So I went to my cousin’s 90th birthday party Saturday, hosted by her son at his very nice place out in Greenwell Springs. A good time was had by all, and LSU beat Tennessee by one point in a double overtime basketball game, the final minute of which took ten minutes real time to play out on the big screen. It was good to catch up, and since I was already all the way out there, I had to stop by Jerry Lee’s Cajun Foods to stock up. Picked up some jerky and cracklins to take to the office for snacks and of course some headcheese and boudin. I first encountered the boudin omelet when I was working for Café LeGrange on Acadian and we had agreed to set up the mobile kitchen out at the Fairgrounds to sell to everyone going to the inaugural Hot Air Balloon Festival . Back then the firing up at dawn for the day’s racing was a big deal. Since we had no real breakfast items on the menu, we cooked omelets stuffed with Jerry Lee’s boudin on the flat top in the mobile kitchen. The mobile kitchen was like a food truck, but it wasn’t designed for window sales. Just an asset when catering large events. It had an oven/stovetop and three or four deep fat fryers and a sandwich table with a lot of refrigeration packed into an old Frito-Lay delivery van. The guys had welded a platform to the back for the propane tanks and to store the generator while we were on the road. At any rate, I’m sure the boudin omelet or boudin scrambled eggs or grits and boudin has been around for a long, long time, And I know we used to stop at Jerry Lee’s on our way into town from the catering depot out in Central to grab a link or two for breakfast before we went to set up crawfish boils or jambalaya and white bean dinners or fish fries–but that was the first time I had ever encountered it commercially as a menu item anywhere. People at the Balloon Fest were pleasantly surprised and we had good sales. I turned the headcheese into sliders for lunch today. Tasty.
