Tabasco, Zydeco, and Catfish Heaven

In 1604, the French first came to North America and landed on a small island in the mouth of the St. Croix river near the present day city of Calais, Maine. That was three years before Jamestown and seventeen before the Mayflower. For the next 150 years, French Catholic settlers lived in eastern Canada--they called it "Acadia"-- in uneasy proximity to their British neighbors.

Then, in 1854, for reasons still somewhat obscure, the British literally forced them from their homes and lands and a kind of French diaspora began. Some moved west into French speaking Canada, but many came to the US, principally to two widely separated places, northern Maine and southwest Louisiana. Because both of these areas were geographically isolated, and because the Acadian people chose to keep substantially to themselves (and why wouldn't they, after what they'd been through?), their French language and culture maintained itself largely intact until well after World War II.

    These are the wonderful Acadians of the St. John Valley in Maine and the Cajuns (say Acadian five times fast) of Louisiana--and it's the latter we visited next.

    We drove east on Interstate 10 from New Orleans about three hours to the little town of Breaux Bridge (below), then south to the even smaller town of St. Martinville where we found our RV Park, Catfish Heaven--which has to be the only combination RV park and catfish farm in the country.

Sorry about the picture quality--it was taken through the RV's front window into the sun, but it still gives you a flavor of the local architecture; Mary loved it, as well as the local cuisine--so help me, she ate nine pounds of crawfish while we were in Louisiana. These little towns have drive-up crawfish shacks, just like lobsters for us.

The next morning we headed further south--to the margin of the Gulf of Mexico--for what turned out to be one of the real highlights of the trip so far, a visit to Avery Island, the home of world famous Tabasco Sauce. A friend of ours in Maine is associated with the McIlhenny Company, the owners of Tabasco, and she arranged a tour of the plant and the island.



The history of Tabasco is a classic American story--New Orleans banker loses everything after the Civil War, returns to his wife's family land on the Louisiana coast, experiments with sauces made from peppers grown on the property, friends and neighbors like it and encourage him to make them some, and 135 years later, the sauce is sold in 104 countries and is the definitive hot sauce practically everywhere.

Above is the first step after the peppers are picked--the mash is aged in wooden barrels (more on them later) for up to three years when it is mixed with vinegar and a little salt to make the magic sauce. The mash ferments in the barrels, so a layer of salt is added over the wooden top which seals the juices in during the aging process.

Here's Ben counting some of the stored barrels; the white tops are the hardened salt. He got the right answer, by the way, by counting the number of rows and multiplying by the number in each row. Who says we're not teaching Math on this trip?







And here's Molly, checking out the salt. Remember now, this product is literally used by the drop so that's a lot of Tabasco you're looking at, and this is just a small part of the inventory. They produce over 500,000 bottles a day of the finished sauce, all of it in this plant.
After the mash is mixed with the vinegar, it's ready to bottle; here's a piece of the production line. The run going through the morning we were there was bound for Singapore. If you look carefully, you'll see the bottles coming in on the left don't have caps; after they go around the cylinder in the center, viola!, they do, screwed on to just the right tightness. Ben and I thought this was cool.






    And here's Molly in another teachable moment. The people in the plant were great, by the way. They didn't know us from Adam, but were friendly and obviously proud to be associated with the company. I've learned that one way to judge the culture (and likely success) of any company is by the loyalty of the workers; by this standard, Tabasco is in pretty good shape. The average tenure of the people we talked to was about 25 years.







This is Hamilton Polk, one of those special Tabasco people. He's a modern day cooper who refurbishes and maintains the barrels (which can last up to 75 years), using a combination of modern technology (a mechanized barrel cleaner, for example) and twenty plus years of experience to produce small works of art. Ben said he wanted to come back and work for Ham. A boy could do a lot worse. 









And finally, after the plant tour, we took a boat ride around Avery Island, which isn't actually an island in the strict sense. It is a salt dome pushing up from the edge of the Gulf surrounded by marsh and bayous on all sides. Let's just say you couldn't leave the place without getting your feet wet. Here, Molly is driving the boat with the help of our wonderful tour guide, Dave Landry, who recently retired from the McIlhenny Company after only 45 years. We kept meeting people with names like Landry, Thibidoux, and Broussard; it felt just like home.






I always make it a point to kiss my wife after returning from an ocean voyage; so what if this one only lasted an hour?









The next morning was Valentine's Day and Molly planned a major breakfast in bed production for me and Ben. Mom helped, but Molly had it all worked out--down to lady fingers with strawberries and plenty of bacon, Ben's favorite. Here is Molly putting the finishing touches on the lady fingers--



--and paying close attention to the scrambled eggs.




The next day we did some home schooling, then went to Lafayette for some non-educational fun. We found the local equivalent to Joker's in Portland--arcade games, go-carts, pool, and Mary's new favorite, air hockey.  Ricky Craven is safe from me; I did manage to pass Ben once, but my advantage was short-lived; he slipped by two turns later and I was toast.



Notice he has the inside track; notice also that if I put my left foot in where it's supposed to be, I keep hitting the brake. It only took me about ten laps to figure that out; I thought his car was just naturally faster.



Mary has really gotten pretty good at air hockey; I think I see a home table in my future.







I had to show you this just for the contrast with the pool room at the Blaine House. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.
Finally, a real treat--breakfast at the Cafe Des Amis in Breaux Bridge on Saturday morning. The place was mobbed, the food was great, and the Zydeco music was fantastic; pictures can't do it justice--what we really need here is a soundtrack.
And here are Mom and Molly on the tiny dance floor; anybody who can sit still in the presence of good Zydeco is seriously lacking the fun gene.

  
Next week, we move from Cajun to Tex-Mex; no more crawfish for Mom, but Dad and Ben will be seriously into the barbeque. Stay with us!