The Other LA

So I'm in Louisiana visiting my family and I really got into the Louisiana experience. On the drive home from the airport I told my mom about this book I'm reading called Real Food. The author basically argues that we should eat like Americans did before the industrial revolution, eating steak and drinking whole milk, as long as the milk comes from the a cow fed on pasture and isn't homogenized. I also told my mom that enriched flour was bad for her which seemed to be news to her, but now she denies it. Anyway, I really talked the part of a health food nut, but I have proceeded to demonstrate otherwise.

Last night we bought a couple gallons of Bluebell ice cream. I just can't visit Louisiana without buying some of my favorite brand of ice cream. If you've never heard of Bluebell, it's only available in the south, but some Texas-owned restaurants in Utah have been known to fly in Bluebell's vanilla ice cream to serve with their desserts. It's got simple flavors, but it really is that good. So even though I typically don't eat much ice cream at home, I've had a bowl every day that I've been here. Then for a mid-morning snack I ate a pepperoni pizza hotpocket. That was a mistake, but I didn't feel quite as sick as I did after we went to Steamboat Bill's. I ordered shrimp etouffee and a pistolet. A pistolet is typically a deep fried roll with some sort of shrimp filling inside. At Steamboat Bill's they typically take a deep fried roll and slice it open and slather etouffee on the roll. The rolls were so greasy that the bottom was a light brown from the oil. It was fabulous, but before we left the restaurant my stomach started to fill rocky from all the grease. Even now, just thinking about the grease on that roll makes me feel sick.

This evening my dad took me kayaking on the Calcasieu River, which was really a lake. At first I wasn't too impressed. I thought the lake smelled like an outhouse, but really it smelled like dead fish rotting on the shore. I almost stepped on one. Then while we were getting the kayaks ready to go, my left foot started to sting like I stepped on something, only I was standing still. I looked down and that's when I saw fire ants crawling all over my foot and my flip-flop. I screamed and slapped them all off, but not before I got several bites. Back in high school, I used to be able to go an entire summer without getting a single bite from a fire ant, but obviously they also wanted to extend their welcome to me during my short visit here in the South.

Once we got out on the lake everything changed. The water is so warm here, just like bathwater. I love it. And that way when it runs down the paddle and down my arm, it feels nice rather than chilly. Of course it also helped that a rain storm had blown through and cooled the air off. Otherwise the water probably would have felt more like sweat running down my arm. The lake was almost glassy, and I got to watch the red-orange sun set behind pine trees. For the first time in my life, I realized how beautiful Louisiana can be and how blind I've been to it all. I wish I had my camera, but a digital camera and me in a kayak doesn't really bode well for the camera or the pictures. I wasn't adept at kayaking, but I got the basic idea behind it, and I got to see a really lovely view of Louisiana.