[Acadiana] Acadiana is the name used locally to describe the area of south Louisiana where French language and culture have been dominant. Of the many strands of folk culture in the area, sometimes called the French triangle, is of course that built around and by the area's Acadian (Cajun) population. The term itself was coined by a local television station, KATC-TV3, in the 1960s. In the following decade, the area was given legal definition and consists of 22 parishes (Louisiana's version of counties). In common usage, it can expand and contract from speaker to speaker, but it is always sure to include the prairies, the swamps, the coastal marshes, and the bayou and river banks that the Acadians settled and Cajuns continue to occupy.

[Acadians] Today's Cajuns are descendants of Acadians, who were the first colonists to consider themselves something other than Europeans in the New World. "Cajun" is simply an English transformation of the French pronunciation of the word "Acadian." The Acadians first began to settle the area of Canada now known as Nova Scotia in the early seventeenth century. By the start of the eighteenth century, the territory was a fertile and prosperous farm land, trading heavily with the English colonies. A series of wars in Europe that had some minor developments in the Americas resulted in English concerns about the loyalty of the Acadians, who steadfastly wished to remain neutral. It also opened the opportunity for a giant land grab. The English governor at the time tricked the Acadians into a series of actions that enabled him to force them off their lands and onto ships that would disperse them in an effort to destroy their community and their culture. The travails of the Cajuns have been thoroughly documented in recent years, but it remains an amazing feat, even today, that so many managed not only to survive deadly voyages and imprisonment but also to re-gather families and communities in Louisiana. Much like the Africans who had preceded them and who faced similar circumstances, the Acadians quickly adapted themselves to their new environment and sought to re-establish their close-knit communities where they could. It is the culture's emphasis on staying together and on self-reliance that have allowed it to remain so vibrant over centuries of rapid, and often turbulent, change.

[Andouille] is a seasoned, smoked sausage. The meat stuffing is coarsely ground, has a higher fat content, and is generally spicier and larger in diameter than other Cajun smoked sausages. While sometimes eaten simply grilled, especially as an early appetizer during day-long barbecue and/or grilling sessions, andouille is typically added to dishes for its ability to add not only the flavor of its seasoning but the flavor of its smoked meat. (Meat is, in some ways, considered a flavoring in south Louisiana.) Andouille can be made of either beef or pork. Historically, that difference has been geographical, but in the contemporary scene one can find either in most places and sometimes a mixture of the two.

[Atchafalaya Basin] The basin, as the Atchafalaya Basin, is locally known, is the largest swamp wilderness in the United States, measuring close to 600,000 acres. There is not room here to inventory the variety of fish, fowl, and flora that are contained in the basin, though pointing out that one-half the species in the North American flyway use the area gives some indication of the scope and depth of its ecosystem. (That and the fact that it produces 23 million pounds of crawfish each year.) The Atchafalaya River, which is the riverine heart of the basin, is one of the Mississippi River's five main distributaries which discharges 30 percent its flow into the basin.

[Attakapas Indians] We know relatively little about the Attakapas: their contemporary name in fact is really Choctaw for "eaters of human flesh." We now believe that they called themselves, as many groups did after their own word for people, "Ishak." As for the Choctaw accusation. We don't know how much or what kind of cannibalism, if any, they practiced. What we do know is that the territory of the Attakapas probably stretched from the Bayou Teche past the Sabine River into Texas and reached from the Gulf Coast up to present-day Alexandria. The Ishak were relatively few in number by the time of European colonization, some sources estimate around 1500. The French and Spanish appear happy to use them in various battles, and those Ishak that remained seem largely to have been obscured by historical documents, though even the nature of this obscurity is still being debated.

[Baba ganuj] also spelled baba ghanoug, baba ganouj, baba ganoush -- is a Middle Eastern dish made of eggplant. In some versions, tahini is added, in others a variety of finely diced vegetables are added. Like [hummus], it is usually served as a dip or spread, often with olive oil drizzled on top.

