I’m still swooning.

New Orleans, New Orleans, your hot, steamy mornings, washed away by afternoon lighting, thunder and pouring rain. Your avenues lined with sprawling live oaks and tall Victorian houses iced with curls of white and pink and purple paint. Your summery libations inside dusky, cool old bars with peeling paint walls, elegant gray-haired waiters wearing bow ties, Luciano Pavarotti wailing over the sound system, and $5 cocktails. Your parked bikes and street musicians and tarot card readers on every other corner. Your beignets and cafe au lait whisked to a table by a tiny Asian man wearing a paper hat. Your free ferries. Your haunted, affordable hotels. Your streetcars. Your meaty, medium-rare hamburgers! And, yes, your Katrina-ed neighborhoods and your questionable government and your complicated, tangled problems. You’re bewitching and fascinating, old and mysterious and like no other place on earth.

For a cook and a writer, and an urban planner-to-be and a photographer, this was the perfect place to be. Kelly and I ate and we gawked at old houses and buildings, walked until the blisters came, took a cocktail break, then ate and walked and gawked some more.

We got to New Orleans late on a Tuesday afternoon, weary from a long drive off the interstate winding through the Louisiana swamps that we hoped would be more scenic, but was probably just more, well, long. After we checked into our hotel (”There’s sherry every afternoon form 3 to 6, but longer if I’m here,” the receptionist drawled charmingly), we stumbled around the French Quarter, half-heartedly looking for a bar that wasn’t full of screaming co-eds hoisting daiquiris. We rounded a corner, and walked into Napoleon House, and discovered Pimm’s Cup.

The foundation of Pimm’s Cup is Pimm’s No. 1, a gin-based liquor flavored with citrus and spices from England. The color of claret and slightly syrupy, its origins were in the name of health, but its evolved to become a popular tipple with the cricket, regatta and garden party set. God knows how it arrived in New Orleans. But I pity the weary, hot traveler who didn’t have access to it around 6 p.m. on a May afternoon. There are other drinks in New Orleans - we had some hefty hurricanes as a prelude to our hamburgers one night, rum mixed with rum they were - but nothing in my mind goes down as refreshingly. Sipping a Pimm’s Cup is like sitting in a glider on a front porch, watching a July thunderstorm pass by.

I found Pimm’s No. 1 easily in New Orleans, $19.95 at a crowded, dusty liquor store in the upper French Quarter manned by a woman eating popcorn off a paper plate. I haven’t had the heart to seek it out more locally - yet. I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed, and then I’ll have to slog through the rest of summer, hot and sticky. However, if you can’t find it, there’s hope. According to Wikipedia, “a close approximation to Pimm’s No. 1 can be prepared by mixing one measure of gin with one Orange Curacao and one red vermouth.” Good to know. Hope I don’t have to try. And hope that you don’t, either.

Pimm’s Cup adapted from Napoleon House

Take a tall glass (about 12 oz) and fill with ice. Add 1 1/4 oz. Pimm’s No. 1 and 3 oz. lemonade. Finish with a generous splash of 7-up or Sprite. Garnish with a slice of cucumber. The British prefer to add borage leaves, strawberries, lemon and orange slices. Take out onto a porch or in the backyard. Sit, stir and sip.

We’ll be New Orleans-bound in a few days, and I’m trying to use up what we have in the fridge. Well, and the garden.

I’ve been quite fussy about my mesclun, giving it a long, cold drink of water every evening. This is my first shot at growing delicate leafy greens. A few weeks ago, they were a palm full of speckish seeds. Trouble is, this North Carolina spring has been fickle - chilly, then blazing hot, then freezing. We turned the heat off, giddily, only to have to crank it up again the first week of May. Now, it’s off for good. I hope. The weather this week has stayed solidly in the 70s, sunny and dry. But I have this gut feeling that the mercury will creep up while we’re gone next week. My pretty ruffle of green will deflate like an ironed shirt on an August day. There’ll go our salads.

In the fridge I found the remains of last Saturday’s farmers’ market haul: some young radishes, small, with the just a hint of heat in their crispy white flesh, and half of a tangy white goat cheese crotin from Goat Lady Dairy . I snipped some greens from the garden (for very tiny salads; microgreens, how chic are we), grabbed some sea salt, olive oil and a shallot from the pantry, and some good butter from the fridge, et voila, ten minutes later - supper. Radishes with butter and salt, salad, cheese, bread. Waste not, want not.

This is one of my favorite vinaigrettes. It’s snappy and tart, but also one of the quickest if you have shallots and champagne vinegar already on hand - and you really should. They’re indispensable friends to salads, and this time of year, you’ve got to treat your salad right.

