You can now find a detailed map of the various Daqauri drive-thrus around Lafayette over at CajunDrinks.com. Click on the link below to find out more!

LafayetteTravel.com has a wonderful article on Cajun vs. Creole. The article mostly focuses on food but talks a bit about the differences in culture too, clearing up a lot of the misconceptions about our distinct culture and food. The whole article is wonderful but this is my favorite part, as it rings so true:

But for day-in, day-out eating, there is nothing more popular than rice and gravy. In fact, a true Cajun can look at a field of growing rice and tell how gravy it will take to cover it when all the rice is cooked. Whole generations of people have lived and died in south Louisiana and never known that some people in other places serve a meal that does not include rice and gravy. Here, the concept never enters the mind.

When I first moved to California, I had no idea that people didn’t have rice and gravy for supper at least once a week, much less ever! To this day, when I say “gravy,” people think of the flour-based white gravy and cringe. I would too if I thought that’s what gravy was! The Cajun vs Creole article has this to say about the gravy “First of all, it is brown. With all due deference to Texans, Cajuns use that white stuff they put on top of chicken fried steaks to hang wallpaper. Gravy is brown, not white. That’s it.” I couldn’t find a picture of rice and gravy on our photo album but I did find a picture of the gravy before I gets poured onto the rice.

That’s my mom’s Stuffed Round Steak gravy. Talk about good!

Malcontent.biz has a headline that reads “Britney’s Cajun Cry-Out.” I’m sure they put that there just because she was raised in Louisiana but for Pete’s sake, she raised in Kentwood which is a town on the Southeastern border of Louisiana. Not everything born/raised in or touched by Louisiana is Cajun.

Internet bios state that Spears was born in McComb, Mississippi and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana. Her family background includes the surnames Bridges, Woolmoore, Spears and Forbes — names with Scottish and English roots. Britney, so far as I can tell, has not claimed any Acadian ancestry — the only heritage she has claimed publicly so far is that of Native American ancestry.

You can read more here about what it takes to be considered Cajun.

Today I stumbled onto the flickr album by Audrey Marks. Talk about some great pictures of Louisiana, yeah! You should check out the whole album but here’s a few just to pique your interest:

City of Breaux Bridge	B.B. Crawfish Festival	Lake Martin
South Louisiana Foods	Old Cypress Barns	Grand Chenier

Ms. Audrey has also got pictures of Holly Beach/Cameron/Creole, Jefferson Island, Avery Island, Lake Fausse Point and a whole bunch of others. Very nice!

Public Broadcasting is important, especially to Cajun Culture. Without it, we wouldn’t have Over 174 Articles on NPR which mention “Cajun” (more accurate Google search) including

• Acadian Congress
• Cajun Culture Slow to Fade
• Cajuns Hope for Revival of Battered Marshes
• The Cajuns: Americanization of a People book review
• Touring Louisiana’s Cameron Parish
• Evangeline Made
• The Pine Leaf Boys CD Review
• Surveying Rita’s Damage in Southwest Louisiana
• Hurricane Rita Victims Lost in the Shadow of Katrina
• Cajun Country Thick with Mosquitoes

And that’s just on NPR.org.. PBS.org has a few articles on Cajun Culture as well.

• Do You Speak American
• Make ‘em Dance: The Hackberry Ramblers Story
• A Taste of Louisiana

And of course, LPB’s (Louisiana Public Broadcasting)

• Lost Louisiana
• Healing Secrets of the Cajuns, Creoles and Bayou Indians

The list goes on.. well, for the second time, public broadcasting is in trouble. Please tell your Congressperson that Public Broadcasting is important to you. You can find out more by visiting Tell Them Public Matters.org.

On June 13, 2006 the full House Appropriations Committee voted to restore $20 million of the previously-planned $115 million cuts to funding for public broadcasting, but left the remainder of the cuts in place in the FY 2007 budget bill making its way through the House.

Although the restoration of $20 million in FY 2007 funds is a welcome development, the committee left intact nearly $100 million in cuts to all of the other public broadcasting programs funded in this bill: CPB digital, interconnection, and Ready To Learn and Ready To Teach, No funds were provided for Ready to Learn and Ready to Teach, two critical early learning educational programs. Moreover, no advance appropriation for FY 2009 was included in the bill—which, if left unchallenged either on the House floor or in the Senate, would represent the first time two-year advance funding will not have been approved since the practice was begun 30 years ago.

Your immediate help is needed to reverse these draconian funding cuts. Please scroll down to send a message to your U.S. Representative to urge that funds for public broadcasting be fully restored.

There is an easy to fill out form that allows you to either email or print a letter to your US House Representative.

One of the biggest things I missed about Louisiana when I moved out here to California was Zapps potato chips. A few years later, I was thrilled when I tried some potato chips called “Dirty’s.” It tasted JUST like Zapps and it even had “Cajun” flavor. I became a bit suspicious so I turned the bag around and sure enough, “Dirty” potato chips came from Gramercy, Louisiana — the same place where Zapps are produced. Upon viewing their respective webpages, it became obvious that Dirty’s is just Zapps rebranded.

Unfortunately, my favorite flavor “Cajun Dill” is not sold around the country. In the Dirty line-up, it’s been replaced with something a little more sophisticated — Roasted Garlic and Herb. Check out the marketing of each (Zapps, Dirty) — seems that Zapps marketing is a little more laid back and mentions beer way more than the Dirty national brand.