[Baklava] is a pastry found from Turkey, through both the Middle East and the Balkans, to as far away as South Asia. It is made of chopped nuts layered with phyllo pastry, sweetened with sugar or honey syrup.

[Bals de maison] Before there were commercial venues like dancehalls for people to socialize and "pass a good time," folks simply gathered in each others homes to play music and to tell stories. *Bals de maison*, or house dances, were larger events where a band would be asked to play, furniture moved aside, and invitations sent out. Folks would come from miles around. The dances would not only provide entertainment but the necessary opportunity for courtship for younger adults. Many a happy story about true love told in south Louisiana begins at a *bal de maison*.

[Bisque] is, like so many dishes in south Louisiana, a subject of a great deal of discussion. (Perhaps the only thing people in south Louisiana do more than eat when they are at the table is talk about what they are eating.) Some recipes call for beginning with a flour and oil roux. Others begin with a butter roux. Some recipes include bell pepper, some tomatoes, and some would never consider either. The most reknown form of bisque in south Louisiana is crawfish bisque. The body of the bisque can be thick like a gravy or thin like a soup and is served, like most dishes, over rice. The meat is seasoned, usually mixed with other ingredients, and then stuffed in the crawfish shells.

[Boucheries] are communal events where an animal, typically a pig or a cow, is slaughtered. Such an undertaking was communal because of the work involved and because, in the days before refrigeration, it was wisest to share fresh meat among many families, with each family taking a turn providing the animal. While times have improved and meat can be found neatly packed in Styrofoam trays at grocery stores, a lot of families continue to host or participate in boucheries, precisely because of the importance of community in south Louisiana.

[Boudin] is a sausage made from a blend of pork, rice, onion, parsley and green onion. Traditionally, the pork was organ meats, but that is rarely the case in boudins sold in grocery stores or quick stops. While boudin can be eaten with a fork or cut open and eaten like a dressing, locally it is usually eaten by raking a portion of the sausage out of its casing between one's teeth. (It can thus be eaten with one hand while the other hand holds a cold drink.)

[Cajun Music] like its Creole cousin, has its roots both in French lyrical traditions and in African syncopation and improvisation. What we know of Cajun music really begins with the first commercial recordings in the 1920s and oral history work done by folklorists and historians, which probably reflects back to at least the latter half of the nineteenth century. Since the start of the twentieth century, and the rise of the music industry, Cajun music has undergone a number of transformations and innovations. Interestingly, almost all of the variations can still be heard being played today by a great variety of bands playing in restaurants, dance halls, house parties, clubs, VFW halls, and festivals. There's really no reason not to hear a great performance of your favorite flavor of Cajun music when you're in south Louisiana.

[Cayenne] as in cayenne pepper, is the ground red powder used to spice dishes in south Louisiana. It, along with black and white pepper, make up the three basic peppers used in the cuisine here. An old saying has it that one uses "white pepper for taste, black for bite, and red for burn." Ironically, such a grouping puts cayenne pepper with the pepper for which Columbus searched in his attempt to teach the Indies by an alternate route. Unwittingly, he encountered the West Indies and began the spread of the American botanical family *capsicum*, which includes everything from the sweet bell pepper to the fiery Scotch bonnet pepper, around the world. Chinese Szechuan and West African cuisines now depend upon varieties of the *capsicum* for their heat. The cayenne pepper is now also grown in south Louisiana and is the basis for most hot sauces. In fact, cayenne pepper hot sauces are sometimes called "Louisiana-style."

[Cher] pronounced "share" as well as "sheh" and "shah" (with a short a), is French for *dear*. It is both a term of endearment as well as an exclamation, as in "Cher, I can't believe you did that." It is especially used in reference to children: almost no one in Acadiana can see an infant without crying out "cher b?b?/baby!" Family is immensely important in south Louisiana, and family ties are something that most people in south Louisiana can calculate in fractions of a second. Even when no actual familial ties exist, it is quite common for close friends to be given honorific titles of uncle and aunt.

[Chitlins] are the intestines of a hog, most often served in a stew, though they can be barbequed too.

