Eating in NOLA:

Because I know your answer is undoubtably "The glorious resurgence of the Eating In Nola foodblog" I thought I would shoot you a quick post about what I'm thankful for.

It's really 3 things, and in this order.

Good friends
Good food
Big Green Eggs

We did our traditional MBA potluck Thanksgiving last week and like always it was great. Kerry and I brought the mashed potatoes, creamed onions, rolls and spiced pear bread pudding. Other selections included stuffing, sweet potatoes, fresh green beans, green bean casserole, cupcakes from Sucre, chocolate pecan pie and a turkey smoked in our friends' brand new Big Green Egg.

Take a look at this plate.



I'm actually sitting in the airport right now getting ready to fly back home from my family Thanksgiving. So check these out too.




Dinner




And the post Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich.

And hell, here is the turkey sandwich I'm eating as I write this in the Victory Lane Bar in the ATL airport.




Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Coming up? Luke and Huevos.

A few weeks ago at work something asked me, "What do you do when you aren't working?"
...
"I used to have a food blog?"

That was seriously my answer.  It's kind of amazing how fast life moves sometimes you know?

I got here in July of 2008 for school and then all the sudden I was done and looking for a job and starting a job and stopped finding the time to tell people about food that I was eating.

Either way I miss it... maybe you do to who knows?

So lets bring it back with a classic.  I'm pretty sure there has been some version of this post at least 3 times on this blog in the last 2 years. 

But to be honest its the kind of post that this blog really is about so deal with it... and i promise I have some never before seen on EatingInNOLA restaurants coming up later in the week.

I really believe that if you only have one Thanksgiving dinner you aren't taking advantage of the season. I was lucky enough to sneak in two last week. One in New Orleans with my MBA classmates and friends and one up in Atlanta with my parents and grandmother.

Obviously, they were two very different different kinds of meals but I like to think that both captured the true spirit of Thanksgiving.


NOLA Thanksgiving 2009 included 30 dishes from 30 participants and a 30 pound turkey. Also about 30 bottles of wine and a handle of Crown Royal. I don't need to tell you that those things all add up to 121 units of good times.


Seriously look at this plate. That's Chicken Parmesan on there next to the stuffing, cheese mashed potatoes and turkey. "Why?" you ask?

You ask too many questions.


The Villegas' had a more traditional spread. Look there is my mom and grandmother! We went a little more gourmet than usual this year. Check out the menu below.

Appetizers

Hot Tomato, Jack and Crab Dip

with Toast Points

Salad

Pear Salad with Rasberry Cream

Entrees

Herbed Roasted Turkey Breast

Brown Butter Mash Potatoes

Roasted Broccolini with Crushed Red Pepper and Bacon

Orange, Gingered, Glazed Carrots

Cornbread, Wild Mushroom, and Pecan Stuffing

Old Fashioned Apple Cranberry Sauce

Desserts

Spiced Pumpkin and Apple Pie

with Whipped Cream

And that's what it looked like on the plate. It was delicious and well executed by two talented chefs if I do say so myself.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

So this is what I ate the last few days. You would be surprised how long 2 pounds of meatballs will last. It was my first time making meatballs. It was pretty easy. Just some beef, bread crumbs, egg, garlic, and basil.

I mixed it all up and then rolled them and put them in a pan until they looked like this.


And as you can see above I like meatball subs so I added some overpriced tomato sauce and made the sandwich you see above.


In the end it wasn't a bad first attempt. Plus like I said, they lasted a few days so it was a gift that kept on giving.

Someone had a birthday a few days ago and someone else threw me a party.

So I'm 25 now. I'm not sure it's quite time to start worrying about eating too healthy, but maybe it's time to consider it a little. That's probably why Kerry decided on bacon-wrapped potatoes AND tomato and mozzarella skewers.


These little suckers were good. It was like a deconstructed Caprese Salad (is Caprese Salad already a deconstructed dish?). Three grape tomatoes and a chunk of mozzarella on a stick, drizzled with some homemade, home grown basil olive oil. Everyone loved them and I ate a bunch, but not so many that I didn't have room for the main attraction...


