WEEK 18 - NEW ORLEANS - wednesday 25 and thursday 26 august 2010

today we headed out to the New Orleans Cooking School, to watch and learn how to make Gumbo, Jambalya?, bread pudding and pralines. the lady who ran the class was so cute, and spent the time showing us how to cook, and telling us the history behind new orleans and the food. i highly recommend doing this, and at only $27 each and you get iced tea, coffee, scones, and you get to eat everything she makes, its a pretty good deal! and you get the recipes to take with you [take a pen to make notes on the print outs, the instructions are a bit sparse in places!]

after the class we wandered around and looked in more shops [again] there definately isnt a shortage of cute boutique shops in new orleans!
in the evening we watched movies and i made a yummy chicken salad for dinner, since we had such a heavy dinner the night before!
we headed out to the local ice cream shop, thats been in business for over 10 years, and had ice cream for dessert, so hilarious though, i asked for a mocha [since they serve lattes , hot chocolates and espresso shots], and they were like, oh we dont serve mochas. what?! if you can make a hot chocolate and an espresso, mix the together and you have a mocha! they ended up offering that option to me, but i just got the hot chocolate instead. oh boy, i miss the hot drinks at home sooooo much, people!

this morning i woke up early and did some work, have some cool stuff planned for when i get home and had paperwork to do!
we looked around at the old dilapidated houses, its unbelievable that 5 years after Katrina, the roads and houses are still in disrepair. hopefully obama coming to the city this weekend will help get things moved along.

in the afternoon we did some house cleaning for fun [yes i miss my home] and baked yummy apple, peach and blueberry pie, as Louis had invited his friends Ritchie, Vince and Anne over to hang out with us.
we enjoyed a really nice relaxing evening chilling out, and reading funny things on the internet out loud, like this website www.shitmydadsays.com. oh my gosh, its so funny, i was laughing so hard, i cried. if anyone has a dad like that, please book me for your wedding. and get a videographer. it will be priceless!
me and Anne got to talking and i cracked out a block of chocolate, which led us both to rant about how rubbish the chocolate is here.
so continuing my rant about the rubbish chocolate here, where if you want real chocolate you have to pay $15 for a block at a fancy chocolate shop, i showed anne the whittakers website and read her the ingredients of their fairtrade milk chocolate. sugar [35ish%, cocoa mass and cocoa butter 30ish%, milk powder 30%, smoothed out with soya lecithin. thats all. just real chocolate. she was very upset to learn how cheap it was. im posting her a few blocks when i get home. so everyone, if you love whittakers, and dont want them to sell out to any big companies and we lose out last source of decent chocolate in supermarkets and turn into america, email them! right now! tell them how much you love their chocolate! and buy some! its good for you! [in moderation of course. one line a day, haha]