Seafoam Prairie des Femmes Mary

La Beauté avec un Coup de Main

Beauty with a helping hand.

Bay Berry Wax 2

Going to get bay berries

bay berries from the wax myrtle

making bay wax

Click here for an old puck of bayberry wax with a red assassin bug in it.

Bois Croche

All about Cherry Bounce

Cherry Bounce

 edited/transcribed from La Tasse Cafe

It's a thick sweet strong liqueur that people in south Louisiana make around the holidays.  You shake the wild cherry trees (merisiers) so that the ti-nincy berries, called merises or choke cherries, fall onto a sheet. You know they are ripe when they get very red, almost black on the tree. You collect them and make a cherry syrup that is mixed with alcohol to make Cherry Bounce. People say that the birds like to get a hold of the berries before people harvest them and that they make the birds act coo-coo, fly into widows, hallucinate and things, because the prussic acid in them is very toxic. The robins and the ciriers start wobbling and get "on high" comme dit bougre....or low, because they end up on the ground...

 
 The Mercedes Vidrine cookbook features a Cherry Bounce recipe similar to this one:

1/4 gallon wild cherries
10 1/2 lbs of sugar
Whiskey

Place cherries (that have the stems removed and have been washed and dried) and sugar in a wide-mouth gallon jar with a good fitting lid and store for 25-30 days until the sugar has all melted and turned to syrup. The cherries will be black when the aging period is over.  

 Take an empty bottle of a fifth of whiskey and pour in some of the cherries and syrup until the bottle is 1/4 full. 

Fill the bottle with whiskey and repeat the process until you have used up all the cherries and syrup. Cover the bottles tightly and let them stand for a week before opening. 

Serve in crystal cordial glasses, or for a treat, over vanilla ice cream.

Tasse Expressions

Bonjour qui ti parles?

Ce café est rechauffée avec du bois croche, pas du bois grave.

Merci Miss Becky (le café est après se faire passer)

Becky après passer le café!

Tu m'attrappeé offguard là!

Arroser l'linge avant repasser!

Pour arroser les chemins pour la poussière.

Le soleil brille icitte a Mamou.. tu peux pas t'imaginer...

Apres deal avec...

Comme dit l'bougre...

Ils ont du gaz qu'a pas ethanol dedans!

Je suis assez bête de crois ça...

T'es comme un homme j'connais, c'est comme une lavette trempe, il flip-flop tout partout!

C'est Valmon, bord icitte!

L'affaire est bonne, hein?

Meilleur que ça moi j'connais pas qui je ferais avec.

Things I learned on the Tasse de Cafe Radio Program

It was a right of passage for the young boys to learn how to cook because when the men would go out in the woods and to the camps to fish and hunt, they would see who would be "the cook", that is, the best cook.

When the tourism bureau of nearby Saint Landry called the Chamber of Commerce of Evangeline Parish asking for help with a fishing trip at Chicot for a group of Louisiana chefs, they were in need of a guide, boats, local cooks... Miss C said "Hold it! Hold it! We seceded from Saint Landry Parish over a hundred years ago! I mean, no offense to Opelousas, but we need to get our people on this! I called Suzy of course and then I called Jesse, our Man of the Year, to cook, he was changing some tiles in our building! I called the Mayor, she was on the road to the ball game! Then I called T-Don, I called T-Don at Cabot! He came out there and did a lil version of the "Lil Donkey".

On peux gone!

Tout les trente-six du mois.

les socos bleus, les socos jaunes, les socos rouges...

Mais

oil platform map

Journal 2001-2004

To Redell

She's so moody

Loom at the old Lafayette Hardware

      

Grand Coteau Classic

La Toussaint et les bénédiction des cimetières

La Toussaint et les bénédictions des cimetières  
Transcribed from La Tasse de Cafe' Radio program 10-27-14

Pour l'église Our Lady Queen of all Saints 

Samedi le premier de novembre
à le cimetière Gates of Heaven
en arièrre de l'église,  

bénédiction après la messe de quatre heures.

Dimanche à une heures de l'après-midi 

ils vont benir le cimetière de T-Mamou, 

et là à trois heures de l'après-midi 

ils vont benir le cimetière du platin. 

