Every time I go to Galatoire’s, I find it hard to resist their Turtle Soup. My last bowl of it got me thinking about making it at home. So after talking it over with Pontchartain Pete, we decided to take it on.

Historically, turtle soup gained popularity with the European explorations of the West Indies, where turtles became an important food resource for sailors and pirates and a luxury item on English tables.

~ New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories, Edited by Susan Tucker.

Turtle soup has been a New Orleans dish since, well, forever. New Orleans’ turtle soup is different from other regions’ soups by the inclusion of another Louisiana food staple: tomatoes. Where elsewhere turtle soup is a thin brothy soup, in New Orleans, it’s a thick, rich stew-like soup.

Pete learned that although there are as many recipes for Creole Turtle Soup as their are Creole kitchens, all of the recipes had these things in common: turtle meat,veal or beef stock, onions, celery, tomatoes, parsley, thyme, chopped hard boiled eggs, lemon and sherry.

Pete:

For the soup, I looked at several of the recipes available online. On his website Gumbo Pages, Chuck Taggert had two recipes, from Commander’s Palace and Arnaud’s. I also looked at Galatoire’s cookbook recipe and decided that I liked elements of all three.

I also wanted to make a lot of it to freeze for later and kept that in mind. Most recipes call for one and half to two pounds of turtle meat, which, I learned, is carried in two-pound packages, frozen, at a few local seafood markets and groceries. It ain’t cheap; the two-pound pack I got in Covington at Pat’s Seafood ran about $30. I’ve heard a lot of people say that most restaurant turtle soup is not made with turtle meat but with veal and after spending that much on meat that isn’t filet mignon I can see why.

Arnaud’s recipe called for both turtle and veal, and since I wanted to make a lot of soup, I also bought two packages of ground veal, which, at $6.00 a pound, seemed quite reasonable.

As far as seasonings go, the recipes were basically the same, although in addition to the onions, celery and garlic Arnaud’s and Commander’s called for, Galatoire’s also called for a lot of bell pepper and paprika–3 peppers and a quarter cup of paprika.

Commanders calls for beef stock, Arnaud’s and Galatoire’s, veal stock. I took the expensive route. Rather than buy a couple quarts of Swanson’s beef broth, we went with frozen veal demi glace from Langenstein’s, at $14.99 per 2-cup package. I figured 4 cups demi cut with 12 cups water would make for a gallon or so of veal stock. I cooked that down a bit for about 30 minutes with bay leaves, thyme, garlic and two tablespoons–not a quarter cup–of paprika, before adding everything else and it worked out perfectly.

The “everything else” consisted of the turtle meat, veal, vegetables, tomato puree, salt, pepper, hot sauce, lemons and sherry.

I’ve never dealt with turtle before and if any of this required cleaning a dead one, we wouldn’t be here today. Not that getting what was labeled “boneless turtle meat” was a piece of cake. Boneless though it was, there was an awful lot of silverskin and connective tissue that needed trimming, which, with my unskilled knife work, cost about about a half-pound of lost meat.

Here’s the method.

1) Have someone else (Nolanotes) prep all the veggies for you. It ended up being a lot more than needed, but I was thinking big when telling her what quantities to buy and chop.

2) Brown the turtle meat. A little salt and pepper on the meat, a little vegetable oil in a hot pot, and brown the turtle meat on each side, just like if you were making grillades or whatever. After cooling a bit, I chopped the meat up in about 1/4-inch pieces.

3) Brown the veal. Same thing, it was ground already and I just browned it and put it in the bowl with the turtle until the stock and veggies were ready. I taste-tested some of  the browned turtle, which tasted more like beef than anything else. Alligator I find to taste like dry chicken with a fishy aftertaste and don’t care for it too much. Turtle tasted much better.

4) Make the stock. Next time I’ll probably start with some boxed stock. This time, though, it was $30 worth of frozen demi glace which I melted down and cut with water, added some bay leaves, dried thyme and oregano, salt and pepper, garlic, one lemon cut into quarters and the paprika and simmered all that while I…

5) Made the roux. All the recipes called for making a separate butter roux to add later on to thicken the soup. Two sticks butter, one cup flour, cook until light brown and set aside.

6) Sweat the veggies. I ended up measuring out two cups each of chopped onion, celery, bell pepper and one cup green onion. Sweated with a little butter until clear, then I added 3 cups of canned tomato puree to the veggies and let that simmer for ten minutes.

7) This is some really involved stuff. I’m taking a break now.

And….back.

8 ) Add the tomato and veggie mixture to the stock and 1/2 cup of sherry. Get it back to a boil and simmer 10 minutes.

9) Add the browned turtle and veal meat and all the juices that were in the bottom of the bowl. Bring it back to a boil, let simmer 20 minutes.

10) Chop up the boiled eggs and add the roux. WHAT BOILED EGGS??? Alright, that was another step that Nolanotes had taken care of before I started. Chop up three boiled eggs, add to the pot. The roux was sitting in the pot and the excess butter floated to the top. I just poured it off and put the browned flour paste into the pot. It thickened fairly well, I probably could have used another 1/2 cup. Bring to boil and simmer 10 minutes more.

11) Taste and adjust for salt, pepper and heat. I added a few shakes of Crystal. I would have added Tabasco instead but couldn’t find it.

That’s it. Pour in bowl, splash on some more sherry and some more chopped eggs if you like.

”

Bowl of Pontchartrain Pete's Creole Turtle Soup.

A note on the sherry: I used Hartley and Gibson’s Amontillado from Martin Wine Cellar. I had chosen a Manzanilla but consulted with Steve Perret, who suggested a nuttier, more full-bodied, Amontillado for use with turtle soup. That’s why it pays to shop where people know their stuff. It was inexpensive, too–only about $12 for the bottle.

Hartley & Gibson Amontillado Sherry.

There’s flame coming out, it’s breathing and wheezing and whining, you realize the vehicle’s alive. It’s just hanging out there full of 3 1/2 million gallons of rocket fuel, ready to take flight.
—STS-135 commander Chris Ferguson on arriving at the pad on launch morning.

It starts out as this teeny tiny point of light. As you get closer and closer, it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Even if you’ve seen it before, you keep wondering how much bigger is it going to get?  This thing is huge! Oh my gosh. It’s a building, and it’s running around our planet in orbit every ninety minutes.
—Mission specialist Sandra Magnus on approaching the International Space Station.

Yep. The crew signed my NASA Tweetup badge.

I was invited to cover today’s meet-and-greet with the STS-135 crew held at Stennis Space Center (SSC). Shuttle commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley and mission specialists Dr. Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim came to personally thank the employees at Stennis for the role they’ve played in fulfilling the shuttle program’s mission. If you’re not familiar with the Stennis Space Center, it’s the facility in southern Mississippi built for static testing of the Apollo program rocket engines, and has since tested all of the shuttle’s main engines to ensure they were flight-worthy.

Stennis director Patrick Scheuermann explained that unlike the Michoud Assembly Facility a few miles away in New Orleans, SSC has a relatively bright future even with the shuttle program coming to an end. Michoud built the non-reusable main fuel tanks for the shuttle and has wound down operations for the most part. Stennis, on the other hand, has been testing the next generation of engines for NASA and has been hired to test engines built by commercial ventures as well. Sheuermann expects that not only will Stennis not lose any employees, it may gain some in the near future.

Chris Ferguson presents SSC Director Patrick Scheuermann with mission photos and a flag that was brought into orbit on STS-135.

Signs on the interstate as you approach Bay St. Louis state you’re entering Stennis’ buffer zone. Use of the 125,000 acres surrounding the facility is limited due to the noise generated by testing the big-ass rocket engines. I can personally vouch for that. On occasion when I was living in Slidell, about 20 miles away from Stennis, I would here what sounded like thunder, although it was more like a low roar that went on for a time, like a plane passing overhead. The first time I heard it, I asked my neighbor, “What the hell was that?” He replied with one word: “Stennis.”

Despite the curiosity that raised, I’ve never visited Stennis before today. I was one of the many people who, as Scheuermann pointed out, zip by the big green sign on I-10 without a thought. A new visitor’s center is under construction now right at Exit 2, where visitors now must park and be bussed in for tours of the present visitor’s center on site in the test area. It is worth the trip, though, with a surprise attraction: the re-entry scarred command module from Apollo 4 (an unmanned test mission).

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." STS-135 crew members Ferguson, Hurley, Magnus and Walheim at Stennis Space Center.

After a video presentation of the mission, the astronauts gave their personal observations and fielded questions from the audience. Ferguson talked at length about the mission and shuttle program in general. He said this of the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME):

They are one of the true success stories of the program…

Someone likened the SSME to a 7000-pound Swiss watch. If you look at it from the operating temperatures and pressures at which it runs, it is an incredible piece of machinery and it’s one thing I brag about everywhere I go. The amount of horsepower you can generate from a 400-pound LOX or hydrogen turbopump is just incredible.

When you start talking numbers like that to young men who are interested in Camaros and tell them, ‘I can give you an engine that puts out 85,000 horsepower as opposed to your 400 horsepower,’ they’re going to be suitably impressed. And they are.

Hurley told the Stennis crowd that in 135 flights, there were no SSME malfunctions, “A flawless, flawless, 135 flights and everyone in here should be very proud of those engines and what they’ve done.” He also went through the launch from a pilot’s perspective. After going through ignition, lift-off and throttle down, he said:

Throttle-up is just like a catapult shot for us Navy/Marine Corps guys who got to do that. You get kicked right in your bottom side and get headed towards the space station at that point. As we go towards MECO [main engine cut-off],the engines start throttling as the orbiter builds G’s. That really does feel like someone sitting on your chest. And then, boom! Cutoff, and you’re floating in your straps instantaneously.

Ferguson went on to talk about the last shuttle launch, STS-135, which I witnessed in person, thanks to the NASA Tweetup program, in particular what happened when the countdown stopped at 31 seconds:

The age-old question of, what happens to the astronauts when the clock stops at 31 seconds? The image probably is, we’re very professional, we know exactly what to do, we have checklists, we have switches to throw…in reality, we all looked at each other and said, “Huh?”

