Homesick, A Recipe, and Who Dat!

It started with seeing this video two days ago:



It's an intro for Madden 11.  After watching it, Damian and I were ready for some football. 

This morning, I saw this video posted by a friend on Facebook.



Would I be a sap if I admitted that I teared up while watching it??  I did.  I was born in Baton Rouge.  My mom was raised there.  I also attended college for one year at LSU, before I transferred to Louisiana Tech University. 

All growing up, we'd visit my grandparents in Baton Rouge, and my grandmother would take us for tours of the State Capital (old and new), and we'd picnic near the big Huey Long statue.  She also took us to the Baton Rouge Zoo (not to be mistaken for the Audobon Zoo, where they all axed for you).  We'd visit the USS Kidd and Mike the Tiger.  Mike's got a much better home now than he did back then.  We always felt sorry for poor Mike in his tiny cage.  Here he is in his newer, more humane habitat.

So yes, today I'm nostalgic for home, wherever that is.  I guess I consider it South Louisiana.  When we moved back to Louisiana, I was 12, and seemed more like a Texas girl because I didn't have a Cajun accent (and I have mom's blonde hair instead of dad's darker Cajun features).  But growing up in Houston, we considered ourselves Louisiana transplants and enjoyed our visits back to Opelousas and Baton Rouge, where my grandparents lived. 

So what's a Louisiana girl to do?  There's no visit home in sight until Labor Day, when we'll head down for a baby shower for my brother and his wife. 

To cope, I put on my Saints t-shirt, dressed Isabelle up in her pink LSU cheerleading dress, and we went grocery shopping.  While there, we picked up everything we'd need to make Crawfish Fettuccine for dinner tonight.  I'll post the recipe at the bottom of the page.

And let me add a big WHO DAT!  Tonight's the first Saints game of the pre-season.  I don't care if the Saints or LSU both have losing seasons (OK, so maybe I do care a little).  But last year's Super Bowl win was enough to tide me over for a few more years.  If we can stay LSU football fans during the 90s (remember the DiNardo years?), and hang on during the Saints eternal drought, we can make it through anything. 

Damian and I, watching the Saints win the Super Bowl, something neither of us ever thought we'd see. 

Now it's time to get cookin'.

This recipe comes from the cookbook, Simply Seafood. It was a fundraiser project for the Notre Dame High School (Crowley, LA) FCCLA back in 2002 and was given to us as a wedding gift by the Herpin family. Since I know it's about impossible for anyone to get their hands on this cookbook now, I have no qualms with sharing this recipe online.

Crawfish Fettucine
Ingredients:
1 sick butter or margarine
1 onion
1/4 c. flour
8 oz. Velveeta
1 can Ro-Tel tomatoes
Salt, pepper, and Tony Chachere's to taste
1 bell pepper
celery (a couple of ribs)
1 c. half and half
1 lb crawfish (I have to buy frozen packages here, and I find that a 12 oz. package is plenty of crawfish)
1 can cream of mushroom soup
Fettuccine noodles

Instructions
Saute' bell veggies in margarine.  Blend all the remaining ingredients together with the pre-cooked noodles.  Place in a large pan or oven dish.  Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.  Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. 

Does it get any easier than that? 

This is a perfect recipe for doing freezer cooking (bulk cooking).  If you do plan on freezing it and you're using frozen crawfish tails, be sure to use safe food practices.  You'll have to completely cook the crawfish tails before freezing again, unless you want to make someone sick.  Just cook them in the pan with your veggies, and you'll have no problem.

Enjoy!