Rachel: Photo Diary

It’s a rare trip where I’m not mailing a postcard on the way to the airport. This time, another last minute errand was our stop at Sammy’s on Highland. Even better than Sunday’s visit! Shrimp poboy and fried pickles, thank you very much.

We flew back to Seattle via O’Hare. This is somewhere between New Orleans and Chicago.

I started the day with a 5k. It wouldn’t be enough to offset the rest of the day, but…

For our big Thanksgiving meal, we drove down the west side of the Mississippi River past Plaquemines to Nottoway Plantation. My favorite part was the crawfish étouffée. We got to tour the grounds and I walked along the levee.

After a solid afternoon nap, we went to dinner at a nearby seafood place. They were ready for Christmas and we watched a raucous Saints win.

Oh, and one more gem from the Nottoway Gift Shop:

The last few times I’ve visited Baton Rouge, the observation deck at the top of the “new” state capitol building was under renovation. They’ve finished, so we took Mr. T up to the top. It was the site of many childhood school day field trips.


We walked the grounds, sat by the river, and slowly made our way home.

Dinner: Stroube’s Chophouse downtown. You know, cause what’s better than a big steak dinner and crème brûlée the night before Thanksgiving?

We started our day right, yet again, visiting with a good friend (E) at Baton Rouge’s Strands Cafe. E told me about the place a few years ago. I stop in every visit now, so it was great to finally go there with her. They make wonderful french pastries (they are LCB-trained), confections and coffee. I’ve worked my way through the whole drink menu and there’s not a single miss.

Then, we spent the afternoon visiting with my oldest friend, G, and her family. By oldest firiend, I mean, G and I — we go all the way back. When she had her baby blessing (other religions consider this a christening) at two months, she borrowed my blessing dress and I hear she did quite the number on it. That’s okay, I was already 6 months ahead of her and it wasn’t like I was gonna use it again.

I could spend hours chatting with her nonstop and back in the day, this is all we did in Summertime afternoons. Now when we get together, there’s other people we have to consider 🙂 and we end up cutting it only to a few hours.

When it was time to go, Mr. T, my mom, brother, & I continued with the trip’s revisiting theme, and drove to another local favorite down river at Roberto’s River Road. More shrimp — this time with peppers and brandy butter in a bread boule — and more Sensation Salad! Yes, this visit was turning into a greatest hits tour.

We are doing this vacation right. I think I got about 12 hours of sleep last night. When we were ready to face the world, we went with my mom to the newly rebranded La Lou. Once upon a time, it was called Another Broken Egg and I wrote about it. They’ve expanded to dinner service and updated their name to something a little less breakfast-focused. Well, we were there for brunch so I could revisit the Redfish Benedict. I’m happy to report the change in name has not altered the delicious andouille hollandaise.

We spent the rest of the day shopping in various forms — Mall of Louisiana, then later, Books-a-Million. I found a lot of gems in the bookstore, including this missed opportunity for a wedding cake:

The person in charge of book displays has a sense of humor, doesn’t (s)he?

My family & I went with an old friend of mine to Saints vs. Seahawks today. Local fans were crawling all over the lobby of The Roosevelt beforehand.

We brunched at Mr. B’s Bistro before walking over to the Superdome.


Then, we hauled it back to Baton Rouge for Sammy’s shrimp poboys and a new discovery: their fried pickles.

We flew to Louisiana for Thanksgiving, and since we have plans in New Orleans on Sunday, we decided to stay in The Roosevelt one more night. Domenica for dinner downstairs was the cherry on top.