There is also food in New Orleans...

...it is not only alligators, swamps, giant enormous black grasshoppers, and tangly Spanish moss... Louisiana is also the home to absolutely fantastic food from the Cajun and Creole traditions.  Seafood abounds, of course, with New Orleans being situated near the mouth of the Mississippi River.  Eating in New Orleans is kind of like bird-watching at Cape May - you just can't miss good food (or the migrating birds).  It is just everywhere as long as you stay away from the very few chain restaurants and hotels downtown.  We were mostly in the French Quarter and the Arts and Warehouse district and ate really well.  What we ate?  This!

Mmm, this was fantastic.  Here you have all the goodness of New Orleans food nearly on one plate from Mulate's, a Cajun restaurant.  (= Go there! Eat!) Crawfish tails, stuffed crab, blackened fish, shrimp on a skewer, potato salad, deep-fried octopus, deep-fried oysters, baked potato with cheese, oh and some vegetables in a corner as an afterthought.  This is not veggie heaven, this is seafood heaven, as you can see.  In New Orleans, even the botanists don't care about food plants. I probably ate more oysters in 4 days than I have eaten in the last 4 years during this trip...

This is the sign outside Grand Isle Restaurant and oyster bar.  What is Hog's Head Cheese?  Wikipedia will tell you, and I think I will pass on it after reading about it.  But the oysters were fresh like cauhgt an hour ago at this place! :

"Head cheese is not a cheese but a terrine or meat jelly made with flesh from the head of a calf or pig (sometimes a sheep or cow), and often set in aspic. The parts of the head used varies, but the brain, eyes, and ears are usually removed." (link)

 The late snack oysters we had at Grand Isle. Moist and fresh! So raw that you nearly could feel them wiggle in your mouth. People that don't eat oysters are wimps (I think) and don't realize what amazing thing they are missing. 

At Ernst Cafe we sat outside in 30-degree (Celsius) / 90-degree humid heat and drank cold beer until after midnight.  The whole place was just run by one bartender...

Louisiana has a million hot sauces.  Well, maybe not, but at least a million bottles.  Tabasco is made here. As is Dave's Insanity Hot Sauce, Hog's Breath Hot Sauce, and many other hot sauces with names that can't be written on a family blog. If you ever wondered about the original Tabasco hot sauce - yes, it is kosher and an unopened bottle lasts at least 5 years. More hot sauce information here.

Fried alligator - we just had to order this.  It was good, very moist and tender, white like chicken, doesn't taste like fish, and less stringy than chicken.  But I don't think I would like to live on it for years. On the other hand, I rather eat than be eaten. Each year over 75 000 alligators are captured in Louisiana (90% of them being male) from a population of over 2 million alligator.  Some alligators are called 'Elvis' when they are small, at least if they are kept on boats as pets for tourists. So, we had an Elvis sighting in the form of an alligator - maybe a reincarnation of the real Elvis?

You realize you are in the South (of USA) when you see this magazine at the airport, Garden & Guns.  I have never seen it in the northern parts of the US, but sure, gardening is truly a kind of micro-warfare against deer (8 feet of plastic deerfence and no deer in the garden), Japanese beetles (feromone traps), diseases (water and nutrients, and then whatever dies off is just life), blister beetles (handpick and drown), hawkmoth caterpillars (which I let live, so they can get parasitized and release more larvae-killers), slugs (sigh - get to handpick and drown them), rabbits and groundhogs (keep them out with fencing)... ok, turns out I don't need a gun for my gardening.  The magazine has a strange (for me) mix of shotgun reviews, pie recipes, and anecdotal stories from southern gardens. I understand hunting magazines, but not gardening with guns.

An old inn in Vermont, some reminiscenses

[update - now with some photos]

The most interesting and talked about experiences are rarely the best.  This might be unfortunate, but in a sense it is these experiences that make you realize what is really good and enjoyable in life.  So, this is kind of a rant, but I am not exaggerating here, this place was really over the top...

