Tag: louisiana

The Cultural Significance of Boudin in Louisiana’s Culinary Landscape

When it comes to Louisiana’s culinary landscape, there are few dishes that embody the state’s rich history and cultural significance quite like boudin. From its humble beginnings as a simple sausage made from leftover meat, rice, and spices, to becoming a staple of Cajun cuisine enjoyed by locals and visitors alike, boudin has played a vital role in shaping Louisiana’s unique food culture. Thanks to this article from The Advocate, you can explore the fascinating origins of the cajun sausage, its importance to Scott, Louisiana, and why it continues to hold such an important place in Louisiana’s culinary heritage.

The small town of Scott, Louisiana has a population of 8,000, but that doesn’t stop it from having the most boudin shops per capita than any city or town in the state.  Most of these shops are found along Interstate 10, as highway travel has become quite essential to the town. Some of the most popular stops include: Billy’s Boudin and Cracklins, Nunu’s Cajun Market, Kartchner’s Specialty Meats, Best Stop, and Don’s Specialty Meats. In 2012, the Louisiana state legislature designated Scott, Louisiana as the Boudin Capital of the World,cementing it among locals and tourists alike as the go-to spot for the cajun delicacy.

Boudin is a type of sausage that is popular in Louisiana. It is made from pork, rice, and spices, and is often used in Cajun dishes. It has been a part of Louisiana culture for centuries, and is still enjoyed by many people today. The sausage was first created by the Acadians, who settled in Louisiana in the 18th century. The Acadians were originally from France, and they brought their culinary traditions with them to America. Boudin was one of these traditions, and it quickly became popular in Louisiana.

Today, boudin is still an important part of Louisiana culture. It can be found in grocery stores and restaurants all over the state. Many people enjoy eating it as part of a meal or as a snack. It is also a popular ingredient in many Cajun dishes. The cultural significance of boudin lies in its history and its place in Louisiana culture. Boudin has been enjoyed by Louisianans for centuries, and it continues to be an important part of the state’s culinary landscape.

It was originally created by French settlers in Louisiana, who adapted the sausage from a similar dish that was popular in their native country. Over time, the sausage evolved to reflect the local ingredients and flavors of the Cajun region. The sausage is often eaten as a symbol of pride and tradition, and is often shared with friends and family members during special occasions. Whether it’s served at a backyard barbecue or as part of a holiday feast, boudin is always sure to bring people together.

The most common type of boudin is the Cajun style, which is made with green onions and garlic. This type is popular in the Acadiana region of Louisiana. Another popular style is the Creole boudin, which is made with tomatoes and red peppers. This type of boudin is popular in the New Orleans area. There are many other regional styles of boudin, such as the Houma style, which is can be made with beef instead of pork; the Baton Rouge style,which is made with hot sauce; and the St. Martinville style, which is made with crawfish. No matter what style of boudin you try, you’re sure to enjoy its unique flavor and cultural significance.

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Explore the Best Crawfish in the State with the Bayou Country Crawfish Trail

Simply put, Louisiana’s Bayou Country Crawfish Trail is the absolute best way to experience the culture behind eating Louisiana-boiled and raised crawfish first-hand. The Bayou Country Crawfish Trail curates an entire culinary and exploratory experience for you to fill up on the most delicious crawfish at over 30 carefully-selected trail stops. You’ll be supplied with a downloaded guide that lists the best spots for delicious crawfish dishes all year long.

While seeking out delicious plates of crawfish all across the Bayou Country is a rewarding experience all on its own in terms of culinary tastes and restaurant-exploring, there is another facet to the Bayou Country Crawfish Trail that is heralded. You see, if you trek along the trail and collect five receipts from the 38 available restaurants, mark your visits on your travel guide tracker, and send them into crawfishtrail.com or at the Houma Area Visitor Center, you’ll be able to exchange your proof of purchase for your very own Crawfish Trail T-shirt. This is the best way to show those in your life that you’ve conquered the best crawfish spots in the Houma area.

The Bayou Country Crawfish Trail absolutely proves that nowhere else in the state of Louisiana prepares and serves seafood than Houma, LA– especially when it comes to crawfish. The Trail’s culinary road map lists and lays out a total of 38 trail stops from downtown Houma to the Gulf of Mexico for you to enjoy the best crawfish in the state. The listed culinary stops will range from friendly Cajun restaurants to take-out seafood markets, drive-thru boilhouses, and everything in between.

The team behind the Bayou Country Crawfish Trail truly believes in the culinary experience of not only ingesting crawfish but the culture that surrounds it, and they also believe that there’s truly not a bad time of year to enjoy the Louisiana delicacy. They’ve divided the calendar year into two “seasons” in terms of crawfish eating: Heads season and Tails season. The main difference between these two times of year is the matter in which the crawfish is “present on your plate.”

