I’ve already told you about Cajun Heritage Festival, April 8 at the Carl A. Parker Center in Port Arthur. Besides all the music, check out the crawfish eating contest which will include a prize of a Sea Rim State Park kayak package. What a way to work off the calories.

It’s fair time and the Young Men’s Business League will present the South Texas State Fair through Sunday, April 9 at Fair Park in Beaumont. What makes people lose their minds over corn dogs? This is the place to hit the carnival rides in hopes of working off your funnel cake calories.

The YMBL hosted sponsors and media to a pre-party to promote all the good eats at the fair and, I suppose, see if guests approved of the flavors. They did.

 

Moroccan Magic
Argan oil has been a thing in cosmetics. I’m just hearing you can drizzle it on your couscous and the traditional harvesting method has focused on tree-climbing goats and their dietary habits. Moroccan Magic USDA Organic Argan & Essential Oil Lip Balm has listed benefits of “repairing, protective, anti-aging, cooling and deep moisturizing.” I don’t know how they can possibly measure this, but “sophisticated” is listed. I will tell you this, both coconut almond and peppermint eucalyptus are $3.99 and they’re the most luxurious lip balms I’ve ever tried. The brown tubes actually do look sophisticated and the product feel is light, silky and fresh. So of course you don’t actually eat this stuff, but it’s a fine example of how “culinary” products are used for the greater good of the earth, and soft lips. Organic sunflower oil, rosemary extract, beeswax, calendula blend and argan oils are used in these little babies, which makers say can be found at CVS stores.

 

Stylin’

Stick out your tongue for beauty. Look at your tongue, stuck out between your teeth and match that shade in a lipstick with your clarity and brightness. What could look more natural? I assume Janna Beatty means the shade, not the act, in “Quintessential Style: Cultivate and Communicate your Signature Look.” Look your holiday best with tips from this book written with Sharon White. The book includes tips like “creams set powder,” so apply eyeliner before shadow.

Your closet should be like a river that flows, not like the Dead Sea, Beatty wrights. That’s how this style book got into my culinary column. I love this advice that goes for most everything. I love to clean out “move” things out of the house with the New Year. It makes rooms for more blessings. Clean out that clothing closet, hall closet and pantry. Weed out clothes that you have “just because” but never wear, donate rarely used items to charity and round up “tired” seasonings and make a chili. Then you’ll have more space, or what I like to call, more room for more blessings. Thanks, Janna Beatty, for preaching it.

 

Atlas of Mini Adventures

As you travel the world with your young foodies, pack “Atlas of Miniature Adventures: A Pocket-Sized Collection of Small-Scale Wonders.” Follow the boy and girl characters to Vienna to the snow globe museum to learn how Perzy Snow put a model of the Mariazell Bascilica in a globe after playing with water globes and white grains of powder to increase the brightness of a light bulb. They’ll find wee Desert Goby fish in Australia and bee hummingbirds who lay pea-sized eggs in Cuba.

darraghcastillo@icloud.com