Lower Mississippi Trip

Apr 28 - May 9, 2022

Today is a very full day that begins at breakfast in the River Room of the hotel. A very nice buffet awaits us and we enjoy the companionship of other members of this tour and getting to know them.

This breakfast room is on the 16th floor overlooking the Mississippi River. I love to walk over and look out these windows overlooking the roof tops down below and the River. A couple of times I see steamships setting off up the River. Al and I will be on one of these boats soon. At 8:45 a.m. we walk as a group 1 1/2 blocks to where our motor coach is waiting for a tour of the city - no coaches over 31 ft are allowed in the Quarter.

We learn alot on this tour. I thought the French Quarter was all there was to see but the City of New Orleans is large and spread out into cultural sections. Robin (Rock'in) is full of knowledge, wit and humor as our tour guide. We make stops at a large and ornate church cemetery and at Armstrong Park. We are all given small tour guide ear plug systems so that we can listen to our tour guide at distances. This works very well.

Lunch is at the Superior Seafood Restaurant. Our waitress looks like a model dressed in a slinky black dress with one bare shoulder showing, dark skinned with long bright red hair. I have the grilled shrimp salad with gumbo soup. Delicious!

After lunch we walk the streets of a big neighborhood filled with spacious private homes and beautiful gardens. Unfortunatly we are not able to see these places because the sidewalks are so deteriorating and broken up in pieces that we have to watch where we are stepping all the time! Dave Roberts is our afternoon guide.

We return to the Monteleone Hotel briefly since we soon are going out to dinner. By the way the Monteleone Hotel is named after the Monteleone family. When you walk into the hotel lobby and look up you see several fancy framed oil paintings of various family members looking down on you.

Dinner tonight is a very unique experience! We walk a few blocks in the city until we come to a store front that reads New Orleans School of Cooking. Inside we are seated at tables and greeted by the head chef/school director. This wonderful man dressed in a white coat not only demonstrates how to cook the meals we are being served for dinner but he entertains us at the same time with personal stories that keep us laughing. He tells us that he got his cooking training at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, NY. This is the same school where our son Ben got his training as well. The building housing the cooking school in New Orleans consists of three floors used for classroom instruction and a kitchen for training in cooking.

As the chef teaches us and shows us how to make the roux he is making, the rest of the dishes are already cooked and ready to serve. After each cooking demonstration we are served the dishes. Here is what we are served:

GUMBO ingredients: lard or oil, flour chicken cup up,Andouille sausage, chopped garlic, chicken stock,green onions, Joe's Stuff seasoning and what he calls TRINITY: chopped onion, celery and green pepper.

SHRIMP ETOUFFEE (SHRIMP STEW) flour, oil, TRINITY, garlic, chicken stock, shrimp, Joe's Stuff seasoning blend, Crab,shrimp,crawfish liquid boil to taste.

PRALINES sugar, brown sugar, milk, butter, pecans, vanilla

BANANAS FOSTER butter, dark brown sugar, bananas, banana liqueur, dark rum, cinnamon, ice cream.

During the preparations student cooks parade back and forth to the kitchen. At the end they are introduced to us. We thank our chef profusely and browse in the cooking school store before walking the four blocks back to our hotel.

On our way back we pass the same street guitar player we passed on the way to the cooking school. He recognizes us and we stop to chat with him a bit. "We had dinner at the New Orleans Cooking School" we tell him. "Oh,yeah? Where is that?" "Walk two block that way and then turn right" we tell him. "Great", he says rubbing his stomach. "I love to eat!"

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