Audubon Zoo Food (Roman Candy Company and Cypress Knee Cafe) in New Orleans, LA

I spent one afternoon in New Orleans at the Audubon Zoo. Food happened while I was there. The first thing I ate came from this nifty looking food cart called Roman Chewing Candy. Apparently this cart is a New Orleans landmark because I later started noticing it on postcards sold in gift shops elsewhere in the city.

I'd never heard of Roman candy before, but it turned out this was a type of taffy. It was being pulled right there in the cart. There was a choice of vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry. Since strawberry was being made fresh as I approached the cart, that's what I went with.

It was chewy and sweet. Like most taffy, this got horribly stuck in my molars and made me want to brush my teeth for the rest of the afternoon. Regardless, it was still a tasty candy.

The Roman candy didn't quite hold me over until I was done exploring the zoo so I stopped into a restaurant there called Cypress Knee Cafe. While all the other restaurants I passed in the zoo served typical zoo/theme park snack bar foods, Cypress Knee Cafe had a bit more interesting menu. They were located in the Louisiana Swamp section of the park, and had appropriately themed local cuisine.

I hadn't had any jambalaya while visiting New Orleans. I ordered it here to remedy this. Cypress Knee Cafe served a decent sized bowl filled with flavorful rice and chicken. I didn't get any shrimp or sausage in my bowl which are normally standards in the jambalaya I've had in the past. I don't know if these aren't in the zoo's recipe for jambalaya or if I just got a bad mix in my bowl. Regardless of the lack of variety in the meats, when it comes to the flavor of the jambalaya here, it surpassed my low expectations for a snack bar in a zoo.

Seashore Sweets' in Disney's Boardwalk Hotel

Yesterday was National Peanut Butter Cookie Day. I couldn't find how or why June 12 was assigned to peanut butter cookies, or why it is only national rather than international, but the holiday is a good reason to eat a cookie. I happened to be at Disney's Boardwalk Hotel and decided to find a peanut butter cookie to celebrate.

We tried the Boardwalk Bakery first. They had a nice cookie selection, but peanut butter was nowhere to be found. Not that easily defeated, we moved a few stores down to Seashore Sweets'. On the top shelf of their pastry case, they had a giant Mickey Mouse shaped peanut butter cookie. It was horribly expensive for a cookie at $5.49, but this was in a Disney hotel and it was a cookie holiday, so the cookie was purchased.

The cookie was huge, but it was also a bit disappointing. It was horribly dry in the part not covered in chocolate. The person who I shared it with described the cookie as being similar to eating a dog biscuit. Not sure how many dog biscuits she has eaten to know this, but I was expecting better from a Disney bakery. Our local supermarket chain has better peanut butter cookies.

Regardless of this cookie being really dry, it still served served the purpose of celebrating National Peanut Butter Cookie Day. I highly doubt I'd get one of these cookies again, but I hope the rest of the baked goods from Seashore Sweets' are better...

Zeno's Boardwalk Sweet Shop in Daytona Beach, FL

Zeno's Boardwalk Sweet Shop is an ice cream shop and candy store attached to a t-shirt store located less than a block from the Daytona Beach Boardwalk.

They had a taffy machine in the window that seemed to be doing a good job of bringing in customers when I visited.

I tried a scoop of their Coconut Joy ice cream in a cake cone. It had plenty of toasted coconut and actually did taste pretty similar to an Almond Joy candy...

Happy Halloween

What happened to the trick or treaters? Two years ago, over 100 came through collecting candy. This year, only 19. Still better than last year's 10...

Halloween Candy

Happy Halloween!

This was a very strange Halloween. Last year over 100 trick or treaters came to the house to collect candy. This year there was a grand total of TEN! I don't get it though. Halloween was on a Friday night this year, and yet nobody was out. In my neighborhood, there were very few houses giving out candy too. Did everyone decide not to celebrate Halloween this year? It looks like I have a whole lot of candy to eat now.

Even though hardly any trick or treaters saw it, I still put up my Halloween display. The pictures below are of some of the monsters that I build, all from scratch, mostly from paper mache:

Halloween Candy Corn

Target now has their Halloween department set up, and a bag of candy corn was purchased. Eating one or two pieces of the candy is good, but beyond that, the candy gets sicky-sweet. For some reason the non-traditional pumpkin-shaped candy corns tasted the best, although it's all the same candy.

I still want to try a a few of Hershey's Candy Corn and Pumpkin Spice Kisses that I originally saw at Hershey's Chocolate World. It's all too much candy though!