Let's start with the facts. I am old, like senior citizen old, and recently one of my adult children asked me to start writing down my recipes. I've been considering that, and instead of putting them in a book or a simple file on my computer I'll be posting them here.
Not only am I old, but I'm Cajun, from a Cajun Creole background. I cook. My father cooked and he taught me. So many folks in my family do serious cooking. But no one much is recording the old stuff. I can tell you how to make proper Louisiana Red Beans and Rice, or show you but heaven forfend if you ask any of us for exact measurements. That's because cooking is like jazz, free form and flowing. I encourage anyone cooking to approach the task with an open mind, joy, bravery and love. It does make the food taste better, love does, cher!
The "why" that will likely get me hate mail or comments is my use of the word "Connasse" or as it's sometimes simplified as "Coonass" While I know some find it offensive, it wasn't always that way. Growing up in the 1960s, 70s and 80s it was a word freely used, with many jokes connected to it. Many of us Cajuns embraced the term, hell, even our once and forever governor Edwin Edwards referred to himself as a Coonass. During World War 2 there was a U.S. service plane with the moniker "Cajun Coonass" proudly painting on it's nose.
The etymology of the word. is something no one can agree on. One legend is that during World War 2 French soldiers started calling their Cajun counterparts "Connasse," which roughly translates to "Stupid person," or "Cheap prostitute." Supposedly because many of them spoke Creole - Cajun French, which has roots in a long ago version of French. But a historian discovered that the above mentioned plane, the "Cajun-Coonass" predates that legend by at least a year.
There are those in Louisiana expending much time and energy attempting to kill the word from daily vernacular, which strikes me as the height of political correctness. I'm a salty old broad, broad of beam, too damn fat for my own good, with a touch of non-P.C. rudeness. I hate that our world is getting so "vanilla" and homogenized. We are losing cultures and languages because of this cultural shift.
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