The Cœur de la Prairie des Femmes

Jambes de Pluie over Prairie des Femmes

Belle Terre

Mistric Mary

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!

Exit 11 Yard Sale

Yon Yon and Couillon

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

A Perfect Persimmon Bread from Monsieur Menard

 

Persimmon Bread

 
Two 9-inch Loaves/ 1 bunt pan

 
Using the higher amount of sugar will produce a moister and, of course, sweeter bread.

3½ cups sifted flour
1½ teaspoons salt
2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 to 2½ cups sugar
1 cup melted unsalted butter and cooled to room temperature
4 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten
2/3 cup Cognac, bourbon or whiskey
2 cups persimmon puree (from about 4 squishy-soft Hachiya persimmons)
2 cups walnuts or pecans, toasted and chopped
2 cups raisins, or diced dried fruits (such as apricots, cranberries, or dates)
1. Butter 2 loaf pans. Line the bottoms with a piece of parchment paper or dust with flour and tap out any excess.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
3. Sift the first 5 dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
4. Make a well in the center then stir in the butter, eggs, liquor, persimmon puree then the nuts and raisins.
5. Bake 1 hour or until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Storage: Will keep for about a week, if well-wrapped, at room temperature. The Persimmon Breads take well to being frozen, too.

recipe and photo via the Virtual Table et Monsieur Randal Menard

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.

A la recherche du sassafron

When we first moved to the PDF, there was open cow field on all but one side of the property, and on that side was a swamp wilderness I call the oxbow woods. Back on the prairie, near the treeline of the cow field de Monsieur Vacheur there was a small grove of native sassafrass trees with their leaves in all sizes and shapes. I remember Miss Kary giving me some sassafras root to chew on a kid and I loved it. The first winter out here I had harvested some from the little grove and made file and root beer and tea with it. But then the neighbors (who love their bush-hog) started to clear that land more and more, cutting their trees and some of ours in the process. They ignorantly chopped the only native producing plaquemine that grew on the very corner of our property. The fruit I ate from it that first fall out here was like no persimmon I had ever eaten off of the trees that are in people's yards, those are Japanese varieties. This native persimmon was like une cuillère à café of velvet spice butter. Then when the parish came in and started ripping out our tree-line (for drainage, and, I was told, paid for by "BP stimulus money") we stopped them and asked they leave our side of the ditch and tree line alone. Half the damage was done but at least we didn't have to watch them tearing out any more of our trees. They agreed to leave our trees alone, but then one day on our walk, I saw they had left every tree on our side alone except the big producing mulberry, my favorite tree.... ahhh.... La Prairie des Femmes. She giveth, and she taketh away.

So imagine my surprise and elation this morning when I took a walk back there to see if any sassafras could still be found. I had looked recently, but wasn't able to go far enough to where I believed it was. I could remember when there was the little grove, but now it's all grass with a few mowed-around hardwood trees. At the back of our pasture where the overgrowth shadows fall on the uncut grass I stopped and stomped my feet. The grass was dripping wet with dew and the left overs of a the morning fog. As I proceeded from the shadows and to the spot where the sunlight hit the grass making it gleam, a black snake slithered in front of me and back into the green jumble of the tree line like a long smooth piece of silk. I frissonered and thanked God that I always have the presence of mind to watch the ground as I walk, but seeing the snake told me something: I would find the sassafron this time! Sure enough, at the base of a few of the trees, the odd shapes of the leaves caught my eye. I collected some and prepared the soil around the root of a sapling for a little transplant. When I got back to the house, I put some of the small branches to dry in the sun on the old Burger Chef Table and made a tea with the fresh loose leaves. Today, the Prairie giveth!

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

 

Prairie Marys

Hurricane Season Update

How do you say Walmart in French?

Comment t'apelles

Walmart en Français?

Walmart!
Walmart! 
Walmart!

Comment t'apelles

Walmart en Français?

Walmart!
Walmart!
Walmart!

Comme le nom 
de Emile Veillon
tu connais?

Walmart est toujours 
le même nom

Comme le nom 
de Emile Veillon, 
tu connais?

Walmart est toujours 
le même nom.

 

Comme le nom d'Emile 

Walmart, tu connais?
 Walmart est toujours 

le même nom

 

Comme le nom d'Emile 

Walmart, tu connais?

Walmart est toujours 
le même nom.

Fee Follet (in the woods)

 


Fee Follet
In the woods
Fee Follet
Fille Fille!

Fee Follet
In the woods
Fee Follet
Fille Fille!

What is dat? 

Fee Follet

In the woods

Fee Follet
Fille Fille!

What is dat?

In da woods

Fee Follet
Fille Fille!

Crazy Fire!

Crazy Fire

In the woods 

Crazy Fire!

