Peter and Bourbon Streets. The picture of me, April and Jay T was taken in the piano bar of Pat O's. The bar of the dueling pianos is great fun! You write down a song, ANY song, on a napkin and pass it up with a couple of bucks to the pianists and they will play and sing your request. People request everything from Neil Diamond to Guns and Roses!

Part of the entertainment in the piano bar is the "thimble man." I don't know what he's really called, but that's what I've always called him. Back when I used to frequent Bourbon Street often, there was an elderly African-American man who we called the "thimble man." He was tall and skinny and wore dark glasses and stood between the two pianos and did his thing. He wore thimbles on all his fingers on which he balanced a metal tray with coins on it. He would strum and tap his fingers under the tray and make the coins bounce in rhythm to the music. He always had a grin from ear to ear and was quite entertaining. I heard that the original thimble man didn't survive hurricane Katrina. The guy in the picture between the pianos is the "new" thimble man and he was just as entertaining!

Unlike most nights I've known on Bourbon Street, the night ended fairly early and with very little alcohol. Hey, things change as you get older, what can I say?!

Family

One of the great past-times while I'm at home is sitting on the swing and visiting. The definition of visiting by ole Mr. Webster "to pay a call on as an act of friendship or courtesy" just doesn't capture the ease in which we converse and laugh while sitting on a swing in the shade! Family news relayed, stories told, recent happenings discussed, memories relived, future dreams shared- now that is the true definition of "visiting". The characters in this visit on the swing is my nephew Andy and his girlfriend Lauren with me and my niece Julia.

Sometimes the swing is too arduous and we're forced to recline in the hammock while visiting! In this picture are my nephews Gavin and Philip hanging out with Philip's girlfriend Jessica. My brother, sister & I gave this hammock to my dad as a father's day gift a while back, but I think he has to fight for time in it!

Every summer, my mom allows a section of grass in her yard to be sacrificed for the kids' pool. I think this is the biggest one my brother has brought home yet! It took two days to fill it with the hose pipe (yeah, we call a "garden hose" a "hose pipe" down here!). The kids swam in it quite a bit, but it never got warm enough for us adults (and I use that term loosly!) to go for a dip.

OK, so you're probably wondering if I actually attended the conference or if I just hung out at my parents' house for the week! I commuted back and forth from Houma to New Orleans during the conference. I'll make the next post about New Orleans just for proof!

Muddy Waters

Last week, the USOC saw fit to send me to a national sport science conference in New Orleans!!! As soon as I stepped out the airport with my parents, the glorious heat and humidity of south Louisiana enveloped me in a blanket of southern familiarity. The dry and chill of my Colorado residence started to escape from my pores and was replaced by the moisture and warmth of the Gulf Coast. This first picture is of a magnolia flower (picked from the tree in my Momma's front yard) and has always represented the easy, sweet way of life my home state is known for.

The second day I was there, I spent the afternoon on my brother's Harley-Davidson Road King with our friend Eric. We logged over 200 miles throughout the afternoon. It was amazing to ride in short sleeves for a change and be perfectly comfortable! We cruised along the Mississippi River on what's known as River Road. This corridor hugs the levees of the Mississippi for about 70 miles between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Interspersed along the River Road are some beautiful old sugar plantation homes set on the greenest lawns you've ever seen (yards to us Southerners!) and surrounded by Live Oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. This picture is of a patio behind Madewood Plantation. Notice the screened in porch behind the sugar cane syrup kettle fountain.

From there, we rode to Killian and the Tickfaw River. The Tickfaw River is a popular place in the summer. As you can see from this picture, there are houses and camps along the river with lots of people in boats and on jetskis. There's a landin (AKA "boat launch" to you Yankees!) with a bar and dance hall that's on warfs over the River called Tin Lizzy's. I had never been there before, but it was quite the hoppin place! This last picture shows that Cajun's have a great self-depreciating sense of humor (and apparently a lot of money)!

I tried to spend as little time on the computer and as much time with my family as I could while I was at home, so I'll be posting about my trip to Louisiana now that I'm back at my house in Colorado. Stand by for a few more posts!

CRABS!

Last night we had one of my favorite foods- boiled crabs! Actually, I love any kind of seafood boiled. . . crabs, shrimp, crawfish, it really doesn't matter what kind of crustacean, I love them all. Boiled in Zatarain's crab boil with whatever else happens to be around. Potatoes and garlic are my favorites, but it's also common to throw in corn on the cob, sausage, and onions.

We also make a concoction that we call a seafood dip made of mayonnaise, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, tobasco hot sauce, Tony Cacheri's seasoning, and a dash of ketchup. It's a great all-purpose dip and goes well with any type of boiled seafood.

Boiling seafood is a fairly easy process- they go in with blue claws and come out red! You just put the crustacean of choice and water into a 30 gallon pot on top of a propane burner and bring to a boil for 12 minutes. Then you let it sit there soaking up the sasonings for another 3-5 minutes. The length of time required to soak in the seasoning depends on how "fat" the seafood is. Depending on the season, crabs might be "skinny" inside the shell, so fluid can seep into it with lots of seasoning easily. That's when you find every cut on your hands and mouth, because if it's really seasoned, the spices will cause a burning sensation on any open wounds!

After the crabs are boiled, we drain the water out and then pour them over a table covered with newspaper. It's our best place setting, so if you're ever invited to a Cajun's home for boiled seafood and you're presented with a newspaper-covered table, you should be honored!!! The only utensils required are your hands and a butter-knife for cracking claws. Growing up, we would get fussed for breaking off the pinchers (claws) and not eating the rest of the crab. It appears that grandchildren are not subject to this same rule since they seem to get this choice meat without much ado!

We bought the crabs from a crabber in Leeville on our way back from Grand Isle the other day ($8 per dozen). We wanted to buy 6 dozen, but the old guy was generous and threw in an extra three dozen. I'll shell whatever we don't eat as leftovers this week and freeze it to take back with me to Colorado! The old crabber didn't say much. He apparently lives right at the boat landing that he runs because as we were leaving, his wife stuck her head out of a doorway right next to the warf and yelled something in French. She ended the string of French words with "come get your coffee!" My dad confirmed that she told him the same thing in French before saying it again in English. I don't know if she reiterated her command in English for our sake or if he just didn't usually listen to her so she tried two languages!!

As you can see from this post, I am very much enjoying my visit home, especially the eatin!!! My niece and nephew are here today, so with 70 degree weather, we'll enjoy the outdoors again until the rain comes this afternoon.

This last picture is of the Louisiana state bird- the Pelican. I don't remember seeing very many when I was a kid, but apprently they were put on the endangered list a while back and have made a come-back over the years. They were everywhere! My dad says that sometimes they cast their lines when fishing and will snare a pelican flying by. These birds are huge and according to him, put up a decent fight when you're trying to unhook them from your line!