Sure, the beads and bright colors might be attractive. The parades might give off the allure of 24/7 fun. But even when attending Mardi Gras, the main reason many of us love New Orleans so much is the food. Even dishes we’ve come to know so well taste better in the Big Easy. While it might not be feasible for everyone to make the pilgrimage to New Orleans this February, we can always create a little Mardi Gras of our own, right in our own kitchens. Here are a few staples of the New Orleans recipe book.

Jambalaya

Really, you don’t need a special occasion to enjoy jambalaya. It’s a great meal for any time. The best part about jambalaya, aside from the name, is that you can do almost anything with it. Really, the only staples of the dish are rice, tomatoes, and bell peppers. After that you can add almost anything you can imagine. While a traditional New Orleans jambalaya will traditionally contain andouille sausage and shrimp, there are dozens upon dozens of other options. You can also add your own blend of seasonings, spices, and vegetables to get it just how you want it. If you need a guide, and we all do at first, here are a couple of popular recipes:

Emeril’s Mardi Gras Jambalaya
Eula Mae’s chicken and ham jambalaya

Gumbo

Another simple dish you’ll see on many non-New Orleans restaurant menus is gumbo. As with jambalaya it’s a versatile dish, so you can create many variations for your own home. It’s in many ways akin to chili, though in many cases it’s a bit soupier and lighter. Still, it’s a great dish to really experiment and find your own sweet spot. As in most cases, it’s best to search around for a basic recipe and an exotic recipe, and then compare them. That should give you an idea of what you can do with your own gumbo. But if you’re looking for some traditional New Orleans gumbo, here’s a good one.

Good New Orleans Creole Gumbo

And if you want something a little heartier:

Chicken Andouille Gumbo

Crawfish Etouffee

This is something I’ve only had at restaurants, but it’s easy to imagine making it at home. It, like so many other New Orleans dishes, is normally served over a bed of rice. I always love this, because the rice absorbs some of the sauces, giving it its own flavor. The only problem with making this at home is that it might not be easy to find crawfish in your area. You might have to place an order online, at an outlet such as Louisiana Crawfish Company. Once you get those suckers, though, you’re in for a hearty and delicious meal.

Crawfish Etouffee

King Cake

We finish off with a rich and filling dessert, King Cake. It might not seem like much, but this dough-based recipe is one of the most delicious desserts you’ll ever taste. It will definitely take some special shopping, but once you find the ingredients, at your supermarket or online, you’ll be able to finish off a traditional New Orleans meal with one of its stealthily decadent desserts.

Sandra Lee’s King Cake
Suzan Jackson’s King Cake

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m finding myself scouring the web for cheap flights and New Orleans hotels. Mardi Gras is, after all, just a little over a month away.

Joe Pawlikowski is the editor of Prepaid Reviews a site that provides news, commentary, and reviews of prepaid wireless services, such as Tracfone.

One of the most exciting parts — and perhaps the most exciting part — of traveling is experiencing different cuisines. We might get a quality variety of food while at home, but there’s just something about tasting food from a different culture. Whether it’s simply another region of the country or it’s another country altogether, we all enjoy experiencing foods that we simply cannot at home.

The problem is that it can be difficult, if not impossible, to travel at certain points in life. Kids, bundles of joy that they are, mostly prevent extravagant travel. Even if they don’t, they probably won’t want to try the array of foods you want. If they’re anything like my siblings and I growing up, they want McDonald’s for as many meals as possible. Thankfully, there are simple ways to enjoy authentic cuisines right from our homes. It just takes some ingenuity and elbow grease.

Culturally themed restaurants

You might think this is a section detailing how you can find restaurants in your area that serve cuisines foreign to your region. I’m sorry, but that’s just not the case. It’s actually pretty difficult to find authentic cuisine at a random restaurant. Too often it’s a watered-down, lowest common denominator form of the cuisine. What’s the fun in that?

This isn’t even addressing Chinese food, which really isn’t what they eat in China. It’s about any kind of themed restaurant. That restaurant that offers New Orleans flavors? Chances are it’s not quite. Since it’s new and different to the people outside of New Orleans, it’s often tweaked as to make the natives comfortable. And that takes away from its authenticity.

Maybe you’re lucky and have a restaurant or two in your area that do serve authentic cuisines from other regions of the country and world. If so, count yourself lucky. They’re not common, so you’ve stumbled upon a gem.

Cooking yourself

This blog is mostly about cooking, so you probably guessed by this point that cooking yourself is the best way to experience foods from other cultures. It’s not exactly easy, though. There are a few steps you’ll need to take before you can dig into these recipes.

1. Research, research, research. If you don’t know the type of cuisine served in a region, how will you know whether a recipe is authentic or not? It takes plenty of research before you know exactly what kinds of dishes you’d eat in a certain region, and which are hybrids made for diners with less sophisticated palates. Thankfully, a little googling can go a long way in this case. Be sure to look for articles and videos that deal with cultural elements as well as food. The more knowledge, the better.

