Jazz Fest 2013

This past Saturday we got miracle Jazz Fest tickets, thanks to our good friend Berthold's good friend Ruth. This luck has struck for Jazz Fest 2 years in a row (see last year here)! We had dinner plans for Saturday night, so we missed the headliners, but the small acts make it what it is so we weren't sorry. 

Old fashion taffy pull

Mardi Gras Indians 

Mr. Okra

Avocado + Sriracha = the best snack ever

Bertold

Jason Marsalis

 

The food: the best part of Jazz Fest 

Oyster Spinach Salad

Oyster Poboy

Stuffed Artichoke

Lost Bayou Ramblers

Mud Bug Bisque

This weekend Lauren and I picked up a bag of crawfish for a late afternoon lunch. We walked up to Captain Sal's Seafood to get them because they usually do a pretty good job; Lauren got a great batch of big, spicy, juicey ones there the weekend before. This was not the case with this batch. They were over salted, dry, and bland. We decided not to continue eating them. Bummer right? This story gets better...

We decided we would peel all the crawfish. Which it's hard to sit with a bag of crawfish and peel them with out eating them all but there was enough beer on hand that it wasn't that bad. We got about two big hand-fulls of tail meat. I put the tails in the fridge while I began prepping the other ingredients for a bisque.

 I defrosted some amazing white corn my mom had brought on her last visit. She packed it off the cob and it's sweet and creamy. I chopped up four red potatoes, four cloves of garlic and an onion. I threw the corn and potato in a pot on low and covered them.

 I browned the onion & garlic and added them to the potatoes and corn.

 Then with half a stick of butter and three tablespoons of flour I made a roux. I expanded it by whisking in a cup of 1% milk until I had a thick white gravy which I added to the vegetable mixture. I added 4 ounces of clam juice and 6 ounces of beer to thin it out a bit. I brought that mixture to boil stirring occasionally to keep it from scorching on the bottom.

 At a light boil I reduced the heat added the crawfish tails, 1/2 cup half & half, a dash of worchestire sauce, a dash of hot sauce, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and salt to taste.  I let it simmer on low until the potatoes were al dente. While it was simmering I grilled some rye toast that I drizzled with olive oil and cracked with salt and pepper. I also trimmed a bit of parsley from the garden.

So that's the story of how we turned a bad bag of bugs into a banging bisque. Bon appetite!

Easter Weekend 2013

Last Sunday was our third year hosting Easter (check out last year's here). My mom and little sis, Emmy, came to town as well as C's mom. We had a great time taking them around to all our favorite spots and cooking as one big family on Easter Sunday. Here are some of the places we hit up and the big meal that closed it out:

Friday morning we took them to the best breakfast spot in town: Cake Cafe. They make fresh pastries daily and the best fried oysters in town!

Courtesy of Cake Cafe

Saturday night we went to Bacchanal. It was really crowded, so we sat in their newly renovated upstairs. We couldn't hear the music or enjoy the weather, but we were glad we got a table at all considering how quick they fill up and how long folks linger. 

Sunday: After mass at St. Francis Seelos in the Bywater. We went to Mr. B.'s Bistro for brunch. 

waiting for our table with bloody mary's 

feelin' it 

We rushed home from brunch and began the preparation for Easter dinner.

Here's what was on the menu:

Appetizers: pears with blue cheese and proscuitto, deviled eggs. cheese plate 

I keep my Deviled Eggs super simple and they are delicious.

Step 1: boil the eggs (best results come when I bring the water to a boil with eggs already submerged, boil 1 minute, remove from heat, steam 3 min, remove from water ASAP). Shells usually come off with ease, especially if I run them under cold water. 

Step 2: cut eggs in half, remove yolk. Add to the yolks sweet pickle relish, mayonnaise, yellow mustard, dash of hot sauce, ground pepper to taste. Mash with a fork.

Step 3: Scoop egg mixture into a ziplock bag, seal, cut off a corner (to mimic a pastry bag). Pipe into eggs.

Step 4: Sprinkle with paprika and chill 

Dinner: leg of lamb, spring pea salad, nicoise salad, mac and cheese

best mac and cheese yet!

mmm lamb + mint jelly 

nicoise salad and spring pea salad

And we eat...

Dessert: lemon pound cake with honey vanilla neufchatel cheese and fresh fruit

till next year...

Spring Cleaning

Sorry it has been so long! Our desktop computer crashed :( this is where we do all our blogging and photo editing, so it is a major bummer. We are taking it to the Genius Bar tomorrow; hopefully it is not fatal. We have a few posts that were ready to go, but are on that computer, so stay tuned for those. For now, let's talk about Spring Cleaning. This is my favorite cleansing season and since Spring Break started on Friday, I have much planned in regards to cleaning, organizing, and purging.

First up, spring cleaning for the body. I found a 3 day smoothy cleanse by Dr. Oz. I'm in the middle of Day 1 right now, and so far so good. What I like about this cleanse is I'm not hungry, and it wasn't too expensive. What I don't like about this cleanse, is that I would rather be eating a cheeseburger. If you find a cheeseburger cleanse, please let me know.

Here are some of the ingredients:

And here's the plan:

Using this list from apartment therapy and some ideas from the nest's list of 100 Days of Organizing I plan to spend the next two days getting everything back to neutral. During my spring clean frenzy the goal is to eliminate as much clutter as possible. And not just the clutter that has accumulated in the last 3 months, but all the visual clutter that is better suited to winter: meaning during the spring and summer I prefer for there to be less out. Less books, less vases, less trinkets. Hopefully I will have time left over to paint a table, or two.

A Week in Meals: Feb 25-28

This week I had every intention of cooking 3 vegan meals (I'm trying to get us to be vegetarians at least three nights a week for health, environmental, and cost concerns). Unfortunately, we added chicken to our chopped chicken salad (so good!) and turned our tofu lettuce wraps into steak salad. We did have one vegan meal, the minestrone soup with quinoa pasta. However, if there had been Parmesan in our fridge it would have been perfect! Better luck next week; vegan meals planned are: a veggie loaf, mushroom stroganoff, and apple bean bake. Here's what the Hardy's had this week:

The last time we were in Mobile, Cynthia made this amazing dressing that was like a salad in itself. She makes it from memory from a cook book called The Well Fed Bridegroom, which she purchased at a cooking demo in New Orleans and later lost in a fire. I recreated this twice this week and would recommend you do the same. Here's a pic, followed by the recipe:

Recipe:

Olive oil or canola oil (I used half and half) 

2 garlic cloves smashed, infuse the oil while you get the rest of the ingredients ready

chop and add however much of the rest you see fit:

green onion

shallot

fresh or dried thyme

fresh or dried parsley 

chopped olives (one night I used kalamata, one night I used green, both were good)

scoop of sweet pickle relish

splash of pickle juice

splash of sweet relish juice

capers

cracked pepper

squeeze of lemon

pinch of powdered sugar 

red wine vinegar (we just poured some wine straight from the bottle)

Friday night: Sushi picnic in bed 

Saturday morning breakfast: coffee and beignets  

I think Christian's are better than Cafe du Monde