We really don’t practice things like this, but I was absolutely amazed at how quickly the launch team was able to identify the problem. From the time you realize has started ticking again from 31 seconds, it takes about ten seconds to realize that, “Whoa! Maybe we’re not going to be here in ten minutes, we’re really going to be in space.” The engines start at 6 seconds so that leaves you with 15 seconds to come to terms with the fact that you’re leaving. Considering that just a few short seconds earlier you had an abort/recycle procedure open and you were ready to start shutting the vehicle down, it happens really quick, 3,2,1…boom! You’re on your way. I think I launched with the abort procedures in front of me.

Sandra Magnus answered a question from a young lady (about 10 years old, I’d guess) about being the only woman on the mission by saying the guys had become like brothers to her, and, like the young lady would know, “Sometimes you have to keep your brothers in line.” She also fielded a question about the effects of zero-g living on the body and provided her insight:

Bone loss starts after about 2 weeks. Exercise is the key. For longer missions, you must exercise. We exercise 2 hours a day. We do a cardiovascular-type exercise on a bicycle or a treadmill; you strap yourself into a treadmill, and get some cardio and it loads your bones somewhat, too. We have a resistive exercise device on station that really loads your bones and your muscles. If you do that religiously, faithfully, 2 hours a day the way you’re supposed to, you can come back and be strong.

The other thing you have to deal with when you come back from spaceflight, whether it’s a long stay or a short stay, is neurovestibular effects. The fluid in your inner ear uses gravity to figure out your orientation. When you get into orbit, that gets completely messed up.
…

The minute you get a 10th of a G or 2 10ths of a G when re-entering, you feel it. You feel heavy. It’s amazing what gravity’s doing to you just this minute; it’s pressing you into your seats. You don’t realize it because you’re used to it. But, it’s like, “Oh my gosh, this is just horrible.”

I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t get enough of these space travel anecdotes. I’m going to stay tuned for future NASA Tweetups, and Ferguson said that hopefully there will be U.S. manned spacecraft launches starting in 2016. Meanwhile, missions to the International Space Station will continue, although we’ll have to rely on the Russians to get us up there until the next gen of U.S. rockets (tested at Stennis, of course) are in service.

Note: for more coverage of today’s event, see NOLA.com’s write-up and photos.

Koerner has been around over 100 years, with the third and fourth generations of the Koerner family now operating the business that was started in 1906. Ann said she first worked with the Koerner company when it was basically a bakery supply firm. After Katrina, the company regrouped and expanded its offerings to include the cutting-edge equipment and ingredients used in creating the types of dishes and drinks one thinks of when you hear the term “molecular gastronomy.”

Tim Koerner explained that the techniques perfected by chefs like Ferran Adrià at Spain’s El Bulli restaurant (which is closing, I’m seeing on internets) presented flavors of classic ingredients and dishes in new formats. Ingredients—pine nuts, asparagus, fruits or beans, for example—could be transformed into foams, gels, spherical “caviar” or instantly frozen into ices that retain the ingredient’s original flavor. Koerner sells all of the obscure equipment and food chemicals any would-be Ferran Addrià could ever want.

The supplies and ingredients to make “caviar,” Tim said, agar-agar and calcium chloride, are known as spherification agents. Mixing a flavored liquid with agar and then dropping the mixture in the calcium chloride bath instantly creates a gel skin on the droplet which burst when put in the mouth, like fish eggs, thus it’s called “caviar.” Here’s a NYT story on Cointreau’s attempts to get bartenders to spherify their orange liqueur and include the resultant eggs into fancy cocktails.

One other way to molecular bliss is through making foams and ices out of concentrated flavors. Koerner sells all the equipment; the insulated bowls and buckets and so forth, needed to handle it. Tim noted that working with liquid nitrogen is preferred to dry ice as it freezes whatever foodstuffs you’re working with much faster, preventing cell walls from bursting and causing freezer burns dry ice can cause.

Purity Vodka held a brunch at the Bombay Club on Friday where they presented their own spin on molecular mixology. It was a great brunch, by the way, and a typically great Tales event, where free booze and food combine with great networking opportunities. I met up with some old friends and made some new ones as well, Jonas from San Francisco and DrinkofTheWeek.com and Emily from NYC and MouthOfTheBorder.com. The Bombay Club put on a great spread with chicken and waffles, eggs Benedict, gumbo, shrimp creole, creme brulee and more.  But I digress from the molecular thingy.

Making Bloody Marys the molecular way with Purity Vodka.

Rather than mix up a batch of Bloody Marys using tomato juice and other ingredients, participants were invited to place ingredients (cubed tomatoes rather than juice, pickled vegetables, other traditional garnishes and even sausage and shrimp) into a whipped cream vessel that was then charged by a canister of nitrous oxide gas. Under pressure, the alcohol and gas would extract all of the ingredients’ flavors into the vodka and after a 30-second shake, the gas is released, the cap unscrewed, and the mixture strained into a waiting glass chilled with a perfectly clear ball of ice.

That seems to be a lot of trouble to go through, but it really worked. A lot of what was presented at Tales of the Cocktail this year were ideas and products (like bitters) that would serve to give an edge to one product or bartender’s offerings over another. Purity Vodka was a good example, going all out with its promotion and showing consumers how to do something different with their product, which, by the way, is a damn fine vodka that I enjoyed cut with just a little water in the vermouth-less martini they also served. And that’s not just the brunch talking. Really good stuff.

This is where Koerner comes back in. Manufacturer iSi (pronounced “ee-see,” I learned, not “eye-ess-eye”) makes the cream-whippers, soda siphons and gas chargers (N2O and CO2) needed to make the Purity-style Bloody Marys and the Ferran Addrià foams and gels. Koerner, of course, sells iSi products. For you cutting edge chefs out there, you Blackened-Out and Appetites wish-they-could-eat-at-El Bulli-and-never-will-because-now-it’s-closed-forever-types, Koerner also carries the equipment needed to sous-vide, smoke-inject and foam your little hearts out.

You can order for delivery from their very extensive website, or if you’re in town, call to order and pick up items at their headquarters, 4820 Jefferson Hwy. Keep in mind they’re geared to commercial supply and while they do sell to the general public, it’s not a retail store and they’re only open Mon-Fri until 4pm, and closed noon-1pm for lunch.

The Bitter Truth's Creole Bitters.

The German guys behind Bitter Truth, Alex and Stephan, were out at Sunday’s Cocktail Bazaar. Alex said they were just a couple of bartenders in Bavaria when they started making their own bitters, and their business has just taken off from there (their Celery Bitters won a Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Award for best new product in 2010).

Alex gave me a taste of the Creole Bitters. Bright red in color, like Peychaud’s, floral scent like Peychaud’s, but definitely brighter and less sweet and, well, more bitter than Peychaud’s. I exclaimed they would probably indeed make a fine Sazerac cocktail, but Alex quickly noted, “We are not allowed to say the “S-word.” Or the “P-word,” due to the Sazerac Co.’s trademarks. That’s fine, but the guys know what’s what in cocktail history and have a recipe on their website for an “Improved Brandy Cocktail” that is closer to Amedee Peychaud’s original concoction than the official Sazerac recipe is today. Another shopper at the Bazaar said Bitter Truth’s products were available at Martin Wine Cellar. I’ll have to check that out.

Improved Brandy Cocktail

50 ml (1 1/2  oz) Cognac*
2 dashes The Bitter Truth – Creole Bitters
2 dashes Absinthe
10 ml (2 tsp) Sugar Syrup*

Stir in mixing glass with ice and strain into a chilled tumbler or cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.
*Metric conversions are mine,  not the Bitter Truth’s.

Ballast and Keel Bittering House's offerings.

The table next door to Alex and Stephan was occupied by another bitters producer, Ballast & Keel Bittering House. The bitters they are creating are more concentrated flavoring combinations than classic “bitters”—Strawberry & Indian Fennel, Saigon Cinnamon & Walnut, Wild Cherry & Tahitian Vanilla, Cocoa Nib & Chili Arbol are just a few of the combinations. I didn’t detect even a hint of gentian or overt bitterness in anything I sampled. That’s not a bad thing at all, as someone looking to concoct a drink with that “I don’t know what that taste is but I like it” element would be well-served to give Ballast & Keel’s bitters a try.

Throwing out the “P-word,” I told them I’m a big fan of putting a dash of Peychaud’s on top of my absinthe frappes and asked which would go well with absinthe. Without hesitation, I was told the Strawberry and Indian Fennel. Duh. Fennel seed, of course is one of the holy trinity ingredients in that make up all absinthes. He handed me small sample bottle, the taste was aromatic and floral, like Peychaud’s and the Creole bitters, but lacking the gentian bite common to both of those bitters. Again, that’s not a bad thing. They’d probably go good with Ramos Gin Fizz, too.

Let the experimentation begin!

Bitters were back this year, although they probably never went away. “The Emperor’s New Bitters” was the Thursday afternoon seminar I attended that was conducted by Jacob Briars, Sebastian Reaborn and Francesco Lafranconi. Since I did a poor job of keeping track of who said what during the seminar, I’m just going to attribute everything to “the presenter(s).” It was a sellout crowd; over 200 people came to hear the presenters describe the history behind the various bitters available today. Added bonus: was the presenters’ views on which liquors mix well with each bitter, which ones they don’t go with and surprise uses for each.

Samples lined up for "The Emporer's New Bitters" seminar at Tales of the Cocktail 2011.

Cocktail bitters are highly concentrated extracts made from botanical flavoring agents–herbs, spices, flowers and/or fruits. Gentian is a common ingredient as, the presenters noted, it has one of the highest bittering concentrations. Bitters not only add their own flavor profile to a drink, they enhance and carry the drink’s other flavors, said the presenters. Bitters stimulate the salivary glands, which in turn stimulate the digestive system. In Italy, beverages containing bitter compounds are traditionally taken 20 min. to one-half hour of a meal. These apéritifs and digesifs include Campari and Fernet (different brands available) and vermouths like Punt e Mes and can be ingredients in many other classic mixed drinks.

[The] cock-tail, then, is a stimulating liquor composed of sugar, water, spirits and bitters—it is vulgarly called a ‘bittered sling.’

