My wife Andrea and I were having brunch in one of those wonderful garden restaurants in the French Quarter of New Orleans. We were with our friends Al and Teri, and had played craps with them last night in one of the floating casinos in Lake Pontchartrain, just North of here. Al and Teri live in Kenner, near the Lake, and, besides craps, they are also interested in a really weird kind of plant called an epiphyllum, or “Epi.”

“An epi,” Terri was saying as the waiter brought our crawfish etouffee, “is a kind of a jungle cactus, and is very easy to propagate. It can slither up trees, feel at home in a hanging pot, or make a beautiful indoor house plant as well.”

“And the flowers are gorgeous!” my wife Andrea remarked, smiling, “You have such wonderful flowers!”

Al stopped eating and licked his lips. “No one makes crawfish like New Orleans restaurants! Yes, we like the flowers too, but we really like the epi plant itself better. The flower is just a lagniappe!”

He pronounced it LAN-YAP. I am very articulate when I’m eating so I said “Huh?”

Terri looked up at the wisteria vines above our table. “A lagniappe is what we call something extra, a bonus, like those sweet smelling flowers overhead, or a baby’s smile, or seeing a deer when you walk in the woods. Everyone likes a lagniappe, it’s like getting something extra, something you weren’t expecting but received anyway.”

I always thought Terri should have been a writer, so still eating, I said, “Oh.”

Now my lovely wife piped up. “Kind of like craps, huh.”

I said, “Oh?”

“Yes, remember last night when we were playing and Alan made a $10 pass line bet and the point was six? He wanted to place double odds behind, or $20, and he would have won $34 ($24 plus $10), but the dealer said he could place $25 odds and win $40 ($30 plus $10)? Then you said to ask the friendly dealer if he could add $30 odds instead and the dealer said OK? So when the six hit, Alan won $45 ($35 plus $10) instead of the original $34 - $11 extra?”

“Yes, it’s called pushing the house,” I said.

“Nope,” Terri said smiling, “Lagniappe craps,”and it rhymed the way she said it, lan-YAP-craps.

“Yes!” Alan was excited! “Lagniappe craps! Since the riverboats only offer 2X odds, we can ask if we can play lagniappe craps, and get something extra! So, if the point was 5 or 9 and I had $10 on the pass line, normally I could only add $20 odds. At 3:2 odds I would get back $30 plus $10 for a total of $40. But if I asked the dealer if I could play lagniappe craps by adding $30 odds instead of $20 I would get back $45 plus $10 or $55! That extra $15 is my lagniappe!”

I took another bite of the etouffee. “You’re right this crawfish tastes great! And Lagniappe craps sounds great! Let’s see, on a four or ten point with a $10 passline bet you can normally add $20 odds but if the dealer OK’s $30 we’ll win a total of $70 instead of $50, that’s $20 more! It’s always nice to get something extra - a Lagniappe!”

The waiter came back to take some of our dishes away and just then, a large bright, green beetle fell down on our table from the wisteria branches above us.

Andrea gasped!

“Oh, don’t worry, ” the waiter said, “That’s just a lagniappe!”

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