Just a reminder

Ray Nagin still sucks.

I'm with Cliff

Cliff writes about Brad Pitt's efforts to secure funding to help rebuild the Ninth Ward.



Brad and Cliff are awesome.

LaProvence Restaurant

Tonight hubby and I dined at our favorite restaurant to celebrate our third anniversary: La Provence in the Lacombe/Big Branch area of St. Tammany Parish.

To all of your big city folks in NOLA: make plans to take a day trip on a Sunday afternoon and enjoy a laid back, delicious Sunday Brunch during the beautiful weather we've been having before it gets too hot. (we've already made reservations for April 5th) You will not be disappointed

click on the pictures for full-size versions



Springtime in St. Tammany Parish is as close to Eden as you can get. To complement the climate, imagine yourself sitting in this patio, choosing from this menu:



Please ignore the date of "March 1" because this is the current menu used each Sunday, not just March 1st.

La Provence has a new Chef de Cuisine, a very talented young man named Erick Loos IV. A Slidell native, as is his boss, Mr. Besh, Erick is an extremely brilliant chef. Allow me to validate my opinions with pictures and words.

Just as important as the presentation and quality of the food is service. The waitstaff is attentive without being exaggeratedly annoying ala any of Emeril's establishments. Our waitress was Kelly and she was extremely sweet and professional.


Upon seating, restaurant guests are treated to a great little starter of chicken liver mousse and warm crostini. Nice......



While we were dining on our crostini and mousse, Kelly surprised us with the offering of a pissaladiere, which is a warm tarte of onions, anchovies, olives, fresh arugula. Not sure if this is an invention of Chef Erick, but this is a beautiful dish which is also offered in the Sunday Brunch Menu



I could eat this all day.......while I was eating it, I imagined the delectably light crust with chocolate and powdered sugar or shrimp and cheese or muffaletta ingredients. An ambrosial dish.

As we enjoyed our pissaladiere, we were greeted by LaProvence Restaurant manager Dale Harvey. Another Slidell native, Dale is a great manager (front of the house man) for LaProvence. He has the personality to put everyone at ease and truely cares about his customers. We discussed our Katrina experiences (anyone who lived down here before-during-after the storm does that) and the menu along with our hope of procuring a pic with the owner to share with our kids at Chef John Folse's School of Culinary Arts: daughter and future son-in-law (more like a "nah-nah, look what I did, actually". ) We found out that Chef Besh just might show up on this evening.

I want to stop here to share the fact that hubby and I are typical Southeast Louisiana natives in the fact that we plan our lives around food. As the saying goes, in Louisiana we live to eat, whereas in the rest of the country they eat to live. We plan our lives around our meals. This trip to LaProvence had us excited for a few months after the reservations were cast. So the anticipation that we could actually meet John Besh in person was exciting to us because of his reputation as a good cook as well as the fact that he's a "Slidell boy". The Food Network stuff comes in second for us because the star factor is really not important to anyone who loves well done cuisine. I don't like using the word of "foodie" to describe ourselves because it's such a pretentious word.

Back to our trek to Big Branch's best restaurant (probably their only one besides a quick stop), after chatting with Dale, we had to decide upon our appetizer.

I apologize for the quality of the photos to come. We were not sure of the grade of the photographs until we got home. We WILL assure you that presentation was of the utmost importance to the LaProvence staff which they met exceedingly well





I chose the Shrimp Tajine because of the flavor (I'd had it before) and presentation. This appetizer includes a "merguez" made of shrimp which is
incredibly delectable




Hubby got the Charbroiled Oysters.

I got to taste an oyster and it was sooooooooooooooo good!!!
Delicious is not a good enough word to describe what we experienced.

Entrees were next



Decisions...decisions.....I chose the tenderloin of beef (medium rare) because I craved red meat; my honey got the scallops with risotto.


