LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL, LOUISIANA

Kinder, Louisiana

Louisiana Crab boil comes in jars big enough to last a northern cook a lifetime.

Guess who's coming to dinner at Fausto's restaurant?

Now that's a hamburger!

Hey, I'm stuck. I knew we shouldn't have poked our heads through this wall to check out what's cooking.

Lauren Thigpen at Fausto's Restaurant in Kinder said, "The only celebrities that haven't been here are the US Presidents, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe. We've had an Elvis impersonator but it just isn't the same."

Local specialties:

gumbo, cracklin, boudin, and crawfish pepper jelly, boiled crawfish, fried alligator and catfish.

Wanda Pitre and Kelsey Robert at Boudin & Cracklin Express

Boudin is a sausage made with a mixture of pork or crawfish and rice with lots of Cajun spices.

Cracklin is chunks of pig skin (pork rind with fat and meat attached) deep fried and seasoned with Cajun spices. It's better than popcorn.

What's a family reunion without a good southern BBQ? Randy Bellon, the County Agent for Allen Parish, and family were cooking Boston butt pork steaks. Randy said they had chicken "for those who didn't know any better."

You want live crawfish? You can only buy them by the sack. Crawfish like to eat rice stubble so crawfish breeders seed the rice ponds with crawfish, wait for them to reproduce and then set traps to catch them.