The New Orleans Brunch Experiment

The Food Experiments originated in Brooklyn, NY, but it didn't take them long to begin a national tour with stops at major culinary destinations across the country.  The food competition involves creating a themed dish to be passed out in individual servings to the numerous attendees.  For the April 3rd tour stop in New Orleans, brunch served as the inspirational theme for each team of chefs.

I partnered with Jeremy Wells of the blog Faire Les Courses to enter Team Bite and Booze into the New Orleans Brunch Experiment.  We thought, strategized, and planned for hours on our experimental dish, and finally came up with what we thought could be a winner.   We conceived a Southern-style biscuit loaded with homemade boudin, topped with cane syrup and bourbon marinated Louisiana strawberries, and served with thin-cut cinnamon apple frites.  Every biscuit and a cauldron of Cajun boudin were made from scratch.  I could tell you all about it, but it's easier to just show the video!

Jeremy and I weren't the only team to travel to NOLA from Baton Rouge.  The Louisiana Culinary Institute had a couple students represented in the competition, and Team Brunchcakes also made an impression.  Actually, that would be an understatement:

In the end, Jeremy and I were really happy with the whole event.  We felt like we did our dish justice, and despite not winning, we still had a great time.  We also rolled out the Bite and Booze carpet for this one, so it couldn't have been too bad!

After the competition we had a ton of extra boudin.  However, it tasted far too good to let it go to waste.  Stop number one was a visit to Theo's Neighborhood Pizzeria in Mid City where my buddy Andrew made a boudin pizza complete with a little buffalo sauce, pepper jack, and mozzarella cheese!

Bite and Boudin Pizza at Theo's

When I got back to Baton Rouge, I met back up with Nick Huftt, owner and operator of Curbside Truck, to discuss more boudin ideas.  It didn't take long to come up with the Bite and Boudin Burger: Curbside's special burger patty topped with my housemade boudin, black beans, divine swine cracklins, a hint of Nick's tasso aioli, and finished with an Acadian sweet heat sauce which consists of a "butter garlic hot sauce cajun spice concoction sort of a thing."  Yes please!

Curbside Truck's Bite and Boudin Burger

I love it when experiments go right!

Thanks to curbsideNICK for almost all these pictures.  Thanks to Brandon Brown for help with the video!

South Louisiana Lemonade Day

May 7th will be here before you know it, and that means South Louisiana (and other regions/cities around the country) will participate in Lemonade Day!  Bite and Booze has teamed up with Tommy's TV to get on board as an official "Media Partner" with South Louisiana's Lemonade Day!  I'm extremely excited about the opportunity to support such a great cause.  So excited, in fact, that I thought I'd share it with you!  I'd love to see some of you get involved too, especially those of you with kids out there that are ready to learn a little entrepreneurial spirit!

I recently met up with Todd Graves (Founder, CEO, and Fry Cook at Raising Cane's) and East Baton Rouge Parish's Mayor-President Kip Holden to get a little more information on South Louisiana's Lemonade Day!

Here are the main points that they wanted for me to help get out to my readers:

• Lemonade Day is open to kids of all ages
• Each child needs a Caring Adult that will help guide them through the process
• The Caring Adult can register the child at LemonadeDay.org
• Once you’ve registered online, backpacks will be available beginning this week at all  Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Greater New Orleans Raising Cane’s restaurants, MAPP Construction in Baton Rouge, Junior Achievement in NOLA, the Louisiana Children's Museum in NOLA, and Veteran's Ford in Metarie
• The backpacks include an Entrepreneur Workbook that guides the “Lemonaders” through Setting Goals, Finding Investors, Site Selection, Building a Stand, and Running a Business
• The Lemonaders are encouraged to Save a third, Spend a third, and donate a third to their favorite charity.
• Teacher’s guide and worksheets are available at LemonadeDay.org

If you're interested in learning more, here is a little bit about Lemonade Day:

What is Lemonade Day?

Lemonade Day is a nation-wide event that teaches kids the skills they need to be successful in life. Kids learn to set goals, develop a business plan, establish a budget, seek investors, provide customer service, save for the future, and give back to the community. Lemonade Day is the perfect opportunity for a community to show kids they care and train the next generation of entrepreneurs through a free, fun, engaging, and empowering activity. Last year Lemonade Day impacted more than 50,000 children nationwide. This will be South Louisiana's inaugural year, and we hope to reach as many as 5,000 children in the Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Lafayette areas.

How did it start?

Michael Holthouse, a Houston entrepreneur and philanthropist, founded Prepared 4 Life (P4L), a nonprofit that provides fun, proactive, and experiential programs infused with life skill, character education, and entrepreneurship. Inspired by the lessons he was able to teach his young daughter and her friend when they set up a lemonade stand, Holthouse launched Lemonade Day in Houston, Texas in 2007 as a community-wide, educational initiative, which has now become P4L’s number one outreach and educational priority.

When is it?

Lemonade Day will take place on Saturday, May 7th, 2011.

Who can participate?

Youth of all ages, can register to set up an official Lemonade Day stand. Kids must register with a caring adult so there are lots of opportunities for mentors and volunteers. In addition, community support from schools, youth organizations, and local businesses is essential to the success of Lemonade Day.

How does it work?

