Portal:Food/Featured personality

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"Way back when I first started as a safety engineer, I took myself pretty seriously, and I found I was putting my audiences to sleep. So having lived all my life among the Cajuns of Louisiana, and having a good memory for the patois and the type of humor Cajuns go for, I started interspersing my talks on safety with Cajun humor." Justin Wilson

Justin E. Wilson (April 24, 1914 - September 5, 2001) was a southern American chef and humorist known for his brand of Cajun cuisine-inspired cooking and humor. He was a self-styled "raconteur".

Wilson was born in Roseland in Tangipahoa Parish, one of the "Florida Parishes" east of Baton Rouge. He began his career as a safety engineer while he traveled throughout Acadiana. His safety lectures that he made to refinery workers prompted him on the road to becoming a Cajun storyteller. He remembered it this way on the back cover of The Justin Wilson Cook Book:

Wilson (who was actually only one-half Cajun, or "half-bleed Ca-jon" as he put it) later recorded several humor albums, beginning with "The Humorous World of Justin Wilson." He later appeared as a guest on the popular CBS series The Ed Sullivan Show. He was known for the catchphrase, "I gar-on-tee!". He later wrote seven Cajun cookbooks and two books of Cajun stories, and hosted several cooking shows on PBS that combined Cajun cooking and Cajun humor.