A few of the descriptions include

• Dirtys - Cajun Spice - Developed By Our Cousin Boudreaux Who Plays The Fiddle Ina Zydeco Band. Note This Flavor Does Contain Artificial Shrimp Flavoring Because Some Folks Are Allergic To Shellfish. It Makes Them Puff Up Like A Blowfish.
• Zapps - Cajun Crawtator - The Taste Of A Cajun Boiled Seafood Feast That Goes Crunch And Your Mouth Goes Wow. Zapp’s Was The First Cajun Flavored Anything And Is Still Our #1 Seller!
• Zapps - Salt & Vinegar - A Tangy, Salty Taste With A Pucker That Will Knock Your Socks Off! A Bag Of These And Cold One And Life’s Pretty Good.
• Dirtys - Mesquite BBQ - Everyone Knows That Mesquite Wood Makes The Best Bar-B-Que And Ours Captures The True Flavor Of The Old Southwest.
• Zapps - Mesquite BBQ - Yippee Cowhands, Our Sweet Mesquite Flavor Tastes Like An Old Wild West Cookout. It’ll Make Ya Want To Kiss Your Horse…Or Spouse…Or Both.

The marketing differences are interesting.. I’m just glad I found Zapps here in California. Salt & Cracked Pepper isn’t mentioned on Dirtys website but they’ve got it out here and it’s my favorite. Dirtys is my girlfriend, Delia’s, “best” brand of chips. Of course Cajun Spice is her favorite flavor

This is a bit of a repetitive rant but I notice it all the time. Many people act like Katrina only happened to New Orleans and Rita never even occurred. I went watch An Inconvenient Truth tonight. The logo of the movie is pretty cool, it’s a factory emitting smoke in the shape of a hurricane. The movie, of course, talks about global warming and makes numerous mentions about hurricanes (though most of it focuses on the polar ice caps).

Many of the hurricanes leading up to Katrina were mentioned and after the 5 minute or so segment that focused on the people of New Orleans, I expected Gore to state what would be so helpful to his argument — two category 5 hurricanes hit the gulf within one month. But that would have required a mention of Rita and, apparently, people go out of their way to avoid mentioning her. It just drives me plum crazy. Plum!

Well, the story titled “Last year’s floods give way to drought” isn’t so upbeat but a picture of Kaplan is featured.

By Claudia B. Laws, The Daily Advertiser

Maw-Maw saw the above picture and said to herself “That looks just like Kaplan!” Sure enough, the caption reads “A farmer drives down a dusty dirt road north of Kaplan, La. Southern Louisiana, much of which was underwater after last year’s hurricanes is now in the throes of a severe to extreme drought.” This part wasn’t underwater, but the verrry south end of Kaplan was. I believe that’s the Adams’ property. It’s either that or the Herpins. North of Kaplan is sometimes referred to as Herpinville because of all the Herpin familes that live there. It’s official community name, however, is “Cossinade.”

Maw-Maw sent me this amazing 5 minute clip from a documentary on the History Channel about the 1980 Lake Peigneur disaster in which Texaco engineers pierced a hole in an underwater salt mine and created a massive whirlpool. It was the only time in history that the “Gulf of Mexico flowed backwards.” This link has the storyline of the 1980 incident at Lake Peigneur, Jefferson Island and Diamond salt mine. Maw-Maw writes:

From my country home in Erath, as a child we could see the highlights of the buildings at Jefferson Island. The attached video tells the rest. There was also footage that Jefferson Island used to show when you visited but the last time I went they weren’t showing it.

The man and his nephew fishing my Dad knew real well. We had heard though, that the man and his nephew had stopped right at the top of the hole; this disproves it as HUGE barges were actually sucked into the mine.

As kids in Vermilion Parish, we were often told the tale of Jefferson Island and going there on field trips of just family outings was always super exciting.

You can read more at damninteresting.com. Be sure to watch the video too, around the fourth minute you’ll hear an old Cajun saying, with a real ‘tick’ accent, “I tought it was de end of de world.” Too cute!

Here’s some background information on our site, based on a web traffic analyser from Google on RealCajunRecipes which provides a summary of information about our visitors. Seems that more than 94% of the people looking to cook Cajun food come from North America.

I’ve never had such a geographically concentrated web audience! I thought Cajun food was a bit more universal but I suppose it’s not. After the US and Canada, the following countries are most popular: UK, Australia, Germany, France, Japan. Within the United States, we are most popular in Louisiana (per capita). Sweet! Being popular among Cajuns has always been my biggest goal for the site.

As far as keywords go, most people find our site by typing in “Cajun Recipes.” After that, it’s beignet recipe, jambalaya recipe, steak marinade and crawfish recipes.

On average, people stay on the site for 5.5 pages per visit (a great number) and people from Kaplan generally stay on the site for 11 pages per visit! The highest pages per visit of 55 comes from Colfax, Louisiana. Dang! It also seems that, based on IP address and not personal information, about 10% of Kaplan’s population has been to our site (Google knows that Kaplantel.net is the only ISP in Kaplan). Even though Kaplan is one of the tiny towns in Louisiana, it is still in our top 10 cities for visits from Louisiana. The others are, in order, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, New Orleans, Shreveport, Metairie, Houma, Lake Charles, and Monroe. All big cities..then K-town. Haha! Awesome.