San Chez Would Be Proud

I've returned from Louisiana with many happy times spent there. I've pictured the paella we made above. It's a bit out of focus, unfortunately, but the dish itself included fresh lobster, mussels, clams, Louisiana shrimp, chicken, Spanish chorizo sausage, and hickory smoked bacon. This is in addition to rice, peas, capers, onions, garlic, and chicken stock. We also used fresh saffron purchased at the local international market. It was muy deliciouso. In addition, we made these delightfully thin and fried potatoes (you can see them in the back cast iron skillet) and served them with a homemade aioli, a garlic mayonnaise.

This weekend I also tried a bunch of new cheeses including a Spanish cheese called manchengo. It was really dry and parmesanish. But, at $19.99 a pound, I probably won't be consuming this every day. It was very delicious paired with serrano, a Spanish ham much like prosciutto.

I also went birding and helped with the new years bird count for the Spanish Lake area of Alligator Bayou. By helping I mean that I helped with the captaining of the canoe. All the folks with me were the bird experts. We even saw a bald eagle and an alligator sunning itself in the bayou. This probably explains the whole name of the bayou thing. Normally, alligators aren't out at this time of the year, but the temperature was pushing 80 degrees on Monday, a welcome change after all the grey coldness Michigan has had lately.

Other highlights included spending New Years with friends eating snow crab legs and beef tenderloin. I hadn't had crab legs in forever, they were delicious.

I finished watching the first season of Lost last night with my sis and bro-in-law. I sure am thankful I gave that to Scott for Christmas. It really was a selfish Christmas gift on my part, but boy was it worth it! New episodes start this week!

School starts this week, so I'm sure to be busy up to my neck in homework soon. For those of you in GR, I'll probably be over there quite a bit, so plan on seeing more of me. I know you're excited already.