[Coffee/Turkish Coffee] Coffee is of such central importance to social life in south Louisiana that the visitor is warned to take seriously when someone says "I'll put some coffee on" or if you are invited over for coffee: such an invitation is not meant lightly. For the most part, the beverage is served strong, often black but just as often sweetened with some of the area's cane sugar. (One local saying has it that coffee should be "black as night, hot as hell, strong as death and sweet as love.") It was only natural then that Turkish coffee, brought with the area's many and diverse Mediterranean immigrants, would find a home in Acadiana.

[Couche-couche] is the same meal as corn meal mush in the rest of the South and polenta in Italian cuisine. Originally called sagamit?, after one of the Native American words for the dish, which is where Europeans first learned about it as well as the corn from whence it came, couche-couche got its current name from enslaved Africans who, upon seeing the dish, took it to be the cous cous with which they were already familiar. In Acadiana, couche-couche is served hot with milk or syrup, but many a home cook has fixed leftover couche-couche as fried cakes the next day.

[Courtboullion] pronounced "koo-be-yon," in south Louisiana is not the same dish as the found in French cuisine. Here it is a thick stew with thick chunks of meat, usually catfish, that has been cooked with tomatoes and other seasoning ingredients until the fish is tender and flavorful. The whole is served over rice.

[Cowboy Stew] is made from beef organ meats cooked long and slow in a thick brown gravy and served over rice.

[Cracklings] also known as *des gratons* in south Louisiana, are made by cutting the skin from a hog and then rendering out the fat. The spelling of cracklins simply recognizes that most of us in ordinary speech do not pronounce the *g* of *ing.* Either spelling will get you good eats.

[Crawfish] or *?crevisse*, are freshwater crustaceans found throughout south Louisiana. Crawfish have always been eaten in south Louisiana, but it's really been in the last half century that crawfish enjoyed simultaneously an explosion in popularity as well as in focused fishing and farming efforts. Nowadays, one can find traps in the [Atchafalaya Basin], in crawfish ponds, in rice fields, and just about anywhere water stands long enough to encourage crawfish to take up residence. Eating boiled crawfish, and not simply crawfish tails or meat as is found in [?touff?e] or [bisque], is something of a mark of enculturation into Louisiana folkways. Crawfish season traditionally runs from February and May, though aquaculture has extended that season both earlier and later. Still, habits die hard, and since most folks in south Louisiana stick to their sense of the season, many boil houses, as crawfish boil restaurants are known, close up come June.

[Creole] as a term, references a very complex history, one that necessarily involves a number of populations which have had a significant impact on the area's folk cultures. The first appearance of *Creole* appears to be the Portugese use of *criollo*, which described persons of European descent born in the new world. It was largely an administrative distinction made by the colonial powers intended to make it possible only for those born in the old world to govern, as a way of maintaining loyalty. As time passed, *creole* came to mean anything of the new world, especially those things which were known to have adapted to life in climates which were often viewed as hostile to Europeans. Thus arose Creole ponies, Creole tomatoes, and Creole peoples. (See [Creoles of Color] below.) Creole now largely references Creoles of Color and their cultures, though there is the occasional moment in which its used reflects a broader sensibility.

[Creoles of Color] indexes a diverse body of peoples with significant centers in New Orleans, the Cane River area, and the prairies and bayous of south Louisiana. All three groups are the product of Louisiana's complex and often troubled history. Careful inquirers should be sure to listen and ask questions. Creoles of Color, like Cajuns and Italians and Germans and others in south Louisiana, are justifiably proud of their history, which necessarily is both a larger history and a personal one.

[Dancehalls] still dot the Louisiana countryside, and even a few urban eras, testifying to the central importance that dancing and music still play in the area's folk cultures. Dancehalls first arose in the 1920s, and quickly displaced *bals de maison* as the place where folks gathered to pass a good time.

