Um, Excuse Me. Your Louisiana is Showing.

Over the past weekend, me and the hubby (along with my older sister and her hubby) road-tripped to Louisiana for a good ole-fashioned family reunion. While I've spent a good number of years in Oklahoma, I was actually born in Louisiana and still have quite a bit of family there. Anyways, the reunion was great, it was really good to see lots of family, but I want to talk about the trip.

On our 16-hour round-trip to a small town outside Baton Rouge, I started to take note of what makes Louisiana totally awesome.

First and most obviously, the food. I'm a total sucker for cajun food. Of course, we ate our way through the state and then ate and drank throughout the entire reunion. Top of the list? Crawfish, of course!

I come from a family of great cooks, so when the family came together there was a lot of food. A lot of meat, in particular... Various kinds of sausage, seafood and more. I think someone called it a "meat parade." (Editor's Note: This is not the same kind of a meat parade that you would find in the Gayborhood Bars in Dallas, although I hear those are fun, too!)

Second, Louisiana Lottery tickets. Does Texas sell Lottery tickets? Yes. Are they mildly trashy? Oh ya. But when in Louisiana, we couldn't resist buying four $1 scratchers. And guess what? Greg won 12 bucks.

So, what do we do? In the Louisiana state of mind, of course we bought four $3 tickets. Then, something crazy happened. He won $25. I think it was the high of winning (I'm scared I'm developing a problem), but we took that money and bought five $5 tickets. And would you believe they all lost except mine. I won $50! So that paid for our lunch on the way home in a quaint little cafe in a small town. I've gotta tell you, I'd never really noticed the Lottery ticket machines at the grocery stores in Texas before, but now I see them and I've got to be honest, I'm getting an urge. But it's just way too embarassing to have a gambling problem, so I'm letting this one go.

OK, let's get back on track. The third thing that's so great about Louisiana? It's so... let's say vintage. (And I don't mean that in the pretentious way that it probably came across.) Driving through some of the small towns, I see things I haven't seen in years. Case in point: local grocery stores (I swear I saw a Piggly Wiggly). Also, really, really old gas stations. Check out this old gas pump. This has gotta be from at least the 80s, right? I think it's so charming!

Finally, and this is by the best, you can buy liquor in grocery stores. Cheers to that!

All in all, it was great to be back in Louisiana!