To vegan or not to vegan

Driving an hour to Fargo for some delicious Indian food at the Passage to India can turn out a little time consuming... Maybe we won't have to do this as frequently as we just NAILED an awesome Indian recipe! The only time consuming part of it is chopping the vegetables, otherwise it is pretty straight forward and if you've never tried to cook Indian food before, this is a simple recipe you can tackle. It is a vegan meal, which you can easily make carnivorous by adding some chicken to it!

Indian Coconut Curried Vegetable

1 chopped onion, 3 cloves garlic, 1 tbsp fresh ginger, 1 seeded green chili, 1 tbsp vegetable oil, 1/2 tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp coriander, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp curry, 1/2 chopped cauliflower, 1 sliced red bell pepper, 1 cup sliced mushrooms, 1 sliced carrot, 1 sliced zucchini, 1 cup coconut milk, 1/2 tsp salt, or to taste.

Use a food processor to smooth the onion, garlic, ginger and chili. Heat the mixture in a pot, then add the oils and spices. Cook for couple minutes, then add the coconut milk and the veggies. Cover and cook for about 20-30 minutes. Although I like my veggies pretty much dead and mushy on my plate, Jeff likes them a little crispier and I found there was a very fine time line before killing them, so make sure you taste throughout to your liking! Serve over rice. Simple, right?

This recipe was taken from this site and modified just a bit! As I said before, you can sure change this one, if you'd like, by using different vegetables or meats. I would certainly stick to using the cauliflower though, as it provides this meal with volume, texture and doesn't take away from the flavor of the spices.

Cafe Beignet

Beignet
 noun, Southern Louisiana
1. A square doughnut without a hole in a middle.
2. Has a mysterious quality of making people travel across the country just to eat one.
3. Melts in your mouth.

Although both Cafe Beignet and Cafe du Monde are great places offering beignets, I would like to give you advice that you may find helpful in the future - Cafe Beignet offers larger pastries. Case closed. 

 Sitting outside to enjoy our delicious breakfast.

 Alton's cat. (If you watch The Best Thing I Ever Ate, you know what I am talking about).

 Enjoy a cup of bitter chicory coffee with the sweet beignets. The making of the coffee is an old Acadian (settlers from Nova Scotia) custom where a ground up root of chicory was added to the then scarce coffee.

When in the South...

... do as the Southerners do. And we certainly did! We ate bagnets, went to the bayou, shopped at the French Market and ate raw oysters.
Dipped in a mix of a cocktail sauce, hot sauce, lemon juice and just enough horseradish to make you cry, put on a cracker and there you go - a true taste of New Orleans!

 Don't bother waiting in line for Acme Oyster House. The oysters are the same everywhere, silly! We really liked the LaBayou restaurant with the winders wide open right on the Bourbon street.