Last Sunday, we went to the Gulf Aid benefit concert with some dear friends. It was an enchanting, oh-so-New-Orleans kind of event: walking through Mardi Gras World, where hundreds of floats and float adornments are created and stored; sampling soundly delicious seafood creations by some of the city's best restaurants and caterers; watching the tugboats and barges troll along the Mississippi; listening to heartfelt, intensely dedicated performers like Tab Benoit call us to attention, lest we forget whom we need to help; chanting "Who Dat?!" spontaneously, like a family, because we are a family.
Singing "You Are My Sunshine"--our state song--a capella, at the tops of our voices. You hardly ever hear the final Louisiana-specific verses, and we didn't sing them either, but here they are, in all their sweetness:
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Tagged with:
music, shrimp, festival, lenny kravitz, Mardi Gras, ani difranco, catfish, dr. john, maque choux, ya-ka-mein, allen toussaint, tab benoit, gulf aid, phil's grill, g.w. fin's, ms. linda's catering
Believe me when I tell you that a couple of weeks ago, when I was dead-set on filling out a nice, long post with photos of the Creole Tomato/Louisiana Seafood/Cajun-Zydeco festival throwdown, I had no idea that it would be so hot down in the French Quarter.
It was too hot to take photos. Seriously, the camera kept slipping out of my hands.
I managed a few, though:
I love these little guys. I ate them.
Cajun fish taco. I asked for a small portion of slaw so I could really taste the fish. It's a lightly fried tilapia filet, dusted with just a bit of Cajun seasoning (like a mixture of cayenne, garlic powder, thyme, salt, pepper). Really nice and simple-tasting, a good thing to eat in the heat.
Shrimp-and-crab-stuffed Creole tomato. This was the perfect dish to "marry" the two food festivals together. Creole tomatoes are the jewels of the summer season here in Louisiana--people talk about them all year, either how much they miss them or how much they love them. They don't really look different from regular tomatoes, to me, but the taste is something special. Denser, sunnier, redder. I devoured every last seed of this tomato.
We had some other yummies--crawfish sausage, hurricane sno balls--but they didn't make it to the photo stage. If you can stand the heat, this festival trio, known as the "Vieux To Do," is really something. Tons of food, great vendors, fun music. This year it was held the weekend of June 13-14, so I'd assume next year it will be sometime close to that.
