You May Be Cajun If…...

..you start an angel food cake with a roux.

...you think a lobster is a crawfish on steroids.

...you take a bite of 5-alarm Texas chili and reach for the Tabasco.

...your children's favorite bedtime story begins "first you make a roux..."

...your description of a gourmet dinner includes the words "deep fried."

...your mama announces each morning, "well, I've got the rice cooking--
what will we have for dinner?"

...you sit down to eat boiled crawfish and your host says "don't eat the dead ones" and you know what he means.

...you don't know the real names of your friends, only their nicknames.

...you gave up Tabasco for lent.

...your dog thinks the bed of your pickup is his kennel.

...any of your dessert recipes call for jalapenos.

...you think the four seasons are: duck, rabbit, deer, squirrel.

According to Cajun Legend.....

Crawfish are descendants of the Maine lobster.

After the Acadians (now called Cajuns) were exiled in the 1700s from Nova Scotia, the lobsters yearned for the Cajuns so much that they set off cross the country to find them.

This journey, over land and sea, was so long and treacherous that the lobsters began to shrink in size. By the time they found the Cajuns in Louisiana, they had shrunk so much that they hardly looked like lobsters anymore.

A great festival was held up their arrival, and this smaller lobster was renamed crawfish.

History of the Crawfish

Nothing else symbolizes the Cajun culture of Louisiana like crawfish. Crawfish have become synonymous with the hardy French pioneers who settled in the area after being forced by British troops to leave their homes in Nova Scotia.

Crawfish (or crayfish) resemble tiny lobsters. They are also known in the south as mudbugs because they live in the mud of freshwater bayous. they are more tender than lobsters and have a unique flavor. Today crawfish are raised commercially and are an important Louisiana industry.

The local Indians are credited with harvesting and consuming crawfish before the Cajuns arrived. They would bait reeds with venison, stick them in the water, then pick up the reeds with the crawfish attached to the bait. By using this method, the Indians would catch bushels of crawfish for their consumption. By the 1930s, nets were substituted, and by the 1950s, the crawfish trap was used.

On July 14, 1983, Louisiana’s governor approved a law designating the crawfish as the state crustacean. Louisiana thus became the first state to adopt an official crustacean. That's how serious Louisiana is about their crawfish.