Chicago, River North

Due to the chaos of trying to work in New Orleans during Mardi Gras last year (which I missed), the trial team decided to vacate the city during that time this year. Meaning… once again, I was *this* close to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and I missed it. The week before the super bowl (or in my case, right afterwards), we participated in a mass exodus of NOLA, everyone heading to their respective homes for a week and a half, with the exception of my team, who got to go with the lawyers to 20-degree Chicago. That was pretty brutal as well, but I had some killer food! I want to be clear that this is all located specifically in the River North area, and I'm sure is only a small sampling of the amazing food throughout the city.

Shaw’s was seafood heaven! Now, I am not a fan of raw oysters. I don’t like their snotty consistency, and I’m not a fan of the cocktail sauce used to make them palatable. But it’s been years since I had one, and I decided to try again. Shaw’s has an entire raw oyster menu, and we ordered some particularly small ones, which came with a lemony accompaniment quite deliciously unlike cocktail sauce. It was divine! My main entrée was grilled Atlantic swordfish with mustard char glaze, and Brussels sprouts with Dijon vinaigrette. It was one of the best seafood dishes I have ever had.

In an attempt to keep up the enthusiasm I have for Shaw’s, I must tell you about Sunda next. I should really stop throwing around the phrase “one of the best,” but… if it’s true, it’s true. I can’t control these things. So. I will admit that I am not a sushi purist. I love me a creative, completely unauthentic sushi roll just as much as an ultra-fresh slice of lonesome raw fish. This place took a step away from classic sashimi, didn’t quite cross over into fancy roll territory, but took me somewhere in between to a level of sushi creativity I had yet to experience. Their specialty is what they call Crispy Rice, which looks deceptively like a normal piece of fish on a normal piece of rice. My favorite variety, the Spicy Tuna Crispy Rice, was in fact a spicy tuna mix formed into the shape of a slice of fish, and laid on top of a lightly fried patty of rice. Wow. Their other home run that I could not get enough of was called “The Great White Tuna,” and featured my favorite raw fish, escolar (or “super white tuna”) wrapped around a chunk of rice topped with a tiny homemade potato chip and truffle shavings. Guys, seriously. One of the best.

Another stand out on the trip was an Italian tapas bar called Quartino. Having recently been to Italy, I really appreciate finding little gems that actually remind me of the country, which most Italian restaurants do not. The ambiance of Quartino, while inviting, was not particularly authentic, but the food was amazing, and not a thing was smothered in alfredo sauce. Small plates of delicately prepared pastas and risottos, with cheese plates and bruschettes and thin-crust pizzas. Overall, a fantastic meal, which was repeated several times over the course of my week and a half in Chicago.

Bear with me for one more glowing review, of a restaurant called Sable. This place was the epitome of “new American” food, which is kind of my jam right now. Super modern and trendy, with a focus on farm-to-table cuisine. Everything I had was delicious, with some specialties such as truffle deviled eggs, fried kale chips with smoked sea salt, tuna tartar on tempura tostada shells, baked gruyere mac-n-cheese… etc, etc, you get the idea. Also, some of you may recall my discovery of poutine in Canada, which has blossomed into a healthy need to try poutine I see on menu, no matter how much we Americans take liberties with that word. Sable had a Chicken Confit Poutine… I did pick out the chicken, but there was no mistaking the delicious flavorings of chicken fat in this dish, which was impressive considering it’s usually made with beef or pork gravy. Two thumbs up!

The one last thing I’d like to mention is that I was super excited to go to Frontera Grill, the famous restaurant of the famous chef, Rick Bayliss. After all the hype, I was unimpressed. The food was good, but not Rick Bayliss good, or at least what I hoped that would be like. Kind of generic, high-end Mexican food. Sadness.

Well, that was actually much more than I intended to write today. Hope some taste buds were excited!

Ghosts and Alligators

The first time I got a weekend off, my friends Dan and Daniele came down to spend the weekend with us, which was so much fun!

