Today is a joyous day of celebrations. My dad celebrates his 85th birthday! He looks 65, acts 25 and has an incredible joie de vivre. Happy Birthday Popy. My great-niece, Isabel, also celebrates her birthday today. I just love this picture of my dad and Isabel celebrating together. Thanks Scott for passing this on. And...it’s also Ned and my 14th anniversary! So lucky to share so much love, joy and good times with this guy. And so blessed to be part of such a great family.
Louisiana is one of our favorite states and we travel through Cajun Country whenever we get the chance. We’ve meant to tour the Konriko Rice Plant, (American’s oldest operating rice mill), but have always managed to time it when it was closed. Not today! Before the tour began we hung out in the Company Store. We tasted hot sauces, different rices, perused thru cookbooks and chatted with the local ladies while waiting for the tour to start. What a fun start to the day.
Oh My Goodness, this tour. I don’t quite know where to start. The ladies who gave it were very sweet, but it was as if we stepped back in time to the early 1960’s, in the old south. First we viewed the slide show, which was given in the back stockroom of the store. We sat on church pews, surrounded by boxes of store product, while a very blurry and outdated slide show was played. (There were references to “Negroes and Orientals.”) The slide show was actually very informative about the history of Acadia and Cajuns, just with references and language that I don’t hear in my day to day. After the slide show we learned about how rice is grown by pointing to faded pictures on the wall. “Did you know the average American eats 35 pounds of rice a year, but a Cajun eats 50 pounds and an Oriental eats 100?”
Next up was a tour of the actual 1912 rice plant. Nothing, and I mean nothing has been updated since then. I got a thrill out of seeing the original machinery used to bag up the rice and the industrial sewing machine next to it that sews it shut. We were given a demonstration on how rice is processed with a scale model diorama. Rice is still being processed here today. I don’t think Ned was listening as intently as me because he was horrified by all the OSHA and food safety violations. Oh, the problems with taking a Food Science Major and prior Quality Manager of Ghirardelli to a 106 year old food processing plant. I mentioned, “there sure are a lot of cats in here,” and Ned responded with, “Don’t you know that’s their rodent control program?” Oh dear...
One of our favorite restaurants in the U.S. is Bon Creole in New Iberia. The first trip thru here we couldn’t even find it. This is our 3rd time eating here and they’ve finally added a restaurant sign and painted a mural on their gray cinderblock wall. We always get the same thing. We split a large shrimp po’boy and a bowl of chicken and sausage gumbo. Freshest shrimp ever and the gumbo to die for. We told them it was our anniversary meal and someone was sweet enough to snap this pic. Honey, don’t we have good times! Best of all I didn’t have to get all dolled up for this lunch. (If you look closely you can see the lady who took our picture in the mirror.).
The drive down to Grand Isle, one of the most southern regions of Louisiana, was so fascinating. We drove along the Bayou Lafourche for about 45 miles. It was dotted with about a hundred shrimp, fishing and who knows what other kind of boats. The other side of the road was small towns and Cajun homes. So picturesque. Getting here we drove thru one of the most intense rain storms. It looked like we were entering a thick fog bank, the wipers could not go fast enough and the road was flooding. We got thru it, made a right turn south and now sunny skies. The weather in this part of the world is just so unpredictable and weird.
Dang, should have held out for some of these fixins’ instead of the shrimp po’boy and gumbo!
The bayou turned into the delta. Some really interesting engineering feats making a roadway over all this marshland. I thought we were just going to drive direclty into the Gulf. Instead we came upon the tiny village of Grand Isle.
Feels like we are a million miles away from the rest of the U.S.
Home sweet home for the night. I was already to go swimming, but for 3 tiny little things holding me back: Red flag warning for swimming, thunder heard in the distance and sting-rays being in the water. Plan B - Having a glass of wine and taking these under advisement. Ned and I are discussing the “may prevent” you part of this statement. We opted for a bike ride into town. Ended up at a dive bar. Pretty fun anniversary day!
