Eating at times which would make my mother faint

One of my Mum's rules about eating is the meals must take place within fairly narrowly time frames to be 'good for you' as in 'it's not good for you to eat this late'. Often, it doesn't even matter what you're eating, if it's not between 6 an 9pm, it's not good for you.

Since we've been here, we've lived a fairly irresponsible life, usually getting up between 2 or 3pm, staying up till around 5am and generally enjoying the fact that we aren't tied to any 'normal' timescales, but all this does mean that meal-times have become very much a theoretical thing, and despite the thousands of miles between us, I'm pretty sure that my Mum would have cross continental palpitations if she knew it was 2.49am and we've just finished dinner.

Crawfish boil fun

One of the awesome things about Louisiana is how friendly everyone is, and how keen they are to introduce us to traditional LA pastimes. As a result of this, on Monday, which was memorial day, we were invited by Shaggy, a friend of our new best friend to a crawfish boil at his house. A crawfish boil is a special kind of event, unlike anything we have in the UK, where food is served directly onto tables and enjoyed by all-comers.

Shaggy is a pro crawfish boiler, so somewhat of a master of the art of cooking up a vast (and I mean seriously vast) batch of crawfish in a huge pot with corn on the cob, mushrooms, potatoes and an incredible number of different spices. The food is fished out of the massive pot with a net and served directly onto the table where everyone tucks in with a gusto pretty much unseen in the UK. There is an art to eating crawfish which seems to yield a ridiculously small amount of crawfish meat - you pull the tail off the body and pretty much the whole body is discarded after sucking the 'juice' out of it, which is a delicate operation akin to trying to get the sherbert out of a flying saucer because if you suck too hard the spicy mix of crawfish innards and hot boil mixture shoots straight in to the back of your throat causing you to choke. The tail is then peeled leaving a piece of crawfish roughly the size of a small prawn, which is squeezed out of the hard tail shell and eaten.

I had eaten some pre-peeled crawfish while we've been here and tried to encourage the Boy Wonder to try some on the grounds that apart from his distaste at their appearance he would probably quite like the taste and wouldn't be put off by the texture, yet he had steadfastly refused to even countenance the idea. However, 20 minutes of badgering from Sam and a couple of demonstration runs, he was all over the mud bugs, eating not just one but several.

I think part of the appeal is the sociable element that comes with a crawfish boil - because you spend most of your time peeling the things, there's plenty of time to chat whilst you do it, and because you need to eat quite a lot (one tiny woman we met said she could easily eat five pounds), you end up sitting at the table together for quite a while, with people rotating in and out, mixing up the combinations and generally making for a very convivial atmosphere. You also get covered in crawfish boil mixture anywhere from the fingers to the elbows which breaks down some of the boundaries of what is normally considered proper eating etiquette and requires you to make friends with anyone who hasn't yet eaten or has washed their hands if you need anything passed or touched without wanting to get it covered, which is a handy conversation starter

All in all, the appeal of a crawfish boil goes well beyond the pleasure of actually eating the crawfish themselves, which even the locals admit is a high maintenance chore clearly originated by people with way more persistence than is currently necessary in procuring food - we're hoping that we will be able to find some kind of equivalent back home which will serve as a suitable substitute, but so far the only thing that I can come up with that even comes close is shelling peas, which I would enjoy, but I suspect would be a bit of a flop amongst our friends.

French bread lies

The food here in Louisiana surpasses any other food we've had in the US - New York is kind of a mish mash, with excellent diners that serve a massive range of good food, but it's all much of a muchness and not that different from what you could get at home, albeit not 24/7 and not all in one place. Louisiana, however, has gumbo, red beans and rice, andouille sausage which the Boy Wonder informs me is delicious and they use pork as a seasoning, which shows impressive dedication to eating well. They owe a lot of their fantastic cuisine to the slew of cultures which have melded here, and the French influence is particularly evident as they have taken to heart the French love of rich food, with scant regard for the effects of trans-fats on the body.

And, as the local TV station keeps informing us, they also love French bread, which they sell in long, baguette style loaves almost everywhere that you can buy bread. They use it for po-boys - the unhealthily massive sandwiches which they stuff with more fillings than one person should eat in a sitting - and serve it with their delicious gumbo. However, the use of the term 'French' to describe their bread is a complete misnomer - it simply isn't French bread, I've been to France. I've wanted to move there just to eat bread and cheese for the rest of my (admittedly probably cut short by cholesterol poisoning) life. We've come home with loaves and loaves of French bread in the hope of defrosting it to its former glory to recreate the deliciousness of the experience. What they call 'French' bread here is just bread - sometimes it's ok, sometimes it's pretty bad, but it's never crusty, never has any of the fantastic soft inside and almost mouth hurtingly crusty outside. It's just bread, and given that you can't even export French flour because the French are so proud of their bread, I think they are stretching their definition of 'French' to describe their floppy, quick drying attempts at French bread. None of their bread is crusty - since we've been here we have searched every supermarket and food establishment we have entered for bread that has anything remotely resembling a crust, and it simply doesn't exist.

