And it's Bellini day today...

It's important to have to have a balanced and varied diet

Breakfast is served

‎Bottomless bloody Mary's - its going to be messy

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The big easy....

‎No, that isn't my pet name for Maria...

Finally made it to N'awlins yesterday and picked yvonne and Tony up at the airport this afternoon. The street sign does actually say bourbon st, so we are in the French Quarter waiting for the first of many parades to come past - think that will be the norm over much of the next week.

Mardi gras in new orleans was the one thing that decided our first visit to the US and doing the south for the winter. Everywhere else we could have visited at any time of year, but this one is immovable so here we are...

Cheap ass mardi gras floats

‎In Baton Rouge. Hope NOLA is a bit more upmarket than this

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How do you stop spelling mississippi?

‎Our first crossing of the mighty Miss at Baton Rouge. It is impressive in both river and bridge. Have a few days here in plantation country before the last leg into N'Awlins on tuesday.

Lafayette - the centre of Cajun country in Louisiana

The Cajun people here certainly like their food, and a little on the spicy side too. Anything that swims or even gets close to water gets cooked. Not only that, a local guy said that each animal at the zoo has three labels – an English name, a scientific name, and how to cook it!

Talking of spicy, today we visited the Tabasco pepper sauce factory on Avery Island, where the sauce has been made (and recipe unchanged) since 1868.

Anyone that's been to Phoenix will appreciate the poster below :-)

The sauce is made from red peppers (and a little salt) which is left to ferment in old whisky barrels for 3 years. Distilled vinegar is then added to the mash and it’s stirred for 28 days before being strained and bottled. This is the only bottling plant in the world and can turn out 700,000 bottles a day! We also got to try all the sauces and marinades that are made, including the new Habanero sauce which is not for the faint hearted! In fact, it blew my head off! I had to try their Raspberry Chipotle ice-cream to calm my mouth down J  

Eaten so far...

‎As we are in the home of cajun catering we have been sampling a few of the local specialties:

• ‎Cajun catfish/shrimp - floured with cajun spice and deep fried. Spicy and tends to mask the taste of the underlying food. Ditto minced alligator and boudin ( a local type of sausage meat with rice mixed in) Cajun is supposed to be fiercer and simpler than creole, and seems to be mostly cayenne pepper.
• Sausage and chicken gumbo‎ - thick soup, fierce spice and the sausage also has louisiana spice in. Closest thing we've had to a madras in 2 years...
• Pan fried catfish/tilapia/shrimp - Still spiced with the cajun seasoning but not as overpowering. Catfish is pretty bland, but the tilapia is really nice and quite meaty for a small filet fish.

• Sausage and shrimp gumbo ‎- thicker than before, more like a stew, with okra which goes to mush. Not as spicy as the chicken version and I'm not convinced.

• Fried alligator bites - quite meaty and again floured with spices. If it didn't say you would assume it was a tough chicken ‎nugget.
• creole shrimp - subtle and a bit sweet for my taste

Haven't found a jambalaya yet, or had an etouffee, but we have another 3 weeks to go....‎and the crawfish season should start around the end of the month

goodbye texas...hello zombies

So we've crossed out of Texas. In review, it may be big but its pretty charmless - I can understand why the mexicans gave up on it. Apart from Galveston and the hurricane proof buildings nowhere really had much going for it, and i'm going to class tex-mex in there with pizza: its not good food, its just the lowest common denominator for pointless restaurants around the world.

Now in Louisiana for most of the next month and its already more interesting - the top local news story this evening is the local zombie fun run where you can either run or lurch...

Merge left

I  know I refer to Badger as a bit of a barge, but we don't usually have to give way to shipping....on the ferry across from Galveston the "command" driving position does give you a good view over the other traffic and railings.

Galveston is actually the most interesting place we have been in Texas - famous for the most deadly hurricane in US history when an estimated 6-8000 people dies in 1900. Last one to hit them was Ike in 2008 which left a high water mark about 6 feet above the ground in the old drug store diner we had lunch in. Official elevation of Galveston is 7 feet, so that would have been a total storm surge of about 13ft. Local residents must be used to it - they had hooks on the diner ceiling so that furniture and fittings could be hoisted up out of the way, and in the back alleys all the electricity transformers are up on poles for the same reason

Most houses on the peninsular are also storm ready with the main house up on stilts (as in Queensland) and storage below. Some even come equipped with a lift to bring stuff up to the safety of the house if flooding threatens.

Lights...wipers....action.

‎Our first rain since leaving the California coast in November, and it's the day we break camp from Houston and head 30 miles down towards Galveston. Managed to turn the windscreen wipers on ok on badger, but turning them off seems a bit hit and miss, sometimes they even stay on when you cut the ignition. It sounds like the relay sticking rather than a problem with the switch, but as it seems to be clicking away somewhere under the dashboard it might stay that way for a while...

Dropped Philip off at the airport after lunch yesterday, so we had him around for just under 48 hours. Really good to see him and catch up - last time we met was at a quiz night down in speldhurst and I had to bale in a hurry to make the last train - and had some good food and many many beers‎ took us back a bit. Even had some punk on the juke box in the bar...

We will head down through Galveston tomorrow and get the ferry across to the Bolivar peninsular, right on the gulf,  spending  a few days there before pottering on across to louisiana.

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