Let the Festivals Begin!

Ah, March. The start of spring and Festivals.

We have several coming up in the next month or so.
Taken partially from Clarence's festival webpage here are a few festivals we won't miss:

2009 Smokin' Blues and BBQ Challenge in Downtown Hammond , Louisiana. , which features BBQ Cooking (of course), Barbecue cooking classes, Sweet Tea Challenge and of course, music. You can sample the foods cooked at this festival on Friday, March 27th beginning at 4:30 PM and on Saturday March 28th after 10 AM. We went last year and got there too early to do a lot of sampling, but we DID get to try one plate for a donation and it was fantastic.

Here's a link to more festivals held in March for our local area

click on pictures for larger versions




On the weekend of April 4th is the Picayune Street Fair. A low key event, it's
fun to walk the Antique District of Picayune and eat some good barbecue at Stonewall's by the train tracks.

The Pontchatoula Strawberry Festival is April 3rd-5th this year. It's become a big festival in the past decade or so, but the crowd's laid back and the berries are plentiful.

On April 11th head on over to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi for the Souper Mud Fest, where pottery bowls will be sold for $20 and filled with soup. Proceeds benefit Hancock County Food Pantry, local potters, and Old Town Mechants Association

The weekend of April 18th brings the Slidell Antique District Street Fair .

We usually hit this one in the morning and then head over to the sixth annual Crawfish Cookoff benefitting the Hospice foundation of the South.


If you have $20 and you like crawfish, get your tickets at Whitney Bank and head on out to Fritchie Park. The weather is ALWAYS great for this event and you can't beat the price.

One of our favorites, the French Quarter Festival will take place on April 17-19th.


Music currently booked is

The Radiators
Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue
Irvin Mayfield and the NOJO Allstars
Rockin’ Dopsie and the Zydeco Twisters
Amanda Shaw and the Cute Guys
Bonerama
the Zydepunks
Soul Rebels
the Original Hurricane Brass Band
Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Review
Theresa Andersson
Big Chief Bo Dollis Jr. & The Wild Magnolias
John Boutté & Paul Sanchez “Stew Called New Orleans”
Wanda Rouzan and a Taste of New Orleans
Susan Cowsill
Posse featuring Dave Malone, Reggie Scanlan, and Kevin O’Day
The Honey Island Swamp Band
Otra
Walter “Wolfman” Washington
Big Sam’s Funky Nation
Hot Club of New Orleans
Bamboula 2000
Soul Project


It's so good that you can eat all you want because you walk it off by walking from the foot of Canal Street to the US Mint and back!


One of NOLA's biggies, the 40th Annual Jazz Fest starts April 24th to May 3rd. Unbelievable lineup of musicians. And the variety of food and crafts will make you want to camp out at the Fairgrounds just to take it all in. If you don't mind the heat and the crowds it's worth the cost.



Here's a long list of the festivals held in April around here

May has a lot of festivals, too at this website .

June fests here

Although it's hot as hell and I'll get sunburned, I refuse to not go to the
New Orleans Vieux to Do on the weekend of June 12.



Formerly the Creole Tomato Festival, French Market Seafood Festival and the Louisiana Cajun-Zydeco Festival, the festival site includes the National Historic landmarks of the French Market and LA State Museum’s Old U.S. Mint. There will be free Music on 5 stages and Chef Demonstrations throughout the weekend. Over 50 Food, Beverage and Merchandise booths Fishermen, Arts & Crafts and Farmers Villages celebrating Louisiana’s extraordinary culture, music and cuisine.




Fathers' Day weekend has the Louisiana Bicycle Festival in Abita Springs. I've never been, but perhaps hubby and I will bike on over to Abita to check it out. We'll need the exercise after all of the food we'll be eating!

On July 4th weekend the Mandeville Seafood Festival, now held at Fontainebleu State Park. We've missed this festival in the past few years because the food frankly sucks. It was all fried food and who wants to eat hot fried food in July outside? Not me.

Instead we just may head back to Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church in Bay St. Louis for their annual Crab Festival, held on July 4th. It's a small festival, but it's held right on the Gulf of Mexico and the crowd is mellow and music is good. Best of all THEY HAVE CRABS!!!!

Saturday in the Park

After a rain soaked Labor Day weekend , we were very happy to be given a picture perfect Saturday. We headed out to Lafayette Square in New Orleans to attend the 5th Annual New Orleans Seafood Festival.



We got there right when it opened so we could enjoy looking around without a large crowd. I think the park was a great location to have this small festival. It provided shade and lots of green space.




All of the food vendors were lined up on one side of the park in the shade.










Mr. B's Gazpacheo was refreshing



Remoulade's meat pie wasn't really spicy but it was tasty.


We never did make it to the Luke booth. This picture was taken early and they weren't ready to serve at that time.


Cafe Giovanni's Shrimp and Grits where a huge disappointment. Instead of the expected rich, spicy flavor we found this dish to be too sweet (?)


The fried shrimp and bacon poboy was very, very good!


We sampled the bread pudding and it was delicious.

By this time we were extremely full and needed to move around. We decided to walk around the block from Magazine to Julia and back up St. Charles. There is so much to observe in this area of the city that we played tourist, stopping every few feet whenever something caught our eye.



















I have a slew of other pictures and I plan to do a post on some of those, especially the variety of window styles, in the near future.

Back at Lafayette Square, the crowd at the Festival was growing



and it was almost time for Amanda Shaw to perform.



We first witnessed Amanda's incredible talent 8 years ago when she was 11. At that time she was relatively unknown and her playing blew us away. She has matured since that performance and in my opinion she gets better and better. She sounded fantastic at the Seafood Festival and she got the crowd dancing.










You gotta love being in a place where a busload of tourists drive by a festival and wave at the festival goers!

After Amanda finished we followed our stomach's advice and got in line at Drago's char-broiled oyster booth.




They were worth the wait!!


Drago's was going thru french bread to fast, they had more delivered by cab. LOL




Kermit Ruffins followed Amanda Shaw with his Barbecue Swingers. They played for more than 90 minutes and the crowd loved them.
















Kermit's 19 year old daughter Neshia performed and she has a very sweet voice.


You can tell who her Daddy is, can't you?

We left about 4 and the people were still streaming into the park. It was a fantastically fun day, but it was good to get home, sunburned and full of good memories of a day in New Orleans. We are truely blessed to live here. See you next week!