A few years ago, I picked up a light case of the croup on the last leg of a trip across Canada and brought it back home with me.  I couldn’t shake it no matter what medicine I took and doctors were of little help.  I pretty much got used to living with it… until Hurricane Rita.  She tore through Louisiana and ripped the hay barn of Cherokee Ridge Horse Farm out of the ground. 

My friend got the contract to rebuild the barn and I went out to work on his crew in the late summer heat.  I only lasted two days on the farm.  The third day of the job I called in sick and the fourth day I called my sister to ask her to take me to a doctor.  I was feverish and hadn’t slept for three nights due to the incessant cough.

My sister helped me get into her car and I assumed she was taking me to a walk-in clinic.  I was surprised when she pulled up to a small trailer off of Highway 90 and shut off the engine but I was too weak to really ask any questions.

Madame Dar Dar welcomed us into her home, looked me over, closed her eyes, and mouthed something inaudible.  That’s when I realized where we were: a Traiteur’s house.  She disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, flipped through some handwritten notes and came back to me with a “cure”:

-          Make a poultice out of brown mustard seeds, garlic, and black pepper and add a little olive oil to it

-          Spread local honey on my chest in the sign of the cross and smear the poultice over it

-          Drink only water with lemon juice and a little cayenne in it for the next 48 hours

-          Reapply the poultice and say the Apostle’s Creed every time I woke up in the middle of the night

-          Confess my sins to God once a day as I took a shower to wash off the “medicine”

While I had heard of Traiteurs before I had never actually visited one.  I thought that my friends who did were nutjobs and I couldn’t believe that my sister had just done what she did to me.  I was desperate, though.  My sister made the poultice for me and set me up on the futon in my living room.  After she left I did everything the Traiteur had instructed me to do.  Every time I woke up in the middle of the night I reapplied the poultice and said the Apostle’s Creed.  Every time I took a shower I confessed my sins (I still do this sometimes).

Three days later I was cured… I couldn’t believe it.  In keeping with tradition I brought Madame Dar Dar some bread and did a few small repairs around her house (Traiteurs cannot accept money). 

My sister had bought way too much of the ingredients for my cure and I was left with all of them.  Out of curiosity I combined them, substituting olive oil for the water in her recipe.  It was a phenomenal salad dressing… bright, sweet, and tangy with just enough heat from the cayenne to warm my palate.  The face that her medicine tasted that good on a salad freaked me out more than the fact that she had cured me!