[Etouffee] is French for "braised," which is not quite the way the dish is made in south Louisiana. Instead, the classic ?touff?e recipes call for the slow sweating of the seasoning vegetables in a fat until a kind of sauce is produced into which either crawfish tails or shrimp are added. In some versions of the dish, the only vegetable used is onion and the fat is simply butter. The dish like most from the region has any number of versions with a great deal of variety to the ingredients list and to the cooking method. The only constant is that ?touff?e is always served over rice.

[Evangeline Maid] is the local bakery for sliced, white bread. Many natives insist that sometimes sliced white bread is what's required and the only slices that matter are Evangeline Maid.

[Fais do-do] is simply a colloquial form of the French expression "faire dormir (go to sleep)." House parties, [bals de maison], and other social events were the highlight of the week or month or even season for most folks, and everyone went, even families with children. The younger children were usually all put down in a room set aside for just such a purpose, and mothers could be heard whispering to their children "fais do-do, fais do-do." The expression came to be associated with the events themselves, and today you can still hear a party where music and dancing are going to take place described as a "fais do-do."

[Flood of 1940] The most severe flood in the area occurred in August 1940. For the four-day period of August 6-9, a rainfall of 27.33 inches was recorded; for the 10-day period of August 1-10, a rainfall of 37.86 inches was recorded.

[Freetown] is one of the older neighborhoods in Lafayette, always largely populated by African Americans. It originally received its name because it was the area of town where free people of color settled. Later, it became the heart of a grass-roots organization formed to protect the neighborhood form the Ku Klux Klan. Now it is an idyllic neighborhood populated by both races, as well as students and businesses.

[Fricassee] is often translated in Louisiana English to "[stew]." Like other fricass?es, the regional versions usually consist of meat cut into pieces and cooked in a gravy, both of which are served over rice. Seasoning vegetables and spices can vary.

[Garfish] also known as gar, are members of the primitive ray-finned fish order, resembling another fish of similar antiquity, the sturgeon. Garfish tend to inhabit shallow, weedy parts of bayous, lakes, and rivers where they are voracious eaters of fish and crawfish. The alligator gar is the biggest of the family.

[Grand Isle] was once a resort area, as depicted in Kate Chopin's *The Awakening*. It has since become the home to hundreds of camps, along with a number of other coastal areas.

[Gravy] perhaps best understood as "rice and gravy." The joke in south Louisiana is that if you show a Cajun a rice field, he can tell you how much gravy you'll need to cover it. A survey of the main dishes of the region reveals that at their heart, most of them are a variant of rice and gravy.

[Grillades] in south Louisiana, are all the pieces of meat that get stuck to the pot while browning. Incorporating those pieces into the gravy is the focus of a variety of techniques. Some saut? onions; others add some sort of liquid. What matters is that the hard-earned results of the Maillard process, wherein sugars get caramelized, are used fully.

[Gulf South] The states typically included within the Gulf South region are Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, with the two other states also part of the Gulf of Mexico coastline, Texas and Florida, only sometimes appearing.

[Gumbo] Perhaps no other dish in south Louisiana attracts as much attention or is the cause of so many arguments as gumbo. It has, in many ways, come to stand for the region itself. There are a number of good reasons for this: the word gumbo is of African origin, deriving from the West African variations of the word for okra: *guigombo* or *kikombo* are but two examples. In addition, the Choctaw word for fil?, another ingredient in many gumbos, is *kombo*. It is more likely, however, that the central Native American contribution to the gumbo pot may very well be the brown roux. In classic French cooking, there are a variety of rouxs, but in none of them is the brown color drawn from the flour itself. (Typically, it is the butter that is browned.) How dark a brown and how much roux to water and at what stage is the water introduced to the roux are subject to fierce debates in south Louisiana, with cooks from different regions sometimes looking askance at what another cook thinks is the proper, and only, way to make a gumbo. In the Acadiana region alone, the variety of gumbos to be tasted could take the devotee weeks of meals to survey. Our suggestions is to try the dark brown gumbos of the upper Teche which typically feature one meat like chicken or shrimp and compare them with the lighter, grayer rouxs of the lower Teche which feature multiple seafoods or chicken and okra. Then visit the prairies, being aware that the further you drive from the Teche the less likely you are to encounter garlic in gumbo. By the time you get to Crowley, even asking about garlic will make people wonder how you were raised. Be sure to drive north of I-10 and sample the smoked sausages put into the gumbos there as well as the fresh sausage gumbos of Lafayette. Don't be surprised to get a gumbo the breaks any number of rules. People in south Louisiana are always experimenting and there's been a lot of moving around over the past half century.

