Cuisine campaign: New Orleans and Lafayette are named among the top 10 “Tastiest Towns in the South,” according to Southern Living magazine’s January issue. Readers will determine the winner of the top 10, which also includes Baltimore; Birmingham, Ala.; Charleston, S.C.; Charlottesville, Va.; Decatur, Ga.; Houston; Louisville, Ky.; and Raleigh, N.C. You can vote once per day here. As of this morning, Lafayette was in second place, trailing Louisville by fewer than 400 votes, while New Orleans was in fourth place, nearly 8,000 votes behind the leader. Southern Living will profile each of the cities on the list and reveal the winner in its April 2012 issue.
Ring them bells: It’s not unusual for people to drop coins in a Salvation Army red kettle to help those in need, but some coins are worth a lot more than others. On Friday morning, when Alexandria Salvation Army officials were going through Thursday’s kettle donations, they discovered a gold coin worth about $1,600 and another gold coin believed to be valued at about $400. Salvation Army Maj. Ken Nelson tells The Town Talk he believes the gold-coin donations were inspired by recent bicycle thefts that have made headlines in Alexandria. Ten bikes that were to be given to needy children were stolen from a Salvation Army building last week, and the community responded by donating more than 130 bikes and more than $10,000.
Making the grade: As part of its “Education Nation” report that aired on Christmas, NBC focused on the “remarkable transformation” in Louisiana public education system, which “struggled for years to graduate kids from its public schools.” Roughly 71% of students completed high school this year, the state reports, which is just shy of the national average. To watch the full video, click here.
