brisket Archives - Lani Kingston

Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana.

THE BIG DAY HAS ARRIVED!!

One of my top bucket list items, it’s time for Mardi Gras in New Orleans. We woke up super early to have breakfast with Anthony’s housemate Lee and his friends – sausage and eggs to fuel us for a long day of drinking, dancing, and jumping for beads.

The house is right on the parade route on St Charles, so we sat inside in the warm until the parade tracker told us it was time to head out. As the parade drew closer, more and more of Lee’s friends turned up until we had about 12 people waiting. Finally, we heard the bands marching down the street so there was a mad scramble to head outside to catch the beginning of the first (and best) parade of the day, Zulu.

It was my favourite parade of the week – awesome things were being tossed out of the floats, footballs, parasols, coconuts – there was such an excited vibe in the crowd. They had the best marching bands too – you couldn’t help but just all dance in the street.
Read more

English Tea Rooms, mesquite grilled chicken + smoked brisket in a Frontier Town.

We drove up to the little towns Carefree and Cave Creek in Arizona for the day today. First stop was afternoon tea at the famous English Rose Tea Rooms in Carefree (on Easy Street. Yep. On Easy Street in Carefree).

These tea rooms had popped up in my culinary searches of Arizona – run by a woman from the UK, they are a hotspot for ‘ladies who lunch’ to dress up in fancy hats and dresses and dine on cucumber sandwiches, real British scones with clotted cream and jam, and a huge selection of teas.

I had scones with a pot of black rose tea, and sat underneath a decorative chandelier of teapots and teacups, next to flowers and British flags. I am in training to move to London it seems!

Afterwards, we drove to Bartlett’s Lake, a typical National Lampoons style American family holiday summer lake.
Read more