We partook of two classic New Orleans tours: a ghost tour, and a swamp tour. Both were excellent! The French Quarter Phantoms ghost tour guide basically just told us freaky ghost stories outside of the supposedly haunted houses and buildings. I was hoping to see something, but I didn’t. There was one that was so haunted that the tour guide didn’t really want to be there, he said locals won’t walk on the side of the street with this one house, and there have been multiple reports of people being chased down the street by “something.” Ack!

The Cajun Adventures Swamp Tour was beautiful – not nearly as scary as I was expecting. We drove out to the middle of nowhere, got on a boat with ten or so other people, and drove around the swamps looking at all kinds of interesting plants and animals, including a couple of giant alligators. It’s hard to tell in these pictures, but he said if you measure from their eyes to the end of their snout, whatever that is in inches is about how big they are in feet. We were estimating that the ones we saw were close to 15 feet! He said they’re much more active in the spring, so I’m thinking about going back when it’s a little nicer.

We got to dine at two of my favorite places in New Orleans, Three Muses and Acme Oyster. Acme Oyster is a divey oyster bar whose specialty is these chargrilled oysters that are to die for! Cheesy and garlicky with puddles of butter just waiting to be sopped up by fresh bread… mmm. There’s always a massive line out the door – that crazy weekend we waited a good hour to get in there. Totally worth it. Three Muses is on Frenchman St., which for those who don’t know of it, blows Bourbon St. out of the water. It’s basically where all the jazz is, if you’re into that. This particular little gem is a tiny space that’s always packed – fun music, amazing food and a specialty cocktail menu to be proud of.

Great weekend, great friends, and refreshed enough to carry on.

My Life, As It Stands

So, what have I been up to since I left Texas, you ask? I have been on a business trip in New Orleans for eleven weeks now, living in a hotel, working 70-80 hour weeks with two weekends off so far. And I’m here until the end of May. It’s brutal, and I’m pretty over it, but the money’s great and I feel like I have an obligation to see this thing through. For those who don’t know, or long since forgot, I create information graphics that attorneys use in court to make their case more understandable to the judge and/or jury. Typically, I really enjoy my work, but this is by far the longest I have ever been on a trial site by many times over. Luckily, every time I start to freak out and think I can’t keep doing this or I’m going to lose it, the weekend arrives, and I get a couple short, eight- or nine-hour days and a few nice meals and I find myself continuing to show up every morning.

Sam started out the trip with me, spending about a month here in the city, which as far as trial-sites go, was AWESOME. Most people have to miss their families… I had mine right here! And New Orleans really is one of my favorite cities, when I've got the time to play. After a while he headed back out on the road to St. Petersburg, FL to visit an old friend he doesn’t get to see very often. He went to Orlando to hang out with me for a weekend (Disney details to come!), and finally ended up in St. Augustine, FL, which I think he really enjoyed. Unfortunately I don’t know very much about what he’s been up to on a day-to-day basis. He’s actually coming back to NOLA today (!!), and will be here for the duration of the trial, for which I cannot express how excited I am! Everything will be so much better.

I realize this post is kind of a downer, but I thought I’d let you peek in a window of my life right now. The two weekends I’ve had off were AMAZING, which I will post about next, and I spent of week or so in Chicago, which has some food I want to tell you about. Not to mention the food in New Orleans! I promise I have more positive things to come! 

Love the Road

My life has taken a significantly less nomadic turn in the last couple of months, and has felt much less interesting than the previous eight months, so it seems I have neglected my blog. And for that, I am sorry.

After beautiful Yellowstone in October, we came back to Texas to celebrate Sam’s 30^th birthday and the holidays with friends and family. It was so nice to have friends again! As much as I love travelling and making new friends, I will admit that, at least in retrospect, there’s something a little exhausting about it. Meeting the gang for a drink, and not doing the Abbreviated Exploration of Who Everybody is as a Person was refreshing and comfortable.

There is a way that I am, and I’m not sure where it came from except maybe from moving around a lot as a kid, but I thrive on change. Where most fear and avoid it, I need it in my life to feel like things aren’t stagnating. This leads to a lot of new apartments, new jobs, and new boyfriends over the years. There’s also an element of mastering chaos – I love to throw myself into an uncomfortable situation, and grow to the point that it is no longer scary and unfamiliar. (This has not extended to roller coasters, among other things.)

