The Perennial Plate

Mirra and I drove across the border from Wisconsin to Minnesota this evening blasting “Sabotage” by the Beastie Boys on the stereo.  I think I’ll always remember that moment.  I’m not sure why such a high octane song was appropriate for our return home.  Perhaps it just felt good to depart from the sadness we had been feeling over the last couple days. Driving NorthWest, we realized that our trip was coming to an end.  Something we had first been dreaming about, then fundraising for, then planning, then spending every waking moment engaged in — was about to be over.  And so we had been driving and reminiscing, re-living the last 6 months…and as we came into Minnesota with music blaring, I had that good feeling of WE DID IT!  But not without a few mishaps: one broken car window, one phone dropped in a cup of wine, one thrown out back, one event where no one showed up, one missing hiking boot, and only four or five bouts of sea sickness for Mirra… we did pretty well.

With all that luck, I asked Mirra what was the high point of the trip, and she said something that rung true for me as well.  She said the two highlights were Catfish noodling in Mississippi and Farming with the Apostolic family in Ohio.  These two families lived such different lives from our own (and from each other) yet we were really able to connect, and share and become part of their…

We eat a lot of OK meals. But from time to time, we step out of our “budget” and go into our personal savings for dinner.  This is more often than we should.  The logic is along the lines of when will be here again?  So we splurge; sometimes to great splendor, other times not so much.  Over the next few weeks, I’m going to post some thoughts on really great restaurants that we’ve been very luck enough to enjoy around America.

We’ll start off way back in New Orleans.  It was an early stop on our trip and we were really excited about it.  New Orleans is one of the few places in America with it’s own rich culture of food.  It’s just hard to find it (unless of course you’re interested in a very tourist-geared cuisine or poorly prepared beinets and poboys on frenchman street).  We did however come upon a few great meals, one was a free(!!) dinner at Restaurant August (John Besh’s flagship). A delicious and decadent meal, the gnocchi with truffle was what I remember the most.  But the other two places were the non fine dining gems that surprised and delighted, and their food had little to do with New Orleans except for their ingredients. Around the corner from where we stayed (at the delightful Maison de Macarty B&B...), there was a wine bar called Bacchanal. This wine bar was not typical….