How to make rue When we were kids I heard a lot of things that all my life I have wondered if they were true. Two things stick in my mind. One is that one day over on the neighbor's fence some of us found a big green grasshopper about three inches long. The story was that if a grasshopper spit on you it was poisonous. The other story was about the little green and red berries that could be found on various shrubs and evergreens were poisonous if you ate them. I still don't know whether that is true. And I think that we had enough kind of crazy women on our block and across the street that it's easy for me to think these were folk tales. It never mattered very much because I was caught up in trying to keep up with my big brothers and their friends, and trying to find excuses not to get caught on the same football field that they were on. There were more important things than grasshoppers and little green and red berries. Except those berries looked really good, even when mashed up in a little hole in the dirt with a stick. This past summer I was driving into Reno Nevada and on the radio I heard the old song Poke Salad Annie. So yesterday I got onto the Internet to try to find out more about it. On a computer in Russia I found the lyrics and the RealAudio of a version of the song. http://kulichki.rambler.ru/dassin/chansons.html On this site there are lots of other songs from the same American artist showing influences from Cajun, Creole, black, Anglo, French, German and Mexican cultures. On another site I found out that this is all called swamp pop or swamp rock: "A few notable swamp pop influenced tunes include Bill Haley and the Comets' re-recording of "Later Alligator," the Rolling Stones' version of Barbara Lynn's "You'll Lose A Good Thing," the Honeydrippers' rendition of "Sea of Love," and the Beatles' original composition "Oh! Darling," which exudes the triplety, emotionally charged swamp pop ballad sound. Recently the swamp pop sound appeared in national hits by country and western artists T. Graham Brown, Mark Collie, and Billy Joe Royal. (Contrary to popular belief, artists like Dale Hawkins, Tony Joe White, and Creedence Clearwater Revival are not examples of swamp pop, nor do they appear to have been influenced by the sound.) Although it still can be heard today in south Louisiana and east Texas nightclubs, and sometimes at regional festivals, swamp pop tends to be overshadowed by its Cajun and zydeco sister genres, and often is ignored by many music and cultural preservationists." www.cajunculture.com The Billy Joe Royal song is The Ballad of Billie Joe McAllister from 1969. The original song is all in French, with different meaning - called Marie-Jeanne. One of Dad's favorites, Pick a Bale of Cotton is also on this site in RealAudio. I found out that the German influence comes from German immigrants who settled in Louisiana around 1789, but who were kicked out by the Acadians who were kicked out of Nova Scotia. The Acadians eventually settled this part of Southern Louisiana, and the Germans, I guess, were swept back into the swamp and eventually merged into Cajun populations. In Lafayette Louisiana someone recently conducted a telephone poll of people with their names in the book and found that surname was not a reliable indicator of ethnicity for any ethnic group whether it be Anglo, Irish, Cajun, Creole, French, German, Mexican, or African or whatever. I also found a joke page which indicated that French names predominated, and that the Acadians tell the same jokes as anyone else except that they tell them about themselves. But this doesn't help me find out about Poke Salad. One site says the name is Poke Salit. One says Polk Salad. Another says Poke Salat. I decided that the name might not have anything to do with either gunny sacks or salad. Due to the German influence in Louisiana I thought it might be possible that it was actually Salat, which is the German word for salad. Then I decided that whether it is Polk or Poke it might be from the German word Pockel with a kind of a long O which means pickle. Now some of these sites have pictures on them, and the recipes for Poke Salad and Poke Salad with Eggs say that Poke Salad is cooked like and eaten like asparagus, so I think it could be that this is actually a recipe for German pickle salad. I wrote to some of our country's experts on Poke Salad and suggested this might be true. Anyway, back to those bizarre folk tales from my hometown. It turns out that Poke Salad is poisonous, and must be prepared very carefully by washing it three times during cooking. During cooking, not before. You can't buy Poke Salad in the grocery, no restaurants have Poke Salad on the menu. If you go and listen to the song on the site I mention above you will recall how Poke Salad Annie was a mean vicious razor totin woman, and it could be from eating Poke Salad. In fact, I think so. I also found out about Gumbo yesterday and how you start by making a roux. Roux seems to be carefully burnt flour, and you can buy a commercially made Roux in any grocery in Southern Louisiana. The Acadians have a saying that to do anything, such as fix a flat, or build a house, hunt ducks or catch a bass, "First you make a roux"