So, PP and I headed to Vermont last week.  We had decided to stay for the first nights at an old inn that his uncle and aunt had stayed at over 30 years ago.  This inn will remain nameless in this story, but I will tell you it is not far from Marlboro College near Brattleboro in southern Vermont.  It has a nice website, but very few online reviews, so it is hard to know what to expect, but the price was the usual for a stay of this kind.  I booked two nights, and we went on to Vermont...

the inn

We arrived at the old inn from the 1700s, and it turns out to be in a great location, a quiet place with a pond in the back. We were met by the very old widowed inn keeper who told us where our room was and informed us that in this place there are no locks on the doors and that everything is safe and there has been no thefts in 30+ years in this place.  OK, we go along with it and go up to our room on the second floor.  Before getting to your room you pass through a very old musky-dusty-smelly living room with 1960/70 style sofas, bookshelves with leather bound classics, and some miscellaneous mixed furniture.  It reminded me both of an old hotel in Uzbekistan, old youth hostels in Sweden, and old libraries.  Nothing wrong with that, but not what I had expected, especially not the smell and 70s flair to things.

living room

Our room was big and airy with nice windows in two directions.  The bathroom was attached to our room and minuscule, but private (well, the open window is right above the front door and anybody can hear you pee and flush... but it is the countryside and an old building, so that is OK.)  But, the bathroom door has no latch so it swings open by itself when you sit on the toilet - it really had no latch at all and it seemed to never have had one since there was no sign of a latch hook on the painted molding around the door. No latch for 30+ years?  The door to the bedroom from the hallway could be closed and latched but had no lock, but even more disturbing was that you couldn't lock the door from the inside with a secure hook.  I really like to be able to sleep in peace, and not worry about some drunk or confused person stepping into my bedroom while I am sleeping at 3 AM, especially not during a hot summer night.  Apparently this was not a concern of the inn keeper.  I am glad I wasn't sleeping alone...

OK, there is more.  There was no AC, which I understand in a old house like this, but it was a heat wave and only a small old fan was provided.  There were water glasses, but at least one was unwashed (some green stuff on the edge, what can that be?), in the room.  The wooden mantel around the fireplace (not in use) looked like it has been compressed and broken in an earth quake (how? and why not fixed?).  An orange-yellow shag rug (think 1974 color choice) was laying around and under the bed and smelled bad... obviously a clear case of 'can't be cleaned properly for the last couple of decades'.

An old painting print was hanging on the wall and it appears that neither the print nor the paper surrounding the print were acid free - all browned with age.  The wall paper, who knows how old, was not quaint and cute, but water stained.  Ceiling had cobwebs, as did the bathroom, and the wall around the tiny sink (which has loose faucets) had spots from previous people's tooth paste spit. Ick!  The bath rug was frayed in the edges and reminded me of the towels we have relegated to our basement to mop up flood waters with.  This is not what I expected to get for $100+ a night.  But wait, there is more!

During the night we realize that there is a door with an nearly inch-wide gap at the bottom near the bed in our room to another rental room  so we can see the light in that room and we clearly hear the excessant snoring of another guest.  We try to stop the sound and light by stuffing a big comforter and blanket on the floor in front of that door.  Our bed is small to be in such a giant room, and HARD.  What happened to providing a nice thin top mattress so that people don't have to sleep directly on what feels like the box spring?

Morning and shower time... the shower stall is miniscule and the inside of the shower is covered in cedar planks, I think. Vinyl shower curtain is too short; water splashes on the floor outside the shower.  It is hard to wash your hair when you hit the wall with your elbows.  It is even harder when you realize that no shampoo has been provided...  Hmpf.  I use the soap (and buy shampoo at the store later in the day).  The towels are threadbare and old, look like leftovers from the 1970s.  When PP dries himself off, one of the towels rips along the edge, that is how badly worn it was.  Come on, new towels of acceptable quality can be gotten at Target or IKEA at very reasonable prices, so why the replacement wait at this inn?

