Lulu's Recipe for Cajun Sass - Sandra Hill Page 0,19
followed by thin slices of andouille sausage. To that, she added the dry beans she’d been soaking overnight and covered the batch with water, bringing it to a boil, then lowered it to a soft simmer. It would cook the entire day and be served with rice and corn bread. Tabasco sauce would give the dish some spice.
Monday red beans and rice—another Cajun tradition from the past when women would work laundering, hanging clothes out to dry, then folding and sometimes sprinkling water on some items for ironing the next day. There had been no time for any special cooking on Mondays. Thus, the red beans and rice, which required no work.
It was funny, Louise mused, how she had come to embrace all the old Cajun ways. There had been a time just after high school graduation that she couldn’t wait to get away from the bayou and all its old-fashioned ways. She’d headed to the big city of New Orleans where she’d been happy working as a typist at the Higgins factory, makers of the famous Liberty Ships. And, yes, she’d been a bit wild, living the principle of joie de vivre to the fullest, a frequent visitor to the city’s USO, dancing and flirting with the soldiers.
And then she’d met Phillipe.
She sighed. Everything came back to Phillipe and that time in her life.
Her new wall phone rang, and she rushed to answer it before the noise awakened Adèle. It was Marie Gaudet.
“Sorry to call so early, but I reckon you’re out and about by the time the rooster crows. I wanted to catch you before you went out.”
“How is Anna Belle today?” Louise asked as she gave the beans a quick stir with a wooden spoon, the phone cradled at her neck.
“Wonderful! The little imp. I do declare, you’d never know she scared us to death yesterday.”
“Young’uns have a knack for springing back.”
“I was wonderin’ if you could send Adèle over fer a play date with Anna Belle t’day. It would be jist the thing to make everything appear normal again. I doan wanna treat Anna Belle lak an invalid.”
“I s’pose so,” Louise said, though she had been thinking of using her daughter as a buffer between herself and the too-tempting Doctor Boudreaux, assuming he came this afternoon as planned for her swamp foraging trip.
She wasn’t exactly sure why she’d agreed to have him accompany her, especially when she knew what he was interested in. And it wasn’t swamp plants. Ever since she’d tarted herself up with Cajun Sass after Justin’s last visit, men had been giving her a second, third, even fourth look. It happened at the farmers’ market. It happened while delivering medicines to her customers, even ninety-year-old Rufus Benoit, who’d pinched her behind and said, “Ah couldn’t help mahself.” It even happened in the toilet paper aisle at the A & P. Worst of all was church where she’d noticed two of the ushers staring at her and whispering lasciviously.
The thing is, Cajun Sass was about more than physical appearance. In fact, that was the least important aspect. There were many times, like now, when Louise missed her mother and grandmother whose wisdom would have helped her so much. In a way, they’d leaned in from beyond the grave and helped her anyhow. Proof was that Louise had found all the information she needed on the subject, not in the always-reliable herb diaries but in some old letters exchanged between her mother and one of her sisters during World War I. Yes, the first big war, not the second one. Mixed in among all the news and gossip, there were paragraphs here and there about Cajun Sass.
Aunt Cecile had been complaining about life on a cold, cold army base up north where Uncle Victor had been grumpy and not paying any attention to her anymore…in the bedroom. Was it the chilly Yankee atmosphere that had cooled his ardor? Or something else?
Cici, you allus was the fool where Vic was concerned. Jist ’cause yer up in Yankee land doan mean you gotta lose yer Cajun Sass. And you know what that means. Style, Attitude, Smarts, Stubbornness.
Mon Dieu! I fergot about the Cajun Sass. Style, didja say? Best I buy mahself one of them see-through nighties. Do you still have that Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog?
Her mother had reacted with: Pff! Clothes is only a small part of the Cajun Sass recipe. Yer smart as a hooty owl, Cici, and stubborn as a cross-eyed mule. But remember what