Eating in NOLA:

So it took a while for us to get to Willie Mae's. A big part of the reason was it never quite seemed to be open when we went. We finally went a few months ago though (that's right, there is a huge back log) and I think I learned a little bit about myself.

As you probably know Willie Mae's is touted at the best fried chicken in America (or the World? Probably the World I guess). Now I have friends that swear by Coop's down on Decatur but I've never been there so we are just going to pretend like it doesn't exist. So the purposes of this post Willie Mae's has the best fried chicken going.

Look, I know people love fried chicken but after eating at Willie Mae's I can confidently say I'm just not a fried chicken guy. For 25 years I have just been assuming that there was better chicken out there and as soon as I had it I would know. Turns out I'd rather just have a cheese burger.


Either way if you are into fried chicken then Willie Mae's is the spot. Its crispy, its moist, and its New Orleans. And the red beans and rice was pretty fantastic.

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.

We are a few posts behind. There is really no way around it. This is from a few days ago but we are gonna catch back up and my buddy Jordan is coming into town this week so we should have a few good ones coming up.

Monday we went to the LBC for Red Beans and Rice day. We decided to use it as a bench mark for the Red Beans and Rice meal we have coming up in the next few days. Kerry found a recipe the other day and we are itching to make our own.

Just like last time, the traditional New Orleans meal was pretty good. Even better, maybe, was that right before we sat down to dig in I found a friend. Here is a picture of us.


Afterward we walked outside right into some free sno-balls from Plum Street Snoball (another New Orleans tradition). They were giving them out for something to do with the Hullabaloo, Tulane's student newspaper. Kerry used to write for the Hullabaloo so we didn't even feel guilty about taking the sno-balls and not filling out the survey they were pushing. In case you're wondering, we got a mixture of Nectar and Cake Batter syrups on our sno-balls.


I promise there is more to come soon.

Every Monday the student center (LBC) serves red beans and rice. You can get it with an extra link of sausage or vegetables. Kerry went with the vegetables... I went with no extra anything (well cornbread) and then consumed all of it in about 6 minutes.

The reason red beans and rice are served in New Orleans on Monday traditionally is that Monday is laundry day and the women could cook the beans all day while they washed clothes. I litterally just learned that 2 minutes ago. And now you know too.

It was good.

I expected to be done posting today but I stumbled on this picture from last night.

Last night for the Super Bowl Kerry, Kerry and I went to a fundraiser at Whiskey Blue (in the W Hotel) that our friend Jeff had told us about.

It was a fundraiser for a community football field they are building in the 9th Ward. A percentage of all the proceeds from the drinks sold went toward the field.

They had the game on a projection television and the 3 of us had a pretty good time. The only issue was we expected there to be food and we were wrong. Dead wrong.

So by the time the game ended at 9 we were pretty hungry. We headed to St. Charles Tavern (a 24 hour restaurant/bar on St. Charles and MLK near Lee circle). In addition to some pretty good food they had The Office on.

I ordered a cheese burger and the waitress told me to get a Cajun burger so I did that and she was pretty impressed with my selection. It was good. Both Kerrys got red beans and rice. I had a bite. It was good too. We had Abita Beer with the meal.

So to recap - New Orleans fundraiser, Cajun Burger, Red Beans and Rice, and Louisiana Beer. Good Sunday night.