Cajun grubbin'

Cajun grubbin’ (Photo credit: seafaringwoman)

You are my friends and will understand that bad case of the blues yesterday. But here’s another now, about finding a way in when you’re totally out.

Sometimes we rue the day, regretting the action, or lack of action, when we didn’t do this or did do that and it’s so hurtfully human, isn’t it? The regrets may sit there in the pit of the stomach, like they’ll never go away. It’s possible to be alone with Jesus, but not even feel like He is there. He’s there though. Jesus makes a point of tending to the cast out and the outcast. Jesus will Personally find a way to take care, especially when there’s not another person around right now. Nearly everybody else may be out, but that’s just when Jesus is always in there with us, just sitting there with us sometimes.

Here’s something. Of all things, along with rue, I thought of roux, the basis of many amazing tasteful sauces. But I think mostly of Cajun food when thinking of roux. So I looked it up at Wikipedia and About.com and E-How Food.

The word “amazing” is over-used, but that word is over-used because what other word describes something so wonderful, with other good things mixed in? Wikipedia said a roux is a mixture of fat, especially butter, and flour, used in making sauces. That’s a good and simple definition.

About.com said roux is a mixture of butter and flour, cooked with another liquid until bubbly. Roux can be the basis of dishes like etouffe (with accent marks) and brown sauce. If the sauce is not browned, its Bechamel or Veloute, otherwise known as White Sauce.

At E-How Food, and probably many other places, there are recipes for dishes like “Cajun Shrimp Gumbo” or (wait for it!) “Crockpot Cajun Pot Roast”. (Be still my heart). There’s more.

The website explained the difference in Cajun and Creole, both with “bold, zesty, robust” flavors, but with a difference. Cajun is a mixture of spices, especially pepper-y spices, with the animal fat, bubbled into a dark roux. Creole is a similar sauce, but with more tomatoes and butter and cream. What could really go wrong with those spicy combinations, if they’re watched and stirred and bubbled over careful time?

Here’s something else from E-How Food, about how being out meant being in again, eventually. Cajun seasoning, the website said, originated in Nova Scotia. In 1785, when the British forced the French settlers out of Nova Scotia, the cast out French people settled in Louisiana. Louisiana is where the cast-out French people gave birth to that magical combination of French and Southern cooking we call Cajun.

From all the way up there, to all the way out here, people still enjoy the benefits of those kicked-out Cajun foods. Cajun is amazing. Let’s cook up that Cajun Pot Roast. Today, here at Lee University, my first French class starts. (No. I was wrong. It starts next week). But sixty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong. They gare-own-tee.

 

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