I´m planning my first trip home to the US of A in over 2 years (less than 2 weeks away)! I´ve been on auto-pilot while lots of stuff has been changing and going on (the end of the academic year, the booking of my flight, the finding of summer work, the starting of summer work and a completely different work schedule, two two-week-long visits from out of towners who don´t speak Spanish OR English, the World Cup, etc etc etc...), and I´m just now realizing how soon I´ll be home. (This of course means I´m just now starting to get freaked out about it.) I´m nervous and don´t really know why. I´m worried I´ll get bored, or gain 15 pounds, or there´ll be a hurricane and I´ll have to evacuate for my whole trip. I´m worried everyone´s lives will have changed so much and I´ll feel guilty for not being there. These are somewhat valid although irrational fears, but instead of letting them take over, I´m going into happiness overdrive and focusing on all the great stuff I´m gonna be doing in just 10 days!!
Having been asked many times in the past month what I want to do when I get home, I hadn´t had time to really think about it and I´ve just told people, "Ehhh, relax and see everybody, I guess." Today is the first time in over 3 weeks that I´ve had to myself and I miraculously have the energy to think about and try to plan my upcoming trip. Turns out, come to think of it, I´ve got quite a lot of stuff to accomplish in just two weeks - almost all of it revolving around FOOD (big surprise from a New Orleanian, eh? NOT).
I´ve started creating an official list of what I want to do in the States/at home, and I was thinking it´d be funny to post what I have to far. This list says a lot about what I miss back at home, about food for which there is absolutely no comparison in Spain. It also says a lot about how unhealthy my favorite New Orleans food is, jaja!
Of course included in my food tour is visiting absolutely everyone that I can since who knows when I´ll get to come back. I´ll need to get creative and incorporate visits and food since I´ve only got 2 weeks...omg, I´m gonna gain 20 pounds!!
Anyway, here´s my list of food I want to eat and stuff I want to bring back to Spain, for your viewing pleasure! What I´ve been missing for almost two years:
Eats & Drinks USA:
Eat Out:
Mushroom & Swiss Burger - Cooter Brown´s
Fried Chicken - Popeye´s
Fried Crawfish po-boy - Domilese´s
Boiled crawfish (probably not possible)
Oysters and crawfish etouffe - Acme
Chinese - Fong´s in Metairie
Thai - Sukho Thai on Royal St.
Eat In:
Fried fish and bbq shrimp - Matt´s house
Lasagña - Gramzie´s house
Gumbo - my Mawmaw´s house
Pizza - anywhere (pizza sucks in Spain!)
Drink:
Mochasippi at CC´s Coffee
Snowball at Audubon Park
Pointsettia at Mimi´s in the Marigny
Hand-grenade in the FQ
Hurricane at Pat-O´s
Thai bubble-tea anywhere
Shopping USA:
Stuff:
Vintage clothes
Okra seeds
DVDs from the dollar bin at Wal-Mart
Frisbee
Food:
Dr. Pepper
Kool-Aid watermelon-cherry mix
Abita beer
Tony´s
Liquid smoke
Curry paste
Hand-made tortillas
Mac-n-cheese
Classic Goldfish crackers