Served with bone marrow, porcini mushtrooms and "pommes dauphinois", I can't tell you what the best thing on this plate was. The bone marrow was mouth watering, the beef perfectly cooked; but those potatoes blew me away! (I guess that goes back to my Irish roots, my obsession with potatoes) :)


Billy now loves Risotto. I explained to him how this is a dish of love - because you have to tend to it like a child - until it is complete. Those scallops were buttery, sweet and cooked to perfection. The asparagus came from either the garden outside the restaurant or their farm in Folsom. I'm getting this dish on our next foray to LaProvence!



By this time we were giddy with the taste of food so well thought out.
I neglected to mention the great wine that we shared with our food.



Wonderful wine from that great year of 2005 (thanks, Katrina).

It really was a nice, dry red wine which complemented both of our dishes: meat and fish.

Dessert was awesome!!



Unfortuneately our dessert pix came out too blurry because we didn't take into consideration the lighting, but I will tell you that the Torte aux Chocolate and the Strawberry Sorbet were orgasmic. Ask anyone who was there.
:)

Thinking that the best of our evening had passed, Mr. Dale came back to our table and said that we were summoned to the kitchen. WOW




As we entered the kitchen we were applauded by the kitchen staff. What a fantastic end to a beautiful meal. Our thanks to all who participated to make this one of the most memorable meals and we applaud YOU!.


my apologies to Chef Erick for the quality of the photographs....your food ROCKS, Erick!!!

Here are links to previous posts about LaProvence and Chef Besh
This one describes our first visit to LaProvence as well as containing a video about their
Biodynamic Farm

Here are my thoughts about Chef John doing a cooking demo IN JULY at the Camellia City Farmer's Market

I discuss the release of the new line of Besh products at Rouses here

Springtime is close

Something in the air feels like spring is just about here. As always for this part of the country, it's not because of the calendar. I think it has more to do with the weather fluctuations of the last month or so. Earlier this week we were in the mid 20's here on the northshore. Today's high was in the mid 70's.

The animals hint of the change in seasons, too. As I was leaving work about 4 yesterday afternoon, I noticed about a dozen hawks soaring around the tall building at the spaceship factory.
click on pictures for full-size versions



Wondering what kind of wildlife would bring the hawks to this 832 acres of mostly asphalt and buildings, I grabbed my camera and started clicking. It wasn't till I got home and downloaded the pictures that I noticed poor pigeons sitting near the top of the building.



Dem hawks were hungry!!

Hoping to get more shots of these beautiful predators, I took Highway 90 East to get back home. No dice. Seems like all those hawks were busy dining on squab.

But I did see some interesting shots along the way. I really hadn't been out in this neck of the woods in quite a while so I was curious to witness what progress had been taking place.



Venetian Isles was slammed by Katrina. On the 1,285th day since Katrina (thanks for counting, Maitri) building is still happening in this outpost of the Big Easy

It seems as if the newer homes are bigger and stronger than the Pre-K domiciles.



Unfortunately, the Venetian Isles Fire Department is STILL operating out of a mobile home. Maybe Venetian Isle rep Joseph Cao can finally do something about this atrocity.





Across the Chef Pass bridge is the fishing village of Lake St. Catherine, which was virtually wiped out from Katrina due to its geography.






It's taken almost four years, but homes are starting to really spring up out here. The first few miles is still pretty much barren of homes, but this is where I spotted trees full of happily squawking red wing blackbirds.



Right next to the tree of birds was this shot of an old fishing net wrapped around a tree. Not sure if it's from Katrina, Gustav or Ike.



Further down the road I passed the church where Father Red(Arthur Ginart) spent his last hours guarding his church.


notice the marsh grass from Gustav/Ike still on the church's steps

Late on the night before Katrina, a volunteer firefighter went down to the St Nicholas of Myra church to convince him to leave, but he wouldn't. "God will be my shepherd," he said.

In the corner of Highway 90 where Jayne Mansfield was killed I spotted this little guy sunning himself. Such a cutie.