Ça c'est à travers de Our Lady Queen of All Saints.

Et là pour l'église de Sacré Cœur et Saint Joseph  

bénédiction de le cimetière  

samedi le premier de novembre à douze heures de midi 

et au Evangeline Memorial après la messe de quatre heures. 

La bénédiction de le cimetière de Belair Cove 

et là à cinq heures de l'après-midi, 

samedi le premier de novembre 

à le Vieux Cimitière de la Ville Platte.

Dimanche le deux d'novembre 

après la messe de huit heures et demi 

ils vont benir le chagrin 

et le cimetière de Saint Joseph à Belair Cove, 

après la messe de dix heures à Sacre Cœur 

ils vont benir le cimetière de Sacré Cœur 

et dimanche à midi le cimetière de l'anse de Tate. 

Soyez sur de gardez ça en idée!

Tasse Expressions: You got ya whistle in Basile

When my daddy would hear someone whistling, he would say, he got his whistle in Basile. Il a eu son siffler à Basile. I told that to my children my whole life, "you got ya whistle in Basile!"

C'est fraiche, ça refraiche.

Mais ça c'est Dot à nous-autres, ça?
Hein!? 
Ça c'est Dot à nous-autres?
Ouais!

Le vent de Basile... le gros Vents d' grand Basile!
(the wind comes from Basile in March, April... from the southwest...a dry wild, with dust, a pleasant wind...also called les vents de carême?)

Daddy and all his friends would gather at daddy's every afternoon and drink coffee under the pecan tree, and exchange lil expressions:

Cher! Ça c'est trop de sucre pour dix sous! 

Fais-attention, lâche pas la poule parce que tu va peut-être attrappé le guime.  

Tu peux pas montrer les nouveaux trick à un vieux mulet.

Pareille comme tu dis, tu peux amener le cheval à l'eau pour boire mais tu peux pas le faire boire. Ça c'est pour sûr!

Thing they should sell at the Prairie des Femmes Store

It was run by a local family, and their youngest daughters, bewitching blonde twins, ran the counter for a time. I went there once on la Fete de la Chandeleur to grab nearly all of their eggs and milk because we were short for crepe making at Beau Chene High School. I think I also bought a Mexican coke. They should sell basics like that at the Prairie des Femmes store, and other basics like bags of rice and cans of Rotel, white cherry icees and boudin balls and boules rouges in big glass jars on the counter, of course, but if I had my way, this is what they would also sell at the Prairie des Femmes store (on the old Indian footpath that is now Hwy 93):

1. powder puffs of thistle tops used to apply powder of the crushed Cherokee rose
2. fresh pucks of wax-myrtle wax 
3. bay and beeswax candles
4. cypress blood, tincture of cypress sap, bottled and corked
5. Spanish moss in a can, match included 
6. iron tines of the plow for t-fer making
7. hats and fans of the latanier for ladies to keep cool in the summertime
8. smudge sticks of indian sage, lemonbalm, rabbit tobacco
9. dried teas of herbe a cabri, mugwort, mongrea
10. sasafrass root
11. file' powder
12. comb-in prairie des femmes honey
13. pecan shell berceuses pour les ti catins
14. dried French mulberries by the lb
15. fresh mulberries, dewberries, blackberries in season
16. white mulberries of the Bayou Bourbeau in season
17. elderberry syrup for the winter and dried elderberry flowers
18. wooden beads and raw leather for leather work
19. Laguiole knives with the bee and goat punch
20. black taribi, cabresse
21. bousillage soap bar
22. red powder made from the crushed shells of lady bugs
23. job's tear and chinaberry rosaries
24. blow guns of lilas parasol
25. shovels
26. seeds
27. Poo yaille fertilizer
28. hammers
29. basins and buckets of all sizes
30. rolls of thick brown paper
31. cast iron cookware
32. a directory of the names of local traiteurs on a cork board
33. Louisiana literature and music
34. quilts
    
35. A Prairie des Femmes Field Guide
36. ceramic shards from the field, embossed with gold
37. plantain t-fer salve
38. homgrown fruits and vegetables
39. lemonbalm tingture
40. loose manglier tea

Don't try to pull in or turn around at the old Prairie des Femmes store, though! They got the driveway lined with nail boards. 

