Rested Up

I've been eating my way through New Orleans and the North Shore for more than a week now. I'll be back in my kitchen this weekend. You can check out some of the NOLA food adventures on my other blog, The Thick Chick. (Yes, I am very in touch with the weight-loss/foodie irony.) I plan to do a more in-depth posting about my Crescent City eats here one day.

I picked up two phenomenal cookbooks, John Folse's Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine and Dickie Brennan's Palace Cafe -- The Flavor of New Orleans. These two books made my trip. I'm so excited. I just got the Palace Cafe book in the airport. We'll talk more about both in the coming weeks.

I will say now that I've wanted Folse's book for years. Palace Cafe has one of my favorite seafood dishes of all time, Gulf Shrimp Tchefuncte. I spent part of my time in the Quarter looking for a Palace Cafe book so I could get the recipe. One would think that I would have thought to ask about the book while I was at the restaurant ... I'm real special like that. Besides, I had a flambéed rum cake with peaches and I was dumbfounded by the presentation and the taste.

Before I left for vacation, I was toying with the idea of blogging about at least one recipe from each of my cookbooks. I have close to 100, so that should keep me busy for a minute! I also have a new New Orleans project: on future trips, I am going to eat at all the restaurants that have published cookbooks. This will force me to dine at Commander's Palace, Galatoire's, Arnaud's, Dooky Chase, Antoine's, K-Paul's and Delmonico -- and these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. These are all places I've never been, so this should be fun. I just have to make sure I don't wait another four years to return. I used to come here every Easter and go to Little Rock every Christmas. Then my life got in the way.