Beignets and Krampusnacht

New Orleans, round two.

Here are the numbers:
1 - nights stayed in New Orleans
2 - hours drive from Mobile to NOLA
2 - Second annual Beignet fest.. essentially just an excuse to eat beignets and listen to music.
3 - Neighborhoods visited (maybe more like 4 or 5, actually), including Bywater, the Garden District, Central Business District, Audubon, City Park, and everywhere in between that our Uber Lyft or St. Charles trolley path took us.
2 - delicious restaurants eaten at: Ethiopian and Costa Rican, both on Magazine Street
3 - cool bars visited: Parleaux Beer Lab (microbrewery), Bar Redux, Circle Bar
1 - first annual Krampus fest
2 - universities next to each other visited in the Garden District (Tulane and Loyola)
1 - crazy man talking to us on the St. Charles streetcar
1000 - number of fog/clouds

It was a foggy day when Evan and I arrived in New Orleans, which ended up being the perfect setting for the first annual Krampus parade in Bywater. We stayed at the Hotel Modern in Lee Square, infamous for its undercover removal of the Robert E. Lee statue this year.

Lee Square, minus Lee

We ate delicious Ethiopian food for dinner and breakfast at Surrey's cafe on Magazine Street; rode the St. Charles streetcar through the Garden District; walked around Audubon park, Tulane, and Loyola; and had a crazy man insist that we too were "other folks from Annapolis" a.k.a. FBI or something.

Audubon Park was a lovely place to walk, and we saw several bird species there, including mallards, wood ducks, coots, and whistling ducks (all pictured above). Tulane University had a nice campus; it even had a study break party in its quad with snow available to play in (the palm tree with ferns was also on campus, for contrast):

We didn't hit up the Breaux Mart; I just thought it was a funny name, especially since there were so many breauxs heading in for a beer run (or at least that's what I like to think).

Inspiring Things

 .. a.k.a. some random stuff that I took note of.

This slide was at a talk in Athens. Good to remember.

From a guy from Berkeley (East Bay) in a bar in Fairhope, Alabama (Eastern Shore): I like to think it means that being normal is meh, and you should strive to be un-normal. It could also mean that the baseline of feeling normal is kinda cruddy, but let's go with my first interpretation; it's more inspiring.

Someone in Mobile did not care for Wells Fargo, putting up this simple sign as well as a banner that reads something along the lines of, "Roses are red, violets are blue, Wells Fargo sucks, you are so screwed."

Located near the USS Kidd, permanently based in Baton Rouge: "Mourn not for him. He sails with one more divine."

Ladies' Night has always been a thing. From the Old State Capitol's display on Huey P. Long: an old election party meeting that says "All Democrats and Especially the Ladies Are Cordially Invited to Attend."

Lastly, this one isn't so much inspiring as disturbing, so can we all agree not to do this anymore? (Low-fat, lactose-free creamer powder, bleh.)

A Gulf Coast Thanksgiving

A trip up to Tennessee for Thanksgiving wasn't in the cards this year, but Evan and I enjoyed a proper Thanksgiving dinner in Mobile. Our nearly-vegan dinner included green beans sauteed with orange zest, cranberry-orange dressing, squash-chestnut-pine nut-sage roast, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie, veggie gravy, giblet gravy, and turkey, plus some fine dark beers.

The trip wouldn't have been complete without a sunset visit to the Fairhope pier and the Audubon Bird Sanctuary on Dauphin Island. That's right; Thanksgiving by the sea.

Springtime in Athens

The courthouse was sporting a nice look for springtime (circa late March), and the woods were sporting an even nicer look, complete with morels.

The Arrival of Spring and Foraging Adventures

The weather has warmed up, the sun is out, and it's clear that Spring is here to stay in Zurich. The first hints started popping up a few weeks ago in the form of cheerful little purple and yellow flowers in almost every patch of grass, city-wide; it looked like the Flower Fairy had come around and sprinkled seeds everywhere. (I haven't entirely ruled out the possibility that Zurich does in fact have official Seed Sprinkling night workers.)

Every year, I always get excited for the arrival of Spring; it's warm, sunny, and beautiful! Life is great! Yay! But then, every time without fail, I'm reminded why it's actually my least favorite season. One word: bugs. They're everywhere, in the air, on the patio, on your leg, and the worst part? There's no escape. At least not until the weather changes, be it for the hotter or the colder.

