Gumbo and Sunshine

The weather has been stellar for the past week, so we put aside our chores to spend the whole day outside on Saturday. As luck would have it, there was a Gumbo Cookoff going on in Olde Towne Slidell. What to do for lunch: solved!

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Olde Towne Slidell was pretty much swamped by Hurricane Katrina. Up to a few months ago the city had been working out of trailers while the new City Hall was being built. What's great about the new city complex is that there is a lot of room to support venues like the Gumbo Cookoff.



For $10 each we could sample all the gumbo we wanted. Some were good, a few others were downright nasty. I can honestly say I got my gumbo fix. Here are a few pictures of what we shared.







While we ate our gumbo we were entertained by this man playing a dulcimer. Combine the beauty of his music with the sun shining, a mild breeze, good eats and being with my best friend and I call that a perfect time.









After eating five or six samples we were in dire need of moving around. We decided to walk around Olde Towne to see what was going on.



Slidell is a small, quiet city. She's been around a few hundred years and has some interesting sites. Right around the corner from the City Hall complex are a series of murals painted by local artists.





In this area we found the remains of the Club Phoenix lounge which suspiciously burned down last week in a four alarm blaze.





As we passed up the charred hip hop club, we were drawn up by the architectural details of some of the neighboring buildings.





The neighborhood in Olde Towne has a quiet charm.













Does anybody out there want to open an ice cream shop? This one's been for sale since the storm.



We found our way back to the cookoff for another beer before heading home.



Once home I discovered one of my cats on the back porch who promptly took off when I started to water my herbs.





It was a beautiful day topped off with a viewing the "Super Moon".