This quote from an 1806 New York state newspaper is the first written definition of “cocktail” and illustrates a couple of points. The first steals the jelly right out of NOLA’s doughnut  by negating the legend of Amedee Peychaud’s invention of the cocktail. The lore is that, in the 1830s, Peychaud served bitters and brandy and sugar in little cups called coquetiers, and the Americans bastardized that word to “cocktail,” ergo, the cocktail was invented by Amedee Peychaud in New Orleans. Now, Peychaud’s bitters (a family recipe brought to New Orleans by his father, a San Domingan refugee, in 1795 are still around) and his concoction, with in the 1870s, rye whiskey substituted for brandy and absinthe added, are enjoyed as the Sazerac cocktail. That Peychaud’s bitters and cocktail idea are still around is a marvel of history and NOLA culture, but, alas, it’s not as romantic as being able to say the cocktail was purely a New Orleans invention.

Sidenote: It seemed like a dig to me, and I could be wrong, but one of the presenters showed a photo of himself in front of Cohen & Sons (see previous post) saying something to the effect of, “Only in New Orleans would one of the greatest bars in history  be turned into an antique gun store!” That’s not an exact quote, but it still seemed like a dig and shows a lack of research. Cohen’s ancestors started the business at 437 Royal St. in 1898, so it’s been an “antique gun store” and New Orleans landmark for a lot longer than it was ever Peychaud’s apothecary shop, and it’s been a worthy successor to Peychaud for that long-standing retail location.

The second, and more pertinent point about the quote from the seminar’s perspective, is that the cocktail and the ingredient “bitters” are intertwined, i.e., it is the addition of bitters to a mixture containing spirits makes that mixture a cocktail. The moderator pointed out an important fact; back then, bitters were medicines and it was the addition of spirits to bitters that made the bitters palatable. A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down, so to speak.

The Bitter and the…Bitterer

The grandaddy of cocktail bitters is the Angostura brand of aromatic bitters, which was formulated in the 1820s, although throughout the 1800s in American bars, one was more likely to find Bokers or Stoughton, but both brands extinct. Regarding Angostura, ”There is not a bar in the world that doesn’t have a bottle and if it doesn’t have a bottle, it’s not a bar,” said the presenter, commenting on the ubiquity of the brand. The presenter said they go well with whiskies, rum and lime but not cognac, and to give it a try in coffee and Coca-Cola.

Surprisingly good was one of the cocktails we sampled, the Angostura Sour, a concoction made by the fine folks at Cure in New Orleans. Rather than the bitters being added a few drops at a time to spirits as a flavoring agent, the bitters are the base of the drink, 1 1/2 ounces of Angostura bitters, to be precise. It turns out the bitters are 90 proof. Lime juice, sugar syrup and an egg white rounded out the drink.

The once-extinct Boker’s bitters have been reversed-engineered and resurrected, thanks to a Scottish bar man, “Dr.” Adam Elmegirab. My notes indicate presenter’s comments of  “insanely bitter on first taste. Aroma, Christmas pudding, orange, cinnamon, cardoman.”

They were ga-ga over Bob’s Bitters recreation of another extinct brand from the late 1800s, Abbotts. Described as “completely gorgeous” but hard to find in the U.S. due to an ingredient, the Tonka Bean. The bitters are available on the internet but expensive, about $40 for 100 ml. Great for Manhattans, bad with tequila, surprisingly good by itself on ice with a little sugar.

I have to say that one of the bitters we sampled I found to be just too much on its own. Bittermens (no apostrophe, dammit! says the moderator) is a company that is set on creating new cocktail bitter varieties, rather than recreate or reverse engineer old ones. On first taste, their Hopped Grapefruit Bitterstasted bright and strong, grapefruity as advertised, but quickly the taste turned bitter to the point of reminding me only of regurgitated bile. That’s nasty, I know. I wouldn’t rule them out for an addition to a drink, but wouldn’t recommend trying them straight. My presenter’s notes say, “Great with Tequila or Mescal, bad with dark spirits, surprisingly good with beer or ginger beer.”

The Biter Truth bitter makers mentioned in the last post are making a version of Jerry Thomas’ bitter recipe contained in his 1862 Bar-Tender’s Guide. One ingredient left out of that recipe, we learned, was the snake root. Some fuddy-duddy bureaucrat somewhere along the line discovered snake root can cause liver failure, as if anyone who drinks enough to make their own bitters from an 1862 recipe would really care. We were not given, unfortunately, a sample of The Bitter Truth’s Creole bitters so I can’t say whether they’d be a great alternative to Peychaud’s or not.

We did spend a little time on Peychaud bitters and were treated to a sample of a Peychaud Swizzle, a drink with an ounce of Peychaud bitters as it base (with Cognac, pineapple puree and juice along with some of those Jerry Thomas bitters. As a bitters-based cocktail, I didn’t like it as much as the Angostura Sour. I think it was the pineapple more than anything, though, so could be a fave with some tweaking with the fruit element.

We also covered Fee Brother’s Whiskey Barrel Aromatic Bitters. Very powerful, noted the moderator, and aged in Woodford Reserve Bourbon barrels. Goes well with Bourbon, of course and dark rum and are surpriseing good with chocolate and lemon.

Overall this was a great seminar. Like most of Tales of the Cocktail, it was geared toward bar industry professionals but had a lot of great info for enthusiasts. As the presenters pointed out, while bartenders can’t, as a practical matter, make their own Tequilas, gins and whiskeys, they can make their own bitters to add a personal touch to their repertoire.

I’m looking forward to the seminar entitled “The Emperor’s New Bitters.” Bitters, as the name implies, are flavoring agents, usually highly concentrated, which add that “there’s something in there but I can’t put my finger on it” taste to a cocktail.

New Orleans’ own Peychaud bitters are a prime example. They were concocted in the 1830s by pharmacist Antoine Amédée Peychaud at his shop on Royal St.; the building (437 Royal) now houses Cohen’s Antiques. Cohen’s, by the way, is worth a drop in. While everything in there is for sale, most items would be at home in any decent museum. Coins, NOLA memorabilia such as Carnival favors and krewe badges,Civil War items and many antique guns are on display.

I heard a representative of the Bitter Truth bitters company on Eric Asher’s show yesterday. She said Peychaud’s recipe is not the same as it was back in the day, and her company had located a sample of Peychaud’s from the 1800s and analyzed and reverse-engineered to make their version, which they call “Creole Bitters.” Their website doesn’t mention any reverse engineering but says:

The Bitter Truth – Creole Bitters are reminiscent of a style of bitters dating back to an era before cocktails even existed. Back then, bitters were made by doctors and apothecaries, primarily for the use in liquid tonics and then eventually as an ingredient in alcoholic beverages. The Bitter Truth – Creole Bitters reflect the Creole way of life with all its beautiful complexity and spiciness.

Science or marketing hype? I don’t know, but I’m willing to buy a bottle to try in the next Sazerac I fix.

Lift-off Atlantis STS-135!

It was over way to quickly.

One thing I noticed the first time I went to see the ponies at the Fairgrounds was, when I turned the corner coming into the grandstand and saw the pack running on the track, the horses looked to be going MUCH faster than I would have ever thought watching horse racing on TV.

Multiply that by at least ten for the shuttle launch. What looks like a huge, lumbering machine taking off slowly while the TV camera tracks its every move is a lie. It happens just about as fast as that bottle rocket taking off on New Year’s but on the grandest scale imaginable. And there are people riding on it.

We were at the NASA press site. I was situated to the right of the countdown clock with a clear view and could hear the countdown audio coming through the speakers in the tent behind me. When they said “main engine start” I saw the instantaneous blast of exhaust billow out of either side of the launch pad. Lot’s of whooping and clapping from the crowd and then the big boosters kicked in and it was off

Atlantis STS-135 going, going...

They warned us not to watch our first launch through a viewfinder. I kept that in mind, but didn’t realize how right they were. As I kept mashing the camera button as fast as I could, Atlantis was well up in the air in seconds and I decided to put the camera aside just as the sound hit full-force. I perceived it like a breeze, an instantaneous cooling on my bare arms and face, and with an imperceptible lag right after, the thunder hit, cracking in my chest.

The next thing that registered was that it was really bright. That was it. “Wow. That’s really bright.”  Then  Atlantis broke through the cloud cover and it was over.

Poof. Or maybe BOOM. Like that. Over.

The cloud deck kept us from watching it head down range, something I was afraid would happen. But the weather was safe for it to launch, so launch it did. Consolation prize: the shadow cast on the cloud cover perpendicular to the smoke trail below it.

Buh-bye Atlantis!

The aftermath in the crowd alongside the lagoon was one of amazement. One of my fellow Tweetup attendees, a guy well over six feet tall and built like a linebacker, was bawling like a baby and reached out to hug another one of our fellows. Whether bawling from the shear magnitude of the launch or at the realization that this was the last launch ever or from a similar lack of sleep or overwhelming sense of camaraderie or the totality of it all I don’t know and it really doesn’t matter. This launch meant a lot to a lot of people, not just the Tweetup attendees but thousands and thousands more whose lives and livelihoods revolved around the shuttle program. The vast emptiness I felt in the huge Vehicle Assembly Building behind us we toured on Thursday (yes, it was so empty I could feel it) spoke literal volumes (129,428,000 cubic feet, to be exact) on the finality of the launch.

An empty sign in an empty building means it's all over...for now.

But it’s not that there isn’t a future to the country’s space program, it’s just that it’s not super clear, and that there will be a period of inactivity before the next big thing and a lot of people are going to lose jobs in that period. A little bit of the future was on display at the Tweetup site as Lockheed Martin and Boeing both had mockups of their contributions to the Orion program on display. While not as roomy looking as the shuttle, the capsule did look like it had a lot more room to work in than the proverbial FEMA trailer, not bad for something that’s got to spend time in the vacuum of space (and go to the moon, and asteroids and possibly Mars, actual missions in mind when designing it).