Shallot vinaigrette makes enough for two good-sized salads, maybe more

About two tablespoons minced fresh shallot
2-4 tablespoons of good olive oil
4-5 tablespoons of champagne vinegar (depending on your taste)
Salt, pepper and brown sugar, to taste. Mix vigorously with a whisk to combine.

On another note…if you’ll have any recommendations for your beloved beignet, or your crawfish crush, let me know. We’re also heading toward Mobile, taking a swing at oysters on the Gulf Coast, then zipping over to Louisiana’s southwest corner for cracklin’ and boudin. Memphis (dry-rubbed ribs) and perhaps Oxford will come a little later in the week.

I’ve been out of the office, in Florida, to be precise, the not-always-sunshiny-state. It was no vacation (someone had to find this), but it was inspiring and I’ve returned somewhat revived. St. Petersburg won’t go down in my little notebook as a culinary destination, but, to be fair, I didn’t have that much time to explore because of afore-alluded to work activities, nor much in the way of transportation. I hoofed it all over downtown, though, where I found clovey, citrusy Hefeweizen in the proper towering glasses, lime-marinated So-Cal carnitas, brandy-flamed saganaki, pastel-colored bungalows and fiery hibiscus and lush foliage. I drank my beer outside in the warm, breezy night and learned how to play the card game PIG. It felt like a North Carolina April, and has me very excited about spring, delicate lettuces, asparagus, being outdoors on a front porch with more beer and friends and probably some fireworks Kelly imported from south of the border.

The St. Pete black list was much longer, unfortunately. I won’t dwell on it - just take note a certain restaurant actually called Cha Cha Coconuts is on it.

But I’d still happily come back!

So I’m trying to eek out the tropical zen a little longer, despite U.S. Airways’ best efforts to disrupt it. My traveling wasn’t over, even when I got back after many delays and hurdles courtesy of the airline industry. Yesterday, my first day home, I stopped by Trader Joe’s on my way back from Raleigh (I had to make a morning trip there). Now, I’m not wild about product placement, but I like a good tip, and I have to tell you - this place is worth a detour.

Many of you living on the West coast probably already know about the joys of Trader Joe’s - mainly, cheapy cheap delicacies, especially a huge line of frozen food exotica - from wild blueberries to curries to Italian seafood stew - developed by the company in-house. I’m not a huge fan of frozen anything, except if I gather it myself, but I don’t have time to make tamales and chicken chile verde every week, and Trader Joe’s does. The stores are slowly making their way east, and this is North Carolina’s first branch, though it seems as if Charlotte is in for at least two soon.

I don’t if I’d been to Cary since high school, when my cross country team was stomped in a few races at a large park there. A location largely known for its concentration of rootless relocatees, beige-colored, over-sized homes, privileged schools, soccer parks and expensive cars, it’s not a city beloved by many North Carolinians. Sometimes, it gets called “Scary,” perhaps a little unfairly. I got a little lost there yesterday, but since I was still riding that zen wave, I didn’t mind. You all might want to print out better directions. Seriously, all of Cary looks the same.

But check out my loot:

My spoils include three bottles of wine, one white and two red, two kinds of salsa, four pounds of coffee, pistachio-encrusted dark choclate toffee, ginger-speckled shortbread, chicken and chile and cheese tamales, garlic naan, granola, sesame soba noodles, cinnamon chocolate cookies, Marcona almonds, and fresh gnocchi. Damn. It was ridiculously crowded, which made things all the more “quest-like.” I had to really push through the soccer moms to get those Marcona almonds. Cary, if you can provide me with $3.49 prosciutto, I can make time for more visits.

I have another field trip for you. This may come to a surprise to many of you in the Tar Heel State - it’s a sojourn rich in meat but, no, it’s not barbecue. If you live anywhere near Greensboro (as in 100 miles), please get in the car right now and take yourself to Giacomo’s, an Italian market and salumeria. There are two locations to serve you.

The marinated eggplant and red peppers (I believe vegetarian-friendly) are especially stunning, rich, lusty, with the heft of a buttery steak. Giacomo’s makes its own everything - salamis, pepperonis, dry hot sausages, sopressata, ravioli, sauces, rice balls, cold antipasti salads. There are cold bottles of espresso soda. There is a store brand of olive oil, in bottles big enough for wine. There are sfogliatelle, thick rippled pastries the shape and size of large clams, and filled with orange-flecked cream. There are amazing sandwiches, dripping with the marinated vegetables, the house-cured meats and fresh mozzarella on good, crusty buns. When I tried to sweet talk the one of the burly men behind the counter into opening a satellite location to the west, he told me with a deadly serious face that the food might not be as wonderful if they get any bigger. “The same four guys make everything,” he said. That’s an answer I can live with.

But don’t forget these guys came from Brooklyn.

Happy travels!