St. Patrick's Day Parade. New Orleans.

The amount of beads that are thrown from the parade floats is indescribable. Literally TONS of colored, plastic, bead necklaces...and this was only St. Patrick’s Day! Imagine the mayhem of Mardi Gras along a parade route! After we caught a few strands of beads, we began actively trying NOT to catch any more beads... even so, we still managed to come home with pounds of them. While I took photographs, Lyderic had to stand just behind me to ensure that I didn't get hit in the head while shooting. Beads hurt. The cabbages, potatoes and carrots that were being thrown from the floats hurt even more. After about an hour of the parade, the crowd became bored with the beads and were also trying NOT to catch more beads. By the end of the parade, the street was filled with neglected beads, cabbage leaves, discarded moon pie wrappers and other flotsam and jetsam. The crowd went home, many people with huge sacks full of cabbage, potatoes, onions and carrots slung over their shoulders.

All About Oysters

Before arriving in New Orleans, I had these grandiose ideas of eating fresh oysters on the half-shell every night with dinner. New Orleans is known for it's seafood, right? I figured we'd be close enough to the Gulf of Mexico to hit it with a well thrown stone, so oysters should be plentiful and cheap... and I was right... to a certain extent. They are plentiful AND cheap, but you can only buy them already shucked. There's a bizarre law that does not allow for a sack of oysters in the shell to be divided and sold individually, except with a special license, and as of yet, I have not been able to locate a fish monger with this particular license. The strange thing is that it's perfectly legal for a store to tear open a closed, tagged sack, shuck the oysters and then sell the shucked oysters by the half-pint, pint...up to a gallon size. Go figure.

As much as I love oysters, I'm not oblivious to the fact that they are ugly, slimy-looking things. For some inexplicable reason, raw oysters only look appealing on the half-shell (and even then, just barely) so if you can imagine a pint full of them (or worse, a whole gallon!)- all grey and naked, floating in their milky juices... not a very appetizing thing to see, I can assure you. I have considered saving the shells the next time we go out for raw oysters, then buying some shucked oysters and placing one on each half-shell, but that would just be silly...and an act of sheer desperation. Cooking them is another option and although they add a delicious flavor to gumbo, they taste far better when served raw. Do you see my predicament? Can you feel my pain?

Unfortunately, thanks to Louisiana's strange licensing setup, it appears that our only options are to go to a restaurant and spend too much money OR buy an entire 25 pound sack of oysters (that's about 100 oysters). Considering that a sack of oysters is only $26.00, it's a very tempting proposition. I'm relatively sure that I would not be able to eat 50 oysters in one sitting, but I would certainly be willing to try!

The only other option is to make some friends here and then invite them over to an oyster-fest at our place. We are currently conducting informal interviews with
potential candidates, with the main focus of ascertaining the potential candidate's level of interest in oysters. The questions go something like this:
1. Do you like oysters?
2. On a scale of 1 to 10 how much would you say that you like oysters?
3. With what method of preparation do you prefer your oysters?
4. If requested to do so, would you be able to eat 25-35 raw oysters?
5. What if you were forced to eat that many? Could you do it?
6. If you were in a Russian Gulag and made to eat oysters on the half-shell...

For some reason, we haven't been able to get past question 4 or 5 before the potential candidate excuses him or herself to go to the restroom and then disappears...

Mardi Gras in Cajun Country

Imagine the following scenario: a large group of country-folk dressed in colorful, fringed, homemade costumes. Drinking has begun at 7am (or earlier if the party happened to be spilling over from the party of the night before). All the revelers, called “Mardi Gras”, are packed onto trailers or on horseback and then travel out to farms or houses in the countryside. Once at the houses, the costumed revelers begin to dance and sing songs in an ancient style of French, begging the farmer for ingredients for a communal gumbo. The farmer lets them dance, watching from the porch of his house. Occasionally a dancer will break from the festivities and in a great show of begging, grovel at the feet of the farmer or pull at the pant legs of one of the onlookers. The capitain, whose job it is to keep all the participants in line, makes a great show of mock-whipping the transgressor and shoving him or her back into the dancing melee. After some time, the farmer produces a chicken from a sack on the porch and throws it in the air. Suddenly, the Mardi Gras stop dancing. They break into a wild run in pursuit of the chicken, tripping over each other in their haste. The chase can last for several minutes as the Mardi Gras climb trees, jump over bushes and leap over fences in order to catch the chicken. On one occasion, I even saw a Mardi Gras crawl into a storm drain in pursuit of an especially wily bird.
Sheer madness, I tell you.

After Cajun Country, we arrived in the Big Easy, New Orleans. We managed to find a furnished apartment at a pretty good price in the Garden District and get relatively familiar with our surroundings. Next up dreaded job hunt...

The weather has been spectacular (although, for some reason, everyone has been complaining about how cold it is...boo hoo, it's only 55 degrees. We were just ecstatic that the temperatures were above freezing!) The trees and telephone wires were still draped with beads from the recent New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations giving everything along the parade routes a jeweled, Christmasy appearance.