Oak Alley Plantation and Red Bean Adventure

I actually slept for most of the day, yesterday, while John drove all over. I was pretty wiped from the dread of the dentist, and had a hard night of it last night, too. It didn't really help that a crew came to pour concrete for the driveway of the building and John set off the smoke alarm in the apartment when he made his breakfast. 

My breakfast was a few block's walk away to the Gracious Bakery, where John had a breakfast bun and I had something called a Hazelnut Crimuffin, which was a croissant dough cut into bite-sized bites glued together with hazelnuts and cinnamon bun filling. It was quite good, crisp on top and layered and rich underneath. With a simple latte, it satisfied my need for something new.

My word muscles have been feeling stupid stiff. It's been a really long time since I've really written much, and I feel awkward and gauche just listing the things that have been happening on this trip. It really probably isn't that terrible, but it feels so difficult compared to how it used to be.

There are so many beautiful things in this city, too. We just come across them when we walk through. We just went exploring for a bit after breakfast, to get out, stretch our legs and see whatever we came across to see. There are several of the little neighborhood graveyards around here, some closed, some open, and we'll see if we can't get into one before we leave.

It's so old. The city is so very old. So many things are so worn with time and age and use. The pavements buckle over the roots of trees so deep they hold the neighborhoods into place. It was so fun to see the names of the streets set into the pavement, so that we would know where we were wherever we went.

There are a great number of photos, not all of them are here, but I tried to make an album of most photos that we've taken. 

We debated about going to do the Plantation Tour. We knew that it was going to be going over the history of slavery in this country, and just asked the question of ourselves if we really wanted to do that, and decided that we could balance it as needed. There would probably be other things out there as well. So we headed out to Oak Alley Plantation, in part because we could get tickets online. 

We're glad we did.

The slave quarters were suitably stark in both presentation and information. The Big House was huge, and deteriorating enough that the top floor was entirely off limits to even the tour. The tour was dry and filled with museum pieces only a few of which had actually been in the house when it was lived in. 

But the Oaks.

The Oaks were absolutely magnificent. They were planted the way they were to funnel the cool air from off the Mississippi River into the front door of the House, and they were more than 200 years old. And one oak right by the house was filled with a swarm of bees breaking off from their old hive, filling the air with buzzing gold insects circling all through the air. 

It was also fun to see the whole process by which sugar cane is planted, grown, and processed, and how much work that was. And the sunshine as wonderful. We even got to eat at picnic tables outside their little cafeteria, and got to buy chips, a muffuletta, and some of their whisky sauce bread pudding which was wonderfully dense with egg and cream and not too much sugar and a good hint of fruit in it as well.

We saw sugar cane planted all the way home. This particular batch was by an oil refinery. 20% of the United State's oil refineries are in this region. It was interesting to watch them go by. I suddenly realized that I wanted to go to a normal grocery store and stock up on some local goodies. So John took me to a regular grocery store and we looked for all kinds of things, from red beans to biscuit flour, from seafood boil spices to locally sourced molasses. It was really fun.

I slept for the rest of the way back home, and I was pretty exhausted and groggy. But we walked to dinner and I felt better after that. Instead of going to one of the commercial restaurants with the big, expensive menus, we decided to hit a little joint that specialized in boiled crawfish. 

On the way was a grocery store and I'd looked up good recipes for red beans and rice and Kenji had pointed out that the really good recipes use pork products that are local to the area, including tasso (a smoked pork shoulder) and pickled pork! I'd never heard of either of those, and we figured it wouldn't hurt to take a look while we were here. The powered cooler we have would easily keep these safe on the way home. We figured we could have dinner, and on the way home, we could pick up what we wanted and put it in the apartment fridge until we left on Saturday.

BOIL Seafood House is in an old house, and we got to sit on tables out on the roof of the first story. We stepped out through this window to get to our table.

And we got to sit by the rail and watch the sunset while we ate. The food was pretty simple, you could pick some pre-set combinations, or you could just get in increments of a pound of whatever seafood you wanted. There was the usual shrimp, crawfish, crab, but also clams, lobster, mussels, and the like. It was all just boiled in one of four spice mixes and served to the table with whatever sides you wanted. We got a great mixed salad and some French bread to soak the juices up in. The simple combo we got was just crawfish and shrimp with a couple of potatoes and corn on the cob. So good.

We went back to the grocery, got our cured meats, and then headed out in the car back to the Creole Creamery. It was far more crowded. This time I got the Creole Cream Cheese flavor and a Strawberry Champagne Amaretti. Creole Cream Cheese is actually a local farmers cheese that is made with skim milk and buttermilk. This was tangy, almost lemony, with a lovely texture. John got the Bananas Foster on the bittersweet chocolate torte. 

It was a good end to a really solid day. We wandered around and found a little cheese shop that John might shop to get provisions for our drive back to Colorado. We'll be here to Saturday morning, and then we start making our way back. It's been really good, and living in the Garden District has let us discover quite a few things we wouldn't have seen if we'd stayed in the French Quarter again.