the dining room

OK, breakfast.  The place is apparently famous for great food.  We sit down in the little dining room, dark and musky with curtains that needed to see a wash 20 years ago, and eventually are asked what we would like for breakfast.  Fruit (berries, melons or pineapple are the choices), coffee or tea, and then either eggs, waffles or pancakes with bacon.  I go for the berries, pineapple, and then blueberry pancakes.  I get the berries... looks OK, but after a while I bite into a moldy raspberry.  Not great.  I hate mold.  I can taste it a mile away, and this was really moldy for real.  Then I got my pancakes, nicely arranged - a handful of small blueberry pancakes arranged in a line on a plate.  Melted butter and warm syrup came with them, so I poured some of the syrup on.  Hmm, how can you under-cook blueberry pancakes that are only about 2-3 inches (5-8 cm) in diameter?  I don't know, but these were still runny in the center.

the kitchen

I felt bad for the old lady that tried to run this place after her husband's death a few years ago, but I really can't accept bad food and dirty rooms, not when I pay $$$ for it.  After all, this is not post-Soviet Uzbekistan, this is Vermont in USA.  Cracked plates, a kitchen with the dirtiest and messiest areas I have ever seen and full of things on every flat service gave me goosebumps regarding the lack of hygiene. I wonder if the Department of Health in Vermont has inspected her kitchen.  I have a hunch it will not pass... Oh, and the breakfast was $10 on top of the room cost, so this is not a bed AND BREAKFAST as I thought.

Oh, I didn't tell you, when I went to bed a dead moth fell out from under the cover.  There was a mouse hole in the corner of the floor molding, nice mice!  Just a few months of attention and the throwout of the 30-40 years old stuff and a clean-up of the rest would have made this place into a new wonderful place.

the living room

So, were there no good things?  Sure there were.  The location is beautiful, and the place has so much potential, it just needs a lot of attention and upgrades (which it needed decades ago).  I like old simple things, but I can't stand dirt and mold. I really wanted to love this place, but I couldn't, but I can see it turn into a fantastic place in the future...

books everywhere

It felt like a place stuck in the past, with grandfather's books that accumulate mold instead of eager fingers that turn pages, and lampshades stained by fly spit and dust rats.  I love old books, and books in general, and this was one of the best things with this place - there were good and interesting books everywhere, ready to be picked up and read.  I read Roadside Geology of Vermont and New Hampshire for two nights and learned a lot about how geologically similar that area is to Sweden.  But that is a small positive thing in the big negative impression of this place.

So, in conclusion, I hope you don't need to stay at this place until it is under different management.  I am sure the inn keeper is doing her best under her own circumstances, but this is not a way to run an inn/bed and breakfast. When you charge a fee the customer is supposed to get the value for that cost, and you should want to get your customers back and take the effort to give them a nice wonderful stay. 

(When it came time to paying the bill the owner had forgot I had sent her a deposit and also added a service fee of 10%, which I was told when I asked about it that "I had to add it since people don't tip the staff enough, but you can take it off".  Maybe that says it all...)

another room for rent, not ours

On this day... now and 9 years ago

9 years ago, the periodical cicadas were buzzing, the fireflies bleeping, and we got married. PP,  thanks for the fantastic dinner at Brothers Moon tonight.  (If you haven't eaten there, you should, if you have the opportunity.)  Local, well-made food, and their Caesar salad with extra anchovies are to die for.

Other things that happened today:

The high school had to be evacuated after a bomb scare.  No bomb was found, but all kids were sent home at 2 PM.  Yesterday Princeton University got evacuated for the same reason.  Prank, lunatic, or what?  This is not funny. Neither was it funny when the two old couples sitting next to us in the restaurant talked about the bomb threat in Princeton and one of the elderly men at their table said 'well, I wish the bomb threat had been true and all the liberal professors had been killed off'.  Sigh.

In New York City two window washers got stuck at the 44th floor (about 600 feet, 200 m above ground) on the outside of the building.  They were eventually rescued by firemen cutting holes in windows so they could reach them and bring them back inside.  This was only one block from where AREA works right now.

The fireflies are out!  Blink, blink, blink! Special photo for KV with fireflies from Japan.

The bull frogs are croaking in the dark, right now.  And big black crickets are cricketing.

