Taking it easy in the Big Easy – Part 3
Day 3 in the Big Easy started off with:
Haha, well actually it started off with FREE continental breakfast at the hotel. Thennnnn the Maker’s Mark (for Jarrod anyway… I think that stuff tastes like nail polish remover).
After breakfast and some meandering through the French Quarter
Then we stopped at Primo’s for some snacking:
Primo’s got horrible reviews online, but we were dying for some bruschetta and they happened to have it on the menu so we decided to ignore the reviews.
I love how all the bars and restaurants down here are open to the streets. Most of the buildings have huge windows that you can open up and it makes you feel like your are in a courtyard instead of inside the building.
I should also mention that the whether has been AMAZING the whole time we have been here. 80+ degrees, sunny, and no humidity. GLORIOUS!
I’m so glad we ignored those reviews on Primo’s! Take a look at this beauty:
Jarrod said it was the best bruschetta he ever had. I don’t know about the BEST, but it definitely was REALLY friggin delicious.
We also ordered a small margherita pizza:
This was tasty too—just needed a little hot sauce!
After lunch we had some time to kill, so we popped a squat across the street from Jackson Square to watch some street performers.
These guys were actually REALLY good!
And they drew quite the crowd!
It’s crazy what these guys can do with their bodies. I can’t do a pushup let alone hold my whole body up with one arm and spin it around like a helicopter while simultaneously bouncing up and down:
Me and the BF in Jackson Square:
After lunch, we headed to our French Quarter & Cemetery tour (which I purchased on Groupon a month or so ago). The tour only cost us $10 a piece, and it was a self-guided walking tour that lasted 1.5 hours. SCORE!
While walking around the French Quarter a random man shouted out Jarrod “Man you big as an Avatar! Look at that big ole white boy!” Neither of us have seen the movie (so we’re not quite sure how Jarrod reminded the guy of an Avatar), regardless we both busted out in laughter at the man’s explanation (as did the group of people walking behind us). Only in New Orleans 😀
You may be wondering why the heck we wanted to go on a cemetery tour on our vacation. No, it’s not because we are nearing on Halloween. It’s because New Orleans cemeteries are uniquely interesting: 
Since the city is located below sea level, all of the deceased are buried ABOVE the ground.
What’s even more interesting is that family members are added to the tombs over CENTURIES. We passed many tombs where the first family member was buried in the 1800’s and over the years more and more family members were added (even as most recent as 2004)!
Jarrod and the tour guide:
The tour guide told us that this is the tomb Nicholas Cage built for himself:
Even though this tour was REALLY cool, we both felt odd smiling for a picture in front of a tomb (hence the grimace on Jarrod’s face) 😛
After the tour, we headed back to the hotel for our daily afternoon nap (we’re like a bunch of old farts, I swear!).
We were having a lot of debate on where to go for dinner, but settled on Margaritaville. I know, I know… Jimmy Buffet is one of Jarrod’s unstated idols, and neither of us have ever been to Margaritaville, so off we went.
We wanted to push ourselves a little out of our comfort zones, so we opted for the Crab, Shrimp, and Mushroom dip for our appetizer:
It came with delicious garlic bread for dipping. I thought it was actually really good (Jarrod wasn’t quite so keen on it, but he was fully satisfied with the bread).
For dinner we went with the Jambalaya:
Jarrod said this was the best meal he had to date in New Orleans, and I agree it was DELICIOUS. And yes, that is seven (count them) seven pieces of garlic bread that we wolfed down during dinner 🙂
After dinner we strolled over to Bourbon Street and stopped on the backside of Jackson Square to snap a photo of the shadow casted on the backside of the building:
While on Bourbon St this time, we hit up several bars including Club 524, Krazy Korner, and the Bourbon Street Blues Company (again!).
On our walk back to the hotel, we both concurred that our favorite parts of New Orleans were everything we had seen OUTSIDE of Bourbon Street. Bourbon Street is definitely fun and full of crazies, but it is a little too commercialized. We both just prefer the old-world charm of NOLA over the flashing neon lights of Bourbon Street. I do wish we had an extra day in LA to visit the districts outside of the French Quarter, but alas that will have to wait til next time!
Big Easy – Part 1
Here’s a recap of our first day in the Big Easy:
Jarrod almost fell down the escalator in the airport. Sadly, I did not capture this on video.
We hopped in a cab and headed to the hotel, which is right on the border of the business district and the French quarter.
Our hotel is super old and super charming:
After we cleaned up, we headed to the French Quarter and stopped in at the first restaurant that caught our eye: Jean Lafitte Bistro… though oddly that wasn’t the name on the front of the building… Peculiar…
View from restaurant balcony:
Dinner!
This pasta sauce was RIDICULOUSLY amazing (though both of us weren’t impressed with the sausage).
I love the old-world charm of all of the buildings here:
After dinner we headed to drinks and some live music at the Blues Club:
Then drinks at the Beach:
Hello Bourbon Street!
Next stop, the Bourbon Street Blues Company
Cheese!
Annnnnd then we went back to the hotel and passed out! Long day of fun in the Big Easy!!