Local-area space facilities, the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans East and the Stennis Space Center just across the Pearl River in Miss. will remain in business. Michoud was where the Saturn V first-stage booster module for the moon launches was constructed in ’60s and ’70s and where the shuttle’s main fuel tank has been built. It will be involved with the Orion capsule manufacture and testing along with some of the systems for the Ares cargo rocket systems. I was told, though, that the work was not as extensive as in the past and the workforce needed would be in the hundreds rather than the thousands. Stennis will continue its role in as an engine testing center, testing the newer and bigger rocket engines Ares will require. Here’s some pics of the Orion mock-ups:

Lockheed's Orion testing model.

The experience was overwhelming. I’m writing this after getting the first sleep I’ve had after 40-plus hours of no sleep and non-stop activity. I want to thank Dvora, Alex and Oscar who were my passengers to and from NASA and Orlando on launch day. I greatly appreciated their company and navigational help as we re-routed around a traffic jam on the way back to Orlando. From Mexico City (by way of Philly and New Jersey), San Francisco and Los Angeles (by way of Puerto Rico), respectively, I loved hearing their stories and hope they didn’t mind my rantings as we had a short tour of off-the-beaten path American rural south. We saw giant alligators (fake), orange groves and what I’m assuming was a sandhill crane. The big bird (looks kind of like the herons we see all the time but at least twice as tall) aren’t as rare as I thought (I told my passengers they would be able tell their grandchildren they saw one) but it was still a neat sight.

"Swampy" on Hwy. 50 outside of Titusville.

I came back to the hotel after a shower and a trip to the get some dinner and could hear the post-launch gathering of  some of the group who were staying at the same La Quinta as me. Too tired and grumpy to be good enough company to join in, I did hear, though, over and over, one common theme floating out of the lobby: “THE most amazing experience of my life!” As we say in NOLA: Yeah you rite!

And it was. Overwhelming and unbelievable and two straight days of “Wow!”

Launch is set for Friday, July 8 at about 11:30 a.m. Eastern time. I’m leaving New Orleans tomorrow for Destin, where I’ll help celebrate my cousin’s 50th birthday, then head to check in at the hotel in Orlando and hopefully have enough time to pick up my credentials before 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

Thursday is Tweetup activity day. I just got the email for the itinerary. Highlights for the day include a bus trip to the launch pad to view one of the pre-launch procedures, retraction of the Rotating Service Structure, followed by “a tour of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, including visits to the Apollo Saturn V Center and the Vehicle Assembly Building and a drive by the Launch Control Center, Mobile Launch Platform and Orbiter Processing Facility” to quote the email.

Launch day starts at 5 a.m. NASA Tweetup pro @ageekmom gave us a heads-up to this Florida Today article about how they’re expecting 1 million spectators in and around the space center for the launch. They are also predicting the three roads leading back to Orlando probably are going to be choked with traffic for at least five hours after the launch. So I plan on leaving Orlando early. Like 3 or 4 a.m., then camping out at the press site for as long as they let us after the launch.  If there’s a delay, there are launch windows for Saturday and Sunday mornings, and I’ve got the room booked until Sunday just in case. But there will be no delays!

Anyone who wants to catch the action can check the following:

Beginning at 10:30 a.m. on July 7, NASA will broadcast the Tweetup program on http://www.ustream.tv/nasatelevision. Other portions of the Tweetup may be broadcast on NASA Television, online at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv. Photos will be posted online during and/or after the event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto.

If you’re not familiar with the New Orleans area’s connection with the country’s space program, take a look at this from the Times-Picayune from yesterday. I’m also going to try to meet up with some Slidell folks from the Stennis Space Center, where they test the shuttle engines, and will be interviewing Stennis’ director for the day job the week after the launch.

I’ll be posting later on once I get situated.

Nonetheless, I’ve been selected to attend a NASA Tweetup and if all goes well have the best seat in the house to watch the space shuttle Atlantis launch on July 8, 2011. Tweetups, for those who don’t know, are get-togethers IRL (in real life) organized by people who are on Twitter who normally only communicate to each other on the internet. I’ve been to lots of tweetups. Mostly organized as get-togethers for drinks or lunch in New Orleans. I’ve met a lot of good people through these things.

I was late in the game learning about the NASA tweetups, not really hearing about them until Leigh, one of our local bloggers (Liprap’s Lament) attended Endeavour’s launch last month (her posts are here). A couple of weeks ago, she tweeted that it was the last day to sign up for next NASA tweetup and posted a link. I decided what the hell, signed up, and last Friday got the email that I had been selected.

Now, everyone who’s been chosen has been whooping and hollering and jumping for joy. They’re big fans: engineers, teachers, scientists and students who’ve been waiting for this chance and applying forever.  My reaction was, wow, great. Now what am I going to do?

It’s not that I don’t realize the enormity of the situation. It’s the last space shuttle launch. Ever. I was one of only 150 people out of about 5200 who applied. And now that I’ve got some arrangements made and financing in place, I’m beginning to get to the whooping and hollering stage myself.

I’m not a scientist or teacher, I’m a writer. It’s going to be a great story. And I’m a fan. Here’s my space story so far and I’m ready to write the next chapter.

I vaguely remember (I would have been 4 or 5) watching one of the Gemini missions launch on our black-and-white TV. In first grade, my brother and I built a model Saturn V rocket that was taller than both of us. That was all normal kid stuff back then, but why I’m starting to get psyched for the NASA tweetup is this: I was THIS (tiny pinched fingers) close to watching Apollo 11 launch but wasn’t quite there and I have ALWAYS wanted to see a launch since that disappointment as a 7-year old.

We were living in New Iberia, Louisiana and my dad was great at piling us all into the Country Squire and going on a long vacation every year. The summer of 1969 happened to be a Florida vacation. We were in Fort Walton when Apollo 11 launched and then traveled to Miami, where I fell asleep in front of the TV what must have been just a few minutes (I tried so hard to stay awake) before Neil Armstrong took his one small step and his giant leap all in one breath.

Update: Mom called. She says she woke all of us kids up when Armstrong was first setting foot on the moon. I must not remember it. She also says she made sure my older brother was looking at the TV when Alan Shepard launched (from his crib, he would have only been about 7 months old at the time). Plus, she said, going to the Apollo 11 launch was never in the plans.

I never found out why we didn’t go to Cape Kennedy to watch the launch. Maybe they felt it was too much to handle with all the crowds and three very ill-behaved children. Maybe it was just the timing. I don’t know. I was still a fan, though, and watched all the Apollo launches after that.

In 1981, I was a freshman at college and anticipated the first shuttle launch. I remember dreaming the night before the launch that I was at the launch and that I watched it launch but that it blew up in sky. That wasn’t really a premonition of Challenger; there was a lot of talk about the untried technology and how that was a possibility which must have crept into my dream. Needless to say, I was very happy nothing like that happened.

In 1984 I was working in a camera store in New Orleans doing photo processing. One of our customers worked at Michoud, where the shuttle’s main fuel tank was manufactured.  He had gotten VIP employee access to one of the launches and let me keep a copy of one of his photos. His description of what it was like to feel the launch planted the seed, that one day I would go witness a launch.

I kept up with the shuttle as best as a twenty-something with a lot on his plate could do, but it is Challenger, unfortunately, that is the next thing that sticks in my mind. I remember that day. I was back at LSU. It was cold, I had ridden my bike to class. In class, I wondered if my mom was watching the launch because she was a teacher and this was the one with the teacher in space. I decided I’d go straight home and catch the replay and when I got home and turned on the TV it was the replay, the replay of those two pillars of smoke coming out of those two boosters as they started to fly uncontrollably apart. It took a few seconds and I still hadn’t realized what had happened when Dan Rather’s voice kicked in to tell me. Later I learned that my mom’s class (I think she was teaching kindergarten then) had not been watching the launch.

After that, graduation, work and life happened. The shuttle returned and became, once again, routine.

In 2002, I was reading about an upcoming shuttle launch. I thought, I have some extra time. There’s nothing stopping me from driving down there and watching a launch. And I was ready to do it, too, only to hear about some problems and a very long launch delay that went past my personal window of opportunity. Then the Columbia tragedy the next year, and I pretty much put any thought of going out of my mind.

So that brings me to now. And I’ve been picked to see the last launch and meet the people who have made it all happen and meet the people whose tweets and Facebook postings I’ve now been following. And I’ll get to write about it, too, for my day job. I think I’m starting to get a little tingly. And thanks, Leigh!

For a time, there was the Maison d’Absinthe and the Absinthe Museum of America which opened on Royal Street in 2008. I heard rumors last fall that it was closing (sad) and then, not too long afterward, that Ray and B.J. Bordelon’s collection of vintage absinthe ware, bottles and ephemera would find a new home at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum at the Riverwalk (yeah!). Both rumors proved true; business turmoil on part of one of the owners resulted in losing the Royal Street lease, and Liz Williams, SoFAB’s director, offered the collectors space in the Riverwalk museum. It’s a perfect fit, as SoFAB is also home to the Museum of the American Cocktail; La Galerie d’Absinthe is a perfect complement, with an expanded focus on absinthe’s role in the culture of both Paris and New Orleans.

Saturday March 26 was the grand opening. B.J., Ray and T.A. Breaux were there and slinging Lucid samples to visitors, many of whom had seemed to just have wandered into the Food and Beverage Museum without a clue that the Green Fairy was about, until they saw the girl dressed as a green fairy who was serving pastries.

Ray has done some tireless research and uncovered some of the earliest documented mentions of absinthe in New Orleans. He has reproduced a newspaper ad from the New Orleans Bee in 1835. It was common for suppliers to take out ads listing the goods they’d just received from the latest ships arriving at the port, and the ad touts the arrival of cases of absinthe from France. Other ads on display include some from the 1870s taken out by Cayetano Ferrer, owner of the shop that became first the “Absinthe Room” and then re-named the Old Absinthe House.

The exhibit goes on to display vintage absinthe bottles from France, as well as a display of antique absinthe ware.

A most pleasant display is the re-creation of a Parisian sidewalk cafe setting.

There’s more at the Gallerie d’Absinthe, displays of ornate absinthe spoons, and a sampling of contemporary absinthe bottles and packages.

One thing I’ve learned, and anyone interested in absinthe needs to learn, too, is that there are no set standards for what can and cannot be put into a bottle and labeled absinthe. For example, for a product to be called Bourbon, it must, by law, be made of 51% corn and aged in new oak barrels for at least two years. There are more regulations, but those two help set a baseline for what someone can expect if they buy a bottle labeled “Bourbon.”

