Bye to new friends in Louisiana

 We stayed in Louisiana till December 29th.  We wanted to get over and see the only place in the world where tabasco sauce is bottled.  There is also a salt dome here on Avery Island.  Confederates used the salt  to help make gun powder during the Civil War.

John and Mary gave me some Mardi Gras

beads for my birthday.  They also taught James and I how to skin and fillet a channel catfish.

John and Pat & Beezer from Detroit.

 It was nice to meet someone else who was a fan of hockey.  These people provided us with the Zatarains mix that was the base for our first pot of Gumbo.

Nolan and Roberta Pellerin are locals and they have the real recipe for gumbo, which starts with making reaux. ( pronounced rue and probably spelled some other french way.)  They gave us so many spices for spicing up catfish and gumbo, as well as 4 types of oranges and grapefruits from their own trees.

Nolan taught me how to make his championship gumbo, and they gave us some of theirs so we could know how it's supposed to taste.  Jake was the only one of us who thought the Zatarains was better.
Nolan is a true Acadian.  His great great grandmother was banished from Acadia in the 1700's.  Nolan's French is still a lot better than mine.

It's off to Houston, Texas next!