mardi gras!

This post has taken a while to write – especially since I've been giving the blog a mini make-over instead of typing posts :)

Anyway, Mardi Gras was last Tuesday the 16th. It was also the day after President's Day, so Jon had the Monday AND Tuesday off work. Gotta love long weekends and three day weeks. On Saturday, we went to the Spanish Town parade in downtown BR. It was great to see so many people around, having a good time. There have been a couple of times we've gone in to the city and seen hardly anyone else around. On this day though, the streets were lined with happy people! We found lunch soon after we got in, then spent a while walking through parts of the parade route. The parade was fun, with lots of floats and bead-catching.

(I actually weighed our beads the other day, and we caught about 2kg each! Pretty heavy weight around your neck, I can tell you!)

We decided we'd head over to New Orleans on the Sunday too. We were a little worried about how crowded and crazy it might be, but thought we really couldn't not go. And we were so glad we did. The atmosphere was great. It was like a massive street party, with people drinking, BBQing, cheering, celebrating. There were lots of people around, but we still had plenty of room to move. We ended up walking along a large section of the parade route, and on our way back, ran into a friend (and New Orleans native) from Jon's work. We spent the evening in their tent (more like a marquee though, in case you get confused) watching the Krewe of Bacchus parade. The floats were much more elaborate than the ones in BR (some of which were trailers with a portaloo in the middle!). Each of the floats had themes, and all the people on them wore costumes and masks. There was also music, from marching bands. And plenty of beads, again! Such a fun day!

There are more photos on Flickr too.

lovely snow

We were getting special winter storm reports on TV last night. Nothing exciting happened though, it was just COLD! More wintery weather was reported this morning. They predicted a cold day, and a chance of snow. Unlikely, I thought, but I peeked through the closed blinds and saw beautiful, light snow! Twice in one winter – may be a first for this place!

who dat!

Last night the New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts to win the Super Bowl! We watched the game at a friend's house, with a few other friends from Jon's work. The Saints didn't get off to a great start, but the game got pretty exciting in the second half, with the Saints coming from behind (10-6), to win 31-17.

I must say, I'm not really into sports. I don't know American football very well either, having never seen a game until college football started last September. Football is huge here though, and for the Saints to win – it's a pretty big deal.
So, I'm excited to be here for their win, and excited for New Orleans and all the Saints supporters. It's also Mardi Gras season here, so I'm pretty sure New Orleans will be partying like crazy! Speaking of which, these are some fun photos I found of people celebrating the Saints' win in the French Quarter:

(All photos are from the Times-Picayune – NOLA.com)

If you are interested, you can read more about the game on the NFL website.
Go Saints!

sounds of louisiana

I came across this clip as a featured video on Youtube:

I looked around for some more Cajun and Zydeco clips. Found a couple of old ones, including this, of Buckwheat Zydeco (who won the grammy)...

... and this one of Dewey Balfa and his nephew, Todd Balfa, on the fiddlesticks (!)

It's been raining all day here, and I've been watching water run down the walls in our living room. It's actually starting to drip from the ceiling on to the carpet now. Let's hope the wall doesn't collapse or anything. Anyway, I'm going to put some cups on the floor to catch the drips, and bake some of these...

RECIPE : anzacs

So, this isn't a Southern recipe, but I thought I'd post it anyway because I made them for Australia Day. I've always thought Anzacs are best chewy, so this is a good recipe.

Recipe from Taste
Makes about 24

Ingredients
1 cup (150g) plain flour
1 cup (90g) rolled oats
1 cup (85g) desiccated coconut
3/4 cup (155g) brown sugar
125g butter
2 tbsp golden syrup
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Directions
Preheat the oven to 160°C. Line two baking trays with non-stick baking paper. Sift the flour into a large bowl. Stir in the oats, coconut and brown sugar.

Put the butter, golden syrup and 2 tbsp water in a small saucepan. Stir over a medium heat until melted. Stir in the bicarbonate of soda.

Pour the butter mixture into the flour mixture and stir until combined.

Roll level tablespoons of mixture into balls. Place on the trays, about 5cm apart.

