Thank you for buying this ebook, published by HachetteDigital.
To receive special offers, bonus content, and news about ourlatest ebooks and apps, sign up for our newsletters.
Copyright 2007, 2016 by Lucy Buffett
Foreword copyright 2007 by Jimmy Buffett
Food photography by Sara Essex
Design by Wimmer Cookbooks
Cover design by Lisa Terrell
Photograph of Lucy Buffett by Toni Riales
Cover Photographs by Angie Mosier
Cover 2016 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the authors intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the authors rights.
Grand Central Life & Style
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
www.GrandCentralLifeandStyle.com
twitter.com/grandcentralpub
First Grand Central Publishing Edition: April 2016
Originally published in hardcover as Crazy Sista Cooking: Cuisine & Conversation, by Lucy Anne Buffett and Anastasia Arnold (2007)
Grand Central Life & Style is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing.
The Grand Central Life & Style name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.HachetteSpeakersBureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015958298
ISBNS : 978-1-4555-6648-8 (trade paperback), 978-1-4555-6647-1 (ebook)
E3-20160401-JV-PC
Above all, have a good time.
~Julia Child
I m all about second chances and new beginnings! Every day is an opportunity to reinvent or update our selves so that we can find peace in an ever-changing world. Embracing change instead of resisting it is a life lesson that has given me great comfort, inspiration, and the courage to dream big.
It is hard to believe that it has been almost a decade since I wrote and published Crazy Sista Cooking: Cuisine & Conversation. What started as a secret little childhood dream of mine to be a published author mushroomed into a rocking dream come true with the sale of over seventy thousand books.
In that first edition, I declared in the opening pages that the book was not going to be a how to cookbook as much as an irreverent-yet-honest take on my life according to food and my rather crazy Southern culture and upbringing. Which brings me to my favorite joke of all time: If you want to hear God laugh, tell him (her) your plans!
Ironically, and much to my delighted surprise, a go-to guide for Gulf Coast cooking is exactly what Crazy Sista Cooking has become for thousands of patrons of my LuLus restaurants and other folks who have shared their experiences of cooking my treasured family recipes and taking a little LuLus home with them. They refer to the book over and over again when cooking for their friends and family. And I will fill you in on a little secret: I often pull out my worn and food-stained copy myselfespecially when I am in a hurry and dont have time to experiment or pull something together in my head.
I had always assumed that we would just let the book go out of print, since Im a firm believer in changing with the times. I had my sights set on writing a new book when I could find the time. So much has changed since those humble beginning days of my restaurant LuLus in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Lots of the players have come and gone. The color of my hair has changed with my equally vacillating moods and temperature. Relationships have shifted and fallen away. Some have come back for second and third chances. We are regularly given opportunities to update our inner lives, to keep up with our changing stories. As my beloved daughter Melanie summed it up one day, Mom, just tell it like it isyou are dating your third ex-husband for the fourth time.
The mystery of life is that as much as it changes, it also stays the same. Such is the case with the LuLus experience and Crazy Sista Cooking, now the lovely LuLus Kitchen: A Taste of the Gulf Coast Good Life. LuLus has grown and expanded beyond my wildest dreams, yet the concept remains the same: fun Gulf Coast food for families. The stories shared here are true memories of my family and a life lived upon my beloved Gulf Coast that remain frozen and timeless in my heart. Also timeless are the classic Southern coastal recipes that have remained staples for generations, and with that realization I felt they deserved to keep on keeping on in this updated edition. This book may have a different title, a new look, and some updated text and photos, but it contains the same recipes and stories that have made countless people tell me, I sat down and read it from cover to cover! So I am humbled and honored to invite you to enjoy these crazy fun tales and recipes from my little piece of Gulf Coast paradise. And one thing is for damn sure: it is still my story and I am, and forever will be, a proud Crazy Sista from the land of Gumbo Love.
Lucy Anne Buffett
April 2016
I f you dont think that food is important in the Buffett family, let me tell you a little story. In the early fall of 1979, our father, J.D. Buffett, was in Boston on a business trip that was suddenly cut short by the arrival of Hurricane Frederic in the Gulf of Mexico. By all opinions, Frederic was headed toward Mobile Bay. For a short period at the beginning of World War II, my dad had been stationed in Fort Kent, Maine, where, despite being a Creole boy from the Gulf Coast, he developed a devotion to Maine lobsters. He loved them, and every time he went anywhere in New England for business, he came back with cardboard boxes of lobsters. So even though he was rushing like mad through the crowded corridors of Logan Airport to get back on hurricane patrol at his home in Daphne, Alabama, he could not resist stopping at a lobster pound in the airport and grabbing a couple of crustaceans to go.
To many, a box of lobsters might not seem to be a top-priority item in the way of hurricane preparations, but to my dad it was as important as the duct tape, extension cords, generator, chain saw, and numerous other items he stored in his arsenal to combat the ever-present hurricanes he had grown up preparing for and living through. When he arrived home, he became a whirling dervish, clearing the pier of summer fun gear, securing the hurricane shutters on the house, and lashing down anything that could be turned into deadly projectiles by hundred-mile-an-hour wind gusts. The last item of business was securing his most prized possession, THE GRILL. This was the grill on which he cooked to perfection his famous tenderloin or grilled fish. It had been constructed out of titanium plates designed as armor for warships and smuggled in pieces from the welding shop to the pier at Homeport. It was built to last forever. When he was finished with all his storm preparations, all that was left to do was eat those lobsters.