[Hog's Head Cheese] is a terrine of meat made from boiling the head of a big in order to extract the gelatin and using any of the meat from the head or other parts of the body, like the feet, and some organ meats that would otherwise go unused.

[Hoummus] is a dip, or spread, made of chickpea paste and tahini (sesame seed paste), with flavorings such as olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, and paprika. It is popular throughout the Middle East, and thus there are any number of variations on the basic recipe.

[King Cakes] were traditionally eaten the day before, and sometimes the day of the Feast of the Epiphany (also known as Twelfth Night), January 6. Such cakes typically concealed a dried bean, which typically signaled a good year for its recipient. Over the last few decades, the King Cake has come to be a part of the Mardi Gras season and they are now eaten from early January through to Fat Tuesday itself. The bean has long been replaced by plastic babies, which are now left to consumers to plant themselves, and the significance of getting the baby varies from group to group. While the classic King Cakes were simple, twisted affairs made of brioche dough, current versions are made of a variety of doughs and come with not only the traditional icing in Mardi Gras colors of green, gold, and purple, but with any number of fillings.

[KRVS] 88.7 FM, is a listener-supported public radio station broadcasting from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette that plays Cajun, Zydeco, Swamp Pop, Blues, Jazz and other music that is popular and created in Louisiana. KRVS began with as a 10 watt station that served six city blocks. Today it?s broadcasts can be heard in 12 parishes in Louisiana as well as online at krvs.org. The station often carries live coverage of local musical events. Every weekday morning it hosts a Cajun music program, with the announcements in French, and on weekends it has both Zydeco and Cajun programming with hosts regularly moving easily back forth between French and English.

[Lafayette Economic Depression] In the 1970s, During Governor Edwards' two terms, Louisiana experienced an oil boom. Oil prices had risen to over $30 a barrel. Because of the high prices of oil, many oil companies and operators began drilling in the state's gulf waters. The state reduced its taxes and relied on the oil industry as it's main source of revenue. In 1982, however, the state experienced an economic depression as there was an overproduction of oil. The prices for oil plummeted to $3 a barrel. The economic depression lasted for approximately three years. Many people lost their jobs and the population of Lafayette was reduced by almost 20,000 people. During this time, a popular bumper sticker appeared on cars saying, "Last one out of Lafayette, turn out the lights."

[Lagniappe] refers to the south Louisiana practice, still found in some places, of providing a little something extra as part of any exchange, e.g. an extra bit of meat from a butcher. The word comes to French from the Spanish *la ?apa*, which itself derived from the Quechua word *yapay* (to increase).

[laissez faire] as a phrase, originated with the economic theory of the French physiocrats, in particular from the saying "*laissez faire, laissez aller, laissez passer* (let do, let go, let pass)." It has since entered more wide-spread use and has been adapted and adopted in south Louisiana to reflect a general perspective among the folk cultures here that advocate a more reflective, patient approach to life and living.

[Lent] is the period from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday. While that span of time consists of 46 days, Lent consists only of 40 days: Sundays are excluded, since it was considered inappropriate to fast on Sundays.

[Louisiana Restaurant Association] The Louisiana Restaurant Association is one of the largest business organizations in the state, representing 7,000 restaurant operations and related businesses. The restaurant industry in Louisiana is the state's largest private employer with more than 120,000 employed directly and another 50,000 indirectly employed. Restaurants in Louisiana generate $4.8 billion in annual sales. The LRA offers the Louisiana Restaurant Employee Relief Fund, to help diffray the cost for misplaced workers after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

[Mardi Gras] is technically the Tuesday, literally the fat Tuesday, before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. It is, therefore, a time for feasting before the fasting of the Lenten season, a time for celebration of the pleasures of the body before the quiet, reflective time that precedes Easter. Because Mardi Gras is tied to Easter, its date shifts from year to year, falling anywhere from the beginning of February to the middle of March. In South Louisiana, Mardi Gras extends to cover the weekend and Monday before the Tuesday. Mardi Gras Season, as it is sometimes called, can often begin in January, with the start of Mardi Gras balls in urban areas and the beginning of run association meetings in rural areas.

