There is still powdered sugar in the cupholders of the Pilot. I have vacuumed twice. It came home from New Orleans with us, along with a box of pralines, the thickest receipt envelope we've ever had and a twelve-year-old who has asked me three times since Thursday whether I can make "that gumbo."
Spring break lined up for both districts again this year, so we took the big trip: New Orleans, Monday, March 16, through Thursday, March 19. It's about 530 miles from our driveway, down I-65 to Birmingham, then I-59 through Meridian and Hattiesburg, then across Lake Pontchartrain on I-10 from Slidell. We left at 5:15 in the morning with a cooler of sandwiches and spent close to eight hours on the road. Ryan's one requirement was free parking, so we stayed three nights at a hotel in Metairie, about twenty minutes from the French Quarter, with a free lot and breakfast in the morning.
For out-of-state trips I plan food by the person: $40 a person a day. We came in at $40.50.
What we ate, day by day
Monday: red beans. Red beans and rice on Monday is an old New Orleans habit. Monday was wash day, so a pot of beans simmered on the back of the stove all day with Sunday's ham bone while the laundry got done. We found a neighborhood place a few miles from the hotel and got red beans with smoked sausage, rice and buttered French bread. The beans were creamy without any cream. That comes from a long, slow simmer and from mashing some of the beans against the side of the pot so they thicken the rest. Jack gave it an 8. Dinner was $54.
Tuesday: beignets, the market and po'boys. We started at the open-air coffee stand across from Jackson Square that has been frying beignets since the 1860s. A beignet is a square of fried dough with no hole, three to an order, under a small snowdrift of powdered sugar. Lesson learned: do not breathe in while you bite. Jack gave them a 10, and Nora has a photo of his sugar mustache that will come out at his wedding. That was $26.
From there we walked the French Market, long open sheds of hot sauce, produce, pralines and T-shirts, and spent $31 on pralines and snacks. Lunch was po'boys: fried shrimp, dressed with lettuce, tomato, pickles and mayonnaise, and a roast beef debris po'boy, which is roast beef cooked until it falls apart into its own gravy. The bread is the secret. New Orleans French bread has a thin, crackly crust and an airy inside, so it squashes down around the filling instead of fighting you. Jack gave the debris a 9 because the gravy ran down to his elbow. Lunch was $63.
Tuesday night was the dish we'd never eaten: three pounds of boiled crawfish, in season in March, for $42. You pinch off the tail, peel it and eat it. The spice is in the boil water, and most of it soaks in after the burner goes off, while the crawfish sit. Ryan and I loved them. Jack gave them a 7 for effort. Nora did her one bite under our one-bite rule, drank an entire cup of water and ate her bread.
Wednesday: the streetcar and the gumbo. We'd bought streetcar day passes on Tuesday to rest our feet, and on Wednesday we bought them again and rode the St. Charles line, the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world, with wooden seats and the windows down, past the live oaks and big porches of the Garden District. Lunch uptown was $55.
Dinner was our one splurge, at an old Creole restaurant in the Quarter, $164 with the tip. Nora ordered the chicken and andouille gumbo. It was dark brown, close to the color of strong coffee, and not hot at all, and she finished hers and half of mine. Here's the why: the longer you cook a roux, the darker and nuttier it gets, and the less it thickens. A dark gumbo is thinner than most people expect, and that's how it's supposed to be. Jack gave the whole evening an 8 and his bread pudding a 9.
Thursday we drove home on cooler sandwiches. Road food, cold drinks and a few snacks across the four days came to the last $51 of the food money.
What it cost
- Gas: $159 (about 1,130 miles with the driving around town, roughly 51.4 gallons at $3.09)
- Lodging: $660 (three nights in Metairie, $220 a night with tax, free parking and breakfast)
- Food: $486 (red beans $54, beignets $26, French Market $31, po'boys $63, crawfish $42, Wednesday lunch $55, the gumbo dinner $164, road food and drinks $51)
- Parking: $83 (a lot near the French Market two days, plus meters)
- Streetcar: $24 (day passes for four, two days)
- Total: $1,412
- Food per person: $121.50, or $40.50 a day