For example, Heads season will begin just before Mardi Gras season, when it is “on the horizon,” and it signals that crawfish traps around the state will soon be filled to the brim with “mudbugs” and the crawfish boils are starting up again. This is the optimal time of the year to eat boiled crawfish wherever you can get it, and you should enjoy it along with all of the available sides like potatoes, corn, sausages, and many more. This time of year will typically wrap up early in the summer, but just because the crawfish boils stop doesn’t mean that you have to wait another year until you can enjoy crawfish dishes in their prime.

This is because Tails season is what follows when the summer is at its hottest and most severe. This is because live and boiled crawfish are much harder to come by in the state, so instead of “scraping the bottom of the barrel” with attending crawfish boils that aren’t necessarily up-to-par, you can check the Bayou Country Crawfish Trail Guide for the spots in Houma, LA where they serve delicious crawfish all year-round. These dishes will come in nearly every form you can imagine because in Houma, Louisiana they know how to best prepare crawfish– whether it’s in a warm bowl of gumbo, éttouffée, or bisque. Similarly, you can also bite into a crawfish stuffed poboy or even a crawfish pie.The options are nearly endless in this season when many think that just because crawfish boils are done, there’s no more fun to be had.

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Third-Annual Grand Caillou White Boot Clean-Up to be Sponsored by Keep Terrebonne Beautiful

For the third year in a row, the Keep Terrebonne Beautiful organization will be sponsoring their annual Grand Caillou White Boot Clean Up in Dulac, Louisiana, according to this article from The Houma Times.

The third annual Grand Caillou White Boot Clean Up will take place on the morning of March 18, 2023, and the event is being sponsored by the Keep Terrebonne Beautiful organization, which is a non-profit organization initially established in 2000 with a mission to empower Terrebonne Parish citizens to take personal responsibility in the prevention of litter and the beautification of Terrebonne Parish. According to their mission, the Keep Terrebonne Beautiful organization “seeks a clean, green, and more beautiful Terrebonne Parish.”

The Houma Times got to interview Billie Richard, the Executive Director of Keep Terrebonne Beautiful, about this third annual event. Richard said, “this is our third year doing it and we are really excited about it. It is headed by a great local volunteer, Jani Voisin. She is from Dulac, and this is a real passion project for her.” The interview informed the reading audience that essentially Keep Terrebonne Beautiful helps with the logistics of the clean up, such as mapping out the route, supplying bags, and a place for the garbage to go, but it is actually the work of the volunteers that makes the event special and operate so effectively.

While those wanting to volunteer and participate in the Grand Caillou Clean-Up can certainly register ahead of time at www.keepterrebonnebeautiful.org , anyone wanting to participate is certainly more than welcome to arrive at the meeting spot, which is Anchor Foursquare Church in Dulac, and they will be provided with garbage bags and allowed to assist. Participants will also receive garbage grabbers and safety equipment in order to make their clean-up easier.

Keep Terrebonne Beautiful Executive Director Billie Richard commented on their hopes for the third annual event by saying, “we really just want people to get out and help us clean up our Parish. We want the people of Dulac to be able to take pride in their home. We want to rally the whole community to help with this,” said Richard. “Litter we see in Dulac can come from up the bayou too. This clean-up is for all of us to come together and help with. We want everyone to come out and help, we are so excited!” Richard also emphasized that while the event is located in Dulac, it is actually open to all members of the community and that everyone has a responsibility to become involved and keep the parish clean.

Last year’s 2022 Downtown Terrebonne Clean-Up, that was organized by Keep Terrebonne Beautiful, was organized after Governor John Bel Edwards, in partnership with the Lieutenant Governor’s Office and Keep Louisiana Beautiful, had declared the fourth Saturday of each month in 2022 “Love the Boot Day.” The event invited participants to “pledge to participate on a monthly basis and clean up your neighborhood, a park, a roadway, or another space in your community.”

Volunteering as a part of a community-wide clean-up day is widely important. This is due to the following reasons: it helps to keep our environment clean, it prevents animals from ingesting harmful materials, and it helps to beautify our community. Picking up litter also sends a strong message that we do not tolerate littering in our community. Volunteering in a group is a great way to make new friends, learn new skills, and give back to the community. Group volunteering also allows you to have a positive impact on a larger scale.

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A Vermilionville Event Teaches the Community about Courir de Mardi Gras

A recent event held at Vermilionville taught guests and visitors about the tradition, history, and legacy of Louisiana’s Courir de Mardi Gras, as per this article from The Acadiana Advocate.