Once a child is registered they will receive a backpack with an informational workbook that outlines the steps needed to start a business: from setting a goal, creating a business plan, forming a budget, finding an investor, to saving money, and donating a portion back to the community (The children get to choose which charity to which they would like to donate a portion of their proceeds).

How can I get involved?

Everyone is welcome to be involved with Lemonade Day. We need mentors, investors, employees, and custom­ers to support participants! Sponsors and volunteers are also needed to make Lemonade Day a success! All money raised through local donations and sponsorships is used directly to support Lemonade Day in South Louisiana.

Bite Club BR - Crawfish Challenge

After the success of Bite Club BR Round 1: King Cake, it is high time to start planning the next installment!  Don't worry folks, it is sure to be a treat.  Bite Club BR Round 2: Crawfish is in the works!

#BiteClubBR will be back at the Hollywood Casino on May 21 as part of their Crawfish Festival.  There will be live music, plenty of eats, cold beer, and Bite Club!  For now though, we are still taking nominations.  So let's hear it folks: what are favorite restaurants and caterers in the Greater Baton Rouge Area serving up crawfish?  To nominate your favorite, leave a comment on this blog post, tweet it to @biteandbooze or @VisitBatonRouge, or leave it on the Jay D's Bite and Booze Blog facebook wall!  Once all the nominations are in, we'll get out more details about how you can do some taste-testing!!!

The 2011 Hammond Smokin' Blues and BBQ Challenge

This past weekend, team Bite and Booze once again competed in the annual Hammond Smokin' Blues and BBQ Challenge. The results may not have been quite what we were hoping for, but we still had a great time and cooked some fantastic barbeque.

Let's get things started by giving you a glimpse of something special.  Here's our BBQ Sauce Fountain.  Talk about a show stopper!  We had to fight the crowds away.  Please leave a comment at the bottom of this post saying how classy you think it is!

That's right... keeping it classy with a cascading BBQ Sauce Fountain and Grilled Sausage!

Thanks to everybody who came out to eat and cheer us on!  Our team - myself, Chef Eusebio Gongora, Travis Ducote, and Eric Ducote - really appreciates all the support!  Thanks to Sammy from Calandro's Super Market for coming early to help set up on Friday and hanging out all day Saturday, Ashley for coming late Friday night to relax, Jeremy for coming early Saturday morning with supplies and for assisting with the camera work on the video, and most certainly to Rush for the use of the travel trailer... what a great improvement over last year!  Also, thanks to Tony and Nani of KickersBBQ for the rub, sauce, and company!  Oh, and we also used some of the Red Stick Spice Company's applewood smoked sea salt and apple chipotle rub... you must check that out!  Finally, this video is the unveiling of the new Bite and Booze intro animation created by the one and only Hunter Brown.  Please leave a comment and let me know what you think about that and the BBQ!

Team Bite and Booze would like to thanks our title sponsor for the 2011 Hammond Smokin' Blues and BBQ Challenge:

        Additional thanks to:

                

Now, how about some more pictures from Jeremy Wells of FairelesCourses.net?

BBQ chicken plated and ready to be served to the judges

Ribs finishing on the grill after smoking for hours

Travis and Jay pull pork to plate it for the judges

Brisket resting before slicing

Geaux Past Cancer

Two great Geaux Past Cancer events are coming up soon. It's your chance to support a great local organization doing its part to support those affected by cancer.

You can find Geaux Past Cancer on the web at www.geauxpastcancer.org as well as on Facebook and Twitter (@geauxpastcancer). Geaux Past Cancer is the vision of Staci Pepitone, who lost her battle with
esophageal cancer in March 2011. The mission of Geaux Past Cancer The Staci A. Pepitone Fund, currently a field of interest fund of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, is two fold. The first is to provide financial assistance to patients of all cancers who travel extended distances to receive the proper treatment. The second is to be an active participant in the education and eradication of esophageal cancer. Geaux Past Cancer was the name of Staci's blog that she maintained throughout her treatments in New York City and Baton Rouge.  Staci served as a mentor to myself and many others during our time at LSU, and this is a great way to honor her and everything she did.  The acorn in the Geaux Past Cancer logo symbolizes the growth that Staci sought in all of the students she worked with.  She had an acorn symbol on her stationary, and now it lives on with Geaux Past Cancer.

This evening, Wednesday, March 23rd, visit On The Border for Give Back Night. A portion of all non-alcohol sales from 4pm to 10pm will be donated to the Geaux Past Cancer Staci A. Pepitone fund of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. Come enjoy some Mexican food for a great cause at On The Border on Corporate Drive in Baton Rouge.

-And-

On Saturday, April 9th at 8 AM, join the Geaux Past Cancer Mile at the Old Front Nine on the LSU Campus. The Geaux Past Cancer Mile is a one mile walk or run dedicated to those who have been affected by cancer, including our friend and namesake Staci Pepitone. Registration begins at 7:15 AM and the kickoff ceremony will begin at 8 AM and will include a show of support to cancer patients, cancer survivors and
honor the memory of our loved ones who have lost the fight with this deadly disease.

Registration is available online at http://bit.ly/geauxpastcancermile for twenty dollars ($20.00) and on the day of the race for twenty-five dollars ($25.00). If you will be participating to celebrate or remember one of your loved ones, please let us know ahead of time by emailing darrell@geauxpastcancer.org.