Today after learning about how to run our transects, I learned how much I love chopping down the blackberry! This plant was messy and stuck very easily to our clothes, hair, and anything it could get a hold of. Although it was very frustrating at times, I learned a good way to get rid of that was to be in charge of cutting it down!
Before chopping down the thorny Blackberry
On our trip this year we were lucky enough to have Kevin, a professional photographer and videographer, join us on all of our adventures. He takes amazing photographs and is always making us laugh, especially when we try really hard to ignore the camera! Kevin snapped this shot of me as we were discussing our fieldwork for today. I could hear the camera snapping over and over and over and I starting cracking up because sometimes it’s super awkward having someone always taking your picture! But he does an amazing job and we love all the great photos he’s producing!
We had a full day in Louisiana (literally). In the morning we went to a New Orleans cooking class. We broke up into groups and worked together to make the many parts of a full course meal- appetizer, soup, salad, entree, and dessert. Yesterday we all walked to the neighborhood market to pick out fresh ingredients. My group was assigned to create the dessert. We decided to go with a pound cake covered in locally grown strawberries.
When everything was done we sat down and tried each others homemade Louisiana food. For appetizer we had stuffed bell peppers, then we had a vegetable soup, followed by a salad with creole vinegarette, then shrimp jumbalaya, and lastly the pound cake. Everything was delicious! My favorite was probably the soup or the jambalaya.
After being stuffed from our amazing five course meal we headed to the trail to begin our first transects (plant surveying). It ended up being a gorgeous afternoon surrounded by green plants and wildlife. While surveying we found a tiny green snake in the leaves on a plant, and we also saw an armadillo!
We’re excited to head to the trials in the morning!
One of my favorite dishes to make on special occasions is crab stuffed mushrooms, so I thought maybe we could re-create it here in New Orleans Cooking School. The Crescent City Farmers Market didn’t have mushrooms quite big enough for stuffing, so we improvised, which turned out to be a lot more fun than sticking to the normal recipe. We picked from what was available and ended up with something totally different! Michael had some Louisiana blue crab claw meat already available for us, so all that was left was mixing together some extra ingredients.
We pulled “heart of the ox” tomatoes and sweet bell peppers to scoop out and make serving boats, added a lemon spiced pesto, shitake mushrooms for extra meatiness, onions, cajun seasoning, lemon, and topped it with bread crumbs and mozzarella cheese. We pressed the bottoms of the boats into some extra cajun seasoning and, per request, experimented with a little paline oil drizzle. The stuffed vegetables baked at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes until the veggies were nice and tender with gooey cheese on top.
Because we had gooey fingers, we avoided using our phones, but were lucky enough to have Kev on the job! We re-payed him with a stuffed red bell pepper. Bon apetit!
Today was awesome! We started bright and early by heading over to the New Orleans School of Cooking. Our host, Michael, walked is through cooking our own meals. My group created a wonderful carrot and coriander soup.
After cooking school, we all traveled to Woodlands trail where we began our first run at field work. It was a slow process, but I have confidence that we’ll grow and learn as we continue Our field work and gain practice.
Hi y’all!
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Today was amazingly eventful, but I’ve chosen to emphasize on our time in the Woodlands Conservancy site. It was our first half-field day! We started when it was hot and humid out, but our first transects were very short. They only extended out about 3 meters before hitting the water. We had a crazy transect at 400 meters along the trail. Almost all of it was dense blackberry and tree vegetation.
We had to stop half way because the blackberry and fallen logs had gotten too thick for us!
Katie chopping through
The 450 meter transect was the best. It was essentially an empty field of flowers with cypress and maple trees interspersed. We even saw a little snake out there.
Sneaky and green
we couldn’t make it till 50 meters because the time ran out. Day one has been complete by group name: unnecessarily thirsty pirates!
As the stories of our beautiful dishes and recipes continue to expand online, we are invited to acknowledge how we brought farm to table for today’s Cooking School. It’s called the Crescent City Farmer’s Market, and it’s where Michael takes our NOLA crew each and every year right before our class gets together and cooks, in order to buy fresh, local food for a budget of $20 per dish – to feed 17 people. Michael’s greatest emphasis – aside from taking advantage of his position in order to discuss history and culture – is that we can feed the masses honest, healthy meals on a reasonable budget, and the cooking school provides an outlet for that.
On our walk over to the market, Michael shared a lot about the rich history and current state of the New Orleans lifestyle. “Local” to New Orleans means a 250 mile radius. The point of the Farmer’s Market was originally to bring the central business district back to the French quarter. Michael spoke a lot about the economic climate, the complicated nature of taxes and law changes, property ownership, etc. For instance, traditionally there are two floors to each building – the store on the first, and the residents on the second. Taxing and maintenance issues are moving businesses out of the city, however, and it is consequently becoming more residential. There seemed to be an obvious connection between the significance of the farmer’s market in relation to placement, business, and bringing that sense of welcoming and personality back to the home streets of the French Quarter and the American District.
Our trip to the market was fast, busy and exciting. We were encouraged to ask each vendor for their stories and origins, and after about 20 minutes of running around, blindly and frantically meal planning, we were ushered past the last few booths and on our way back to the cooking school. Memorable moments included a surprise from the cinnamon roll saleslady – a full time water quality professional! Exposure to an informative walk through of interesting cultural histories was a treat in itself, and the avocado popsicles weren’t bad either. In fact, they were kind of life changing.
Follow these links to learn about some of the ingredients for our recipes, and their origins!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmzshpxyyVU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt5NsDdfuwQ
– Aryana and Lauren 🙂
Today we finished the second part of our Cooking School. My group and I made Carrot Corrainder soup, which came out to our satisfaction. We also started on our research at Woodlands. As a non- ESRM student I was worried about missing up data or not being able to pick up the hang of things. In the end of the day my group the Swamp Monsters, got the hang of things.
Today started out really great, because we went to The New Orleans School of Cooking. The day before (3/18/17) we went grocery shopping for today (3/19/17) and we split up into 4 teams of three. There was a soup team, salad team, entree team and a dessert team. I was part of the salad team, the day before I bought cabbage, spinach, tomatoes, carrots, strawberries, cucumber, and Arugula plants. The first thing that John did was that he cut up the cabbage, while I cut up the carrots and cucumbers. After that we finished up the carrots and we cut the tomatoes in half I also cut up the Strawberries. We were waiting for a little Sean, John and I took the flowers off the stems and then we also took the leaves off and put them into the salad. The spinach that I had gotten had come pre cut so we just put the spinach into the salad. Then our teacher who’s name was Michael helped (as in just made it). He put Creole muster in, Pecan oil, vinegar, salt and pepper into a bowl and just whisked all up. After the salad was tossed and the dressing was put in, John, Sean and I planted the salad and put the Arugula flowers on the salads to make them look good.
When we were just starting
Dan is helping us cut up everything
Look at all of the work that Dan did
The finished salad