Crazy Fire

In the woods 

It was vary scary

Vary scary 

Vary scary

In the woods

Crazy Fire

Crazy Fire 

In the woods

It would make a glowing light

a glowing light...

 a glowing light...

in the woods

Fee Follet would lead dem  

the wrong direction

Uh huh 

 Feu Follet 

Uh huh

Uh huh

Feu Follet

Uh huh 

Uh huh

Feu Follet

Uh huh 

Uh huh

and low ground

In the woods

Mary Black

The first weeks that I lived in the Prairie des Femmes in the summer of 2006 I was a newlywed in a refurbished cypress cottage hand-built by my husband and a crew of friends and family. Everything was new and like an old dream, the clean linens, the wood and family antiques that looked so beautiful and were freshly oiled or white-washed. Scents can bring you back in your memory. I remember the smell of the cypress and linseed oil and the fresh air of the prairie coming in through the doors those first few weeks at my new home. The clean smell of Egyptian cotton and the ozone smell of the prairie at night. There was another smell that brings me back to those weeks, and it was that of a bath oil my aunt bought me on my wedding day called Mary Black by Florence Gunnarson. It came in a real French glass bottle with a heavy square stopper. It was nearly the only bath soap I had in the house those first sparse days I spent out here. My husband left for a small tour a few weeks after our marriage, and I was alone in the prairie for the first time. There was no hot water for some reason, maybe because we had no electricity except for one extension cord stretched across the field from the branch that we only used for necessities, so I spent time at night heating our new red kettle full of hot water on the gas stove over and over to fill the tub with just enough to have a few inches of warm water. I would put the kettle on a cypress stump next to the old tub. I remember laughing to myself at the process, and wondering what to make of this new existence alone in a dark house in the Prairie des Femmes, but in retrospect, it was one of the most luxurious times I have ever had. Mary Black bath oil, like the good friend she was named for,  filled the house with the woody and vibrant citrus smells those first candlelit nights here and indeed kept me company. She seemed like she belonged in the Prairie des Femmes, so much did she smell of the fog, the prairie grasses and the resins of freshly planed Atchafalaya old growth cypress.

Rue Royale on Pont des Mouton

One of the Hamlets of Pont des Mouton: Rue Royale

Royal Road

Huitres Bien Rares en 2014

 

Et finalment  

Ça dit que les huitres est biens rares 

au long du Gulf Coast 

et le plus bas depuis les passeés quatres ans 

quand le British Petroleum Oil Spill...

quand l'huile avait vidé dans le Golfe. 

Ça dit que les banc des huitres après produire moins que un tier de ça ça faisait 

avant le oil spill.

C'est tout le temps on avait pour 

les nouvelles en français à ce matin 

presenté à vous 

avec les compliments 

de la Banque Evangeline!

 

Sidney's Grotto in August

The Plains of Mary

Saint Thérèse in Arnaudville

mercredi le 30 julliet, arnaudvile, lousisiane

Oh S'il J'Aurais des Ailes à la Feuille d'Or

A Strange Bird has landed in the Prairie des Femmes!

Vièrge Noire of Orange Street

Late July Figs

              Mom under the fig tree. 

Cedar Hill Grotto

Le temps fraîche

 

...very low humidity ah, et of course, quand on avait du temps comme ça, ça, ça aidait à faire le coton craquer... les grabot du coton craquer of course un peu plus tard dans le- especialment dans le premier d'aoüt tu connais? Mais y'avait un tas qu'a été élèvé à ramassaer du coton et des chose comme ça qui se rappelle bien que les fraîcheurs... tout le temps en temps t'avait un tit vent nord et pis là la rosée, c'était coûteux d'aller commencer à ramasser le matin, le bon matin jusq'ua ça faisait clair dans la rosée.

Maison Blanche

Maison Blanche

Moi j'reste dans un mobile home
Mais tous les soirs je rêve de ma maison blanche
Moi j'ai une femme et un ti-garçon
Et j'aimerais les mettre dans ma maison blanche

Moi j'veux p
as d'être president
Mais j'aimerais rester dans ma maison blanche.

Moi j'veux pas d'être le president
Mais j'aimerais rester dans ma maison blanche.

Ma Maison Blanche

 

Nonc Bob's Auctions has a Facebook Asteur

Le Nonc Bob's Auction Barn 

12004 L'anse aux Pailles Road, 

Ça c'est là bas dans le cœur de l'anse aux Pailles 

et il y a toute sorte de marchandise qu'il vend à l'encan. 

Des vieilleries, des antiques, collectibles, 
des outils de tout qualité, primitive, glassware, 

en fin, j'vas dire quoi, 
Nonc Bob peux vendre toute sortes des articles à l'encan, 

et pis il après servir le public dans le business des encans 

il y a plus que quarante ans asteur 

et pis tu peux le suivre sure Facebook! 

C'est bien! 

Nonc Bob est sus Facebook asteur!

Nonc Bob's Facebook 

Nonc Bob's

Nonc Bob's Blogspot

Petite Madame Veillon Speaks French in Chataignier

I have committed my life to learning as much about Louisiana French as I can, but I am not a true native speaker. Because I am young, there is some confusion when I speak with a local as to why I speak French. Imagine then what a joy it was for me to meet Madame Ethel Fontenot Veillon at the Evangeline Parish French camp this year in Chataignier.  Born in 1982, she is a year younger than me and one of the youngest people I have met who speaks Evangeline Parish French, or what some call "Cajun French" as a first language.

I was so happy to have the charming Madame Veillon agree to give a little interview for the Prairie des Femmes. Here is the transcript:

June 20, 2014, Chatiagnier, Louisiana

Mon nom est Ethel Veillon
Et je viens de la Ville Platte.
Mon dernier nom c'était Fontenot 

avant je me mariée.
Ma mère et mon père, ils m'ont montré 

comment parler en français depuis j'étais un ti-bébé
Et il faullait j'parle en français 

avec mes grand-parents dessus les deux bords 

parce-que ça parlait juste, juste en français 

pas en anglais du tout.
J'ai trente-deux ans 

et j'reste à la Ville Platte 

et j'travaille à l'Opelousas 

et j'aide tout le monde parce que j'suis un nurse, 

j'travaille à l'hôpital et 

je peux parler en français avec le monde.

So Immaculate