What is Louisiana?
That’s a great question. A person could take hours and hours coming up with an answer to that and still only scratch the surface. But if you could boil all the possible answers down to some common denominators you’d come up with some essentials like..
..family and friends
..it’s history and heritage
..it’s food and drink
..it’s music and culture
..it’s love of the outdoors.
So much more could be said. And, in fact, one way of summing up a lot of what our great state is about is the way we bring so many of those things together in our numerous festivals and traditions. And of course, as everyone knows, one of those traditions for which we are known is our beloved Mardi Gras. And that’s a great tradition. However, that’s not the only tradition that defines us. When it comes to our local traditions, few things capture the soul and spirit of what Louisiana is about, and that sets us apart from other places, as much as the time-honored tradition of Crawfish Boils. And when it comes to Crawfish Boils, nobody does it any better than the Hospice Foundation of the South’s Annual Crawfish Cookoff in Slidell, LA.
For over 18 years now, individual teams and corporate sponsors will come together on a weekend in April to engage in a spirited competition to see who can come away with the top prizes in the fine culinary art of cooking our delicious crawfish! In 2023 alone we saw 61 different teams – from such entities as Slidell Memorial Hospital, Walmart, WVUE FOX 8, Slidell Moving & Storage, Lake 94.7, St Tammany Fire District #1, Slidell Police Department, Coastal Environmental Services - St. Tammany Parish/Northshore, and SO MANY MORE – come together to cook and serve over 41,000 lbs of crawfish to 9000+ people from at least 19 states and 2 countries! All of this takes place in beautiful Fritchie Park where families and friends will gather under gorgeous oaks to enjoy a full day of hot, steaming crawfish, ice cold beer, and a wide variety of other foods like jambalaya, funnel cakes, fried Oreos, and daiquiris and more, all the while enjoying a continuous line-up of live music from numerous different artists over the years such as Marc Broussard, Bucktown All-Stars and Phunky Monkeys to name a few.
In short, The Hospice Foundation’s annual Crawfish Cook Off is truly a showcase of so many of the things that Louisiana stands for and in particular for the uniqueness, enthusiasm and passion for life that defines us as a state. It is a wonderful example of the colorful and memorable ways that our many traditions – like crawfish boils - have captured the enthusiasm for celebrating the life the we love, with the people we love, in a place that we love. That’s what Louisiana is about. And we gladly show it off every year!
We hope you will see the value in participating whether it be as a team, a sponsor, or just someone who loves to eat crawfish. Join us this year at 19th Annual Crawfish Cookoff. Get your tickets at www.CrawfishTickets.com