This past year was decidedly uncomfortable, and I settled into that discomfort magnificently! Moving the RV from one place to another became routine. Driving became more than a way to get from A to B, but an experience in itself – some music, beautiful scenery, great company... it really turned out to be one of my favorite things to do. I truly love the road, in so many ways. It’s been an odd combination of settling into a routine, but waking up every few days to a whole new world to explore – a new mountain to hike, a new beer to try, a new friend to make. Everything hasn’t been perfect, but it’s been such a delightful adventure, I wouldn’t change a thing!

I am now working in New Orleans for a while, which I will elaborate on in my hopefully much more frequent upcoming blogs. <3

Yellowstone Adventures!

I’ve spent a lot of this trip traveling to places I’ve never heard of, on the word of a passing stranger, or in the case of Yellowstone National Park, the general fame of the location. I had, of course, heard of this park, but to be honest, I never really knew what the place was all about. I’m sure most of you are far more learned than I, but for those of you who, like me, always heard it was cool but never knew why, allow me to shed some light.

Yellowstone is the home of Old Faithful, a geyser that, as the name suggests, spews at predictable, regular intervals (every 45 min – 1.5 hours) and has been doing this for forever. Probably not forever, actually, but I don’t feel like looking up when it’s estimated to have started. The entire area comprises the largest volcanic system on the continent, and as such is covered with over 10,000 geothermal features, including 300 geysers and massive amounts of beautiful hot springs. It's also well known for a wide variety of wildlife.

I didn’t find the park itself to be very pretty… in part because of a fire about twenty years ago that the forest is still slowly recovering from, and because we came at the wrong time. I assumed autumn would be beautiful, and apparently it was, but for this national park, winter has arrived. When we started from Boise to Yellowstone, the RV park reservation guy was like, “You’re from Texas? You know it’s supposed to be eight degrees tonight, right?” EIGHT?! No. I did not know that. This would be a good spot to mention that our heater was broken, and there was nobody in Yellowstone available to fix it in the amount of time we were staying there. So, we toughed it out with layers and layers of clothes and blankets, huddled around our little space heater. We have since gotten that fixed. ANYWHO, back to my original point, the park itself is a little dead right now, but the geothermal features definitely made it a fascinating day!

So, pictures! Here are a few geysers. The upper left photo is Old Faithful, which was cool, but hardly the most interesting thing we saw that day. The far left part of the white in the photo is the actual water spewing upward, and the rest of the white part is the accompanying steam. If you look close, you can see a rainbow! The other two are just other geysers in the park that I manage to catch on camera. 

The hot springs, in my opinion, were really the highlight of the park. The colors were just unreal. The photo on the far right is a spring called the Great Prismatic. It’s tough to see in photos, but the steam coming up from the hot spring displayed a beautiful spectrum of color. The surroundings of that one were pretty insane as well.

We didn’t get to see much wildlife this late in the year, but I did see my first bison… and then HERD of bison! Also, again, difficult to tell in the picture, but that raven was about the size of a large cat. And not even remotely wary of people. Wicked.

Oh, a quick word about the Grand Tetons. As I mentioned previously, winter has begun in the park, and we missed all the beautiful fall colors. The day we tried to see the mountains was foggy and overcast, with a layer of clouds covering up the jagged peaks. The lakes and ponds that are usually mirrored were not, and we didn’t see a single of the many varieties of wildlife in the park, which is a major draw to this area. After stopping to take a few unimpressive pictures, we ended up deciding to keep driving.

So, we are now in Fort Collins, Co, which will be followed by Denver, Santa Fe, and finally Austin for Halloween. We are officially on our way home, and I have some serious mixed feelings about it. I can’t believe how quickly this year has gone, and I don’t want it to be over! At the same time… well, you know how when you have to pee, and then you actually SEE the restroom, you have to pee so much worse? That’s how I feel. Now that we’re this close, even though I’m sad that our out-of-state travels are ending for this year, I can’t wait to see my friends!!