Wandering Browns

We left Louisiana a few months ago, but I never had the chance to write about the delicious Cajun food we sampled while we were there. We had some favorites, and some misses, but here it goes: Pistolettes: image credit  here Pistolettes: These little fried roll things are a delicacy that I had never heard of before. It is basically a roll stuffed with etouffee of some sort, and then fried. With the wonderful gravy inside, it tastes like you're eating a slightly crunchy, flaky roll full of spicy gravy. There really are no words. We had crawfish pistolettes and cheese pistolettes, and I never found one I didn't like. étouffée:   This gravy-based dish, served over rice most commonly with crawfish or other seafood cooked into it, is complex in flavor and often a little spicy. This is comfort food to the max and if I was in doubt as to what I wanted to eat, I always ordered the crawfish etouffee. Recipe and photo cred Boiled Crawfish: This is a required cultural expe...

Puddle jumping in the parking lot We are all settled in here in the Netherlands and WOW! it is awesome. I am hesitant to start on a bunch of posts about Europe when I still have some thoughts to post about our time in Louisiana, as well as my left-over phone pictures of Landon. In my first impressions post, I think I commented on how people are just a little rough around the edges down here. Looking back, there were all sorts of people in Louisiana, but the ones that stayed at our hotel were mostly staying longer term working construction or at the refineries and plants, so that might be why I thought that at first. Church was amazing, the people here are so generous, loving, and kind. They invited me to their homes, lent Landon some Thomas trains to play with, and even kept me in the loop on park play dates going on during the week. Landon made friends with a little girl and boy that were precious and he talked about them incessantly while we were there. Actually, he still talks...

Front of Museum About 20 miles north of Sulphur is the darling little town of DeQuincy. As we came nearer the end of our time here, I knew that I had to take Landon to check out the museum, with or without Austin. So, we set off on a rainy morning to check it out! The museum is housed in the old rail station and  depot. Passenger and freight trains came through here, and there are tracks on both sides of the station that are still in use!  Inside, there was tons of train memorabilia including this cool office set-up that replicates what the train office looked like when the station was still in use. My favorite pieces were the old type writers, calculators, and Morse code device.  Office One of the most interesting papers I saw in the museum was this train order for the day after Pearl Harbor- ordering train operators to not allow Japanese people to travel on trains in light of the invasion. Super interesting to me! Train stop travel notice Als...

The cute tour shack About an hour west of Baton Rouge, off of I-10 is the cute community of Breaux Bridge. Nearby the town is a big lake, swamp and bayou. There are a few different tour companies that run swamp tours from this area, and we chose Champagne's Cajun Swamp tours because they were responsive to my inquiries.  My boys in the boat After a few minutes of waiting around the shack, we were invited into our boat. The tours take place on boats with 12 other people, so the tours are small and the boats needed to be smaller and shallow bottomed to traverse some of the shallow portions of the swamp and boat roads.  Cypress After spending most of our time in marshes by the coast, it was nice to see some swamp that actually looked like the swamp I imagined. The scary trees with Spanish moss hanging down, the still water and algae growing, everything was very serene. Our guide had an awesome accent and a fun sense of humor. He was a pro at navigating through...

Old Louisiana State Capitol Huey Long liked his buildings new and modern. Obviously this castle-looking state capitol did not cut it and so he had the new capitol building built. I was planning on just admiring the outside, going to lunch and moving on to our next activity, but Landon rushed inside before we could stop him. I'm glad he did! This side looks like a cathedral This gothic structure looks like what I think a Medieval castle should look like. Or a cathedral with the gorgeous stained glass. This building was originally built in the 1850s after the state capitol of Louisiana was moved to Baton Rouge. It was used as a prison and garrison during the Civil War. While being sued as a garrison, it caught fire several times and by the time the Civil War was over, it was just an empty shell. In the 1880s it was renovated and the stained glass dome and spiral staircase were added. It was used a the state capitol building until the new state capitol building was built...

Louisiana state capitol building Downstairs elevator bank with golden doors This 30-story art-deco tower was also a creation of Huey Long. He wanted the capitol building to be iconic and different, and I'd say he delivered on both of those things. We came in on the bottom floor because Landon was asleep in the stroller. The elevator bank was really neat down there, and it was just a foreshadowing of what was to come! Once we got up to the first floor, we were wowed by the main room. It had a display with every flag ever to be flown over Louisiana- which is a lot of flags from many different countries! The ceiling was really neat as were the marble accents. Main front hall Unfortunately for Huey Long, he was also assassinated in the building that he had built. He was a Senator and had amassed lots of political enemies. An area doctor rushed him as he left an office in the back hall of the main floor of the building, and shot him in the side. The doctor was immedia...