[Muffulata] also spelled *Muffoletta*, is a Sicilian bread. The olive salad to which the term also applies is Sicilian as well. Finally, it was a Sicilian immigrant who invented the muffoletta sandwich around the turn of the century: Lupo Salvatore, owner of the Central Grocery in New Orleans. The Sicilian immigration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought thousands of folks to New Orleans as well as to parts of Acadiana (Lafayette, Palmetto, and Morgan City to name a few).

[New Orleans World Fair] The Louisiana World Exposition of 1984, while otherwise considered something of a failure, did bring home to a lot of folks in south Louisiana just how curious the rest of the world was about them. The fair, which was timed to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the World Cotton Centennial held in New Orleans in 1884, added momentum to the already building interest among many individuals in their own culture, its history, and its traditions.

[Offshore Oil Industry] The Gulf of Mexico offers an abundance of jobs to coastal dwellers in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The numerous oil rigs require around-the-clock manpower. Many men from the Acadiana area work offshore because the pay is quite high, although the trade off is long periods away from friends and family.

[Parrain] is French for "godfather," used to refer to the practice of naming at the time of a child's Christening a set of alternate parents who are willing to make sure the child is raised properly, that is according to Catholic teachings. Because godparents are typically close members of the family, and because the lines between extended family and close friends can sometimes be blurred in south Louisiana -- see the entry on [*cher*] above -- the practice of naming godparents extends beyond the Catholic church and, like Mardi Gras, has become a cultural practice general to south Louisiana.

[Pastitsio] is a Greek baked pasta dish, constructed of layers, usually served as a main dish.

[Rice] is not native to Louisiana, but was brought here, along with the farmers in chains to grow it, to serve as a source of cheap sustenance for enslaved Africans. It was usually grown in the back areas of a farmstead, in land otherwise unsuitable for cultivation. It was not until the late nineteenth century that rice became a commercial crop and a central dish at so many south Louisiana tables.

[Sauce Piquants] can vary from thick- stew-like dishes to more gumbo-like soups, both of which are served over rice. The *piquant*, or biting, of the dish's name refers to the addition of tomatoes and usually a larger dose of the usual spices found in south Louisiana dishes. Both are present to help tame the wild nature of most sauce piquants, which typically feature rabbit, alligator, squirrel, or some other form of game as their meat.

[Snowballs] also called "snow cones," are shaved or finely crushed ice packed into a cone or cup and flavored with an ever-increasing variety of flavored syrups. Mention them to a resident of Acadiana, especially one over forty or so, and prepare yourself for vivid reminiscing.

[Stew] see also [fricass?e], is a popular cooking technique in south Louisiana. Historically, slow cooking meant two things: first, a tough meat was made tender, and, second, the flavor from a little bit of meat was maximized, feeding more mouths. The former was important during a time when the meat provided was in all likelihood from an animal whose useful life had reached an end, e.g., a chicken no longer able to lay eggs. The second was important to large farm families trying to make the most of what little they had. The name *stew* is applied to a variety of dishes that may not necessarily have the meat itself stewed, e.g. crab stew or shrimp stew.

[Tasso] Smoked seasoning meat used for seasoning dishes like jambalaya and red beans and rice. Tasso was traditionally made from the trim of a hog after a boucherie and was seasoned, smoked using hardwoods for flavoring and then dried.

[Vermilion River] The Vermilion River, formerly the Bayou Vermilion, cuts through the middle of Lafayette as it flows from just north of the city to Abbeville and the Gulf of Mexico.