culinary break

It is of course, inadmissible to spend so much time in Louisiana and not cover that singular delicacy of the bayou, what no trip to the Big Easy would be complete without, the pinnacle of Cajun and Creole cuisine and the salve of every southern belle and gentlemen. I am speaking of course, of the frozen daiquiri.

Kidding! As important as frozen daiquiri's are, they are, in fact, second to the Snowball. What is a snowball, you may ask? The genesis of the snowball, I assume, happened in the settling of Louisiana when the Arcadians nee Cajuns fleeing the British takeover of Canada brought with them their traditional ice shavers to always remind them of thier wintery lost homeland. These Cajuns ate these shaved ice balls until they encountered the Creoles who introduced them to flavored syrups, which were a fusion of traditional Carribean, African, and tropical fruit flavors and lots and lots of sugar.

Apparently there are snowball shacks within shooting distance of nearly every settlement of Louisiana, even so far as to be enshrined in the Napoleaonic legal code.

Anyway, these shacks are all the same. There is a shack with a small window and signs covering 90% of the rest of the front listing the various flavors. The shack near aunt Kim's offered, no joke, approximately 50-60 flavors, including things like "tiger blood". I was going to go for "clear superman" but chickened out in the end, opting for "tamarind". Aunt Kim was nearly appalled. "Who ordered Tamarind???" I liked tamarind.  And it was a good choice with the condensed milk on top.

But I never heard the end of it from Larry, who was also dying to know what clear superman tasted like. The world may never know, but then the world may not yet be ready to know.

Tay ordered cherry, and it was thick and syrupy as cough syrup. He managed a third before setting it aside. I learned my lesson. Order light. Next time I ordered a snowball, I got cucumber melon, and that was pretty goood.