In general people don't eat enough bacon-wrapped things on their birthdays. These went fast. Small red potatoes quartered, boiled for a few min, tossed with some fresh rosemary, salt n peppa, and olive oil, then wrapped in a half slice of bacon and cooked at 400 degrees for about 40-45 min.

Oh, don't worry - the bacon grease they sucked up was countered by the sour cream and Tabasco dip we had for them. These were so good we made then again the next night for a meal.

There were some banana nut cup cakes to top the night off as well, but somehow we forgot to get a picture of them... it's a shame because they were delicious and looked pretty good too.

So - turn 25 if you haven't yet, get some bacon, and a girl that will throw you a party and life will be pretty good.

So, by this point it's no secret that we take ideas from Blackened Out every now and again. We like to see it as giving a different perspective of something you might have read. Plus they make some things sound so good we have to try them out.

Well at least this time we waited awhile...

So we saw these recipes for butternut squash soup and roasted broccoli about a month ago and had been waiting to try them out. We did Saturday night... with a few key changes... or one key change.

Did you know that butternut squash is out of season? Or maybe it isn't. Did you know that Robert's at Carrollton and Claiborne doesn't have butternut squash? Well I'll tell you what they do have. Potatoes.

So we switched it up to a potato soup because I love potato soup and potatoes will never let you down. We just boiled them up, put them in a Cuisinart with some half and half and butter, and warmed it in a pan with some cheese and bacon. Easy as that. It was really good too. Here is a picture of it in the pan.


The broccoli came off without a hitch though. Actually we used broccolini but looking at the picture on Blackened Out I think they did too. We just threw it in the oven with some garlic, olive oil, bacon, and red chili flakes. 400 degrees for 11 min and it was ready.


Finished the whole meal off with some garlic bread that you can see above in the picture of the meal and it was one of the best meals we have cooked. Try the broccolini... it's as good as you want it to be.

Success!

So we went in for a round 2 because we don't like to be denied... And it's a cheap meal.

This time we switched it up a little and added some other fresh ingredients we picked up at the Crescent City Farmer's Market yesterday. Namely, fresh basil from our new sweet basil plant and a Creole tomato from a local grower. Oh, and an onion from the corner store on Calhoun.


We cooked up all the goodies in my one pan... By the way did you know I only have one pan and one tiny sauce pan? Well, we cooked it all up...



And you can see the finished product up top. Still not exactly want we got in Rome but just as good. That could be because we have gone through half a (big) container of Parmesan cheese in two days, though.

- Post From My iPhone

I had this in Rome and it was simple and tasty. So we figured we would take a stab at it. I'll tell you now it didn't come out perfect. It was good though.

It seemed simple enough -- just spaghetti, garlic, olive oil and crushed red pepper, and some Parmesan for good measure. It wasn't quite what we were hoping... a little spicy and I think maybe it needed more varieties of cheese in it. Actually in general I think everything in the world could be improved with more and multiple cheeses.

Here is a picture though. It didn't look bad on the plate. Either way, it's good to be home.

So this is a post that has been in the works for a few months now -- since before the blog existed, actually. Or I guess what I really mean is I had a pork roast in the freezer for a few months. I bought it back in December, but didn't have a Crock Pot at the time to slow cook it in. I got a little one over Christmas just for this occasion. And Kerry got a Cuisinart food processor for Christmas so we were excited about fresh salsa and guacamole as well.

MBA classes will get in the way of the best of plans, though, and it took us a few months to get to it. Worth the wait.


We slow cooked the pork all day. We threw in some chicken broth, some Montreal Chicken Seasoning, and she doesn't know it, but I put a little cumin in later. Then, while she was at one of our typical marathon MBA team meetings, I shredded it up and went to the store for some fresh salsa and guacamole ingredients.


The pico de gallo we made was really good. Just some fresh vine-ripened tomatoes, white onion, a little jalapeno and salt.


And then we used the same recipe for the guacamole, plus a fresh avocado (Robert's charged me the $1 Hass avocado price even though I got the $2 Frontera avocado). There is still some of this sitting in the fridge for consumption today. The Pico and Guacamole really made the meal.


