panse bourrée or panse or pounce

Denise and I were talking about the products sold at the store the other day. Beef tongue is popular. I called Mom and Dad, they were on their way back from the casino, and asked them if there was a particular way of saying beef tongue in French. Mom said it was langue de boeuf. That is the standard French way of saying it and Mom and them around Evangeline call it that way also. But only the older people will call it that. Many simply say it in English as beef tongue. I told Denise gratons was the same thing. In the store and spoken by people they are cracklins now. Boudin survived. That's the French word. It's pronounced that way and spelled that way. Why did boudin survive when other words faded away. I have no pouncing idea. Pounce on the other hand is another story. It's pronounced and called by its French name but instead of spelling it panse it's spelled pounce. Who the pounce knows how this came to be? Anyway, it's November and for Thanksgiving we'll eat plenty of gog or chaudin or panse bourree. It's all the same pouncing thing no matter how you say it. I rather eat that than that dry pouncing turkey. 

cigare and guepe

I'm guessing cigare would be the right spelling. Because it sounds like see-gaar. I'm guessing guepe is the codeck too.  These annoying bastards are flying all over the damn place. I killed about five now. The males fight each other and big female gets annoyed when we pass by her nests. 

The big little putain dug several death holes around our place. She paralyses the cigare or cigale and drags it down in the hole for her babies to lunch on when they hatch. Sha, dat's so sweet. Sha guepe. You can do whatever the hell a guepe got to do, just not where we live. And I'm sorry, but I can't stand seeing that cigare laying there, trying to move but unable. So now I have to stomp it. It's gangsta out here in the yard. 

figue

Figue sounds just like fig. Easy one today.   My brother Marcus made the jam and Mom and Dad gave us ones from the house. 

L'Anse Grise flooded by Miller's Lake in Evangeline Parish

Mom and Dad have pictures of L'Anse Grise flooded by Miller's Lake sometime in the 50s.  A levee had broke around the North Landing.  

chaudiere

We're cooking chicken fried steak in a fryer. Love to cook outside. It's a fryer but a pot too. Anyway, sounds like show jaa. I'm glad to have people I can ask to pronounce words because the DLF has incomprehensible  pronunciation guides. I have the spelling, thank you people making that dictionary, but I rely on everyday people, like my Mom, to know how to say it. And the thing is, they don't know how to spell it. 

truck

Badass Creole truck. Creole is the French word, Cajun is the American word. Cadien, would be better, however, this badass truck belongs to an Evangeline Parish hadeya and Creole would fit better. Go ahead, Neg, tie that squirrel tail on your truck in October! Get down at Teet's and get some boudin for that mal de tete! When I think of Revon Reed I think of IceCube: "don 't hate da playa, hate da game!" Call yo self Cajun till you blue in the face, but shit la merde, you a badass horse riding, hard drinking, fighting Creole from the prairie. Nothing wrong about Fontenot, Brignac, Guillory, Ortego, Manuel, Vidrine, Soileau, Ardoin, LaFleur, Morein, Vizinat, Fusilier, etc etc. Names you see all the time around here. And Arvie, Doucet, Lartigue, Reed, Marcantel, McDaniel......Shuff. Names around here. 

Hadeya!

Hadeya is hariat. Around here it means raising Hell, roaming the roads up to no good, etc, or just a no good person, a bon rien. In Father Daigle's dictionary he has it as old or beat up. 

Google prairie des femmes Evangeline Parish slang for hadeya and other fun sayings. 

cotes de cochon

Kot. My Mouman said she would spell ribs when I asked for mot for pork chops. She said she would maybe call it that, asked Dad, and he said yeah. It is a cut of rib from a pig. I looked through the DLF and they had that. Then I looked through Wikipedia on cuts of meat and pork chops are a cut of ribs. All sorts. But one way of saying you ate some pork chops is cote, or, cotes de cochon. Kot. I wonder though. I don't know for sure. But for me, cote suits me fine. 

viande moulee

Ground meat. Mom said sounds like moo-lay and that must be spelling. 

soco and patasa

Muscadine wine. We drank some in area named Patasa. It means perch and the town, in English, is Perchville.  That's on the signs.  But people call area Patasa.  

mure d'eronce

Mure d'eronce is blackberry bush. Our neighbor has a bush that has some already ripened.  We would pick them along the fields in L'Anse Grise. We made sure to wash them well because the crop dusters would pass, spraying everything.  Mom would make pies with them and we ate them sometimes simply on bread. Put a lot of sugar over them in a bowl was a favorite treat also. 

tchoc gumbo and ecureuil gravy

Blackbird gumbo and squirrel gravy.  In L'Anse Grise, when we would visit Memere, Mon Mon (spelling for Maw Maw ? because it doesn't sound like Paw Paw) and Paw Paw, they would have sometimes this to eat. I didn't like that and always ate sausage and rice or whatever else was available. 

