Opening March 19, 2013

We will be opening for the season on March 19, 2013. We will be open 1-7pm Tuesday-Sunday.

Hours update

We are now open 1-7pm Tuesday-Sunday.

Hansen's Now Open for the Season

Hansen's is now open for the 2011 season.

The current hours are Thursday-Sunday 1-7pm. We will be expanding our hours in April.

Hansen's Sno-Bliz to the rescue with true Sno-Bliz Aid!

The debacle in the gulf, and an enduring sense of helplessness, has inspired Hansen's owner Ashley to create a new bliz to help save the marsh and swamps of Louisiana's vanishing coast. At Hansen's, we desperately want to help and do something meaningful, New Orleans-style.

Come join us in our effort by sipping and slurping our new Swampitoulas Sno-Blizzes and Sodas. These will be served in a special biodegradable cup, designed by local artist Caesar Meadows. Cups are the 16oz size and will cost $5. All proceeds will benefit BTNEP, Barataria Terrebonne National Estuary Program.

Try one of our new flavors, only available in the Sip-A-Swampitoulas cups:
The Swampitoulas: verdant vanilla (it's green!)
Brown Pelican: a frothy root beer cream
LimeAid: a tart lime.

You can always get your favorite Hansen's homemade flavor instead.

Ashley is also bringing back the Sno-Bliz Soda just for the Sip-A-Swampitoulas cup. By adding soda water your sno-bliz is turned into a delicious slushy concoction.

Help save our swamps and air-condition your tummy at Hansen's Sno-Bliz. Available now.

Introducing Four New Flavors

Ashley has created four new flavors: Cardamom, Vanilla Bean, Satsuma (Tart), and Cream of Chocolate Mint. All of these flavors, as well as Limeade, Lemonade, and Cream of Chocolate, are all natural. So head by Hansen's and try them out today.

Opening April 6!

Hansen's will be opening for the 2010 season on Tuesday April 6!

The hours will be Tuesday-Sunday 1-7pm.

Announcing the next generation of Hansens

It is my pleasure to announce that today we welcome the next generation of Hansen into the world. Avery Allison Springgate was born this morning to Ashley Hansen Springgate. Both mother and baby are doing well. Ashley told me that she is a beautiful baby and promised to send pictures and more information as soon as she can.

-Allison (Hansen's Web Master)

National attention

In the past week, Hansen's has been in 3 major newspapers / magazines.

First, Hansen's was listed as the New Orleans location in USA Today's "10 great places to eat regionally, eat well."

The "eat + run" section of August issue of Every Day with Rachel Ray magazine, focused on shaved ice. Hansen's was one of four in the country that were listed.

Finally, the Los Angeles Times author Kathy Price-Robinson did "A search for New Orleans' best snowball". In my opinion, she wrote one of the most lovely descriptions of what it is like to visit Hansen's:

"As I watch the creation of my snowball, I feel as though I'm in Ashley's kitchen. She layers the snow and syrup, one after another, snow then syrup, snow then syrup, in a leisurely manner. She isn't so much cycling through the customers as she is honoring her grandparents. What that means, though, is slow service... . [The] wedding cake does not disappoint. It tastes like cake and frosting in a cup and the snow is soft, light and irresistible. It could well be the finest human-made snow on the planet. It's perfect, really."

Roadfood at Hansen's

Last month the Louisiana Roadfood Festival tour stopped by Hansen's for some snoballs on their way out to the bayou.

This is what Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle had to say about it on the Roadfood Digest blog:

This is New Orleans, good people, so Stephen added a Roadfood lagniappe to the trip: on the way, the buses stopped at Hansen's Sno-Bliz! ... There were three flavors available for Roadfooders: Satsuma, Strawberry (?), and Nectar. Did we hear somebody say that Nectar was some sort of citrus/vanilla combo? Satsuma was a tart orange flavor that Sue and Bruce tried and found extremely refreshing. The others were said to be sweeter. You could have had yours with some sweetened condensed milk on top too, if you wished. We wished!

Kiki Maraschino at Here, Eat This:

At Sno Bliz they layer ice and syrup to make sure the ice is fully saturated. When I asked the difference between a snowball and a snow bliz, they said, "well, it is our brand name." They also have a flavor called "bliz" that most people liken to tart strawberry. I love that they have a size called "baby duper".

Other posts about the stop can be found at Eating in Translation and The Jetsetting Fool Cooks (and Eats!).

Hansen's Featured on AG Minute

TWILA TV's Lauren Thom explores the history of an iconic icy New Orleans treat on the Louisiana Farm Bureau's AG Minute.

Times-Picayune article

The Times-Picayune ran an article earlier this month about how during the winter months Ernest Hansen's machine got a much needed overhaul. Now it shines like new and is ready to make snoballs for you.

Hours change

Until the summer the hours are going to be Tuesday-Sunday 1pm-7pm. Then we will go to the full set of hours that were posted the other day.

Also, Hansen's will be closed from Good Friday though Easter Sunday.

Opening March 28

Hansen's Sno-Bliz will be opening on Saturday, March 28.

The hours will be:
Monday: Closed
Tuesday-Thursday: 1pm-7pm
Friday-Saturday: 12pm-9pm
Sunday: 1pm-7pm

Facebook page

Check out the Hansen's Sno-Bliz Page on Facebook.

Closed

Hansen's is now closed for the season. We will reopen next summer.

Reduced Fall hours

After taking a little time off due to Hurricane Gustav, Hansen's has reopened with reduced hours for the Fall.

The current hours are Wednesday-Saturday from 1pm-7pm.

Online Exhibit Receiving Attention

Since the launch of the Online Exhibit last week, snobliz.com has been noticed by local news sources.

Today an article came out in the Times-Picayune called Hansen's Sno-Blog.

Last week, the Blog of New Orleans (part of the Gambit) made a post about the website and online exhibit.

Poster session

Yesterday was the Capstone Poster session for the iSchool. We each had 90 seconds to present our project and had to make a poster to go with it. I think that the session went very well. I was really happy with how my poster turned out. After watching a few people play with the website, I have a couple of minor changes to make this weekend, which I hope will help with usability.

Online Exhibit Live

I am very excited to announce that the Sno-Bliz Online Exhibit is now live. The Online Exhibit is a a collection of Hansen's Sno-Bliz memorabilia, including photographs, signs, articles, and video.

You can also check out and comment on some of our photographs on our Flickr account and our videos on YouTube.

So Close

I am so close to launching the Online Exhibit I can almost taste it. As of right now, all of the pages on the site look and behave the way I want them to. I just have a few technical details to work out and some text to polish.

Uploading items to the exhibit is going well. I'm figuring out some pretty cool tricks that I can do with OpenCollection.

I've also run ABBY Fine Reader 8 (an OCR program) on many of the articles and other documents and created PDFs (with mostly clean OCR) for many of them which I'm including in the Exhibit.

If all goes well, I plan to launch the Online Exhibit on Tuesday.

I also decided to simplify my cataloging. I realized that it did not make sense to separate letters from paper documents, so I folded them into the paper documents category. I've updated my Naming Schema to reflect this.