The tagline on their website says it all. When cello player for the late 90s Alt-Rock band Treadmill Trackstar Heidi Carey emailed me about her love of po’ boys and whiskey, she informed me of her recently reunited band’s finished effort to produce an album – after a ten year hiatus – funded entirely by donations from fans and supporters, entitled i belong to me. Intrigued by the idea I gave the album a listen, and I’m impressed with it. I mean, strictly from a technical standpoint it really can’t be easy to put out a well-produced, decent sounding album (as this is) after such a hiatus, while simultaneously tackling the issue of having absolutely no money, but Treadmill Trackstar managed to pull it off.

On that note, Heidi said:

The donation thing was crazy, we just sent out an email to our old (like 10 year old) list. About half came back as dead addresses so we set up a sort of public radio style fund raising effort on our website. We totally didn’t expect it to work and for about 3 months it didn’t!  But then, money started showing up in our PayPal account.  [...] We like to think that folks wanted a new Treadmill record!   I think it was just a proper alignment of the stars or something.

TT’s “non-profit band” formula of making music for music’s sake is entirely – and ironically – new and refreshing in this day and age. This mentality actually feeds into a feeling you develop as you listen to the album; they’ve clearly put a lot of love into it and it actually makes the music feel better. Describing the music is a touch tricky since it enjoys a wide range, but the term that keeps sticking in my mind is “slightly moodier Foo Fighters with a dash of Smashing Pumpkins.” …and a cello. Try track 8, Hands Off (available free to listen on their website) for a very good sense of what they’re all about.

Since the individual members are all currently with family and settled down, you won’t be seeing them any time soon at the 8×10. But for their next project they’re apparently attempting to develop a full blown ROCK OPERA, with all proceeds from their current album and individual “investments” going entirely to the production. It will be interesting to see where it leads. But for now, check out Treadmill Trackstar’s i belong to me at their website or Facebook.

(Album available on iTunes)

Po Boys, Po Boys, Po Boys

Chances are pretty high that if you’re going to New Orleans and someone you know has already been there and you’re talking to them about New Orleans, they will say something to the effect of “OMG OMG G O JOMGOGMGOMG PO BOYS DDROOOOL.”  Sure enough, New Orleans is awash (hehehe) in Po Boys, their version of a Hoagie/Grinder/Sub/Whatever. From reading entirely too much on the matter, I came to find that the only functional difference between a Po Boy and any other sandwich/sub on Earth is the use of French bread – which is actually great, since the crust is nice and crisp while the inside is soft. Wonderful for sandwiches without a lot of runny toppings, but in the event that you throw on some gravy fries (as I did) onto your sandwich, you’re gonna end up with a really soggy mess on the bottom.

Case in point: the Ferdi. This rather famous sandwich prepared by Mother’s Restaurant comes on French bread with baked ham, roast beef, debris (in gravy), shredded cabbage, creole mustard and mayo. To be certain, it’s one of the best sandwiches ever and I’d eat an entire plate of debris by itself. But the gravy goes straight to the bottom of the bread and causes it to disintegrate, leaving you with a pile of stuff to eat.

Then again, if you’re like me you’ll eat the whole thing in 2 minutes flat and not have to worry about it. Yeaaaah buddy.

Furthermore, it also seems like the most popular thing to do for 99% of all restaurants serving Po Boys around town is to pile them to the ceiling with fried seafood. Fried oysters, fried shrimp, fried gator tails, fried catfish, fried crawdads, fried fries, it goes on like that for a while (but no fired clams, surprisingly!). It actually begs the question: Why doesn’t Baltimore do this? We’re pretty obsessed with seafood on the whole and I rarely see fried insert seafood here subs around town. Come to think of it, a lake trout Po Boy would be pretty awesome…

To the point, you can’t go anywhere in New Orleans without tripping over a Po Boy. They’re everywhere. Most places do a serviceable job of putting together a nice sandwich for you but real trick is finding the best ones – much like finding a decent deli pretty much anywhere, anymore. So if you go, try Domilese’s, Mother’s, or Sugar Shack. You won’t be disappointed!

…and for an honorable mention try Tomatillo’s for their “niño pobre,” which is basically just a wrap but they were pretty awesome folks and have live music (including a rockabilly version of “When The Saints go Marching In”) often times.

A week or so ago I had the pain/pleasure of spending some time in New Orleans during what must have been the coldest four day period in the history of New Orleans, with the exception of the last ice age (maybe). And since walking around the Garden District seemed less appealing in freezing rain, I ate. And ate and ate and ate. Here’s some of what I ate.

Breakfast in New Orleans

First and easiest of all, Cafe Du Monde. Every single tourist in the city can be found there every morning and it’s not hard to figure out why; they serve two things – coffee and doughnuts. I don’t know when the Cafe decided to start calling them beignets officially but I’m guessing it has something to do with the place being house within “The original French Market.” Regardless, I found photographic evidence that they did in fact used to just call them “Doughnuts.”

All this aside, realistically beignets are remarkably similar in every way imaginable to one food thing in particular: FUNNEL CAKE. They taste the exact same and have the exact same consistency. So from now on, I will refer to Cafe Du Monde as “That funnel cake place.” And so should you.

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Fortunately, if coffee and funnel cake isn’t your thing there are plenty of places to grab a full service breakfast in the Crescent City. My favorite place for a regular ol’ breakfast turned out to be Daisy Dukes, a 24/7 diner type place with a pretty awesome breakfast menu, including a cajun omelet (pictured, with sausage/onion/parsley/tomato/paprika/black pepper) with all the fixins for $8.95 – not too shabby.

And of course, the holy grail of all breakfast experiences in New Orleans is the vaunted Jazz Brunch. There are numerous, numerous places to enjoy a decent Sunday brunch with some hoppin’ jazz music, but after much deliberation I settled on a place called Buffa’s Lounge, a fairly low key locals bar with a Jazz Brunch featuring a special menu every week. The folks there are super friendly and make some fantastic home cooked meals. For more PR, check out their video for a bit of the experience!

So that’s some of what you can expect from breakfast in New Orleans. Stay tuned for part 2!!

What: Turkey Wrap Where: Cafe Azafran (3700 San Martin Dr, Johns Hopkins Homewood) How Much: $8.50 Synopsis: It’s not often that I would use Mealtime! to disparage something I’m eating, but this turkey wrap – despite its decent flavor – was small and exceedingly expensive considering you could just as easily get the same thing one block away at a place like Hopkins Deli. I mean, daaaaayamn it’s expensive. Anybody else out there have an opinion on the matter? How much should a turkey wrap cost?

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What: Flag Pizza (large, 16″) Where: Joe Squared (133 W North Ave., Charles North) How Much: $23 (yikes!) Synopsis: Posting anything about Joe Squared is kind of an afterthought since practically everyone knows it’s a superior place to get a ‘gourmet’ pizza. And this pizza, split into three different pizzas (standard cheese, four cheese, pesto and mozzarella) is living …er, pizza proof of that.

Each section has a distinct flavor, and the 16″ pie was large enough to split between 3 people. Which for $23 comes out to be around 8 bucks a head, which is pretty reasonable. I did note, however, that the “flag” aspect of the pizza is supposed to be Italy (right?) but the cheddar adorning the middle portion makes it yellow, which apparently is the flag for Mali. Eh, whichever continent you’re into, I guess. Thumbs up for this pizza.

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