Too Many Excuses

My, oh my, where has the time gone? I can’t believe that tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. So much has happened in the past few weeks (except, of course, updating this blog) that I barely know where to begin. Since my last post, Eric and I celebrated our three-year wedding anniversary, went to New Orleans for a wedding, learned how to knit, had my fifth treatment, catered two team holiday parties (for Eric and our friend/neighbor, Ross), and went to Massachusetts for a week to celebrate Christmas with my parents.

Let me start with my favorite topic – food. The week of our anniversary was great; it was probably my best week of eating since my surgery back in September. During that week, of which half was spent in New Orleans, we went to Harold Dieterle’s (Top Chef Season One winner) Perilla, John Besh’s (from The Next Iron Chef) Restaurant August, Commander’s Palace, Café du Monde and Cochon.

While all of the restaurants were great, our favorite, hands down, was Cochon in New Orleans. French for “pig”, Cochon gets a pig every day from a farmer in the area, butchers it at the restaurant and makes all of their own charcuterie. Eric had the most amazing “salad” of arugula with a creamy shallot dressing, grits fries, and sausage-stuffed fried shrimp (yes, the shrimp was stuffed with the homemade sausage, deep fried and THEN topped with a creamy dressing…and yes, it was delicious!). I had fried chicken livers (the hot ingredient of 2008) with homemade pepper jelly and fresh mint on toast and homemade sausage with peppers with grits. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures to share – for two reasons: first, I always feel a bit awkward taking pictures in restaurants (yeah, yeah, I know that everyone does it, and I just need to get over it – I’m sure I will eventually) and second, the food, while delicious, was not very pretty.

As for the other restaurants…I had the best duck entrée at Perilla, Eric had a delicious venison trio at August (although they stiffed us on the bread…and our server was very sweaty), and we enjoyed a long but tasty brunch at Commander’s Palace – which reminded me of Tavern on the Green (in the bad way of being super-touristy, very old-fashioned with a gaudy elegance from the 80’s, an average age of 65 for most of the patrons and absurdly expensive for brunch) but with good food.

The main reason we were in New Orleans was for our friends’ wedding (Congrats Ginny and Jeremy! Hope that you’re having fun in New Zealand). The wedding was a blast (as if a wedding in New Orleans could be anything but). The ceremony and reception were held in the Edgar Degas house and had the best band ever - it was a three man band including a guitar, tuba and washboard. The highlight of the night was when the band busted out Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song. My favorite version was the Viking Kitties until now...that tuba player was absolutely unbelievable (although he looked like he could use an oxygen tank after playing that song)! Here’s a picture of me and my friend Anuradha from the wedding:

The real reason that I included this was to show my hair since many people haven’t seen the new “do”. Just a quick shout out to my wig stylist, JT. He did a really great job in helping me choose a wig. It’s pretty realistic – and even funnier is that I’ve actually been stopped by various people to complement me on my “great haircut” (true story – it happened at Mt. Sinai hospital and the coffee department at Fairway).

There’s definitely more to share, but I’m exhausted…will be back soon…I promise…but if not, Happy New Year!