There are so many great musicians in New Orleans, there’s got to be a reason. Maybe it’s something in the water. Or maybe it’s something in a building on the corner of Chartres St and Saint Ferdinand. That’s NOCCA – New Orleans Center For The Creative Arts.

If you go to NOCCA your education is free. Thanks in part to the funding arm of the school, The NOCCA Institute.

Sally Perry, Executive Director of the NOCCA Institute, joins host Peter Ricchiuti on this edition of Out to Lunch.

Nita Duhe is founder of Crescent City Cooks – a kind of instant-education version of NOCCA – for people who want to be able to cook like a New Orleans chef, tonight. 

Besides food and music, New Orleans has long been known for coffee. Until coffee became so massively popular, most of the country’s coffee arrived in the US at the Port of New Orleans. Today 400 million cups of coffee are consumed every day in the United States. Practically every one of them leaves behind coffee grounds that are thrown in the trash. Imagine if you could find a way to monetize those millions of tons of coffee grounds. That’s what local entrepreneur Yvette Tablada does.

Yvette’s startup company, Grounds to Ground, recycles coffee grounds into all natural gardening products. 

Photos taken at Commander’s Palace by Alison Moon.