So we wrapped it all up with a little cheese and lettuce on some skillet-warmed tortillas (ask Kerry how to roll up a burrito, she knows how to now).  Delicious.

What do you do when you have about a cup and a half of Bisquick mix, no eggs, and some milk?


Biscuit breakfast. And you smother them with butter and honey. And you drink orange juice with them.

So when I said a few days ago that we were gonna make those red beans and rice at home from that recipe I wasn't kidding. It was a great recipe, with red peppers and onion cooked in with the beans and sausage. We added a fresh tomato too.

Like I said, we picked up a couple key ingredients at one of the Crescent City Farmers Markets last Tuesday down at Uptown Square. These ingredients included this andouille sausage:


I won't go into all the details but you know it was a lot of chopping and browning and cooking. It looked like this in the pan toward the end:


Oh and we had some corn bread too! I opened the oven to check on them while they were baking, which Kerry always yells at me for doing (but she wasn't there to stop me).  It was Kerry's box of cornbread, the standard Jiffy mix, and it took 15-20 min to bake. And we ate it with honey.


Oh and Jordan helped. I didn't mention that, but he did so thanks to him as well.

My mom made us dinner our last night in Lawrenceville.  My mom is a pretty good cook and this was the second really good meal she made while we were there.

The menu was Chicken Cordon Bleu, rice, asparagus, salad, and garlic bread. It was really good and it came with wine and good conversation. My parents told stories about me when I was a little kid.

Here is a picture of my mom... she made the food.

All the food cookin' at the levee made us want to grill out. So we grilled up some hot dogs on Mardi Gras night. We got some Bob Evans sides (Macaroni & Cheese and Original Mashed Potatoes) to go along with our Oscar Mayer Deli Style Hot Dogs. I sauteed up some sweet onions too.


Kerry went with some of those onions, ketchup and mustard.

My plate looked messier because I went with chili and cheese and didn't skimp at all on the sides.

It was a nice quick, easy, pre-travel dinner. Look out for the Eating in ATL posts coming up this weekend.

So what do you know about Mardi Gras and Shrove Tuesday?

Well Wikipedia says that Shrove Tuesday is "widely associated with the eating of foods such as pancakes, and often known simply as Pancake Day, originally because these used up ingredients such as fat and eggs, the consumption of which was traditionally restricted during Lent."

So we made them. We cooked them like silver dollars...


And with blueberries that we threw in one by one from far distances...

And we topped them with whipped cream and butter and syrup and sprinkles in celebration of Mardi Gras. And we drank orange juice with them and the orange juice might have had some Malibu Rum in it... it's hard to say.

So after the infamous "Banana Day" we stayed away from bananas for a few days.


But we brought them back this morning in style. Banana pancakes! They were good and we had them with syrup and butter. We made them in this pan.

Last night we broke out my Valentines gift and made our first recipe with beer.

We made a Beer and Cheese dip. It was awesome and we ate it with pretzels that look like snow shoes. It had cream cheese and cheddar cheese and chives and Dixie Blackened Voodoo Lager in it. We ate it up. Kerry ate it up while she did accounting homework.


We got the ingredients at Rouses. Kerry went incognito.


After the dip we made some chili and didn't burn it and then ate it. I ate it with Tostitos Scoops and Kerry ate it with Fritos. We had the left overs for lunch even.

Well it was good the first time... why not do it again?


We did the whole frozen 4 cheese pizza with tomatoes cut up on top thing again two nights ago before we went out (more on that later). It was pretty good again, the tomatoes seem to add something more than just color. I've never been a huge frozen pizza fan in the past but this keeps being surprisingly pleasing. This one was round and of the Red Barron variety. This picture has a big knife in it because it was Friday the 13th.


We did salad again as well. Just some romaine tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette, Parmesan, and some croutons from my mama. There is a bear in this picture because I forgot to move it.


And white wine (Francis Coppala on special at Roberts Fresh Market) this time instead of red.


Well I guess that's it. Sorry if it was a repetitive post... I figured the pizza being a different shape and the white wine might have made it post worthy. This picture has a Kerry in it because she hasn't decided to take it down yet... maybe she wont.