To anyone who's interested, Crawfish Fest is going to be happening in less than 2 weeks!

If you are not familiar with it, the festival is like a smaller version of the New Orleans Jazz Fest.  There's going to be lots of New Orleans music and food.  Let's talk about the food first.  The food should be very authentic as the vendors are all from Louisiana.  As the name suggests, there's going to be lots of boiled crawfish there.  Also, there's going to be crawfish bread made by the same guy that makes it for Jazz Fest. I've only had it once at Jazz Fest, and it was so good, I can't wait to taste it again.  There's also gumbo made by Prejean's restaurant. The full menu is on the website.

As for the music, the big names going to be performing there are Allen Toussaint, The Radiators, and funky Meters ("Mardi Gras Mambo").

The location is at Augusta, NJ, which is about 1-1.5 hrs away from NYC and Central Jersey. They even have a bus that transports you from Manhattan. The price of admissions is $30, not including the food.  This is somewhat pricey, but you'll be getting some really good authentic cajun/creole food and New Orleans music.

Anyways, we are planning to go Saturday afternoon (5/31).  You are welcome to join us. Oh, and if you do decide to go, order your tickets online with the promotion code TULANE. Tulane University, my alma mater, will receive a $5 donation to the Tulane Rebuilding Fund.

Can't believe it, my little baby turned one today! Time flies. It seemed like yesterday that he was just a little baby all swaddled up. Now he's already walking. Every stage seems to go by so fast. I'm glad we have a digital camera with video features to capture all these little moments.

This past weekend we took a trip to Wegmans supermarket in Bridgwater, NJ.  Beforehand, I looked up the address from Google maps.  It seemed easy enough. It was just a few minutes north of the mall.  As we were driving near where it's supposed to be, it didn't look like an area where we would find a supermarket.  Nonetheless, we kept going for another few minutes. Still no wegmans. So I pulled to the side of the road and called them up for directions. Turns out it's south of the mall, not north, as the map has it.

This is actually not the first time I've been led astray by Google maps. There's been at least 2 or 3 other times where it's given me incorrect locations. Out of curiosity, I searched for the same wegmans using the other mapping services, including Yahoo, MSN, Mapquest, and AAA. All of them gave the incorrect location except for Yahoo. That actually didn't surprise me, as in the previous times where I've gotten bad maps from Google, I've also searched on Yahoo afterwards and found that it gave me the correct location.

So why did I still use Google maps after I've been burned before? Because I'm lazy. It's only a click away from Google and Gmail.

Here's my overview of the popular mapping services:

• Yahoo - Best accuracy. Pretty looking maps. Best labels, includes county names.
• Google - Great fast simple interface. Street view. Better user draggable routes implementation.
• MSN  - Pretty good looking maps. Unique bird's eye view (IMO much more useful than Google's street view).
• AAA - Has AAA-only point-of-interests, including AAA ratings for lodgings. Can create TripTiks. Interface a little clunkier.
• Mapquest - Used to be the best, but now other services has better features.

 I didn't even realize that today is Mardi Gras. So out of the loop.

While reminicing about New Orleans, I found this message on Chowhounds:

Longing for Lin's Bakery

Birthdays aren't the same at my house without the wonderful oriental cakes from the now defunct Lin's Bakery on Vets. Blvd. near Williams. I tried one of the whipped cream and fruit-filled cakes from Dong Phuong Oriental Bakery in N.O. East, but it just wasn't the same. A friend mentioned that they heard of an oriental bakery somewhere in Kenner that makes the cakes I'm looking for ... light yellow cake layered with whipped cream and sliced fresh strawberries, very light and absolutely delicious. Does anyone know the name of this bakery?

It feels good to see that there are others that enjoyed the cakes and really missed it. My parents made some awesome cakes back then!

Here are two free great looking online cookbooks written by a couple of famous chefs in Seattle.  The dishes are on the fancy side, but look absolutely delicious. The first book is great if you've recently gone apple-picking. If you make anything from these books, send some my way, will ya? 

All About Apples by Scott Carsberg of Lampreia   Autumn Omasake by Tatsu Nishino of Nishino, who trained under the famous Nobu Matsuhisa. Interesting Tibit: The design of the books are done by Jenny Lam, who designed many of the things in Windows Vista.