The event took place earlier in February as Louisiana communities were easing into the Mardi Gras season ahead of Valentine’s Day. On Sunday, February 12, a traditional Mardi Gras Run was held at Vermilionville, and it was open for the public to enjoy and for families to participate in an interactive and educational experience with admission prices going to Vermilionville. The event was presented by Vermilionville and the Basile Mardi Gras Association, and it featured an interactive Courir de Mardi Gras tradition led by Le Capitaine, who sang “ La Chanson de Mardi Gras,” as the costumed riders made their way through the historic village begging for ingredients to make a gumbo, as is the tradition.

Although a traditional Courir is held before or at dawn, this family-friendly event began at 10 am with a screening of Pat Mire’s “Dance for a Chicken,” a Mardi Grad documentary that reveals the historic secrets of the traditional, rural Mardi Gras run, which is also known as Courir de Mardi Gras. After the screening, musician Kevin Rees demonstrated the proper use of the “La Chanson de Mardi Gras” with the event’s attendees before the Basile Association began riding through the historic village, which ultimately ended with the infamous chicken chase. The event ended with attendees grabbing a delicious lunch at Vermillionville’s on-site restaurant and enjoying live music and dancing from Feu Follet.

Traditionally, Courir riders will consist of people disguised in colorful and festive costumes with a cone-shaped “capuchon hat”, a mask made of screen, and a top and pants covered in strips of fringed fabric. These riders would mount horses and go from house to house to ask neighbors and community members for ingredients for a communal gumbo. The gumbo would then be cooked and eaten by everyone in town on Mardi Gras before the start of lent.

This self-contained version of a traditional, albeit  wilder event was designed by the Basile Mardi Gras Association andVermilionville officials to teach a new generation about the humble beginnings of a long-held Mardi Gras tradition. The holiday has become so ubiquitous in Louisiana with businesses, schools, and portions of the city being closed annually for the event, so it stands to believe that the origins of the holiday can sometimes be lost on a new generation. Luckily, the Basile Mardi Gras Association and the historic and educational Vermilionville can help to rectify that lack of knowledge.

The event was a success, thanks to the organizers at the Basile Mardi Gras Association and Vermilionville. Jim “Pecoq” Young, who is a member of the Basile Mardi Gras Association commented by saying, “we love it. We get people from all over Louisiana and even out of state. People come from all over to see the Mardi Gras. We’re thankful to Vermilionville for inviting us over here and letting us help them celebrate.” A full listing of their calendar of events can be found here.

Vermilionvile’s mission is to “increase appreciation for the history, culture, and natural resources of the Native Americans, Acadians, Creoles, and peoples of African descent in the Attakapas region through the end of the 1800s. Through historic interpretation and conservation along the Bayou Vermilion, we strive to educate guests on the interactions of these groups and the connections between past and contemporary folklife, thus empowering guests to apply these lessons from our shared histories.”

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Inaugural King Cake Festival in Downtown Thibodaux Had Large Turnout

Thibodaux’s inaugural Bayou King Cake Festival had a large turnout as thousands went out to crown the best king cake, according to this article from HoumaToday.

The inaugural Bayou King Cake Festival was held in Downtown Thibodaux at the beginning of February, serving as a festive beginning to the Mardi Gras season. The event, which was hosted by the Lafourche Education Foundation,served as a way for locals to sample and rank a diverse array of locally baked King Cakes, enjoy the Krewe of King Cake Children’s Parade, and listen to live music from Nonc Nu & the Wild Matous.

In total, 28 bakeries competed in the King Cake contest portion of the festival, where visitors voted Slidell’s Sugar Love Bakery the best-in-show. For the past eight years, Sugar Love Bakery has had a ship along Englewood Drive in Slidell, but before that owner and baker Sierra Zerangue ran the business out of her mother’s kitchen for the initial six years.

Sugar Love Bakery was a popular shop at the festival, as they were offering visitors small portions of their “King Cake on a Stick,” which according to Zerangue is the company’s invention along with “King Cake Charcuterie.” This nontraditional charcuterie offering came in the form of a king cake with cups of all the available fillings for dunking.

After Sugar Love Bakery received 183 votes, they were awarded first prize; to which Zerangue said, “it’s amazing, it means a lot to a bakery or any small business.” Second place went to Cut Off’s Cajun Pecan House with 182 votes, and Spahr’s Restaurant finished in third place.