Most recently, lots of dandelions have been popping up, and since dandelions are both easy to identify and [allegedly] highly nutritious, I got really excited about the idea of foraging my own. So one day, I collected a handful of dandelion greens and a few blossoms from a nearby field (possibly owned by a local university and/or grazed by cows), washed them enough times to make someone with OCD proud, and cooked them as part of a pasta sauce.

A word of advice: don't do this. If you absolutely must eat dandelion greens, then you should HIGHLY consider blanching them first, as they're very bitter and gross if you don't. Doesn't matter if you sautee them with onions and cheese or anything else, just blanch them first, trust me. My experiment might have deterred me from dandelions.. for the moment. But I'm still trying to learn about edible plants, and I think the next up might be lavender. Stay tuned!

Becoming "Culturally Aware"

How many times have you used the phrase, "I'm hungry enough to eat a horse"? Well, this week in the IBM ZRL cafeteria, you had that chance. On the menu was horse, or Pferdesteak. While a few members of my group were quite pleased with their equine lunch (served with a side of fries), others found the idea less than appealing; this polarization wasn't confined to specific countries, with people from different places and backgrounds chiming in for different sides. Even among the Swiss IBMers there were different attitudes towards eating horse.

While I personally find the idea of eating Secretariat rather horrendous, I also acknowledge that part of my revulsion is based on American cultural taboo that differentiates a foal from lamb or veal. The whole situation made me think back to a different lunchtime discussion about being "culturally aware," a term IBM had coined in its sensitivity training but that was jokingly turned around to mean that if you find something offensive or unlikeable, you must not be "culturally aware" enough.

Then I reflected on things I've found surprising or unlikeable while in Switzerland. A surprising thing is that Swiss friends kiss on the cheeks when meeting or leaving one another. Not to be outdone by the French, they take it to the extreme, with 3 alternating-cheek kisses. This fact wasn't particularly unlikeable, merely very surprising to a "hugs-only" American. Other surprises include blatant nudity in the evening papers and on television, which in the US would be covered by a black censor bar or just banned entirely.

Then there is the less desirable eating of foals, and funnily enough, a matter related to swing dancing. Apparently in Switzerland, it's expected that one dances at least 2 dances in a row with a single partner before moving on. Bailing out after the first dance generally implies that the dance was just terrible. For so many reasons, I dislike this unwritten requirement, though I'm at least aware of its existence now.

So I guess I will remain blissfully "culturally unaware" about things like horse meat and "required-dances" swing dancing, but if that's what bothers me most about Switzerland, I'd say things are going pretty well. So how culturally aware are you? Would you eat a horse?

A Little Taste of Home

Prepare yourself for a shocking and controversial statement: Nutella is not a suitable substitute for peanut butter.

I know, I know, you might say, "Just because it's made with a different nut doesn't make it inferior. You're just a dirty anti-hazelnut American!" .. and any part of that may well be true. However, I'm not a Peanut-Supremacist; far from it, in fact. I openly embrace nut butters of all types, particularly of the almond-variety, and quite frankly, I didn't even think peanuts were all that great in the first place. But that doesn't change the fact that an entire jar of Nutella contains less protein than a single Snickers bar.

One need only take a look at the nutrition facts on a jar of Nutella to see that it is far from a real nut butter. The first ingredient is.. sugar. Followed by plant oil, cocoa, and finally hazelnuts. Don't get me wrong; I'm not being anti-Nutella here. On the contrary, I think this ingredient list qualifies it as a fabulous breakfast topping for toast. (Keep in mind that this is coming from a girl whose breakfast of choice is, unapologetically, an Eggo topped with chocolate chips.)

Needless to say, the lack of good nut butters in Zurich is somewhat of a death-blow to vegetarians. Sure, they have Barney's Best, which is apparently like the German version of Skippy, but I was hoping for something a little more fresh-ground and a little less sugar and oil-filled. So yeseterday, stuck at home sick, I decided to make some peanut butter from scratch. Turns out this process isn't so hard, especially if you have modern conveniences like nut crackers and food processors. Sadly, I possess neither, but it's still a pretty easy process.

So I went through the grueling process of shelling my pre-roasted peanuts until I could shell no more, which was disappointingly short. Then I used a crappy hand-blender (that only works during the half of the time it's not sparking) to grind and mix them, to delicious though poorly-photographing results. (Seriously, the pictures of it on my phone just kinda look like throw-up, so I'm not gonna post them.) With a spoonful of honey mixed in, this peanut butter might just be my food of choice for the next few days straight.