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"Hey y'all, just wanted to follow up now that I'm back home.  First, let me apologize for not taking many food pics.  I'd be a horrible blogger.  And yes, I will blame my two small children in large part. The breakfast feast at my friend's mother's house was yummy.  The highlights were her homegrown satsumas:   We brought about a dozen home.  Should have brought more. and cheese biscuits:  Sarah's cheese biscuits are legendary in our little circle of friends.  Whenever we had sleepovers she'd make these for our breakfast.  What kills me is that she makes them with Pioneer biscuit mix.  Maybe all the cheddar disguises the fact that it's a mix.  She gave me the parfait glass with which she used to cut the biscuits until her son dropped and and broke the bottom of the glass.  Sarah reports that when the glass fell, I cursed her son for not respecting the biscuit cutter. The fare at the wedding was standard Catholic Cajun fare.  Boudin balls, roast beef, open bar.  Nothing to exciting, and not a single crudite in sight.  I found that a bit strange.  The cakes were AWESOME though.  My cousin (mother of the bride) couldn't remember the name of the baker, but I'm pretty sure it must have been Mrs. Short (Kathleen?).  There was THE cake plus about 8 other cakes, I suppose in lieu of a single groom's cake.  Tres leches, coconut, red velvet, carrot, and others I don't recall.  The red velvet was hands down the best I've ever had.  The others were excellent too.  Only drawback was that they were so moist that they were difficult to serve. On Sunday, we headed to Baton Rouge to meet up with friends.  At lunch we met another family at The Chimes East (The Chimes near LSU just opened a new store on Coursey -- much bigger and much more of a \"family\" restaurant than the original.)  I was disappointed in my order -- grilled amberjack with crawfish bearnaise sauce.  The crawfish were mealy and the sauce was obviously made to far ahead.  I would have prefered the fish by itself. My parents had said that they wanted to take treat us to a restaurant of our choosing.  My dad has a very narrow view of what makes a good restaurant, so I suggested that my parents choose between Zea (one of their suggestions) and Guama's.  They chose Zea, apparently a local chain focusing on rotisserie items.  If I had to choose a chain, Zea would likely get my vote.  This was not cutting edge cuisine, but a simply solid menu and ambience that will appeal to a wide audience.  I had a very nice spinach salad and redfish with a nice topping of shrimp etoufee.  Sides were collard greens and roasted corn grits.  Nice.  This was my best seafood entree the whole trip. Thursday night we went to Cafe des Amis where one of the chefs is a friend of a friend.  Turned out he wasn't there, even though we'd coordinated to go on one of his work nights.  Bummer.  The apps outshone the entrees that night.  The chef sent out pecan encrusted shrimp with Turbo (Abita beer) butter sauce.  We also ordered the crab cheesecake, which was more on the quiche side of a cheesecake, but quite good.  (side note -- anyone have suggestions for serving savory cheesecake as an hors d'oeuvre? -- is a fork required?)  The BBQ shrimp was the best entree.  Nice big gulf shrimp and a thick brown sauce, french bread toast points.  We also had crawfish fettucine (mediocre) and drum topped with a crab/crawfish sauce (again, the sauce was disappointing, and the fish was fishy.)  The white chocolate bread pudding rocked.  They get points for decor and ambiance -- lots of cool folk art.  And the antique bar was at the Hotel Evangeline in Lafayette -- where my parents first met 40+ years ago. I knew I wanted some killer biscuits before we left town, but felt like Dwyer's would have been too much of a production for us.  So on Friday morning we had breakfast at Edie's Express at Bendel Gardens.  We ordered the $3 platter with 3 eggs, sausage/bacon, and a biscuit, and the biscuits stole the show, of course.  Absolutely gorgeous and feather light. We never made it to Poupart's but my dad did pick up a baguette for dinner on Friday night.  One of my last carb splurges before coming home. Speaking of carb splurge, a family friend brought over some homegrown lemons with which I made some killer lemon bars.  The two remaining lemons are in my fridge. The other treat we brought home was some olive salad from Cedar Grocery.  Totally forgot about going to Central Grocery when we were in NO.  Ooops! \n"
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