New Orleans in 2018 party notes

[hazelchaz]

New Orleans in 2018 pre-bid party at Loscon, November 2011

Photos start here.

We served:
Jambalaya
Red Beans & Rice
Muffalatta dip with saltines. Next time make a half batch.

Soft drinks included a lot of fruit flavors. The only colas were in the diet section. If you wanted caffeine and sugar, you could have a Sunkist Orange, or try one of the other parties.

(Sunkist Orange, Cactus Cooler, Cherry Crush, Seven-Up, Welch's Strawberry, Squirt, Welch's Grape, Diet Pepsi, Diet Coke, Diet Coke Zero, Diet Mountain Dew.)

Snowballs. We had six flavors of syrup, we didn't go through much of any of them. (We could fill the “ketchup bottles” at home and not bring the gallon jugs to the hotel at all.) Next time only need one can of sweetened condensed milk.

We had a reasonably well-stocked bar as far as spirits go, anyway. We served slushy drinks. Margaritas were incredibly popular! Next year, split the snow in half for the bar and snowball station elsewhere. For transport, use the jumbo cooler to get the dry ice and keep the snow frozen and cooler closed on the drive back from Gardena.

Decorations included purple and gold lengths of fabric. Next year get green, too.

Things to add to New Orleans party at Loscon 2012:

Devilled eggs. Color them? Maybe black sprinkles for the Saints (Black & gold)?

King cake. Bake our own.

Small prepared muffalatta sandwiches.

Research sno-ball machines and recipes.

Things to consider:
Beignets
Some kind of po' boy sandiwch
shrimp & cocktail sauce in bowl over ice
New Orleans Barbecue, which is different from Kansas City
Bananas Foster
Red Velvet mini-cupcakes, bite-size, with white frosting

I would personally like to get some Abita Beer.

library_lynn and Maria enjoyed coloring the party signs. In addition to having full-color party signs, can we have ones that are even more suited for coloring?

Need menu signs for what's available. Make individual signs for everything we hope to serve.

Need high-resolution art images. Can we get a good, clear, square-on shot of a street sign that we can then manipulate ourselves?

missmea needs a spare bartender, and an assistant throughout the night. It was a long time to be on her feet. Stool for bartender!

Notes for pre-bid materials.

Lots of people asked "who's running the proto-bid." The flyer answered that question, a whole new group of people. Lots of enthusiasm for the project.

One fan copy-edited the flyers, catching a handful of typos. Another costumer still remembers the problem with the Masquerade's dressing rooms not being cleaned before the fans were to use them. And I was cautioned not to use the word "Nolacon" when talking about the proto-bid as it would be premature to use the Worldcon name.

In general there was a lot of good wishes for the New Orleans group.

Comments

Response from New Orleans part 2

[hazelchaz]

King cake is also a good idea, but Raymond and I have discussed the issue and we think it would be better if we shipped ya'll a king cake than if ya'll tried to make one over there. To head off comments from smart asses who may criticize you on the timing, you might want to post a small sign advising people that you know it's not carnival season until January 6th and, thus, not proper king cake season, but you're serving one anyway because they're characteristic of New Orleans. Besides, we come up with excuses for serving king cake at other times of the year here anyway, like decorating them with black and gold sugars for Saints games.

Finally, on the issue of barbeque, we don't have a local style of barbeque, unless you're talking about Pascal's Manale's much-copied barbeque shrimp. It's a really tasty dish and doesn't require the use of a grill or smoker. It's braised. To serve it for a party crowd, you need to commit the blasphemy of peeling the shrimp before cooking it. It can then be ladled over rice or grits or spooned onto po-boy sandwiches. A couple of restaurants here make it into po-boys by hollowing out one end of the sandwich to make a kind of cup to put the shrimp into so you don't have to worry about the sauce running everywhere. A barbeque shrimp po-boy needs nothing else added to it.

By the way, I appreciate that ya'll decorated the suite in honor of my alma mater, LSU, whose colors are purple and gold. I hope that Raymond didn't take it as a snub of Tulane that the green was left out. He's a fan of Tulane, you see. Did you know that there's a local legend concerning the seeming division of those colors between the two rival schools that has to do with their being the colors of Mardi Gras? Amusing coincidence, to me, anyway.

Rebecca