Best Places to Work in Louisiana By Deborah Burst In which our reporter goes sleuthing for places that focus on employee satisfaction Remember the glory days? When you didn’t wear out the keypad connecting to a real person? After a four-year stint as a restaurant review columnist and a customer-support/quality-control manager with IBM, I consider myself the Queen Bee in recognizing quality service and happy employees. After numerous boycotts and searching the highways and byways of our great state, nine top-notch companies meet my standards for some of the best places to work in Louisiana. (An announcement was also placed in the Summer issue of this magazine inviting readers to make nominations, subject to editorial review.)(More) At Home on the Road By Bonnie Warren A sampling of Louisiana's bed and breakfasts Cabahanosse Bed & Breakfast and Antiques & Gifts Donaldsonville “Wake up in a quaint bed-and-breakfast, and go downstairs to visit a unique antique and gift shop with 18 vendors who offer surprising treasures. Located in a restored 1890s building in the heart of quaint Donaldsonville, this bed-and-breakfast is just a short walk from two museums and art galleries featuring the work of sought-after local artists. You are just minutes away from many plantation homes that are open to the public. End your day with bedside treats of brandy and candy.” Kay Dugas, manager and co-owner 602 Railroad Ave.; (225) 474-5050; cabahanosse.com (More) LOUISIANA’S BEST By Michael Terranova Our readers' picks of their favorite dining destinations. Our readers have spoken. Our Spring and Summer issues contained self-addressed postage-paid ballots with which readers were asked to pick their Louisiana favorites in many categories. In tallying the results, we only included those places for which there was a cluster of votes significant enough to show strong support. In our Autumn issue we presented our readers’ picks of Louisiana’s Best in two categories: Favorite Outdoor Spots and Favorite Music Clubs. In this issue, we hunker down and talk about what folks like to talk about the most –– eating! Here are our readers’ picks for the state’s top dining destinations.  (More) Luderin Darbone: A Life as a Rambler By Ben Sandmel Luderin Darbone, the acclaimed Cajun-swing fiddler who co-founded The Hackberry Ramblers in 1933, died on Nov. 21 at Calcasieu-Cameron Hospital in Sulphur. He was 95. Darbone was born in Evangeline on Jan. 14, 1913, and raised in Orangefield, Texas. He taught himself to play at age 12 by taking a correspondence course. With the technique that Darbone acquired, he was soon able to play by ear and learn songs he heard on the radio. As a teenager, Darbone moved to the then-remote salt-marsh town of Hackberry. There he met his lifelong musical collaborator, Edwin Duhon, a multi-instrumentalist who, at that time, focused on the accordion. The two began playing dances together. They quickly gathered a following, added a third member and dubbed themselves “The Hackberry Ramblers.”(More) Jambalaya By Stanley Dry A savory mélange Along with gumbo, jambalaya is one of the most famous and emblematic dishes of Louisiana cooking. Like gumbo, jambalaya can contain a multitude of ingredients from land and sea in combinations that vary greatly from one cook to another. The origin of both dishes is uncertain at best, and in the case of jambalaya, even the derivation of the name itself is a source of considerable confusion. One widely held theory holds that jambalaya results from a slurring of the Spanish (“jamón”) or French (“jambon”) names for ham and the Spanish dish paella, a savory mélange of rice, meats and seafood. Others have claimed that the name comes from “jambon” combined with “a la” and “ya,” said to be an African word for “rice” (“ham with rice”). A third theory traces the origin of the name to a combination of words from a Sierra Leone dialect that translates as “gift with rice.”(More) Six Degrees of Franklinton By Melissa Bienvenu For my husband’s birthday last October, I ordered the memoir by former LSU football player John Ed Bradley, It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium. For purposes of secrecy, I had the gift shipped to me at my neighbors’ address. I asked them to notify me when the book arrived so that I could run over and pick it up. They never got the chance. The mail lady, as we call our postal carrier, delivered the package straight to our house. It took me about 5 seconds to figure out why: The mail lady knew good and well I didn’t live at the address on that mailing label. The whole thing reminded me of an old joke about the farmer who gets pulled over by a cop for failing to signal. “Why didn’t you use your blinker when you turned into the driveway?” asks the officer. The farmer replies indignantly, “Everybody knows I live here!”  (More)