Loaded Joetato
When I first graduated college and entered “the real world” cooking was not exactly my forte. Typically, I’d pick one to two meals for the workweek, purchase all the ingredients on Sunday, and then eat the same thing for dinner for the next five days. Can we say blasé?
Add this lack of knowledge in the cooking-for-one field to my pure disgust for all things raw-meat and you end up with a meal plan that looks something like this:
- Spaghetti with red sauce and garlic bread
- Chicken quesadillas (using pre-cooked rotisserie chicken, of course)
- Ravioli with red sauce and garlic bread
- Egg salad
- Macaroni and cheese (and garlic bread if I was feelin festive)
- Ice cream
- Anddddd repeat.
After a few months of this monotony, I started to branch out…. to every local restaurant within walking distance that is. The food was FABULOUS, and the weight gain was… well… FLABULOUS.
Fast-forward a few years. I started to realize that Olive Garden take-out wasn’t the best option for my wallet. And while the Chop House in Cleveland has THEE MOST AMAZING MASHED POTATOES and Fat Fish Blue has fried pickles with hot sauce that rock my friggin socks off, these weren’t the best options for dinner every night of the week.
Dangit.
I love multi-purpose ingredients, but I HATE eating the same foods day in and day out. So how the heck do you eat healthy delicious meals but avoid having to eat the same foods over and over and over again? This is about the time I started batch-cooking basic ingredients to have on hand throughout the week to toss into whatever random concoctions I decided to make each night after work. Additionally, I changed my approach to grocery shopping. Rather than buying ingredients for a specific recipe (that undoubtedly made 6+ servings), I simply started purchasing fresh produce and ingredients that LOOKED tasty and then worked on incorporating those things I really liked into as many different concoctions as I could.
And I FORCED myself to get over my repulsion for raw meat. At first I handled all raw meat with two sets of tongs… Even this method led to sporadic dry heaving… Can you picture forming a hamburger with two sets of tongs?! Trust me… it ain’t easy.
In my house, Sundays are for cooking. Every Sunday, I cook up breakfast for the entire workweek, wash and chop veggies, batch-cook chicken breasts or turkey sausage, and roast up some veggies. Not only does this make healthy eating during the week super easy, but it also cuts down on my work-week cooking time.
Hallelujah.
So where does this lovely story take us? It takes us to a Loaded Joetato. Feast your eyes on this puppy:
This Loaded Joetato consisted of my leftover healthified sloppy joes atop 1 medium sized potato topped off with some fat free sour cream and chopped onion leftover from my chicken quesadilla and some roasted broccoli leftover from my Sunday cookfest.
Ohhhhh Joe.
Healthified Slop Sloppy Joes
Sloppy joes are a fall food staple in my family, and I have been craving a big fat sloppy joe since the start of football season! This was my first attempt at making a healthified version of the sloptastic treat:
Looks pretty good, eh? To start things off, I sprayed a skillet with cooking spray and tossed in:
- 1/3 cup chopped white onion
Once the onions started to soften, I added:
- 8 ounces 99% lean ground turkey
- S&P
I cooked the turkey til it was no longer pink. I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly a fan of rare poultry… bleck!
Nice and brown:
Next I added:
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup Reduced Sugar Ketchup
- 1 tsp mustard
- 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp garlic powder
- 1/4 tsp onion powder
Once everything was combined, I popped a lid on and let the joes simmer for about 25 minutes on very low heat. Then I spooned half the mix on to a Pepperidge Farm 7 grain deli flat and topped with some chopped raw onion.
A thing of beauty:
Ohhhhh yesssss….
That is one happy joe.
These sloppy joes were super easy to throw together and pretty tasty — I think the only change I’ll make for next time is to use the ORGANIC Heinz Ketchup instead of the reduced sugar version (which oddly has this crazy sweet taste that I am NOT a fan of).
I’m still craving a good old-fashioned Manwich sloppy joe… so I’m sure those will be making an appearance on an upcoming Sunday game day menu 🙂
Stats on the sloppy joseph: 256 calories, 27g carbs, 3g fat, 35g protein, 6g fiber
Cheeseless Quesadilla?
What do you call a cheeseless quesadilla?
Is it just a dilla? What about a cheeseless quesadilla with beans? A habadilla?
Something to ponder…
Quesadillas are one of my favorite fast-fix dinners. I put a lot of random things in my quesadillas, and I’m convinced that you can sandwich pretty much anything in between a tortilla, throw it on the george foreman grille, and have near instant glory in your mouth.
Take this dinner for example. I started off with 1 Tumaro’s low carb tortilla topped, 1/4 cup fat-free refried beans and 2 ounces grilled chicken:
Plus 1/2 a cup of frozen calabacita mixed veggies that I defrosted in the microwave:
5 minutes of quality time with the george:
Naked quesadilla:
Veggies for toppin’
Add 2 tbsp of fat-free sour cream and you have yourself magnificence on a plate!
Stats on the habadilla: 264 calories, 38g carbs, 3g fat, 33g protein, 12g fiber
Mmmmmm beans…… Love them.