Unfortunately, anyone can add wormwood oil and food coloring to grain alcohol and label it absinthe. Traditional methods involve the maceration of whole herbs (anise, fennel and grand wormwood at a minimum) in alcohol (traditionally grape alcohol) which is then distilled; essential plant oils in the distillate flavor the product and create the “louche,” or cloudiness, when water is added. The product is then naturally colored green by chlorophyll extracted from an additional soaking of fresh herbs. Adding wormwood oil to alcohol and calling it “absinthe” is no different, Breaux explains, than adding vodka to Welch’s grape juice and calling it “wine.”

There’s a video display at the museum of Breaux’s segment on the History Channel’s Modern Marvels which follows Breaux as he makes a batch of his super-premium absinthe Jade Nouvelle-Orléans. I highly recommend watching it for an appreciation of how the hand-crafted product is made. The layers of aroma and complexity of flavor in traditionally made absinthe brands make them well worth the price.

The Krewe of Hermes floats are designed in the classic style by Henri Schindler.

On Friday, as always, Hermes and Le Krewe D’etat rolled Uptown. The weather was sketchy but the showers held off most of the evening. We caught the parades at Magazine and Napoleon, where Mardi Gras guru Arthur Hardy was there, doing parade spots with reporter Siemny Chhuon, who was enjoying her first Mardi Gras.

Arthur Hardy and Siemny Chhuon get ready to report on Friday's parades for WDSU.

Krewe D’Etat didn’t disappoint, the satirical theme this year was “D’Etat’s Wild World of Sports.” The Krewe’s “Dancin’ Darlin’s” performed as the LSU Turf Munchers, skewering LSU coach Les Miles in advance of a float doing the same that was entitled “Two-Minute Thrills.” An unlikely cast of characters caught the sports-themed roasting at the Dictator’s hands; Bobby Jindal (“Featherweight”), Brett Favre (“Pocket Pool”), Lil’ Wayne and Edwin Edwards. (No float pics this year, I only had the cell phone camera. Maybe NOLAnotes has some to share? But I see Uptown Messenger has some, as does Liprap’s Flickr, along with Muses and Hermes parade pics). New Krewe D’etat throws included krewe logo blinking rings and bracelets.

Le Krewe D'etat's new blinky skull ring.

Marching on…

Saturday all hell broke loose weather-wise. Endymion had been canceled and re-scheduled for Sunday night, to parade Uptown after Bacchus. The weather was great Sunday, and after a long odyssey (is that redundant?) trying many different routes to get to Point B on the other side of Napoleon and Magazine, I parked and walked the mile or so Laurel St. near Tipitina’s. Armed with the big gun camera, I continued my yearly quest to capture some of the motion and action of the Mardi Gras night parade. I think I did o.k. See for yourself.

[Show as slideshow]

The New Orleans Carnival is descended from ancient religious rites of the Greek and Latin World. Ovid described the Greek shepherds of Arcadia who, five thousand years ago, celebrated a spring festival in hopes of better pastures and the remission of sins.
–Henri Schindler, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 1997.

I was reading the Times Picayune recap of the annual Caliphs of Cairo bal masque (Caliphs does not parade). I had assumed this was an affair having nothing to do with the paranoia of Glenn Beck over Egypt’s revolution being the first step in establishing a Muslim/Communist one-world government, what he called a “Caliphate.” But after I read this description of Caliphs, I’m thinking I could be wrong. I doubt that Beck is a student of Carnival customs, but if he was serious about rooting out Caliphate cells within U.S. borders, he might want to start in New Orleans, where there is a Caliphate whose members only meet hidden behind masks and the identity of its leaders kept completely secret:

Caliphs of Cairo

The title assumed by former sultans proclaimed investiture with absolute authority in all matters of state. The Caliphs governed in the capital of Egypt for centuries and their descendants in the valley of the Nile ceremoniously observe the traditions of ancient Cairo.

The Caliphs of Cairo, successor of Mohammed, made their appearance in the Carnival world in 1937, where they have introduced a series of realistic spectacles and scenic triumphs, with glamorous courts of beauteous maidens.
–Arthur Burton La Cour, New Orleans Masquerade. La Cour’s 1952 book is the definitive guide to the early history of our carnival krewes.

Beck paranoia aside—I think he’d get thrown off track by the “realistic spectacles and scenic triumphs” not to mention “courts of beauteous maidens”—Caliphs is a serious organization that has been around for almost 75 years now. (For more on Caliph’s, see Ryan’s posts here and here.) Although the krewe chooses a king and queen, maids, princesses and pages, as do parading krewes, Caliph’s entire carnival activity is limited to a ball. As with many of the old-line krewes, all the members mask, the king’s identity is kept secret and the ball is a specialized production known as a bal masque; a masquerade where the participants ceremoniously enact scenes based on a particular tableau, or theme.

Caliphs’ first tableau back in 1937 was “Joloco, the Rainbow God” (you can try to Google it, but I can’t find anything on Joloco). The Times Picayune described this year’s theme:

The Caliphs of Cairo staged the organization’s annual bal masque Saturday in the Royal Tent at the New Orleans Country Club, presenting a tableau depicting the Battle of Vienna in 1683, when King Jan III Sobieski, king of Poland-Lithuania, rescued Vienna from the invading Ottoman Turks. The sultan’s grand Vizier, Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha, had marched 150,000 Janissaries into Austria. The sultan had threatened death to Holy Roman Emperor Leopold, who fled to Passan with his court. Fortuitously for Leopold and the Viennese, several months earlier, King Jan had signed the Treaty of Warsaw, agreeing that he would come to Leopold’s aid if he were attacked by the Turks. Beseeched by Pope Innocent XI, King Jan Marched on Vienna with 80,000 men, Hearing the thundering charge of his winged husaria down the mountainside, the Turks retreated in panic and were defeated.
–Times-Picayune, February 6, 2011.

It goes on to explain some notable pastries were created to commemorate this battle: the croissant (symbolizing the defeated Turks’ crescent moon flag) and bagel (representing a stirrup, the symbol of King Jan’s cavalry).

Seeing this reminded me, to paraphrase Dorothy, that, on so many different levels, we’re not in Kansas. We never were in Kansas, or any where near Kansas.

In which diverse local habits, some of ancient origins, are enumerated, leading to the suggestion that everything in New Orleans may not be changing after all.
– S. Frederick Starr, introduction to Chapter 3: Habits. New Orleans Unmasqued. 1985.

So I say New Orleans’ Mardi Gras is the last bastion of civilization. Where else would groups of everyday people (alright, some may well be filthy rich. But I know several members of krewes like Caliphs who, although college graduates, some with professional degrees, are basically working stiffs at this point in their careers) put aside time and money to plan a good old-fashioned bal masque?

Imagine the committee meeting.  “Let’s see. We’ve done Joloco. We’ve done Cindarella, the marriage feast of Alexander the Great, the reception of the Marquis de Vaudreil at New Orleans, the Three Muskateers, the return of Marco Polo to Venice, the Bard of Avon and even Fiesta, South of the Border [all actual tableau from Caliph's early years]. What to do, what to do? Wait—y’all remember the Battle Vienna in 1683, you know, with the Vizier and the Polish winged cavalry that ensured the place of Christianity in the western world and gave us pastries? Let’s re-enact that next year!”

Starr’s quote really puts my whole thesis in a nutshell. We take the time and make the effort to maintain our local habits, that are ancient in origin, to make sure New Orleans’ core really won’t change, despite all the forces at work on its exterior—Katrina destruction/reconstruction, the new hospital’s re-working of Mid City and even recent observations regarding the creeping influx of European-inspired (but thoroughly mid-American in origin) “nouvelle” cuisine on the city’s restaurant scene.

Starr goes further and explores the role of allegory in Carnival, noting even suburban krewes might have such distinguished themes as “Tales of Gilgamesh,” “The World’s Worships” or “Tales of Josephus.” He notes that one year, Comus (when it still paraded) had a theme of “Ophidian Lore.”

To save a trip to the Encyclopedia Britannica [note lack of Google in 1985], this refers to the suborder ophidia, which comprises all snakes. Hence, Comus produced floats on “Eden,” “Aesculapius,” “Dumbala,” “Abraxas” and “Python”…

Now imagine hundreds of potbellied rednecks from Mississippi, North Florida or Manhattan lining up to watch some New Orleans businessmen represent this all allegorically. Picture businessmen anywhere dressing in outlandish costumes in order to present samples of Ophidian Lore to the masses, and paying every penny of the costs to do so. It staggers the imagination.

Which is precisely what Mardi Gras is all about. Beneath the superficial vulgarity, it is a poetic festival steeped in the exquisite high art of allegory.

Now, Starr is spot-on in his observations, and the thought of rednecks from Manhattan seems novel. But sometimes, the outsider over-thinks things. I prefer Bunny Matthews‘ take on allegory and Carnival themes, as channeled through Nat’ly Broussard, who in one devastating cartoon skewers all sides. Nat’ly, who you have to imagine, is simply talking on the phone:

Vic? Nuh uh. He’s at a Krewe meetin’…yeah…nuh uh…dey decidin’ on da theme fo’ da truckfloat—eithuh “Greek Gods” or “Salute to Soaps”—so I guess I’m gonna be Aphrodite or Susan Lucci—one of dem! Rite—talk to ya later…

How do you plan on celebrating our little spring festival? I’m taking inspiration from Henri Schindler’s ancient Greeks and continue my quest for greener pastures and the remission of sins.

Addendum—Looka’ dis-Bunny Matthews takes you on a guided tour of A Carnival Ball In Municipal Auditorium.

The result is a comprehensive guide to early Louisiana furniture with over 550 pages and 1000 images. I’m not a furniture collector or scholar, but love the book for its comprehensive coverage of our history and culture as reflected in our natively-crafted decorative arts. Chapters on early cabinet makers, woods and hardware not only talk about the “nuts and bolts” of furniture making, but tell the stories of early Louisianians as their country changed from colonial French to Spanish, then to American control, influence and, finally, statehood. And it’s all beautifully illustrated with period maps and images in addition to the photographs of furniture.

