New Orleans Coffee: A Rich History


Book Description

New Orleans history is steeped in coffee. Outside the Cathedral of St. Louis in Jackson Square, early entrepreneurs like Old Rose provided eager churchgoers with the brew, and it was sold in the French Market beginning in the late 1700s. Caf du Monde and Morning Call started serving caf au lait more than a century ago. People gathered for business, socializing, politics and auctions at five hundred coffee exchanges and shops in the 1800s. Since 1978, myriad specialty coffee shops have opened to meet increasing demand for great coffee. Author Suzanne Stone presents the full story of this celebrated tradition, including how chicory became part of the city's special flavor.




Very New Orleans


Book Description

The exquisite antebellum mansions of the Garden District. Giant oaks stretching across boulevards and back in time to before the Civil War. The decadence of Bourbon Street. The vibrant sounds of jazz, blues, and Cajun music coming from every doorway or right from the street. Lacy iron balconies that wrap around the historic buildings of the French Quarter. A leisurely meal under a canopy of wisteria. In vibrant watercolors and detailed sketches, artist Diana Gessler captures the unique charm that makes New Orleans alluring: Mardi Gras, the Cabildo, Jackson Square, the Court of the Two Sisters, St. Louis Cemetery, the Jazz Festival, the River Road Plantations, the Cajun country, sumptuous Creole cuisine, and Audubon’s Aquarium of the Americas. In fascinating detail—on everything from the making of Mardi Gras, Napolean’s death mask, the city’s inspired architectural and garden designs, and favorite author hangouts to famous New Orleanians and Aunt Sally’s Creole pralines—Very New Orleans celebrates the city, the Cajun country, the people, and our history




In the Spirit of New Orleans


Book Description

This celebratory volume shares what makes the Crescent City so special--from its fascinating history and rich musical legacy to its enduring traditions and cultural landmarks. Includes an insider's list featuring bars for the cocktail connoisseur, venues for the music maven, and can't-miss restaurants for the gourmand.




Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New Orleans


Book Description

Winner, 2009 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History, The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Historical Association A microcosm of exaggerated societal extremes—poverty and wealth, vice and virtue, elitism and equality—New Orleans is a tangled web of race, cultural mores, and sexual identities. Jennifer M. Spear's examination of the dialectical relationship between politics and social practice unravels the city’s construction of race during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Spear brings together archival evidence from three different languages and the most recent and respected scholarship on racial formation and interracial sex to explain why free people of color became a significant population in the early days of New Orleans and to show how authorities attempted to use concepts of race and social hierarchy to impose order on a decidedly disorderly society. She recounts and analyzes the major conflicts that influenced New Orleanian culture: legal attempts to impose racial barriers and social order, political battles over propriety and freedom, and cultural clashes over place and progress. At each turn, Spear’s narrative challenges the prevailing academic assumptions and supports her efforts to move exploration of racial formation away from cultural and political discourses and toward social histories. Strikingly argued, richly researched, and methodologically sound, this wide-ranging look at how choices about sex triumphed over established class systems and artificial racial boundaries supplies a refreshing contribution to the history of early Louisiana.




New Orleans Coffee


Book Description

New Orleans history is steeped in coffee. Outside the Cathedral of St. Louis in Jackson Square, early entrepreneurs like Old Rose provided eager churchgoers with the brew, and it was sold in the French Market beginning in the late 1700s. Café du Monde and Morning Call started serving café au lait more than a century ago. People gathered for business, socializing, politics and auctions at five hundred coffee exchanges and shops in the 1800s. Since 1978, myriad specialty coffee shops have opened to meet increasing demand for great coffee. Author Suzanne Stone presents the full story of this celebrated tradition, including how chicory became part of the city's special flavor.




Mardi Gras: Chronicles


Book Description

The definitive guide to all things Mardi Gras . . . past and present! From Twelfth Night to Ash Wednesday, New Orleans is transformed. Queens and fools, demons and dragons reign over the Crescent City. This vividly photographed book is a lively, comprehensive history of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Fascinating and intimate, this book seamlessly intertwines the past with the present.







Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table


Book Description

“Makes you want to spend a week—immediately—in New Orleans.” —Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal A cocktail is more than a segue to dinner when it’s a Sazerac, an anise-laced drink of rye whiskey and bitters indigenous to New Orleans. For Wisconsin native Sara Roahen, a Sazerac is also a fine accompaniment to raw oysters, a looking glass into the cocktail culture of her own family—and one more way to gain a foothold in her beloved adopted city. Roahen’s stories of personal discovery introduce readers to New Orleans’ well-known signatures—gumbo, po-boys, red beans and rice—and its lesser-known gems: the pho of its Vietnamese immigrants, the braciolone of its Sicilians, and the ya-ka-mein of its street culture. By eating and cooking her way through a place as unique and unexpected as its infamous turducken, Roahen finds a home. And then Katrina. With humor, poignancy, and hope, she conjures up a city that reveled in its food traditions before the storm—and in many ways has been saved by them since.




New Orleans Cuisine


Book Description

"New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories provides essays on the unparalleled recognition New Orleans has achieved as the Mecca of mealtime. Devoting each chapter to a signature cocktail, appetizer, sandwich, main course, staple, or dessert, contributors from the New Orleans Culinary Collective plate up the essence of the Big Easy through its number one export: great cooking. This book views the city's cuisine as a whole, forgetting none of its flavorful ethnic influences--French, African American, German, Italian, Spanish, and more"--Page 2 of cover.




Christmas in New Orleans


Book Description

"From the festivities of yesteryear, revolving around religion and faith, to today's events, such as City Park's Celebration in the Oaks, New Orleanians observe Christmas with inimitable style. Late-night feasts, or réveillions, and rare occurrences of a winter-white Christmas are jsut a couple of nostalgic moments readers may stumble upon while perusing the pictures and warm recollections of notable locals, including Irma Thomas, Anne Rice, and Decon John Moore. In a celebration that has become as unique as the city itself, the images of a Christmas in New Orleans are classic and unforgettable. Descriptions of merriment, dating from the 1800s to post-Katrina, delicious recipes from Chef John Besh, bonfires along the levees, and the seasonal melodies of a city world renowned for its music are presented in this brilliant volume" -- inside cover.