Have van will travel.

We went through four different vans in our cross-country quest for recipes.

We bought them used...and then really put some miles on them.
Photo by Cookie Snyder

I know how it is with my own cookbooks. There are recipes...and then there are recipes. Those are the ones that I highlight: the really good ones that turn out nicely and get lots of compliments.
Well, Gwen and I decided to collect those 'highlighted' recipes from all the cookbooks in a state and publish them in one cookbook.
So Gwen had finished the Mississippi cookbook and now I was on board. We decided to move on to Louisiana. It's right next door and that's Gwen's home state. And finding great recipes in the 'Bayou State' seemed like a slam dunk!

As we set out, we set as our goal to search for recipes that really capture the local flavor...the ones that people really eat. We were also looking for kitchen-friendly recipes that anybody could cook and enjoy. So we packed our bags and headed to Louisiana.

We got a used van and packed it with stacks of boxes, luggage, grocery bags, cooking paraphernalia and headed out to find our recipes.

Talk about a road trip!

The first Louisiana Cookbook.

Since the Louisiana cookbook was published in 1984 it has been reprinted seventeen times. And it remains to this day our #1 best seller of every state in the union.

~ Barbara