The colonial times are interesting, as we forget that Louisiana once encompassed the entirety what is now the United States west of the Appalachians.

"La Louisiane et Pays Voisins" by Jacques Nicolas Bellin, 1763; The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1975.35.

Items of early Louisiana furniture are rare finds. Fire destroyed many a plantation home along the river over the years and most of the city of New Orleans—twice—in 1788 and 1794. Another hazard, flooding, is illustrated by this engraving of a levee breach near Bonnet Carré from 1871.

"The Landing Near Bonnet Carré" by Alfred Rudolph Waud, 1871; The Historic New Orleans Collection, gift of Harold Schilke and Boyd Cruise, 1953.100ii. Note the armoires and tables being rescued on the right.

Some of the stories are tales of intense research and detective work. City directories of the late 18th and early 19th centuries list many names that have the occupation of menuisier or ébéniste; cabinet and furniture makers and inlay specialists; however,  correlating a piece of furniture to a particular maker is often difficult as pieces were rarely signed. Vermin, mold and all the other hazards of a hot and humid climate destroyed paper labels.

To a certain extent, the story of a craftsman dubbed “The Butterfly Man” (for a signature device he used to join side panels) and the extant furniture attributed to him, make his armoire the star of the book.

Creole-style inlaid armoire, attributed to the “Butterfly Man,” 1810–1830, from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Patrick, New Orleans; photo by Jim Zietz.

Coming out of the collection from the Houmas House plantation in 2003, this armoire set a record for Louisiana furniture when it sold for $140,000. The detailed account of the experts who examined the armoire’s construction and style of its inlaid decorations in an attempt to identify its maker is one of the book’s engrossing mystery stories (in a geeky, research-y kind of way; not necessarily one for Scooby and the gang).

History buffs will also be interested in the account of Creole and Creole-style furniture found in the Mississippi Upper Valley—in Missouri, Indiana and Illinois, for example—and the appendix listing furniture makers found in early city directories and newspaper advertisements.

Furniture buffs can spend countless hours perusing the catalog that makes up the bulk of the book. Photos and descriptions of every piece of furniture the authors could get their hands on are displayed in sections divided by armoires, chairs, bedsteads, buffets, tables, utilitarian pieces and the furniture of the Upper Valley.

The book is available for pre-ordering online through the Historic New Orleans Collection’s website, and I assume at the Collection’s gift shop at 533 Royal St. when it arrives (which, they say, should be sometime next week (of Dec. 13). Check the website for updated information or call the shop at 598-7147.

The Collection’s Royal St. gallery now has an exhibit of Mignon Faget’s work throughout the years. The research center at 410 Chartres St. features an exhibit of early Louisiana furniture from the Magnolia Mound plantation in Baton Rouge and an exhibit of photographs documenting life in New Orleans’ 7th Ward.

Update: I mentioned artist Rolland Golden’s work in a previous post. Fourteen of the 32 or so works he painted in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and exhibited at NOMA were acquired by the Historic New Orleans Collection and New Orleans Museum of Art.

This isn’t new news, but I thought anyone who’s interested should know they are on display at the Collection’s Williams Research Center. It’s free and open to the public, so if you’re wandering around the quarter think about popping in. There’s the furniture, the paintings and the photography to peruse. While you’re there you can take a peek into the reading room upstairs. It’s an impressive space, the former courtroom of the building’s original incarnation as a police precinct and municipal courthouse. The Williams Research Center is open Tue-Sat and the gallery and gift shop on at 533 Royal from Tue-Sun. Both are free.

New Orleans Musical Legends Park is a little nook of sorts at 311 Bourbon, across from the Royal Sonesta hotel. The foundation that runs it has installed life-size bronze statues of NOLA entertainers Al Hirt, Pete Fountain, Fats Domino, Ronnie Kole and Chris Owens.

After years of lobbying and fundraising, the Prima family finally saw their patriarch get his due, his own statue in the park. The unveiling ceremony was a star-studded event, with Chris Owens, Ronnie Kole and Louis’ family present. Some of Louis’ pals from the old days were there. I met his son, Louis Jr. (who performed with the NOCCA Jazz Band) and one of his daughters, Joyce Prima. I also met Paul Ferrara, who was drummer for Louis’ band The Witnesses (and of course, Sam Butera) for a time, and Joe Segreto, who was Louis’ agent. Segreto now owns Eleven 79, a classic Italian restaurant at that address on Annunciation Street. Segreto gave a good talk, giving a nod to Eddie Sapir, who he said was instrumental in founding the park.

At the height of his Las Vegas career in the 1950s, Louis performed with his wife, Keely Smith, who many people still associate with him. Segreto gave a shout-out, however, to Gia Maione Prima, Louis’ wife and performing partner from 1963 until his death in 1978. In the 1950s, Louis had purchased some land in Covington where he built a home (and restaurant and golf course) named “Pretty Acres.” He and Gia raised their two children, Louis, Jr. and Lena, for most of their childhoods at Pretty Acres. Louis, Jr. and Lena live in Las Vegas now and both have successful music careers of their own, keeping their dad’s legacy alive. There’s a detailed story about Louis and Gia and Pretty Acres here, with lots of photos from the family’s days in Covington.

Louis would have turned 100 on Dec. 7 this year. Segreto paid tribute to Louis Prima’s importance to the city, saying, “He never failed to mention New Orleans no matter where he was. He is us. He is our fun. God bless you Chief, we love you.”

Louis Jr, Joyce Prima, Chris Owens and Councilwoman Jackie Clarkson.

Louis Prima, Jr. performs his dad’s classic Jump, Jive and Wail with the NOCCA Jazz Band.

Preeminent bluesman Robert Johnson was dubbed “King of the Delta Blues.” Johnson’s early recordings influenced legions of musicians, both pure bluesmen and rock ‘n rollers who followed him. He is the stuff of legend, allegedly selling his soul to the devil in exchange for blues prowess. The story is he made his deal with the devil at the crossroads of Hwys. 61 and 49 south of Clarksdale. Johnson’s song “Cross Road Blues” (which doesn’t address any satanic deal-making) has been covered by over 30 artists. The most famous version is Eric Clapton’s arrangement “Crossroads” performed by Cream.

So what made the Delta region (not to be confused with the Mississippi River delta found where the river meets the Gulf) the cradle of blues? The region covers (according to the Wiki) north west Mississippi, along the river from Vicksburg (Willie Dixon’s birthplace) in the south to Memphis in the north, and east to the Yazoo River. It’s the ancient flood plain of the Mississippi River and seems even flatter than the swampy ground surrounding New Orleans, if that could be possible. Thousands of years of the river’s meandering and levee jumping  have tortured, scoured and scarred as well as flattened the land. Louisiana and Arkansas have their own Delta regions encompassed by the alluvial flood plain on the west side of the river with similar agricultural and cultural background notes (musicians Jerry Lee Lewis and Conway Twitty from the Louisiana Delta; Johnny Cash the Arkansas Delta).

Satellite view of a portion of the Delta country illustrates the tortured scarring inflicted by the river over millennia.

Cotton was king here. Many of the blues artists came from sharecropper families or worked at one time or another in the fields. It was oppressive work performed by poor people who weren’t treated much better than the slaves they descended from. The Delta country was the scene of much bloodshed and violence during the civil rights era, and it’s no wonder that following WWII returning GIs fled the area in search of better living in cities like Chicago, where blues recordings by Chess Records made the likes of Muddy Waters famous and paved the way for Chuck Berry and the rock ‘n rollers. The movie Cadillac Records provides a well-produced but fictionalized account of the Chess Records story.

Hwy. 61 (Airline Hwy. in the New Orleans area) starts in Louisiana and ends in Minnesota (where Bob Dylan is from, his album Highway 61 Revisited is a classic), following the river most of the way. It cuts right through the Delta and is the route I take to get to Arkansas every Thanksgiving.

Traveling through the Delta from Vicksburg to Greenville (where there is a bridge that crosses into Arkansas). I jump off Hwy. 61 on to Miss. Hwy. 1 where 61 meets the town of Rolling Fork, home town of Muddy Waters himself (links to DeltaBlues.net, a great resource on the Delta’s byways and juke joints).

It’s always been the week of Thanksgiving that I take my trip through the Delta, and the weather is usually cool and clear. The fields have been harvested and tufts of leftover cotton gather up along side of the road like mini-snowdrifts. Looking at all the fields and the run-down shacks and shanties, silos and cotton gins alongside the road and I can tell I wouldn’t want to be working outside in the summer around here.

The Delta fields stretch on forever.

It’s not without inherent beauty, though. I’ve always been struck by it, the vast emptiness of the fields, the rusted-roof shacks and the occasional splendid plantation home. I’m not the only one; scores of photographers and artists have tried to capture the Delta’s essence. Mississippi public radio was playing an interview with artist Rolland Golden while I was driving through the Delta. He talked about the Delta scenes he’s painted for decades and remembered the days when, as a boy, his family lived in Grenada, Miss. and his father would take him on drives through the Delta country. Some of Rolland’s Delta work can be seen here, here, here and here. His latest exhibit of Mississippi River paintings is on display in Jackson now.

I love the Algiers ferry pictures here and here, he said they were painted recently from photos he took in the ’60s, when, as an artist raising his young family in the French Quarter, he and his wife and kids would occasionally ride the free ferry back and forth on weekend outings. The free ferry ride is still something people enjoy today; being on the river amid the ships travelling to and from foreign ports, enjoying the New Orleans skyline that, in Rolland’s paintings, is bare but for the cathedral and Hotel Monteleone as his photos pre-dated the CBD building boom of the 70s.

I always forget to pack a tripod and camera when traveling through the Delta country, but listening to Rolland on that beautiful afternoon  inspired me to at least get some shots with my phone.

Crop dusters in their hangers along Highway 1.

Grain silos in the Delta country along Hwy. 1.

Elmwood Cemetery outside of Rolling Fork.

