Invasion of the In-Laws

Yesterday my mother-in-law and her father, whom we all affectionately know as Dee, made the trip from Port Arthur, Texas to visit us. Having spent most of the day in the car, they wanted to rest up a bit before we squired them around town. Patricia has been to see us three times since we've moved, but it was Dee's first time to be in New Orleans in over 30 years. Although he's from Bunkie (holy crap, this place has a website!?), he's only been to NOLA twice, the first time in the late 40's. And of course, we had to hear the tale recounted of that horrible trip to the sinful city, where he went to visit a relative at Charity Hospital and had his car broken into. The bandit broke the window and made off with a suit jacket and a basket of fruit. Thankfully, he didn't think to look in the glove box, where Dustin's grandmother's wedding ring happened to be.

Once the visitors were rested, we loaded up the MIL's PT Cruiser and road from Audubon Park, down St. Charles, took Decatur to Esplanade and back up to Rampart. Dustin also drove us by the house where he got sot at while responding to a call, and a place that he gets hot wings from while on duty. Finally we drove back across the highway and went to VooDoo BBQ where Dustin and I left the others in the car to make our to-go order.

We've never had any problem with VooDoo, and their food is delicious. But last night, we waited almost an hour for our food, as people who came in well after we did were eating and leaving. When we finally said something, they discovered that the wrong name had been put on our ticket (not really understanding that one, as we were given a number for our table). I don't know what that had to do with the fact that our food hadn't been boxed yet. The man offered us a free brownie, so we accepted (seriously, do we look like the kind of people who refuse free brownies?). The girl came out and yelled the wrong name, which we knew from our talk with the other waiter, before acting like she was going to take our food back to the kitchen. Se spoke up, got our grub and finally headed back to the car full of starving people. My pulled pork was delicious as always, as was Dustin's brisket and chicken. They got Patricia's side wrong, but she said she didn't mind as the Gris Gris Greens turned out to be quite tasty. And they didn't give us our brownie. So, since we were all set for brownies, Dustin took his mom to Winn Dixie to get dessert. He came back with a giant cookie decorated for someone's graduation (I asked him Who's graduating? and he said "I don't know, but I'm gonna eat their cookie!") and some New Orleans brand ice cream. The have such delicious flavors! We've had the Bananas Foster before, which tasted just like the real thing, and this time we had the Coffee & Chicory and Vanilla, both of which were rich and yummy.

I think our dessert was a fitting end to a nice day about town. I love being able to share the city we love with the people we love. :)