2. Find recipes. Now we get to a more fun step. Here we can take our research further, looking into what specific restaurants in our favored regions serve. Even better, we can find articles and videos — Food Network is great for this — wherein restauranteurs talk about what goes into their dishes. Having a knowledge of what works with what, along with a few simple recipes, can help greatly. With the knowledge and recipes in hand, we can be sure of creating something reasonably authentic.

3. Shopping for ingredients. More and more grocery stores now have international aisles that carry items you might need for your recipes. If, for instance, you want to cook something Thai, you’ll find plenty of sauces and ingredients that you won’t find in an American-only grocery store. Even better, look for specialty supermarkets. You might not have one in your area, but make sure to search Yelp just to make sure. You’re much more likely to find key ingredients there than you are even at a supermarket with a robust international section.

Bite the bullet and travel

While you can have tons of fun researching cuisines, hunting down ingredients, and cooking authentic meals for yourself, there is always a little joy in traveling to these regions. Not only do you get the food, but you get the whole experience. That’s not something you can recreate in your kitchen. Of course, it’s a whole lot more expensive than finding the ingredients yourself.

Say you want to visit Dallas to try some of their world-famous barbecue. You can scour the web for cheap flights and even find a reasonably priced Dallas hotel. It’s still going to cost you plenty, though. And no, the kids won’t magically disappear for the weekend. So there are still plenty of obstacles in the way. But it’s still possible if you have the freedom and are willing to pay up.

For those of us who don’t and can’t, cooking at home is certainly a better alternative to finding a local restaurant. Chances are it’s not authentic cuisine, anyway. Even better, learning to cook new cuisines can bring new skills. And who doesn’t want to add a few new tricks to their culinary arsenals?

Joe Pawlikowski is the editor of Prepaid Reviews a site that provides news, commentary, and reviews of prepaid wireless services, such as Tracfone.

My friend Grace Becker has a long history of making money from what she’s good at – baking!  Over at Dough Raising Mom she’s sharing great resources and advice for others who want to build a home based business around their love of the kitchen.

Check out the free coaching group that she has going on right now.  Register and you can ask her questions about anything.

Sign up here: Free Group Coaching

This is a guest post

It seems that everyone, from specialty markets to your popular chain grocery store, is going organic these days. An ever-increasing number of people are interested in purchasing natural, whole foods created without the aid of pesticides or harmful chemicals. This is a wonderful attitude to adopt and many organic foods can, indeed, give you a respite from hormone-fed meat or chemical-laden produce. However, it’s also important to know what going organic isn’t. Going organic is not a food, environment, or lifestyle miracle. Below are the most common myths about going organic:

Myth #1: Organic food contains fewer pesticides than traditional produce

This is perhaps most often the first fact proponents of the organic movement cite. However, organic farmers use pesticides, too; they simply use different pesticides— some of which are even less regulated than their traditional counterparts. Additionally, all produce, organic or not, is susceptible to bacteria in soil runoff, like e. coli. So, don’t think you can take a pass on washing your produce just because it’s organic!

Myth #2: Purchasing organic food will help the environment

“Organic” does not equal “local.” In fact, only 16% of Whole Foods’ organic goods are locally grown or manufactured, and the rest require a great dose of Co2 emissions to reach your table. Additionally, organic farming is less productive than traditional farming, which means it uses more land and resources to get the job done. It also takes more energy to grow fruit or vegetables in a climate where they don’t typically grow—often much more, requiring special heating, bigger equipment, and more.

Myth #3: Purchasing organic meat and produce will support small, local businesses

Nearly every major corporation, from Kellogg’s to Kraft, has jumped on the organic bandwagon; and don’t expect to see their names on the packaging. Most major food companies call their organic affiliate by another name (Kraft, for example, uses the moniker Back to Nature). To make sure you’re actually supporting a local business or farm, and not just another major conglomerate, you may have to do a little more research or choose a smaller, more local grocery store.

Myth #4: Organic food is healthier and tastier

The true secret to finding produce that is nutrient-rich and delicious is making sure it’s in season. Raspberries are most likely to taste their richest during the warm

summer months, while pear or squash hit their peak during the fall. Familiarize yourself with seasonal produce; it is the only true indicator of taste and nutritional value.

None of these items are meant to completely discourage you from going organic; there can be and often are major benefits to purchasing organic products, especially from farms or hyper-local grocery stores where you know exactly where your food is coming from. The organic versions of meat and eggs, in particular, are quite often much more humane than their regular counterparts.

The bottom line? Do your research. Purchasing whole, sustainable, environmentally-friendly meat and produce is a noble and important goal. Don’t let an organic label trick you into doing anything less than that.

Meg King is a blogger and health food nut who writes for Clearly Fresh Bags.