Now, if I’d known
They’d line up just to see him
I’d trade in all my money
And bought me a museum
From Steve Martin’s blockbuster hit of the 70′s, King Tut, inspired by the exhibition touring America

I remember it being towards the end of King Tut’s NOLA reign, it was either in the fall or winter; I remember it being cold. Maybe that’s why I also remember not having to wait too terribly long in line to get in—or maybe my dad had bought a museum membership that year because members were admitted immediately—unlike many who had waited 8 or more hours for admission at some points during the exhibition.

The museum had been transformed into a tomb-like interior, they had constructed plywood paths taking you from from priceless artifact to priceless artifact, ultimately leading to the pharaoh’s solid-gold death mask. The sight of that mask up on a pedestal in its glass display case still comes to my mind when I hear the word “priceless,”  no matter in what context the word has been uttered.

Now, when I die
Now don’t think I’m a nut
Don’t want no fancy funeral
Just one like ole King Tut
(Steve Martin)

I’m telling you all this not just because of the impact it made on me (I rattle on like Grandpa Simpson every time I’m in front of NOMA—”King Tut came here and they painted this whole drive blue. Blue, I tells ya!!!”—to anyone within earshot) but because it marked the first big blockbuster exhibition brought to NOMA after John Bullard became director in 1973. He’s now Director Emeritus, having passed on the reigns to Director Susan Taylor, a passionate art lover and veteran museum administrator.

I had a chance to talk to Mr. Bullard as NOMA was gearing up for its latest exhibition, Great Collectors/Great Donors (links to Doug McCash’s nola.com article for more details), the first of many to celebrate the museum’s centennial in 2011. He told me the story behind King Tut’s arrival in New Orleans in 1977.

Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was looking for some extra PR for his country during the time of the Camp David peace negotiations between Egypt and Israel. The exhibit was presented as a gift to the American people in honor of the U.S. Bicentennial. A New Orleans businessman had heard about Egypt’s plans, and the lobbying for New Orleans began.

Mr. Bullard recalled, “Verna Landrieu was head of the local bicentennial commission, so she got Moon [Mayor Moon Landrieu] to go to Washington, D.C. to see the Egyptian ambassador and we had our congressional delegation going to see him as well. They did want a specific geographic distribution—Washington, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles—and then they wanted somewhere in the south. I was somewhat skeptical this would happen; surely it would go to Houston or Dallas or Atlanta, where they had a bigger resident population.

“We made a good case, we talked about the two great delta cities in the world, and the Mississippi and the Nile, and they selected us. That was before we expanded in 1990 so the museum was not quite half the size it is now. We didn’t sell tickets in advance, so we had bleachers for people to wait in, and sometimes it was an 8-hour wait.”

The exhibit’s impact was enormous, and had far-reaching economic consequences for the city. “In a normal year before Tut, we would have had maybe a 100,000 visitors,” said Mr. Bullard. “In the four months of Tut we had 900,000 visitors—it was a transforming experience for the museum. It made the politicians and businessmen realize that a big exhibition could generate as much money as a Super Bowl, over a longer period of time, and with upscale visitors.”

Many big exhibits were to come. During his tenure, NOMA’s permanent collection expanded from just under 5,000 items to over 35,000 today. The latest exhibit, and the first to celebrate the museum’s 100th year, is called Great Collectors/Great Donors.  It is a history of the museum as seen through the works of art donated by patrons since NOMA opened as the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art. The name change to New Orleans Museum of Art came in 1971.

Mr. Bullard gives a thorough run-through of those great donors in the museum’s publication Arts Quarterly. (Click to download a pdf). It’s a fascinating tale that reaffirms our city’s interest and support for the arts.

John Bullard talks about the upcoming NOMA centennial and the Great Collectors/Great Donors exhibit. In the background, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu is either contemplating the occasion or planning on whose ass to kick next at City Hall.

Mr. Bullard walks us through Great Collectors/Great Donors. Looking on are two delightful ladies, Margarita Bergen (left) and Wendy Rodrigue. Margarita writes for NewOrleans.com and is in attendance at every event I have ever covered. Wendy is a NOMA board member and is married to George Rodrigue, whose work warranted its own mega-exhibition at NOMA back in 2008 (here is a post on the Blue Dog exhibit, and a little story about an encounter I had with Mr. Bullard then). She writes the blog Musings of an Artist's Wife, a must-read for any Blue Dog fan and a great place to see George's art, with the added bonuses of George's reminiscences about and Wendy's insight into the images he's produced over his career.

Mr. Bullard with what he said may be the rarest item in the museum, a Hawaiian god collected during Capt. Cook's ill-fated third visit to the islands.

The exhibit runs until January 23 and is a great chance to see all the best works that are in NOMA’s permanent collection. It’s a visual telling of how NOMA grew by donation to donation over the last 100 years. Many of the items are often on loan to other museums, so go while you have the chance! Check NOMA100.com and  NOMA.org for events, times and admissions policies. It’s free from noon to 8pm on Wednesdays and always free for members, so that’s a great reason to join. Centennial exhibits and activities continue through 2011.

About five other people stopped in their tracks coming out of the store, whipping out their phones to document the brief-lived wonder.

Later, I noticed a lot of Twitter activity and decided to round up all the photos I could find. The pics link back to their original posts. Thanks everyone!

I wish I had taken this one, the winner if this were actually a contest, from @mattjparks, Rainbow Over Dome (my title):

Here’s the French Quarter view, from @LunaNola, @CallMeAlva and @winshuttle:

And downtown from @BrittanyHornets:

Over the river from the Algiers ferry from @SHarney:

And more, from @necs, @NCantarano, @BigadShaban and @marcadelman:

We took a side trip to Avery Island, home of the Tabasco sauce factory and other attractions. I remember visiting it as a kid, driving around the pretty island, seeing the sites, and touring the factory. I remembered a warehouse full of oak mixing tanks 2o feet tall and stacks of oak casks aging the fermenting pepper mash, which, after 3 years, will be mixed with vinegar to form the sauce that is eventually bottled and sold throughout the world. To this day I remeber the aroma of fermenting peppers that hit you in the face as soon as we got out of the car at the factory.

Unfortunately, that version of Avery Island no  longer exists. There is no driving around the island any more. You are directed straight to a “country store” where all manner of Tabasco brand regalia is offered for sale. We took the tour of the new factory, built after my childhood visit sometime in the 1970s. Alas, you’re not allowed in the aging facility, but herded straight into a small auditorium for a 10-minute film hosted by TV’s Susan Roesgen. They do show all these things you can’t see in person in the film, but it’s not the same experience at all. Directly afterwards, you are herded past the bottling facility; sterile, idle, and uninteresting the day we toured.

Bright spots: I picked up some Tabasco products not readily available everywhere else. A bottle of Thai-style sweet chili sauce, some of their teriyaki sauce that has a lot of ginger as well as a pepper kick and a three-pound bag of the pepper pulp left over after they bottle the Tabasco sauce. It’s got that same pungent aroma I remembered from the factory as a kid, so there’s that.

On the way back to the camp, we passed through Delcambre were Nola spotted “Shawn’s Cajun Meats, Too,” and we turned around to do some shopping. I was hoping for some home-made andouille and/or tasso, but all they offered were seasoned fresh meats. We bought a stuffed brisket (slow-cooking in the oven as I write) and some items to throw on the grill. We spotted what looked like some fresh pork sausage, but it was labeled “Syrup Sausage.” A customer overheard us speculating about the contents. He said, a) It’s good stuff; and, b) it’s spicy pork sausage that has Steen’s Cane syrup added in.

We also purchased some bacon-wrapped stuffed jalapenos, bacon-wrapped stuffed boneless chicken thighs and pork-stuffed portobello mushrooms. Grilled, all these were tasty, spicy and worth a drive to Delcambre from NOLA even for no other reason.

1. Old New Orleans by Stanley Clisby Arthur. A walking tour of the French Quarter written by the man who also wrote Famous New Orleans Drinks & How to Make ‘Em. Old New Orleans is full of interesting historical tidbits; for example, the building that houses The Coffee Pot restaurant on St. Peter was the first home of Antoine’s Restaurant and the buildings known as the “Spanish Stables” on Gov. Nicholls are neither Spanish nor stables (alright, they were stables originally). They were built by a French Creole, Gallien Preval. An exile from the colony of San Dominque, he was an attorney, justice of the peace and judge who was fined for holding a ball on the premises without a permit. A ribald ditty about the dance was a popular tune in the African-American community. Preval also happened to be my great-great-great-great grandfather.
2. The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf by William C. Davis. This is an interesting book I highly recommend to everyone interested in local history. Do you remember the movie Goodfellas? Where DeNiro and his gang would hijack trucks and steal their cargo, often with the cooperation of the drivers? Jean and Pierre Laffite built an empire doing the same with Spanish ships, whose captains tended to turn over control of their ships rather than risk injury and ill-treatment at the hands of the pirates. The Laffites then sold goods on Grand Terre island or shipped them to city via Bayou Barataria to New Orleans merchants, who avoided paying import duties. The brothers also sold hijacked slaves, a very lucrative business at a time when it was illegal to import slaves into United States territory.The Laffites’ story as told in the book is unseemly, however, at times, humorous and often complicated.  Beyond that, the book’s interest lies in Davis’ weaving in little known details of daily life in an era of change for Louisiana, as it transitioned from Spanish colony, to French colony and to American territory and statehood in 1812 and beyond.
3. New Orleans as It Was: Episodes of Louisiana Life by Henry C. Castellanos.This history of New Orleans was originally published in 1895. It’s a series of vignettes about life in the city, mostly from the early 1800′s to the 1860′s.
4. The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square by Ned Sublette. Sublette’s book is a thorough examination of the “gumbo” of French, Spanish, African and Haitian cultures that came together in the city’s first 100 years. He makes a strong and fascinating case that New Orleans culture would be far different— Mardi Gras Indians, the Second Line and jazz music may never have existed—had just a few things gone differently in the early days of the French colony.
5. Bienville’s Dilemma: A Historical Geography of New Orleans by Richard Campanella. An essential guide to understanding how the geography of New Orleans shaped its history from Native American times to post-Katrina. Campanella includes excerpts from the journals of the earliest Europeans to explore and settle the area. One memorable source is a young girl shipped off to New Orleans from France in care of the Ursulines nuns. Her letters back home to her father in the 1730′s give a portrait of the city not unlike what we know today…she says that the men of city are idle and lack industry; interested only in hunting and fishing. Add LSU football and we can see how things never changed around here.

