Journey to The French Quarter

Last night we journeyed to The French Quarter, and listened to some music. I met up with my wife at Popeye's for somedeep fried goodness and then went over to Yuki's for some super sexy plum wine and some even sexier old clips of Astroboy. The two guys playing classical guitar were also pretty good.

Then, we walked over to Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop and grabbed a beer while listening to Mike Hood on the piano.

Yuengling may own my heart, and Sam Adams pays rent but as far as local beer goes....Abita can live for free.

Since age is a factor, and it was getting late, we decided to head back to the street car but now before walking back up Bourbon and seeing these wonderful sights:

1) Crazy Old Jesus Freaks (tm) with a giant wooden cross and bullhorn preaching repentance in front of Hustler. (yeah, that'll work. keep trying pops)

2) Also in front of the strip clubs....middle aged sweaty white trash guy drinking beer and wheeling a stroller with his two kids. Refer to the beginning of previous sentence.

3) I forgot what this one was.

City Park

On Sunday, Rob and I ventured to City Park after my work meeting.  We have been to City Park before; it's so huge that it will take many, many more outings to really explore all of it.

Naked lady fountain

 We brought along some snacks and things to read.

Rob preparing the picnic spot

We laid around reading and eating for a while, and then got up to explore more of the park in the oppressive heat.

I find it hard to appear enthusiastic when I don't know when Rob is taking the picture.

Creepy attempt at seduction

I wish we could swim in there, because it was hot as balls

We decided to walk over to the Sculpture Garden and check that out.

Blockheads just like us!

Rob found this sculpture lacking in subject and decided to take art into his own hands.

Rob faces his literal biggest fear

I want this awesome nightmare for our yard.

I can't wait to go back to the park and maybe rent a paddle boat!  Going to the New Orleans Museum of Art in City Park is definitely on our to do list. Also, we are looking forward to seeing the park in the fall; it's so gorgeous, but I bet it's even more gorgeous then!

My birfdee.

Today was my 29th birthday, and that hill is getting a hell of a lot steeper :p. We got an awesome Oreo Cookie cake from Whole foods....which I can't stop drooling over. Yeah, We ate cake for breakfast.

Afterwards, we went over to the WWII museum. That place was pretty cool. In fact, we only got half way through it. We had tickets for Tom Hanks' Beyond All Boundaries which we very interesting to watch. Strobe effects for the win.

We then made our way to John Besh's The American Sector for a lovely ass dinner. My wife got lamb meatballs and I got the creole shrimp:

i

There were also amazing pickles and cheese grits. Now to relax.

Insectarium Expedition

The weather here this week has been sooooo incredibly dreary and yucky; I'd really been looking forward to some quality time in bed with a book on my day off.  Definitely got some of that in, but didn't want to feel too lethargic, so Rob and I braved the weather and took the street car down to the Quarter to go to the Audubon Insectarium.  I'd gotten tickets for us from livingsocial * a few weeks ago, so we figured it was a good day to use them.

Awesome giant koi fish

Butterflies also enjoying the very rainy view of Canal

Feasting!

Rob was still soaked from our walk; attempts to not smile when posing with butterfly

Rolling the ball of dung

Big earthworm

Check out my sweet armor

We had a good time.  We were there for quite a while (at least 2 hours).  They did have some food prepared in the back of the museum with bugs.  Rob and I tried pretty much all of them - my favorite was the chocolate "chirp" cookies with crickets in them.

After a relaxing streetcar ride home (i.e. I almost fell asleep), we came home and relaxed.  

For dinner, since we were both home and wanted to cook together, we decided to try a recipe we'd found: Crab Cake Mac N Cheese.  In a quest to make this somewhat healthier, I swapped the regular pasta for Ronzoni Smart Taste macaroni and the cheeses for Cabot 50% reduced fat cheddar (normally I like the 75% reduced fat kind, but I figured since it needed to melt well for this that I'd get the 50%).  This dish took a lot longer to make than anticipated, but the result was well worth it:

The topping is a hot sauce/panko crumb mixture

Yum!

Good thing we both really liked it, because this recipe made a ton! With the swaps that we made, according to my BodyMedia food logger, one serving (I put in that this made 8 servings, and they're pretty generous servings) is 423 calories.  Not too bad.


* Livingsocial and Groupon have been a great place to find stuff on our "to do" and "to eat" list for cheaper.  We've used a few now; we keep all the ones that we have on the side of the fridge as a reminder of fun stuff to do together when we have some free time.

Rob's birthday is Wednesday, so we have another outing planned: the WWII Museum (Rob's pick).