April 2011 – The Life and Times of Bayoucreole

Wishing you and yours a very, very Happy Easter! It’s gonna be a pretty day down here in the Big Easy. I suspect that I’ll be smelling a whole lotta crawfish boil and charcoal coming from a bunch of yards today. Me and my crew are going out for dinner today…I’m not cooking.

Nope, heading to the French Quarters and we’re having dinner at Olivier’s if it isn’t too crowded. I’ve never been there before so I wanna give them a play and see how it is. I’ll be blogging about the experience as my restaurant of the month.. which I’ve been seriously slacking and will be getting back to.

I have to fix the easter baskets this morning. I always fix four baskets.

The kids each get one (yeah, even at 19 and almost 17, they still look for baskets),

a house basket (that’s code for… when you’re finish eating all of the candy in your basket, you can eat the left over candy and it’s in this basket just sitting around the house)

…and NavySeal’s basket. Yeah, he looks forward to his basket and will pout like a big baby if he doesn’t get it.

I live in a house of spoiled-rotten people.

My baskets are always traditional NOLA baskets with Elmer’s candy… like my mom used to make. I fill it with their favorite jellybeans and some other stuff but, the base of the basket always start here…

That’s another one of the many Louisiana food culture things…eating Elmer’s candy for Easter. Ms. Denise Trowbridge did a wonderful blog about this tradition.

In addition to their baskets, have to send my brother(The Oracle) his easter candy so, I make sure I purchase enough Heavenly Hash to ship along with his bricks of CDM coffee.

You Louisiana folks would just die if you couldn’t get a care package from home…I’ll tell ya!

Yesterday, the hubby and I went to Petco with Happy and Dyson for them to get their vaccinations. It’s probably the first time that, Happy(the rescue dog) ever received them.

He was so well-behaved. It was super-crowded and he just took it all in stride. I’m still trying to figure out why they abused and neglected him. He is a wonderful dog. Abusers don’t really need a reason though… do they?

Dyson on the other hand, acted like a donkey! Growling, barking and acted a plum-nilly fool and then, I noticed his nose started bleeding.

I’ve never had a dog whose nose bled or had seizures before and he’s doing both.

We’re gonna have to get a panel workup on him to see what’s going on. I’m noticing that, it happens every time he’s really excited so, I hope that gives us a clue.

I’m just hoping he doesn’t have a tumor. We just buried Sassie a year ago…I couldn’t handle another loss.

The second season of Treme begins tonight…can’t wait to see what this season brings and how it will affect those of us who are emotionally tied into it all.

Over at Back-of-Town, they do a really wonderful job of going through each episode and writing about how it affects so many of us. Looking forward to going through another season with you guys!

Well, that’s all I got today…gotta get these baskets done before my people wake up.

Have a wonderful time with family and friends today!

This weekend was an extremely busy one. For starters…my dad is home again. He returned Saturday but, that’s another post in itself. Sunday was myyyy dayyyy. The French Quarter Fest was this weekend and ya know, I love me some festivals! This is my favorite time of the year. The strawberry fest in Ponchatula was also this weekend but, I went a few years ago and I didn’t really have fun at that one.

The French Quarter Fest is da bomb so, if ya ever planning a trip to the city…that’s a really great time to visit. The weather isn’t hot as hell yet and you still get the NOLA party flava. We arrived out there around 3:00 and walked around trying to figure out what booths we wanted to hit. Even though it was super crowded, the lines were moving fast at the booths.

I started with crab cakes with a creamy crawfish sauce, NS had crawfish pasta.

I followed that with some crawfish bread(I was on a crawfish kick) and NS had an alligator sausage kabob. I had never eaten gator meat before…lawd, that stuff was good!

Guess I’ll be getting gator meat at the festivals now.

Naw, we don’t have any pics of the food…we killed that stuff before I could get the camera out.

The closest we got to one was…

NS catching me while I was taking a swig of coke… I love how the wind blew my hat,reminds me of Hee-Haw.LOL

The music was plentiful. We didn’t go into Jackson Square…just hung out along the mighty Mississippi at Woldenberg Park

and headed for the Cajun/Zydeco tent. Y’all know I love me some Zydeco and Rockin’ Doopsie Jr. was closing out the fest…there was no way I was missing Doopsie! He is one hell of a performer!

Doopsie had the crowd on their feet and totally engaged. I lost my voice from screaming so much and I danced the entire time…so did a lot of other folks.