Bellingrath Gardens and Home in Theodore, AL - Spicy Cajun Food in NOLA

As I told Mom when I spoke to her this morning before boarding the bus, I'm gonna cut down on the pix I take. Whereas yesterday I took 67, today I only took 45.

From the swiftly moving bus, we have

 cotton fields and a for sale sign to buy some acreage

and god only knows what this is. There were a lot of shacks - actual rundown shacks - that I tried to photograph but the bus was going 70 miles an hour.

But I'll tell you something. It took HALF AN HOUR to load these two photos from my hotel room on the 15th floor of LaQuinta Hotel.

During that time, I wrote out a dozen post cards and ate a couple dozen pistachios.

It's now midnight, and I'm dog-tired and longing to dig into my books.... finish one of them. When I called Scott from a rest stop and told him the killer had been found, he said, Don't be too sure.

It's quite shocking who the killer is. It's..... the wife of the president of the United States. Claire Farrington.

Just discovered that I can grab photos off the Internet in no time at all. So that's what we'll do, okay gang?

We ate at The New Orleans School of Cooking, where Julie demonstrated how to cook a real spicy soup w sausage in it, that made me choke.



We had pitchers of beer on our table. I tell you, I'm turning into a real lush on this trip. We're also served cocktails on our bus, and I order half a glass of white wine, which I enjoy ever so much!

Then at the cooking school we had chicken jambalaya over rice, which was scrumptious.

We watched Julie make praline candy. You pronounce it PRAY-leen and it's made w pa-CAHNS, not pecans, which is what you put under your bed, she said. Pee-cans.







Bananas Foster for dessert. Donna, who sat next to me at table, said it's the best dessert she ever had.

The guy next to me, Lenny, and his wife, Nancy, did not finish theirs. So I had seconds.

When I got back to the hotel

Even if you spell it 'tradmill' the image still comes up. I love that!


Twenty minutes of punishment for all that I ate. I use the treadmill for 20 minutes.

When I got back to the room my sugar was 91. I'd injected 20 units at dinner.

Lemme just show some pix of those gardens.

One of the first things I noticed in the gardens were Butterflies. Whatever these flowers are they were favorites of a couple of monarchs and a deep yellow butterfly.

Try as I might - and I took six shots - I could not capture a butterfly.

 Inside the house was a collection of different Coke bottles. This one is the first. It popped when you opened it, hence the name "pop" for us Midwesterners.

The family last lived here in 1955. Here's their modern kitchen.
And now if you'll excuse me, I'm under the sheets with three books.