We are waiting for another giant weather event.  This one isn't named (yet), but we are expecting 4 inches (100 mm) rain tomorrow, storm-level winds, maybe tornados and hail and definitely big thunderstorms.  We haven't even dried up after the most recent storm, and our rivers are so flooded already that roads and bridges are closed.  Not good, the ground can't soak up any more.  But we are prepared, with pumps, generator (if the power goes out), charged cell phones, lots of food, and playing cards and candles. And while we get soaked, Colorado burns. There doesn't seem to be any 'normal' in the weather anymore.

Finally, our cat Smokey believes that the way to get of loose undercoat wooly fur is to lick it off, get it stuck in your teeth and then have it hanging from your lips like if you were an old goat.  Sorry, no photos yet, we are working on it.  She isn't the most cooperative cat when it comes to photography or brushing.

What if.... Ponderings over technology

At work we have a copy machine that you have to sign out of when you are done, by clicking buttons on the Touch screen THREE (3) times.  First, click your name in the upper right corner, then select Log Out from the menu, then a new menu comes up asking: Are you sure you want to Log Out? and then you have to hit yes.   Isn't it amazing that something as simple as logging out is made so convoluted?  They can't blame it on safety. 
     When you drive a car and turn left, nobody stops you and wait for you to confirm once or twice that YES, INDEED, I want to turn left.  Imaging the number of accidents that would happen if you had to confirm every little action while driving a car... and response times would increase as would frustration and road rage.  What a waste of time in front of the printer.

At home we have a printer that stops working as soon as one of the colors is finished, even if there is black ink left and you only want to print in black and white.  It just won't print.  It is on strike until you have bought new, expensive color ink (or photo gloss, or whatever it might be), that you don't need for that particular print job. 
    When you drive a car, and the windshield washer fluid runs dry, the car just doesn't stop working and waiting for you to fill up more of it, regardless of where you are.  That would be inconceivable.

Sometimes when you surf the web and look at stuff, the network gets clogged, or the software slows down, and even sometimes, the program or even the computer just crashes, and you are forced to restart the computer.  
   When you drive a car, it suddenly just doesn't stop randomly or goes at tiny speed because of some outside force field or sluggish connection.  That would be pretty dangerous.

Many times you look around on the web and try to find a good restaurant so you browse their web pages, but when you go to their website you are met by 'the intro' - some awful music, slow things (usually photos) moving across the page, and you have to sit there and waste your time unless you can find the tiny semi-hidden text called 'Skip this intro'.  After that torture and time-waste is over, you can start to look for 1) opening hours, 2) address and directions, and 3) the menu.  You would think those three things are the most important information to get to your potential customers, and that at least 1 and 2 should be listed on the opening page of the home page. Oh no, you often have to guess where it is, maybe under 'Contact Us", or 'About Us', or some other non-direct heading.  And often you have to scroll down because the bottom of the page can't be seen at first sight.  For the menus, those are often under a tab, but many are hidden under headings that are tiny, and on extremely slow-loading pages (including the crashing pdf-format), or just small.
    If you drive a car, it doesn't play unwanted intro music when you start it.  It starts up, then it immediately shows you if anything is wrong with the car on the dashboard (any Check Engine light on? Doors open? No, good!).  All information is right there, ready to check out and react to.  Restaurant web pages are like Lego Men hidden in pizza dough, you can't find them or you find a little piece but you can't see the rest.

Who designs these things?  I thought designers' jobs were to make things that WORK WELL and LOOK GOOD.  The first of those things, i.e. practicality, user-friendliness, and usability is as important as that it looks great.  The funny thing is that often the companies insist that their way of doing things are for our convenience, when in reality these things cause us inconvenience, frustration, or just waste time.  Books never fail to open.  Compasses never run out of batteries. Simplicity and ease-of-use means just that, simplicity. 

Will it take 50-100 years to make the internet, printers, copiers, and computers as user-friendly and reliable as cars?  I hope not.  Of course cars break down at times, but they are far more reliable than most of our other home electronics.  I love things that work and that even if complicated, are easy to use. Don't get me started on the design of remote controls... you would think they get paid by the numbers of buttons they put on them.  How long did it take for cars to enter the phase of user-friendliness?  And maybe cars are now on their way to become less user-friendly again?  I haven't mastered the GPS in PP's car at all, because it is not at all intuitive. 

