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Jim Bradshaw

C'est Vrai: First there was corn

They say that a true Cajun can look at a field of growing rice and tell exactly how much gravy it will require after harvest.
It’s true that rice has become a staple in our diet in south Louisiana, but before there was large-scale rice production in south Louisiana, corn was the staple in Cajun cabins, and that was a choice pretty much forced upon them.
Before their exile from their Canadian homeland Acadians cultivated mostly wheat and barley, perhaps with a little bit of Indian maize to feed the hogs. But when the exiles finally settled in Louisiana, they found that wheat and barley didn’t do very well in our climate. Instead, Louisiana colonial officials gave them seed corn to plant. The Acadians didn’t particularly like it, but it was all that stood between them and starvation. They planted it and learned to turn it into everything from cornbread to coush coush. Today, if you do a computer search for Cajun corn dishes, you’ll even get one for Cajun corn dogs, whatever that might be. I don’t remember them as part of my grandma’s repertoire.
Rice didn’t push corn aside as the staple Acadian crop until Midwesterners came to the prairies in the late 1800s and began to grow it in commercial quantities. Before that the Cajuns occasionally planted so-called “providence rice.” They threw some rice in a wet spot and let providence take over.
Acadians complemented their corn crop with large vegetable gardens and quite often with fruit orchards as well.
On New Year’s Day 1786, Louis Judice, commandant in the Lafourche area, wrote that the Cajuns’ “principal crop is corn, very little rice, lima beans, [and] English peas,” and that they grew “several varieties of peaches” as well as plums, pecans, three types of figs, pomegranates, pecans, and several varieties of grapes.
When they settled in southwest Louisiana, practically every Acadian household kept a yard full of chickens, and eggs became a big source of protein in their diets. They also became important in their budgets because they were used to barter for coffee, sugar, flour, and other staples that they needed from the local store. That practice continued at least until World War II in many south Louisiana communities.
Most Cajun farmers also kept a hog or two, from which they harvested meat, lard, sausage, cracklins — in short, “everything but the squeal.”
The Cajuns also relied on hunting, fishing, and gathering to fill the table. Wild game, old hens, and aging cattle made up a substantial part of their diet—all of them either tough or stringy or both, meaning that they had to be cooked “low and slow.”
That practice of cooking for a long time at a low temperature is the technique that is still at the heart of many south Louisiana dishes.
Friday was fish day in Catholic Louisiana, and for folks who lived along the coast or next to a bayou, fish found their way to the table more often than once a week. Crawfish, turtles, oysters, frog legs also sweetened the pot, helping to create the idea that “a Cajun will eat anything that won’t eat him first.”
In 1879, journalist Charles Dudley Warner visited a family living on the lower Vermilion River and was given a meal that included gumbo, fried oysters, eggs, sweet potatoes, and black coffee.
In more recent times, a lot of other visitors have come to sample our cuisine, and have tried to imitate it — sometimes simply creating some sort of spicy abomination and telling unsuspecting diners in far-off places that it is “authentic Cajun.” National restaurant chains began to market “Cajun” this and “Cajun” that, without much regard for the real thing.
As historian Carl Brasseaux once pointed out, “The only link between corporate America’s products and actual Cajun dishes was usually cayenne pepper, which the imitators used to great excess.”

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

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