calvin trillin on boudin

New Yorker readers: I direct your attention to the piece on page 46 of the Jan. 28 issue. It’s a funny bit by my hero Calvin Trillin on the hunt for the best boudin in south Louisiana. (Boudin, if you don’t know, is a delicious Cajun sausage made of rice, pork, liver, and seasoning. Calvin’s been writing about the wonders of Cajun food at least since The Tummy Trilogy in the ’70s.)
The main character in the tale is James Edmunds, one of Calvin’s friends in New Iberia, former head honcho of the once-great Times of Acadiana weekly newspaper, and (oh by the way) a blogger his own bad self.
I was once lucky enough to eat a seven-course meal of nutria rat with Calvin and James, which remains one of the highlights of my life. But that’s a story for another day.
My favorite quote from the story: “When I am daydreaming of boudin, it sometimes occurs to me that of all the indignities the Acadians of Louisiana have had visited upon them — being booted out of Nova Scotia, being ridiculed as rubes and swamp rats by neighboring Anglophones for a couple of centuries, being punished for speaking their own language in the schoolyard — nothing has been as deeply insulting as what restaurants outside South Louisiana present as Cajun food.” Too true.
In related news, Calvin’s got a new novel out.