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about the show. It’s been picked up, turned over, looked at; put down, picked up again; dissected and examined even further by a squadron of NOLA bloggers at Back of Town. The creator/executive producer David Simon made an introductory statement for the locals’ behalf in the paper and gave a detailed post-mortem on the show after the last episode aired. The Gambit ran a pretty thorough article profiling the real New Orleanians on whom some of the characters were loosely based. The paper’s (and Nola.com’s) TV writer Dave Walker did a great job throughout the show’s run with explanatory posts and articles on the production’s  workings behind-the-scenes. His latest article examines the bloggers keeping track of the show, Back of Town in particular. (Aptly described therein by co-founder Maitri as “part local insider celebration and critique of the show, and part support group.”) 

My take on it was mixed. Over all, I liked the show, its phenomenal music and think it is a great vehicle to showcase New Orleans music and musicians to non-locals (and, for much of the music and musicians, a lot of locals, including myself). The writing was great, there was much attention to detail and a great effort to get the city’s cultural details correct (for a change–portrayals of New Orleans in the cinema and on TV have historically been atrocious). The acting, for the most part, was first-rate, the exceptions being performances by non-actors or first-time actors. But the plot(s)–many layers for many characters–though well-thought and fleshed out, are set against a backdrop in time I’d rather not have to examine again. And a lot of it seems forced, as if they wanted to cram as much NOLA culture into one season as they could, not knowing until much of the production had wrapped up that there would be a second season (which will begin production in September of 2010). As much as I enjoyed Treme and was rooting for it to surpass it, my pick for most creative, well-written and well-produced show I’ve watched remains HBO’s Deadwood.

I came to accept Treme as David Simon’s work of art. Each episode a painting; New Orleans the canvas and its residents and culture his art supplies. From what I’ve read in blog comments and on Twitter, not everyone necessarily appreciates being used like that, and that’s o.k., too. I can understand that.

Part 2 is going to be a post about the back of town culture that for many was a hidden aspect of the city that was brought to light in Treme, and the story of its one of its finest preservationist, Mr. Ronald Lewis, and his museum, The House of Dance and Feathers.

It’s always been a great place to take pictures, and yesterday was no exception. No doom-and-gloom moody cemetery shots this year; it was a bright, clear day, the sun strong so that the marble structures seem to glow. I was struck more by the shapes and color rather than individual details and that’s what most of the photos below depict. The light was so bright coming off the marble the camera has to “squint,” the sky is underexposed and dark so that the marble isn’t completely washed out.

While the big Voodoo fest (not so much the Afro-Caribbean religion, but music) was going on in City Park, someone started a staged a voodoo ceremony at Marie Laveau’s alleged tomb as I was getting ready to leave. It’s the last picture in the set. I was told it was being filmed as a promo for groups offering destination weddings for goth types: “Vampire Weddings” and “Voodoo Weddings.” I thought the Haunted History tours were enough of all that. Oy. Isn’t New Orleans interesting enough without having to make stuff up? But, as the Yat Pundit said, “I‘m always amazed at the things that make a buck in this town.” So it’s a good thing, right?

It was a subdued opening with a small but engaged crowd wandering about. A gallery along one side of SoFAB has been dedicated to movie posters, production stills and other documents chronicling Louisiana’s continued role in the motion picture industry since 1908 and the film Faust (not sure what the Louisiana connection is) and the 1912 silent feature A Bucktown Romance.

Speaking of Bucktown romances, I was always enamored of Bruning’s whole broiled flounder (and my fave bread pudding); the restaurant’s original Bucktown building was damaged by Hurricane Georges in 1998 and the restaurant moved to a modern building across the canal on West End. It was the third oldest restaurant in the city and its renowned  bar, built in the late 1800s, survived Georges but was swept into Lake Pontchartrain along with Bruning’s original building (still waiting repair from Georges) and the rest of Bucktown and West End by Hurricane Katrina. Bruning’s bar was rescued from the bottom of the lake, restored and now is a centerpiece of SoFAB.

The film museum is a nice little addition. Its web site, LouisianaFilm.org is a great resource with a comprehensive Louisiana filmography. At the opening, and in a total moment of NOLA randomness, Mardi Gras Indians showed up. Although I’ve gotten over any romance I may have had with the post-K resurgence of the fleur de lis, I was briefly smitten by this young lady’s shoulder-blade tattoo  playing peek-a-boo with her ponytail while she was talking to one of the Indians.

I love taking pictures at sunset, and I love being near the river.  A very pleasant evening at the Riverwalk, including a passing parade of ships. A parade, floating, but no floats and no beads.

Tales of the Cocktail 2009 is now over. From the opening ceremony Wednesday, July 8 (celebrating the 75th anniversary of NOLA’s own Herbsaint), to the Wormwood Society’s grand soirée closing things out on Sunday night, it was a whirlwind of boozing, networking and learning.

Tales of the Cocktail’s official cocktail, the Creole Julep, on the bar at Cure.

I went to last year’s Tales (my first) because I had been assigned to write a feature on absinthe and its return to the market in general and to New Orleans in particular. Alright, not so much assigned to write it as having the editors accept my suggestion that absinthe would be a great topic.

2007 was the year the first genuine absinthe, made with grand wormwood, Lucid, was cleared for sale in the U.S. I learned later that there was plenty of absinthe to go around in New Orleans, if you knew who to talk to, but that’s another story. Some friends of mine began drinking it after they discovered Acquistapace’s Covington Supermarket was carrying it in November of 2007. That was my first exposure to the spirit. By July 2008, when Tales took place, there were eight or so brands available legally here. During Tales of the Cocktail 2009; 55 or so are now available, with more in the approval pipeline.

T. A. Breaux, absinthe pioneer, creator of Lucid and distiller of the Jade line of premium absinthes.

The first day at Tales, I ran into T. A. Breaux, the guy who really pushed and did a lot of the leg work in getting absinthe back (legally) into the U. S. I snapped his picture with my phone, (excuse the quality) and didn’t realise I would be running into him (and luckily, it turned out, his products) quite often in the next few days.

A New Orleans native, and chemist by trade, Breaux analysed vintage, pre-ban absinthes, and discovered that these well-crafted spirits contained less the maximum amount of the chemical that caused absinthe to be banned in the first place—thujone—than was permitted by U. S. law. He went on to reverse-engineer absinthes he had chemically analysed, eventually coming up with the Jade line of premium absinthes, and Lucid, an absinthe made the old-fashioned way with more readily available ingredients that’s crafted and priced for more of a mass market.

I’m a real big fan of his Jade Nouvelle-Orléans, having sampled it earlier this year (it was approved for sale late October, 2008). In tasting, it was lighter and more complex than the other brands I had tasted up to that point; but with more layers of flavors that developed as it lingered in my mouth.

Best souvenir ever—bottle of Jade Nouvelle-Orléans signed
by maker T. A. Breaux.

The name, Nouvelle-Orléans, held great appeal for me, as did Breaux’s story behind its creation. He explained while the other Jades are his re-creations of vintage absinthe brands, Nouvelle-Orléans is completely his own recipe, wanting to make a testament to the early days of absinthe in New Orleans, when it was taken as a medicinal drink. If you want to see how its made, the show Modern Marvels on the History Channel featured a segment of Breaux producing a batch of Nouvelle-Orléans at the Combier distillery in Saumur, France. Here’s a YouTube video of the episode.

Back to Tales of the Cocktail. One of the things I had signed up for was the Green Hour, and it appeared to be a seminar-type event. I was wrong. It was a festival celebrating the flood of absinthe that’s come into the country since last year. Just about every manufacturer/importer was set up in the place, pouring generous samples of brands I had read about and wanted to try but would never be able to afford to taste all in one, maybe two, years. (Absinthe is an expensive habit, look to pay at least $50 for a bottle of one of the decent brands, and higher for premium absinthe, like Nouvelle-Orléans (around $110/bottle)). Not only were some European-made brands newly approved for sale in the U. S. represented, there were also some sampled that are now domestically produced.

Breaux was serving Nouvelle-Orléans, a real treat; Gwydion Stone, founder of the Wormwood Society, was pouring Marteau, an absinthe produced to his specifications in Switzerland as of last year’s Tales, but is now produced by him personally at a Portland, Oregon distillery.

Gwydion Stone at the Green Hour event.

New brands that were on my “too try” list that were being served included Vieux Carre (U. S. produced; another winner on name alone, a solid, if a little minty, product); La Clandestine (a clear Swiss absinthe with a great story behind it at their site; it’s tied for second place with Marteau as my new faves behind Nouvelle-Orléans), La Fée Absinthe Parisienne (not a fave); Duplais, Vieux Pontalier and Mansinthe, all products of distributed by Tempus Fugit Spirits (first two very nice; Mansinthe, o.k.); Pacifique (another domestically-produced winner) rounded out the first evening of absinthe, absinthe and more absinthe. Update: Pacifique is distributed by Tempus Fugit Spirits as well.

It wasn’t over. The next day, Breaux was serving up his verison of the absinthe frappe, made with Nouvelle-Orléans and a splash of ginger beer in one of the open tasting rooms. La Clandestine and Lucid (all three brands are distributed by Viridian Spirits, who hosted the event) also were sampled.

Finally, the Wormwood Society Grande Soiree d’Absinthe on Sunday, the last day of Tales. Many of the same players were present. It was upstairs at Muriel’s on Jackson Square. Again, several brands were tasted; some I had not seen before (notably St. George, which was getting a lot of buzz).

Absinthe lined up at the Wormwood Society Grande Soiree d’Absinthe.

Good food (boiled shrimp, raw oysters and creole jambalaya) and great company. It was great seeing veryone who helped with my research last year—Breaux, Stone, the gang from La Maison d’Absinthe: Cary Bonnecaze, store manager Amanda, Ray Bordelon and his brother B. J.; absinthe photographer Damian Hevia—as well as a bunch of people I had met on Twitter (@Fac104, @LunaNola and @laurabergerol) were all there.

Can’t wait until next year.