Milford’s On Third (Baton Rouge, LA)

When we were recently house hunting in Louisiana, we drove through the state capital of Baton Rouge. With a population of 1/4 million and the home to LSU’s ~30,000 students, you’d imagine the food between New Orleans and Lafayette (the heart of Cajun country) would be pretty good. It is. Unfortunately, there are a lot of very popular and extremely busy seafood restaurants and when you’re traveling, you don’t have time to wait for an hour or two. We didn’t even have enough time to find parking for those spots. After checking Yelp, we headed to the more historic downtown area, easily found a free parking spot in front of a beautiful church and walked in Milford’s on Third.

Apr012019

Welcome to Our New Home!

As some of you may know, we’ve been planning on moving to New Orleans, Louisiana. We wanted to find a place that could match the cultural strength of Los Angeles… with A LOT less people, and traffic. Alana loved NOLA/The Big Easy/The Crescent City after helping out when Hurricane Katrina hit. She always wanted to take me there and we finally visited for the first time during their Tricentennial, which was early last year. She was worried that I wouldn’t enjoy their drinking culture, but I didn’t mind. Sure, the tourists on Bourbon Street were annoying, but the locals on Frenchmen Street were great! I didn’t have my trombone with me, but if I did, I surely would’ve joined their impromptu marching band at midnight.

Jun082018

Remembering Anthony Bourdain

There truly are only a handful of individuals in the culinary world that truly brought something new to the table. One of those individuals, Anthony Bourdain, has left the table, and with that, a seat that will be extremely hard to fill.

While I enjoyed cartoons and sports growing up like every other kid, I watched more food television than most kids my age. For Christmas, I’d ask my mom for microplanes, honey dippers, and other obscure cooking utensils to feel more like the chefs that I idolized on television. She’d let me help with food prep in the kitchen and might even let me make my own dish from time to time, knowing full well that it’d end up being inedible. (Note, I was VERY young when this started.) My fixation for in-the-kitchen cooking shows like Emeril Live, Good Eats, Two Fat Ladies and many others, over different channels, never completely faded, but after watching these for years and years, I need new inspiration.

Image source

Jan202016

Cooking Shows Can Actually Make Your Life Easier

Food Network was and still is the most-viewed network in our household. Over the course of 20 years, that hasn’t changed but the personalities and themes certainly have. While it’s not fair to say whether it’s for better or for worse because that would be so subjective, we can definitely say what we enjoy more or less. Everyone has strong feelings for Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, and all the baking contests, but there are just some shows that give you a little bit of everything. Cutthroat Kitchen is one of them.

For the longest time, we watched a lot of Chopped and we still do. It has its practical application. While the focus of most competition cooking shows isn’t being healthy, there are two major components that will make the life easier of the everyday chef, or the home chef. Those two factors are time and convenience. In most of these competitions, the chefs are only given 20-30 minutes to prepare a meal. That’s right, on Chopped they’re not making a single dish. They have to prepare four portions, which could be exactly how many you need to make for your family! Most of us don’t have hours every day to make fresh meals, so we often resort to opting for some not-so-fresh meals but that often sacrifices the health factor. Frozen food and fast food are time-friendly and have large portions, but typically are filled with unnatural ingredients, excess calories, tons of sodium, and a lack of nutrients. On these shows, top chefs show you how to save time.