Travel

Veteran’s Day/Armistice Day

Uncle Pete's letters to his brother Val on the German surrender of 11-11-1918.

Today’s paper came out with all the conditions of the armistice – unconditional surrender I should call it. Why, the terms the beaten Huns accepted do not even leave them with a tooth brush they can call their own. My great-uncle Pete was a pilot during World War I. Fortunately, he had not completed...

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Tales 2012: Kweichow Moutai, the Legendary Spirit of China

Moutai in its tiny serving glass.

The media, or “Resurrection,” room set up on the top floor of the Monteleone for Tales is a blessing. It’s a place to sit down and catch up on email and meet people—bloggers, reporters, manufacturers—from around the world who’ve come to cover Tales of the Cocktail. The past few years distributors and manufacturers have...

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On Creole Cuisine, or, What It Means To Be New Orleans, with Richard Collin

The New Orleans Underground Gourmet by Richard Collin, 1973.

The book is a battered paperback, the “New, Revised and Up-to-Date Edition” of The New Orleans Underground Gourmet (subtitled: “Where to find great meals in the city and environs for less than $3.75 and as little as 50c.”) published in 1973 and written by Richard Collin. Collin, who died in 2010, and his wife...

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NASA Tweetup Epilogue: A Visit with the STS-135 Crew

Yep. The crew signed my NASA Tweetup badge.

Quick quotes of the day: There’s flame coming out, it’s breathing and wheezing and whining, you realize the vehicle’s alive. It’s just hanging out there full of 3 1/2 million gallons of rocket fuel, ready to take flight. —STS-135 commander Chris Ferguson on arriving at the pad on launch morning. It starts out as...

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The Local Molecular Supplier

Making Bloody Marys the molecular way with Purity Vodka.

While browsing Sunday’s Cocktail Bazaar at the Monteleone, Ann Tuennerman pointed out the table where the folks from the John E. Koerner Co. were displaying their goods. Koerner has been around over 100 years, with the third and fourth generations of the Koerner family now operating the business that was started in 1906. Ann...

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Pontchartrain Pete: the Embittering Ends

Bitter Truth's Creole Bitters.

Last word on bitters. I promise. I had talked in my previous posts on Tales of the Cocktail 2011 about Bitter Truth’s Creole Bitters, that they were touted as a modern (or retro-engineered, I’m not sure which) version of Peychaud’s Bitters, the long-standing New Orleans product without which the Sazerac cocktail cannot be made....

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Launch Day and Aftermath

Lift-off Atlantis STS-135!

Note: I’m covering day one in another post. It’s just the way it worked out. It was over way to quickly. One thing I noticed the first time I went to see the ponies at the Fairgrounds was, when I turned the corner coming into the grandstand and saw the pack running on the...

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Countown to Launch-NASA Tweetup STS-135

As I excitedly posted earlier, I was selected (at random, it turns out) to attend the NASA Tweetup for the launch of space shuttle mission STS-135. It’s historic, the mission for the shuttle Atlantis is the last flight of the space shuttle. Launch is set for Friday, July 8 at about 11:30 a.m. Eastern...

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STS135 and the NASA Tweetup. I’m Freaking Going!

I’m not a engineer, or scientist of any sort and certainly not a proverbial “rocket scientist,” which worked out fine, as most of the things I’ve accomplished in life fall into the category of “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.” Nonetheless, I’ve been selected to attend a NASA Tweetup and...

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La Galerie d’Absinthe Opens in SoFAB

fountains

I’ve written a couple of posts through the years about absinthe, that old French spirit that remains shrouded in mystery and misinformation despite it being on the open market in the U.S. since 2007, after being legally unavailable here since 1916. (For a pretty thorough telling of how absinthe came to be banned and...

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Marching On

Le Krewe D'Etat's new blinky skull ring.

As post-Carnival depression sets in I like to go over all the pictures (blurry from cell phone) from the season and try to recapture some of the spirit. On Friday, as always, Hermes and Le Krewe D’etat rolled Uptown. The weather was sketchy but the showers held off most of the evening. We caught...

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Gone Crabbing

This past weekend (27 degrees at dawn) I was invited to ride along with some commercial crabbers. Freezing hijinks ensued.

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Furnishing Louisiana

Furnishing Louisiana

I was lucky enough to be invited to preview Furnishing Louisiana: Creole and Acadian Furniture, 1735-1835, the latest book from the Historic New Orleans Collection. It’s been in the works for over 30 years now, as furniture collectors (and scholars) Jack Holden and Pat Bacot, along with photographer Jim Zeitz, began documenting just about...

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King of the Delta Blues

King of the Delta Blues

Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Willie Dixon, Son House, Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James were some of the most influential musicians the world has ever seen. Along with many other bluesmen from the Mississippi Delta country, their music formed the foundation for what became rock ‘n roll, the American music that took over the...

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Cajun Country Foodie Post

Cajun Country Foodie Post

I was invited to spend Labor Day weekend with NOLAnotes and BSIComics at a friend’s camp in Intracoastal City, La. It’s pretty much directly south of Lafayette near ((but not on) the Gulf. The nearest towns are Abbeville, Erath and Delcambre, all pretty much Cajun fishing communities that have served to support the offshore...

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My Top Five NOLA reads.

So NOLAnotes issued a NOLA book challenge. Here are my favorites, an incomplete list limited to my top 5 non-fiction books, in no particular order. Old New Orleans by Stanley Clisby Arthur. A walking tour of the French Quarter written by the man who also wrote Famous New Orleans Drinks & How to Make...

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All Saints 2009

All Saints 2009

I try to go to the cemetery (St. Louis No. 1) every year on All Saints day. Save Our Cemeteries is there every year, too, with a list and the map from the Dead Space project to help families locate tombs. They’ve been doing a good job over the years working with various groups...

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Thanks for the Tales!

While I’m still working on some more detailed posts on things I learned at Tales of the Cocktail this year, I want to hand out some kudos to everyone involved. Ann and Paul Tuennerman, along with the Cocktail Angels Melissa Young, Christina Gaspari and Michelle Dunnick and the rest of Ann’s staff did a...

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Bravo’s Top Chefs Visit the Hotel Monteleone

Bravo’s Top Chefs Visit the Hotel Monteleone

The Hotel Montleone, one of New Orleans’ historic hotels, and home to Tales of the Cocktail, is celebrating the 60th anniversary of its Carousel Bar. The Royal Street landmark is famous for its literary connections. Literary greats have haunted its halls for decades. Tennessee Williams was a frequent guest, Truman Capote often quipped that...

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Bud’s Broiler on City Park

Bud’s Broiler on City Park

Tom Fitzmorris opined, back in 1977, that there were three restaurants he couldn’t live without: Antoine’s, Maylie’s and the Bud’s Broiler on City Park Avenue. Tom would have say whether all of that still stands today, since although Antoine’s is going strong, Maylie’s has been closed for years now (the also-defunct Smith & Wollensky...

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