 


 

Things I learned on la Tasse

On Swings:

In Ville Platte we say balance, mais...galance... Galance? I don't recall ever hearing that. I don't know where this French comes from... so I guess that comes from that Thibodeaux French. Just a-swangin... Oh serait joli d'être après se balançer, avec une bonne tasse café avec un tit vent nord t'après souffler.. Hot dog! Ça serait la vie!


From the French News:

The Louisiana Swine Festival,  va avoir, jusqu'à à minuit, la musique par un D. J., Lucky Lady, Bad Weather et High Roller. Tout ca va prendre place en gym à Basile.

...Le police des Opelousas dit que vingt-trois ans d'âge Marcus DeJean avait ménacé quelqu'un avec un pistolet mercredi au soir avant il avait lead l'officier d'un course à pied. 

Random Stuff:


le premier qu'a éné -first born
le nichoix- last born 

Moi j'suis maître et major, et je me berce moi-même, ouais.

 Les jeunes persones ils ont oublié la politesse. C'est vrai. Et c'est le parti de notre faut aussi! Pareil comme pour apprendre le fraiçais c'est notre faute.

Pour ce-là de vous qui sont après planner d'aller à la chasse aux chevreuils, vous-autres peux trouver le maïs de chevreuil, la mélasse, de des food plot mix et tout ça là-là. Ils ont aussi les ATV spreaders au Evangeline Feed and Seed!

Le forecast à Dave et le forecast à Liz...

Daddy and all his friends would gather at daddy's every afternoon and drink coffee under the pecan tree, and exchange lil expressions:

Cher! Ça c'est trop de sucre pour dix sous! 

Fais-attention, lâche pas la poule parce que tu va peut-être attrappé le guime.  


Tu peux pas montrer les nouveaux trick à un vieux mulet.

Pareille comme tu dis, tu peux amener le cheval à l'eau pour boire mais tu peux pas le faire boire. Ça c'est pour sûr! 

The Ditches of the PDF

Squirrel Season Warning: C'est Pas Des Bébelles

La grande fête de la Paroisse Evangeline
La fête des écureuils!
La saison des écureuils
Va commencer officialment demain matin.

À tous ce vous les chasseurs
Qu'après nous écouter
On veut souhaite vous-autres va se comporter
a'oir un bon temps
et rappellez-vous de 

Les fusils et des armes
C'est pas des bébelles.
C'est pas des bébelles. 
Les fusils et des armes
C'est pas des bébelles.
C'est pas des bébelles.
Les fusils et des armes
C'est pas des bébelles.
C'est pas des bébelles.
C'est pas des bébelles.

The Plowed Mound

the Apex and the Moon

I have always imagined, when I looked out over open water, of all of the fantastic sea creatures that are just below the surface unseen. It's the same out here in the prairie where one can see the undulation of the ground, the swells of earth, and knows the history in the dirt, the treasures below the surface.

When I venture to ask a local elder about the Prairie des Femmes' origins or where I can find an arrowhead, they direct me to this field, which is on a bayou path that I am familiar with.

You can't see it from certain angles, but when you do see it, it is unmistakable; there was a large mound here. The earth swells as a wave, climbing two or three feet gradually, and forming a clear apex out toward the center. It was disorienting to be there, like being on holy ground. I have passed on idle so many times but never stopped. 

It's the harvest time. Just last week I passed the field in question and it was knee deep with weeds grown up in the weeks after the harvest. But the fields on this side of the PDF have been getting plowed, so I had the feeling that it had been, also. I waited until the cool of sunset to go out there. I took my boys, sat them down at the treeline with a bag of potato chips and a pig in a blanket each and told them to stay put while I tramped off into the field. 

