Ponchatula Strawberry Festival

Back in April, we drove up to Ponchatula for the annual Ponchatula Strawberry Festival. Ponchatula is on the northern end of the isthmus running between Lakes Ponchartrain and Marepas, and is locally famous for its strawberries, and has a festival every year to celebrate. There's a ton of strawberry-related food available, and a bit of country-fair atmosphere.

Of course, the REAL reason to go to the Strawberry Fest is for the ginormous strawberry daiquiris, which we bought from the booth run by the family of this year's queen.


(Just kidding. And don't worry; we split that between us). But really, what country fair would be complete without deep-fried things that have no business being deep-fried? We had the choice of chocolate and vanilla deep-fried strawberries; we got one of each. They taste exactly the way you would expect, which is to say, AWESOME.


When I say country fair, I really do mean country fair. The festival itself is in a park a few blocks off the main drag, and on those couple of blocks leading up to the park. They have country fair rides and game booths set up in the park, and food lining the outter edge of the park. There are more food and drink stands on the city street leading up to the park. On the main street of Ponchatula, all the businesses stay open during the festival for all the foot traffic.


And finally, here is our real main mission of the day: a flat of strawberries (yes we could have gotten it back in New Orleans, but that wouldn't have been as much fun). Nora shows off the flat we bought for $8. It has since been turned into several jars of strawberry jam.


The festival is so popular that we had to park about a mile outside of town, on the road leading into Ponchatula from I-55. There are farmers lined up all along that road into town, so we just bought our flat from the stand closest to the car.

Friday Cat Blogging: foster cats edition

(Cue Jaws music) Oh no, it's a scary shark!


Wait, no...that's just Wally, one of the cats we are fostering. And here's his brother, Marty, who we are also fostering.


Wally and Marty were found in the parking lot of the local Wal-mart, which is how they were named. Nora likes to call Wally Wall-e, like the movie. He even responds to that. We are fostering Wally and Marty on behalf of ARNO, so they are staying with us just for a bit. When we took in Tony last summer, we were debating between him and these two guys. We eventually went with Tony because we thought no one would take him, and Wally and Marty would get adopted relatively quickly. But no, they are still at ARNO. Wally had a tooth infection, and is still recovering from that. Marty is very shy. Both have gotten a bit antisocial from being coupped up in a cage at ARNO next to the dogs. So they are staying with us until Wally is recovered and both of them are more social. Then we hope to get them to a forever home without much more time at ARNO.

They currently spend a lot of time in the closet, which is where we see them here. They are living in our office and listening to NPR and classical music all day, and slowing unferalling.