PS.  OK, you want examples of bad design offenders? Here is one...
Prune Restaurant, New York City   
You have to CLICK to enter their website.  What did they think, that you got to their website by accident and need to confirm with them that you actually want to be there?  And then click on Menu and see if you can see their partial tiny menu in a scrolling window... The prices on the lunch menu are about 4 mm tall on my screen.  That is about half as big as a black pepper corn.  Anybody that can read the ingredients on the Bloody Mary menu online ought to get a free drink, or two. Prune, shape up, and fix your website please...

I think Steve Jobs got it right in this quote:

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Bologna, Italy in April

I went on a short journey to Bologna, Italy last week. Here are a few pictures from the city, a shop with cheese, pasta and sausages, dinner plates and plants (for LS). The Muscari is probably a wild flower.

Gothenburg's Horticultural Society - an oasis in a city

In the middle of the Swedish city of Göteborg (Gothenburg) is a park owned and managed by the old Horticultural Society (Trädgårdsföreningen - look, they got all the umlaut vowels into that word!).  It has a large rose garden, a little charming cafe, lawns and old trees as well as an old Victorian conservatory.  We spent some time here last weekend, enjoying the spring sun and outside temperatures only a handful above freezing.

Trees formed like American telegraph poles is a very western European thing.  I think these might be beeches.  In the background is the cafe building.

Succulents are awaiting warmer weather in their sandboxes in one of the transplant houses. I liked the organized way they were planted. Doesn't it remind you of an army on a square someplace?

The cafe is in the old wagon barn, tall ceilings, old brick floor, and very vintage furniture.  Creaky chairs! 

The cappucino and the flourless chocolate cake with real whipped cream was great.  MiracleWhip and other synthetic white frostings don't exist in Sweden, so real food rules.

In the greenhouse is one room all filled with camelias, wonderfully scented even if a bit overpowering if they flower all at the same time. There were bumblebees in here too, which must live in the greenhouse.

The aquatic greenhouse is gorgeous.  An old square pond in the center, hanging tropical pitcher plants above and ferocious snakehead fishes in the water below.  There are warning signs not to put your fingers in the water or you will get bitten.  I was surprised they had put in snakehead fishes since they are invasive and horrible, but apparently they were there to eat the cichlids that were eating the waterlily leaves.  Oh, all the tings we do to control nature!


Some floating aquatic plants, mostly water lettuce (Pistia).

OK snapshot food review: Pizza Anonymous

[LS is blogging this restaurant report on behalf of OK, just to make you all confused. A while ago, OK found this note below stuck to a door, without a sign, but somehow indicating that there probably was a pizza place behind that door. Now the place has been visited. So, here is OK's snapshot report from the anonymous pizza place in Stockholm, Sweden.]

Menu (in Swedish. tomat = tomato; oliver = olives; skinka = ham; surkål = sauerkraut; champinjoner = mushrooms; sardeller = anchovy; aubergine = eggplant; lufttorkad = airdried; ask about the rest in the comments if you want to know more)

So JU and I went to that nameless pizzeria with the strange sign tonight, and it was very good. Unfortunately they were out of the sauerkraut and timmerman sausage-pizza, so I ended up with the buffalo mozzarella and dried entrecôte pizza.

 JU had the buffalo mozzarella, bayonne ham and mushroom pizza. 

JU also had the dessert pizza with apples, jam and stuff... You can have a three course meal there, all pizzas!

 

 Some say that you can judge a place by their bathroom. I'm not sure what this tells you...hehe. 

Another interior pic from the bathroom. Nice lightning.

So all in all, I'll say it was an e on a scale to pi. 

Weird real quotes: Waiter

While having lunch here in New Jersey a few days ago, the waiter came up after we had received our food and said:

"How did everything come out so far?"

Excuse me, but I am not in the bathroom. I am eating!