Paw Paw and others liked to hunt tchoc at Miller's Lake. The tchoc would eat all day in the fields and then fly at sunset across the Platin towards Miller's Lake to sleep. They would then ride out in boats and shoot a bunch of them. Come back and cook a sauce or gumbo. I don't think they ever fried them.  It looked drole to me, seeing miniature "chickens" in the pot. 

As for squirrel, in Evangeline Parish, it's a delicacy. Brain and all that in a gravy. Going out, camping and shooting them in the woods. Many cut the tail off and tie them to their truck antennas. 

Tchoc, I've read, is a Native American word. Gumbo is African. Ecureuil is French. Cocodrie is Native American? I can't remember right now. Anyway, Paw Paw Elbay, a Fontenot from Ville Platte, hunted cocodrie at Miller's Lake with his padnas (spell check wanted pandas hee hee) Manuel and others. 

Paw Paw, "Mon Mon," and Memere spoke French better than English. Dad's Mom couldn't speak English. Both parents couldn't read English. They died in the early 60s in Ville Platte. They lived all their life in Evangeline Parish. 

Pointe Aux Tigre

We went hang out with some of Denise's friends from work. This was about a month back. We had a good time and several older people knew my family. The place was past Eunice on the old Basile HWY. 

They called the place Basile because that's the address. Basile, however, is more down the road. It wasn't Duralde but that's close too. It was Pointe Aux Tigre. It's an area like L'Anse Grise. I saw some road signs saying Tiger Point and I realized the area we were in. Dad said we have several cousins in the area and many family members are buried in Ashford cemetery.  My great great aunt, Denise Hebert (Milan) married a William Ashford. He was from Pennsylvania.  

Coo Shaw?

We're cooking, grilling ribs ce soir and have some squash too. Enjoying the warm spell after that hellish cold. I called Mouman. I said "hey, how you say squash?"  Now, I had the DLF right in front of me, looking to see, like magic, the word pop out. She said at first, she was watching a show, bleme.  Now the DLF has that. But then she said that's an eggplant.  She called Dad, he was watching World War Z, in the other room, and he said cou-shaw.  Dad is older than Mom and remembers some stuff. Mom got triggered, she said mais yeah, like you say cat. But how you spell it?  I said book has cou croche, but she said, that makes sense, but you say cou-shaw. I know how to say it, that's cool with me.

palette a mouche

A little bit of rain, a little bit of warmth, and don't you know, the damn maringouin come out and bite. I be damn. I thought that cold killed the bastards. But no, Hell no, the little heathens just hided. Waiting. I got bit washing our clothes at the laundry mat. And more rain to come. I guess I'll just drink another beer. I also like the word for flyswatter-palette a mouche. 

avalasse

Heavy rain or downpour. 

moutarde

I can't stand moutarde but Denise loves it and Mom cooked some for her. I just ate the chicken breast wrapped in bacon and stuffed with cheese and peppers. The smoked sausage and rice and a cold Coke made a good meal. Now, moutarde is for mustard greens as well as yellow mustard sauce. They both moutarde. No amount of yellow moutarde can hide that green moutarde smell or taste for me. 

fricassee

Good stew today at Mom and Dad's today. Not my favorite, boulette, but still good. 

Looked through several things Dad had collected and sent some to John.  Need to make more copies of other things as well. One article is all about Creole cooking in Opelousas. Looks like it was written in the 60s and in a local paper or magazine. I say that because the ads on the article are Opelousas based. 

But I see no author, date or name of publication. Crap. It would be hard to cite that. Did find Revon Reed's poem about Creoles in Mamou, written in 1947. I think that was published in the Gazette or Acadian paper. It's all good stuff. Bobbe West also wrote some things in the Gazette about Creole Evangeline Parish. 

The Evangeline Parish Library, main branch, has the Gazette on microfilm as well as the Daily World. Many things were written in the early years of Cajunization. See late 60s, 70s and 80s. After that it slowed down a lot. "Cajun Magic" was taking over. Hopefully John and others will stop the complete brainwashing of our area. 

panse, chaudin and ... gog?

OK, around here in Evangeline Parish a panse is a panse.  Spelled ponce or pounce.  

Down further south a chaudin is a chaudin.  But I'm learning different things all the time.  

In Avoyelles Parish a gog is a gog.  It sounds like dog.  Mais neg, you hungry for some gog?  Maw Maw cooked a damn good gog last night.  I laughed and laughed.  However, the Avoyelles dude laughed at me when I said we call it a panse. 

loin loin and moqueur

They live out in the far, far.  They live out in the loin, loin.  The answer was obvious but I didn't see it.  To me with my Anglo ears I heard fwan fwan but when I described it to Mom she said it was loin, loin.  I was tired and working on a 12 pack so that probably helped with the sound challenge.  The bird singing the different songs one morning was a moqueur (mo-cuh), a mockingbird.  I remembered that one but had to be reminded of it.  It's true that if you don't hear or say things every day you start forgetting.  I keep my dictionary handy and Mom, Dad and friends are a phone call or text away.  Mom gets a kick out of it.  I call and say, "hey, what ya'll doin?  How you say this or that?  OK, thank you!"  They're cooking blanquettes and sausage.