For the last leg of our two week road trip to see the MotoGP races in Austin and then a tour of the Texas Hill Country we got an invite to Conn Ass Country in Baton Rouge to visit one of my favorite cousins down there Stevie and his wife Cindy.

Stevie has a cabinet building business and is an avid hunter and fisherman. He's a member of a corporation that owns 2000 acres or hunting land on the Mississippi river and does some very high end cabinetry and construction for some billionaire owned hunting lodges in Louisiana, so he does very well for himself.

There's a word in Louisiana called Lagniappe and it basically means: Getting more than you expected. Well our visit with Stevie and Cindy was way more than we expected. First off we got there after driving all day from Fredericksburg, Texas to Baton Rouge and They had a bar spread for us and ice cold beer. Stevie cooked "Bambi Bites" and bacon wrapped shrimp, potato salad and baked beans and beef. It was a trip to Flavor Town, USA...






Next morning he made us some sausage, biscuits and his tomato gravy. his tomato gravy has made me completely rethink my life so far. I've made tomato gravy several times, but this has redefined tomato gravy for both me and Mrs. Irish...




After coffee and breakfast on Friday we hung out in the carport drank Micheladas, told stories to the girls about us growing up on the farm and doing stupid chit together when we were kids. Well just so happens, this being Cajun country and all that a buddy of Stevie's a couple of doors down sells seafood and was cooking up 100 pounds of crawdads on Friday and 800 pounds on Saturday for a church social, so we went down to see how it all was done...








We brought a mess of them back and chowed down...




After more day drinkin', story tellin' and all around fun, Stevie decided we needed to eat again and decided on fresh fried butterflied shrimp and farm raise catfish...

I love this guy like a brother...

Wow! Cousin Stevie laid out some fine looking meals!

Yep amazing stuff!

Will he join aldeer and start turning in monster entries like these?

I need a Cousin like Stevie.

Yes you do...

Me too.

Some monster crawfish!
Looks great!

Great times and great grub.

Irish delivers again!

That will eat.

Cool things about Stevie...

1. All those green cabinets in his kitchen... He built all that from scratch. He's a better carpenter than my brother and that's saying something.

2. That picture with him cooking the fish in what appears to be a car port. Well that's beneath his house. His house flooded in 2018. But he knew it was going to flood and got all his furniture and stuff out. He and Cindy bought a camper and lived in the camper, while Stevie worked with a company to lift his house, which was built around a trailer that he used to live in before he married Cindy. They lifted the house 10 feet, extracted the trailer, gutted everything, added new joists where the trailer was and completely re-engineered the whole house, then made the down stairs a man cave, giant carport and out door hangout area.

The dude is one of those guys who can build just about anything, and one of those guys if the SHTF you would want on your team. Amazing dude. So proud to have him as part of the family. His mother and my mother were sisters.

The man knows how to serve up fried catfish, with a thick ring of RED onion! Lemon juice, hot sauce and a few onion rings and I'm set.
All looks good!

Take me next time. Imma gonna wear a Bama hat tho! 😃

Sounds like a good guy. I could make myself sick with that fine eating. I'd weigh 700 lbs if i lived down that way. Love the louisiana cooking.

Damn that’s some good looking food especially the stuff on the grill and the tomato gravy

So are we going to get the recipe for that tomato gravy!?

Let me make it this weekend and see how I do and then I'll post my version of it.