Deanna Lafont is the Executive Director of the Lafourche Education Foundation, and she estimated that since they sold over 2,000 tickets to festival goers in advance, ticket sales along with preorders and scholarships had generated about $50,000 in funds for the Foundation, which will be going towards teacher grants, some festival overhead, and future events.

She went on to comment, “when we were setting the event up, we sold about 700 tickets almost two days before, so we were hoping to get 1,000 people. I think it was just the right time, the right place, the right event, and the right weather. I’m still in shock about how successful the event was.”

The festival had a larger turnout than initially expected; this was due to the fact that festival organizers occupied a section of downtown Thibodaux that’s usually used by Big Boy’s Main Street Cook-Off. Since that festival usually attracts about 1,000 people, Lafont admitted that they’ll need to try and “emulate the Fraternal Order of Police Mudbug Boil-Off because it is a larger event.” This will mean that next year’s event will occupy a larger section of downtown Thibodaux, centered along LA. 1 and Bayou Lafourche, which initially seemed unnecessary for an inaugural event.

Reportedly hundreds of festival goers had stood in line at the two entrances, filling up over two blocks waiting for their king cake samples. Due to the higher-than-expected turnout, many booths and shops were out of king cakes early on. For instance, the Culinary Department of the Lafourche Career Magnet Center saw Kalena Dehart and her coworkers down to seven king cakes from the dozen they brought to the festival within the first hour.

The event was kicked off officially at 1:30 pm with a parade of 15 children-toting wagons and five marching bands marching from the old Capital One building on West 2nd Street to St. Phillip Street and back. Next year, Lafont hopes to organize more events for the children festival goers outside of the parade, saying: “we had the children’s parade, but we’re really talking about having a kids’ area. I would love to see a kids’ king cake baking contest.”

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Louisiana’s Largest Marsh Creation Project On Track to 2025 Completion

Louisiana’s largest marsh creation project, which will create approximately 2,800 acres of marshland near Shell Beach, recently received a project update, according to this article from The Advocate.

The Lake Borgne Marsh Creation Project is a $115 million project that began its construction last year and is set to conclude in August 2025. The $115 million is being financed with settlement funds related to the 2010 BP oil spill; however, the federal government will be paying for a separate plan to restore wider wetlands that have been degraded by the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, or MRGO. The Lake Borgne Marsh Creation project is Louisiana’s single largest marsh creation project currently under construction. The area was visited by St. Bernard Parish officials, Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) representatives, and members of the Louisiana Legislature in order to gain a perspective on the project’s current level of completion ahead of the Coastal Protection Authority’s annual plan and the update of the state’s 50-year, $50 billion master plan.

Recently, the chair of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, Chip Kline, and other state and parish officials were able to visit the Lake Borgne Marsh Creation Project in order to provide an update ahead of the Coastal Protection Authority’s five-decade master plan that is updated every six years. Kline and other state and parish officials were able to visit St. Bernard Parish’s Shell Beach as well as take an airboat ride so that they could survey the eroded marsh that’s located between the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet and Lake Borgne.

This specific area has seen drastic erosion and changes over the past few decades thanks to saltwater intrusion, erosion, and subsidence that has been gradually degrading the area. It’s generally understood and accepted that most of Shell Beach’s erosion can be attributed to the MRGO after it fully opened in 1968 as a shipping shortcut from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, this shortcut channel was also labeled as a “hurricane highway”after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, when the channel was responsible for helping expedite the storm surge that hit New Orleans.

One member of the local community, Robbie Campo, spoke about the drastic need for a new marsh environment by saying, “if we don’t do something over here, the lake is going to be into the MRGO. We’re going to lose it all.” Campo’s family operates Campo’s Marina at Shell Beach, and the marina has existed for 120 years, meaning that he has slowly observed the wetlands eroding over his lifetime. While Campo is concerned that the area’s fishing environment will be changed on account of future separate river diversions, he is reportedly relieved to see progress on the new marsh construction.

Thankfully, the $115 million Lake Borgne Marsh Creation Project is set to use approximately 13 million cubic yards of dredged soil to create around 2,800 acres of marsh. It’s estimated that this project, like others of its kind, will have an expected lifespan of 20-30 years. Chip Kline spoke about what Louisiana’s experience with detrimental storms has taught it by saying, “I think one of the greatest lessons that we’ve learned over the last few decades is that a natural buffer is just as important as your hurricane risk reduction system. This natural buffer – our marshes, our wetlands – are helping protect us.”

During the visit, parish and state officials were able to see construction excavators work to build a containment dike and mud berms to hold in sediment. After the tour concluded, a press conference was held, and St. Bernard President Guy McInnis spoke about the project by saying, “it’s all for the resilience of our community, and to keep our culture and our heritage for future generations.”

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