NOLA: Beignets x 3

Since my last post three weeks ago, I have survived finals, received surprisingly good grades from said finals, and have someone ended up in New Orleans for a "vacation" that continues to be trumped by the difficulty of trying to do things on an iPhone. Such as write this post. Granted the fact I can even do things like write this post is a testament to the versatility that is the modern iPhone. But just because you can, doesn't mean it's comfortable. I mean my poor PhD electrical engineer big wig dad took a year to transition to a iPhone and still hates it.

Anyways, New Orleans. The land of loose vacation morals surrounded by streets lined with churches and anti-abortion buses. It's a very confusing and very sad at the same time. Clearly life moves on as it must, but driving by the Superdome today just made me think about all the death and general lack of humanity that occurred in that building and the neighboring streets and hospital a mere 6ish years ago (I had to edit in that link later because the iPhone app doesn't do text urls, but it's a great article that will make you wrestle with ethical questions that, if you are lucky, will never have to answer in reality).

It was strange to see a place that was filled with so much death rebuilt as a place defining of rowdy sports and aggressive Americanism, and yet what else could better signal the strength of a surviving city? Heck, San Francisco had it's worst earthquake decades ago with plenty of deaths, but it's not like we set aside locations of tragedy as permanent memorials out of both a physical and emotional necessity to move forward and away.

But back to food. This is actually about the world famous Cafe du Monde beignets. Yes those fluffy fried pieces of dough worth more than one trip per vacation, let alone day. There's something to be said about tearing your fingers through a piping hot piece of fried dough and inducing mild burns caked with a thick layer of powdered sugar to boot. Sure it's just another piece of fried dough, but it's a damn delicious piece of dough that does what all fried dough does in all countries--bring people together.

*the fun point of this entire 3x series of beignet photos is that they were all taken on separate trips to Cafe Du Monde.