Twelve Nights and Confusing Cake

King Cake Dolls.

Update 2/13/2012: Tasting party winners corrected for all categories. Back around the beginning of king cake season this year (January 6, twelve days after Christmas, a/k/a “King’s Day” or, “Twelfth Night”, the Catholic holy day of the Epiphany, the day when the three wise men discovered the baby Jesus in Bethlehem), there was a...

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Creole Turtle Soup.

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Every time I go to Galatoire’s, I find it hard to resist their Turtle Soup. My last bowl of it got me thinking about making it at home. So, I decided to take it on. Historically, turtle soup gained popularity with the European explorations of the West Indies, where turtles became an important food...

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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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Still Bitter—Tales of the Cocktail 2011

Samples lined up for "The Emporer's New Bitters" seminar at Tales of the Cocktail 2011.

Bitters were the big buzz at Tales of the Cocktail 2008, the first one I attended. I was researching an article on absinthe (pdf); its reappearance and place in New Orleans drinking history. Bitters were back this year, although they probably never went away. “The Emperor’s New Bitters” was the Thursday afternoon seminar I...

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