I looked around and around, walking, looking down, listening for trucks that passed, watching the little red and white spots of my children against the black of the treeline, yelling at them occasionally or hearing them playing. I was unprepared for arrowhead hunting in my old red leather loafers, now full of fine dirt, as I had sunk eight inches in places as I walked. At the apex of the mound, which is not extremely pronounced, I took some pictures. I detected a death smell, very faintly, yet clearly. Surely from a field mouse crushed under the plow, I thought, but I could not help to think of the place and wonder what it really was.  I picked up clods, but found no stone, no ceramic. I walked crushing the clods in my hands and letting the dust fall. At the high point I found a dark clod of earth, cooler and fresher than that rest, and put it in my pocket. 

It seemed to me strange that I was so worshiping this land, an ironic time for me to come there, the permission and the occasion of the harvest coming at the same time that I have been fuming daily about a near neighbor back on my side of the prairie who is excavating a pond and trucking out dozens of Mack trucks a day of Prairie des Femmes dirt to sell, I assume. I hear the grumbling and beeping for twelve hours a day, I can see the machinery. It's officially started to annoy me, not only the noise way back here in the peaceful prairie, but that they were trucking out the land.  The Prairie des Femmes, being unceremoniously trucked out, and I had to listen to it all day. Selling earth was taboo to me, I realized, especially this dirt. 

I believe it is sacred ground, and it has been desecrated to a point. People have built their own homes on these high places, plowed them repeatedly, dumped and littered them, or else built roads over them, as there are a few roads in the PDF that undulate up over a mound and back down again.

I left as the reds of sunset were fading to oranges and purples. I had found nothing but a dark clod of earth from the apex, but what Frozard had said was true: no one messed with me. Now I needed is a big rain...

the rise of the plowed mound

la terre et mon soulier rouge

Sept Aigrettes

Jambes de Pluie over Prairie des Femmes

Belle Terre

LES CCC

Les community crime cameras
va venir avant longtemps!
va venir avant longtemps!
va venir avant longtemps!

Les community crime cameras
va venir avant longtemps

community crime cameras
va venir avant longtemps

community crime cameras!
community crime cameras!
community crime cameras!

va venir avant longtemps!

Yon Yon and Couillon

How many yon-yons does it take to make one couillon? Dix.

Collecting Sassafrass for File'

Pick the leaves before the first cold snap, ideally the last full moon in August. The nutrients are still in the leaves then. Hang the branches to dry in a pillowcase on the line, or in a the cabanne, and at Thanksgiving, with the family all get together, clean out the twigs, crumble the leaves by hand, picking out the leaf stems. Then use a spice mill, blender or mortar and pestle to grind and then you can sieve it to make it a very smooth powder.
If a tree is not near, replant it before spring in the new location, before the budding begins, while it is still dormant. Usually you can find a few younger plants near the older, as the roots run, and offshoots develop.

Rime de Rose du Bois

Ça c'est ma portfeuille 

ça c'est mes mouchoirs, 

ça c'est tout mes piastres de l'or 

pour aller au festival.

Triangle Goddess

Je M'Endors

A New Crop of Random ECards

YOU need to put some kerosene in the cistern to kill the tadpoles!

If you T-Galop all the way from la Pointe-aux-Pins to T-Mamou, you will burn some calories.

OUAIS! And I can name them... Allons 'oir.. there's drought, flood, bolls weevil and worm, rayon, nylon and .... hmmmm....

Ohhhhh she is as fine as a syrup cake!

La Ville des Manteau....

Go West Young Man! Go West and Go To Mamou!

Just Stop.

This reminded me of when Mr. JD was at the Mamou Mardi Gras and all the young guys were dancing on top of their horses and he stood up and said  "Hey! I'm fifty years old!"

Watch em, now!

So THAT's how they knew to come to Ville Platte...

C'est vrai!

Here's some veggies and cheese for yall to snack on.

Dans la Prairie des Femmes

Dans la Prairie des Femmes
Les oiseaux chantent tout le temps
Même ils chantent
au milieu de la nuit
Dans la Prairie des Femmes
Les guêpes et les serpents
Et dans l'été
Ca tombe les jambes de pluie

La Prairie des Femmes
Pointe Claire 

Prairie Laurent
Les femmes restait 

les hommes sont partis

Dans la Prairie des Femmes
Je crois je peux attendre

Quand dans la silence j'entends 

dans la nuit