Press with a fork to flatten slightly. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

Set aside on the trays for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack so they cool completely.

'straya day

We had a few people over on Australia Day (well, it was the 25th here. We are 17 hours behind Melbourne). We had been thinking about doing it for a while, but weren't sure how many people would fit in our little apartment. In the end, we had a small (but good) amount of people come and it worked out well. We had sausages in bread, chicken wings and some salads. And beer, there was of course, beer. I also made Anzacs. We showed them last year's AFL grand final (recorded on DVD by Jon's parents), and listened to the Hottest 100 for a while too. It was a good night, and we were glad we decided to do it. It was nice to have people over, to share dinner and have a few drinks – it's something we enjoyed doing back in Melbourne. Hopefully we'll do it again soon, I know Jon is keen to knock up some pizzas for them!

PS. I don't know if anyone is reading this blog, but we were interested to hear what people thought of the Hottest 100? There were a few good songs in there, but our favourites didn't seem to rate as high as we thought or hoped (and I was sure Phoenix be no.1)...

Here were my favourites from last year:
• Clare Bowditch - Start of war
• Doves - Kingdom of rust
• Florence & The Machine - Dog days are over
• La Roux - Quicksand
• Passion Pit - Sleepyhead
• Peter Bjorn & John - Lay it down
• Phoenix - Lisztomania
• Sarah Blasko - All I want
• Silversun Pickups - Panic switch
• White Rabbits - Percussion gun

back to the french quarter

We spent another afternoon in New Orleans last Thursday. We had a visitor from Australia, and it was my 25th birthday – good reasons to head down to the big easy.
We basically spent the afternoon eating, drinking and walking through the French Quarter. I took a few photos, though they're mainly of building signs, like this...

You can see more on Flickr.

brrrrr...

Winter has set in over here. This week has been especially cold. My weather widget says it's only one degree outside now, and tonight the low will be -7. Chilly!

On Sunday, we had lunch at Capital City Grill and then went to the Louisiana State Museum in downtown. There are two permanent exhibits in the museum. Downstairs covers Louisiana's history, and upstairs has displays relating to culture (food, festivals, football/tailgating etc). We spent most of our time downstairs, looking at the displays on the Mississippi and the Louisiana purchase. We ended up rushing through quite a bit downstairs, and everything upstairs (we thought we'd be booted out at closing time), so we are hoping to go back for a better look.

That's about it for this week, just staying in to keep warm (and drinking lots of tea). I'm off now, to start some pea and ham soup for dinner.

skidboot

We saw this dog, Skidboot, on a 'best of' Oprah show yesterday (couldn't find the actual clip, but he did this same trick). So cool!

happy new year!

Hoping you had a nice Christmas and great new year's eve (happy birthday mum)! We still have a few hours left of 2009, but saw some shots on the local news from Auckland and Sydney's new years. We aren't really big on new years, so we're going to make pizza and have a couple of drinks at home.

Christmas was pretty quiet for us. We stayed in, baked ham and watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. We opened our presents on Christmas eve while Skyping family (on Christmas morning) in Melbourne. It was strange spending Christmas away from home and family, but still nice and very relaxed.

Jon has a few days off over Christmas/new year, so we are trying to get out and about. On Tuesday, we spent the afternoon in downtown Baton Rouge. We started off with lunch at Poor Boy Lloyd's, which is right near the Mississippi. I had a delicious shrimp po-boy, and Jon tried a hot roast beef po-boy which was pretty much dripping with beef gravy, yuuum! We had planned to visit the State Museum afterwards, but it was a nice clear day, so we walked over to the State Capitol building instead (hoping to go up to the observation deck). We spent a little while looking around the hall, and the Senate and House chambers. Unfortunately the observation deck was closed, so we didn't get to see BR from 27 floors up this time. We finished off our day with a coffee and short walk along the Mississippi.

We took a few photos over Christmas and in downtown, which I've uploaded to Flickr. I've also upgraded my account, so all our older photos can now be viewed (previously you could only see the 200 most recent photos). We had a look back at some of the pics we took in LA and during our stay in the trailer – fun times (and Jon's hair was so short)!