Stuck in 1982: Red Lion diner

Some places have not changed for years, decades, and bear witness to design fashions of times past, good and pad.  Here I serve you the example of the Red Lion Diner, in Vincenttown, NJ, an outpost on the edge of the Pine Barrens and a giant food serving place (and about the only place to eat around there unless you have your own kitchen).



Well, what do you think?  Plastic covered peachpink chairs (where the springs have gone bad in the sofas along the walls), chrome, mirrors, black, and evocative sculptures on the theme of 'big hair'.  I don't know the age of the decoration of this place, but I think 1982 is a good guess.  Maybe PP can tell better.

So, how was the food?  The menu is here (extensive... 8 pages like this).


The food was OK.  I got pulled pork sandwiches and they were OK, the regular burgers were OK too.  The salad was soso, and I am not sure about the rest of the food.  It is really a place to eat only if you pass by and have to have some sustenance.  Service was acceptable, except she forgot some of our drinks repeatedly.  But in the end, you eat at a place like this not for the good food, but for the experience. This is diner culture and real Americana.

If you give a Swede breakfast in St. Louis...

...you should take her to Crepes, at least this particular Swede.  Fantastic coffee (real italian espresso), and made-from scratch amazing breakfast dishes.  Here are some we tried:


 
Croque Monsieur - cheese, mustard and ham all melted inside a croissant.  Has to be eaten with knife and fork and fantastic.  Not healthy though.



Towering French toast (fattiga riddare in Swedish), with whipped cream and strawberries.



The healthy option, if you don't add all that brown sugar in the little bowl, was oatmeal with apples. I loved the presentation of this one.

The real thing in St Louis

So, I went to a conference in St Louis and while there, apart from being a scientist at a national conference, I also wanted to 1) see the Saint Louis Art Museum, and 2) eat some good barbecue.

For 1, that was easy.  The Sunday morning before things started, me and a friend walked 2 miles (3 km) through their central park in 90-degree heat and high humidity (that is about 30 degrees Celsius for Europeans) to the Art Museum, which is chilled like an icebox.  Rarely has air conditioning felt that good.  But more about the art museum later.  But where to find the best bbq?  My tactic was to ask cab drivers.  They really should now where the best things are.

We took a cab back to the hotel from the art museum, and when asked, the cab driver said "Pappy's is the best, but you have to be there early, they sell out".  So we looked it up, planned out a Pappy's Smokehouse attack, and decided that Wednesday at 5.30 PM was the time to go.  We got everything ready, mainly cameras and appetites, and got a cab from our hotel on Wednesday.  When the cab driver heard our address, she said "Did you call first to make sure they are not sold out of bbq?".  And yes, we had.





We arrived at Pappy's Smokehouse, which you can find based on smell or smoke, your pick.  It looks like any regular place, but when you get inside (through the back door, please), you are met with many tables and one single counter where you order.  It turns out their BBQ is not St Louis style but Memphis (Tennessee)-style, a difference I didn't know about earlier.


So, the first question, what to order?  Nothing was sold out yet (lucky us!). The menu is scribbled with chalk over the ordering counter. Generally speaking there are five choices of barbecued meat (beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and sausage). Then there are the traditional side dishes, baked beans, deep fried corn on the cob, green beans (overcooked as they always are in the South), sweet potato fries, potato salad (lots of mayonnaise), cole slaw, and apple sauce.  Don't ask me about the last one, it makes no sense to me, but must be a traditional thing.

So, I ordered. I got food. I ate.  I shared with my friends. I ate some more.  It was amazing.


Deep fried corn on the cob.  It was a lot better than it sounds.


Baked beans.

Half slab of pork ribs with side dishes.  Mmmm, melting meat in your mouth, and with three different barbecue sauces to add onto them.  Original was best, as it should be.


If you need to prove you have been there, you can buy a Hog Whisperer T-shirt.  That phrase doesn't translate well to Swedish - who would want to be a 'grisviskare' in Sweden?  Nobody. But in America, it is the best thing ever. If you get to St Louis, try to get to this restaurant, it is worth the effort!