Here's a sampling of the houses I saw along this route. I want to take more when the traffic allows.











More to come.....................................................

A mystery solved

About a year after Katrina blew through here, I first noticed this sight in the community of Northshore on my daily commute to the spaceship factory.





I never could figure out how or why it was there until earlier this week when I read an article in the local newspaper


Sticking out of a pond in front of a large green building is the tail section of a small plane, looking as if the plane took a nosedive and got stuck in the mud at the bottom of the pond.

No, it’s not a plane accident, it is actually a work of art created by local contractor Bruce Sauer.

Sauer is a pilot and owns the Beechcraft Serria four-seater plane that sits in the middle of the pond. He built the building and pond in 2001 and his company used to work out of it, but now he leases it to Superior Construction Co.

Sauer bought the plane about 1989, and he flew it all over the place. But then his wife, Missy, who did not like to fly, asked him not to fly so much.

So, Sauer parked the airplane at the Lakefront Airport in New Orleans, and there it sat for several years.

Then Hurricane Katrina blew into town, and destroyed the plane. Sauer didn’t have any insurance on the aircraft, and he discovered that it wasn’t worth it to sell the plane for scrap metal.

“So I decided to make some pond art out of it,” Sauer said.

The building that sits behind the plane-in-a-pond rode thru Katrina as if it were a thunderstorm. It's well-built.

Northshore Saturday

Having a WHOLE day off recently is rare for me, so when I decided to take Saturday off, Hubby and I ventured out looking for stuff to buy at the local Farmers' Markets.

Our first stop was Slidell's Camellia City Market, where I purchased the "official" poster of the Market, created by Vivian Hava, Northshore High School Freshman.






Actually we were on a mission: We were looking for the dynamite Mediterranean food from Nur's Kitchen. A take-out-only restaurant, Nur's Kitchen used to be at all of the local Farmer's Markets, but we didn't see their food in Slidell, so we ventured on to the Mandeville Farmers' Market. There we found some delicious BBQ Sauce and a praline type brownie, but no Nur's. One more market on the northshore: the Covington Farmers' Market. No Mediterranean food there, either. But they DID have a good crowd and lots of produce and homemade goods to choose from. We decided to take a walk down to the Columbia Street Landing and visit shops along the way.



One of my favorite shops on Columbia Street is Art on Columbia , a gallery and store where you can buy wares from local artists. I purchased a very nice item for my fireplace mantle (love that overtime $$).

Columbia Street is full of boutiques, galleries and PLENTY of lawyer shops. One of my favorite sites is the old General Store.



We made it to the Landing, and enjoyed the quiet sitting by the Bogue Falaya





Getting hungry, we decided to look for food (seems like we're always looking for food, doesn't it?) So we walked towards the old Courthouse on Boston Street. Up New Hamshire Street we saw this hilarious site



This guy was trying to see if his brake lights were working. We assured him they were.

Further up New Hamshire, we spied some new construction and what looked to be a park, so we decided to check it out. Turns out we discovered the newest Trailhead for the Tammany Trace.



Newly opened last April (where've I been??), this Trailhead marks the end of the Tammany Trace's 40 mile trek.





I didn't bother reading the plaque, but I discovered a huge statue of Ronald Reagan keeping watch over the park





We noticed that this Trailhead didn't yet have full time rangers yet, so we decided to do some snooping around to see what else was there.

Then we noticed this flyer



So we tried the door, which opened, and wandered into the model train room. What a treat.









Hubby works for Amtrak, so he got a hoot out of this.



This display is so intricate. The owner of the trains paid so much attention to detail in this setup. I even spied a hooker hanging out by the auto shop!!

I asked the owner how long his Model Railroad display was going to be there and he said forever. So if you love Model trains, or have kids that do, I suggest you head to Covington to see this. You won't be disappointed.

We never did do lunch in Covington. We ended up at Fazzio's in Mandeville



They make the BEST tartar sauce in the world!