The Cross is my Salvation: A beautiful cast-iron mourning cross from Catholica
Woo-boy! Cajuns love Lent. Jus’ ask chuval on Stuff Cajun People Like. It’s right there, in black and white: #2, between “Community Coffee” and “LSU Football.” And I’d have to agree: What bad thing can we say about a season where our “punishment” is to eat seafood?
My Lent started rather auspiciously with a care package from my mama that contained Eula Mae Doré’s wonderful Cajun Kitchen
cookbook. It’s funny (we are not Cajuns — well not officially anyway), but the season of Lent has long been associated with Cajun and Creole food at my house, just as Christmas means lots of chanky-chank Catholic and Motown chansons Christmas (or strikingly good combinations of the two, like Stevie Wonder’s Ave Maria). I think a lot of people must get Cajun fever this time of the year, some taking it un peu trop loin, like these Cajun lovin’ Anglicans. Someone needs to tell them, and the people who own Two Boots in Brooklyn, that Mardi Gras ends promptly at midnight on Tuesday, and that all beads and tokens and masks and (Heaven forbid!) Dixieland Jazz needs to be bien caché by Ash Wednesday. It seems to be a popular misconception that Mardi Gras season begins on Fat Tuesday.
Anyway, I digress. Eula Mae’s book is delightfully ordered according to the seasons, beginning with (you guessed it) Lent and Spring, and progressing through Easter, and on into the Summer months. Well, I imagine we’ll end up at Christmas again (that was the Cajun word for Christmas — sounds a little like “Creased Muss”), but I have only gotten as far as Summer’s Blackberry Cobbler. Eula Mae recounts so lovingly the great tradition of the extended family trip to their “camp” in the chênière (a ridge of silt where the live oaks cling, along the Louisiana shoreline), usually corresponding with Easter week and culminating in a large Easter Fête.
And there’s more: With the help of Marcelle Bienvenue
, Eula Mae paints an unforgettable portrait of her home for the last 50 years, Avery Island, La. If you’ve heard of Avery Island before, it’s probably because of the venerable Tabasco sauce that’s been made there by generations of the Avery and McIlhenny families since 1868. Eula Mae has enjoyed a long and storied and distinguished career managing the Tabasco Commissary and Deli and cooking for McIlhenny family events. She has cooked for Jacques Pepin and Julia Child and visiting dignitaries to Avery Island, which she refers to as her “Garden of Eden.” She is without a doubt the Grande Dame of humble, but beautiful Cajun fare. And when she calls the scent of peppers ripening in the sun-dappled breeze “the perfume of the island,” I am enchanted. Are there really 5 different colors of azaleas on the Island, Eula Mae? Here in Texas, where I am sojourning this Lent, we have only one that I’ve seen: the standard hot pink. I have already asked mon mari if we could finish out this Lent with a trip to Avery Island, as it’s not far away. Perhaps I will spot a snow-white heron, or happen upon the row of cottages that have been the longtime home of Eula Mae and her husband, MoNeg. At any rate, I’ll be visiting at the most exquisite time of year in this part of the country. While much of the U.S. can barely shrug off the ghost of winter by April, Avery Island is bound to be in full bloom.
Now to keep the good times rolling, my mama sent me, just today, a box of four one-pound bags of Camellia Red Beans. I would like to feel a little gloomy during Lent (as I am sorry for my sins), but I just don’t know if that’s possible this year. I gave up reading some of my best-beloved blogs, which has freed up much time to read Eula Mae’s book at a leisurely pace. I have 6 more Fridays of succulent Gulf seafood to get through, and a bad case of Spring Fever from visiting a place that is warm and sunny and beginning to flower. I guess I’ll just have to redouble my efforts at holding my tongue when my husband and I disagree, spend more time working on my belle-mere’s website, or grumble less when I’m changin’ a stinky diaper. There has to be some way to deny myself. ‘Cause, tho’ I’m not Cajun, this Francophone Catholic loves me some Lent, too.
Que vous passiez aussi un bon Carême!
Dieu vous bénisse,
Anna
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