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ORAL HISTORY
Coz Fontenot, home boudin maker
Boudin may be best known as convenience store food, but for every commercial producer of the sausage there is a Cajun like Coz Fontenot, who makes boudin at home—or at the communal boucheries (hog killings) still occasionally staged throughout the area. Coz ate boudin every Saturday with his family growing up, and he learned to make the sausage from three different men, his bosses at small stop-and-shops, when he was a teenager. Eventually he developed his own style and an (unwritten) recipe, which incorporates several twice-ground seasoning vegetables, long-grain rice, and always pork liver. He lived in Atlanta for ten years as a young adult, performing as a musician and running a catering company focused on Louisiana specialties such as sausages, jambalaya, and bread pudding. For Coz and many other Cajuns, food and music go hand in hand. For example, you might catch him singing during a regular Saturday jam session at Savoy’s Music Center just outside of Eunice. That’s where he bought his first harmonica; that’s also where breakfast boudin packaged in white boxes outnumbers doughnuts.