I love the food here - I have been more adventurous with my choices than ever before, which even extends to eating an oyster the other day (although it was fried and barely distinguishable from any other fried food in that sense), but their stretching of the definition of French bread is something with which I simply cannot get to grips.

The downside of being delicious

Louisiana rocks, and we're having a blast here at Jazz fest and seeing more awesome bands in the evenings. The only downside is that I am so delicious -all day, and apparently all night too, I am being bitten to buggery, although inexplicably my right side is way more popular than my left, to the point where I now have about 50 bites down my right arm and another 10 or so on the right side of my back, whereas my left hand side has only been munched about 10-15 times in total. There seems to have been a bug dinner party on my forehead last night as I have four bites very close together which have taken the form of a long blister which looks absolutely revolting.

We have bought bug spray, but reading the warnings on the back has been enough to put me off using it thus far, including the opening line which is 'It is a violation of federal law to use this product in a manner which is not consistent with its labelling' before a long list of ways to use the spray which might kill or maim you, including information on how to contact Poison Control Centres if need be.

The upside of this is that I went to see a pharmacist at the local Walgreens who looked about 15, chewed gum loudly whilst looking with vagues distaste at my blistered arm, and recommended peroxide and Neosporin. We duly purchased both and came home for a mammoth bite treatment session which was strangely romantic, but during which we discovered that peroxide actually does bleach your skin so for quite a while I had reverse leopard-style spots around every bite which made me look like some weird Michael Jackon uber fan before it faded enough to leave the house for some more funk.

One of the reasons I find it particularly galling is that I am always nice to bugs - I never knowingly kill them, I try to save those that fall into my drinks, I actively discourage the Boy Wonder from hurting the ones that stray into our house, and yet he remains relatively unbitten whilst I am a red, blistered mess and have been munched in the most awkward places - elbows (meaning I can't lean properly on anything), shoulders (meaning putting a bra on is a particularly hazardous experience at the moment) and the backs of my hands and between my fingers meaning that I can't even wash and dry my hands without being reminded that I am a bulging, oozing blisterfest. Still, the Boy Wonder has been patrolling the house every night spraying every entry point with the terrifying chemical concoctions and (fingers crossed) the number of bites isn't actually increasing, so hopefully I will return to my non bitten state over the next week or so and survive this whole ordeal relatively unscathed.

If you've heard of it, don't bother going

A phenomenon we've come to understand is that of the awesomeness of small diners where lovely waitresses (I'm not being sexist - we haven't been served by a man in a diner since we left New York) serve food 24 hours a day at ridiculously low prices. Whilst in Lafayette we tried all the 'recommended' eateries which make the guidebooks and people tell you you have to visit, and they ranged from the alright, but not as amazing as we had been told (Randolls, Prejeans) through mediocre at best and overpriced (the Blue Dog Cafe - I'm talking about you!) to the downright disappointing (Mulates). All the places names above had outstanding reviews as 'must eat' places, whether because of the unique barn dining experience with great music, great food and dancing all night long or the iconic artwork and legendary atmosphere and in fairness, Randols and Prejeans did both have ok food and music, but Mulates was a lame duck with music finishing at 9.30 and expensive, crappy food and the Blue Dog had one of the worst duos apparently in Louisiana and the iconic artwork turned out to be pictures featuring identical images of a Blue Dog which looked slightly scared and made me feel uncomfortable.

However, Mel's Diner, John's Family Restaurant and the Hub City diner had waitresses who openly laughed at our accents before declaring them 'amazing' (not that that swayed me, but you can't help but love the way Americans are so pleased to hear an English accent) but serve huge plates of delicious food which is about ten times more enjoyable and about a third of the price of the 'big names'. You simply cannot beat that kind of deal, and we have now resolved not to bother going anywhere that's a 'must' on the grounds that the likelihood of disappointment seem inordinately high, and stick to places with a choice of sitting in a booth or at the counter, have random assortments of decorative accoutrements on the wall which focus your attention when fighting off a hangover, waiting for lunch or just enjoying the 'Happy Days' style diner-ishness of it all, and everything comes with a choice of grits, hashbrowns or homefries whether you want them or not. I wish we had this kind of establishment in the UK - we'd never cook again. And probably die of heart disease before either of us saw 40.