From Paddy to Plate: Journey of America's Oldest Rice Mill

Embark on an auditory journey to the vibrant heart of Cajun country as we sit down with Mike Davis, the passionate president of Conrad Rice Mill, and explore a story steeped in history and flavor. Mike's personal tale of acquiring America's oldest operating rice mill, with nothing but determination and the support of two backers, is as rich and textured as the medium grain rice his mill produces. Our conversation meanders through the milling process from paddy to plate, unraveling why rice isn't just a side dish in Cajun cuisine but the very soul of Southern cooking.

Cook up a storm with us as we discuss Conrad Rice Company's innovative expansion, from the deeply aromatic wild pecan rice inspired by French Indochina to a potential for a grain bin-turned-restaurant. We share a home favorite, the verdant green rice, and how the company embraced change to grow from a local enterprise to a specialty food brand reaching across state lines. Plus, don't miss the story behind the Creole Cuban sandwich that's adding a new twist to classic flavors, proof of the company's unwavering spirit and adaptability in the face of an ever-evolving market.

Finally, take a detour with us along Louisiana's Boudin Trail, where we uncover the everyday essence of Cajun life, far from the jazz-filled streets of New Orleans. From the mysterious swamps of the Atchafalaya Basin to the familial anecdotes of our first visit to this lush state, we savor every moment. Join us as we taste our way through Louisiana's culinary riches, experiencing the culture, people, and stories that simmer beneath the surface of this unique American region.

Transcript

Dave: 0:06

Welcome to Sweet Tea and Tacos. I'm Dave and I'm Jen and we are today talking about rice and you know rice is a huge thing in Southern cooking and also South Louisiana or Louisiana cooking. You know Cajun cooking and today we're actually in New Iberia, louisiana or Louisiana, cooking Cajun cooking. And today we're actually in New Iberia, louisiana, kind of the heart of Cajun country, and we're at Conrad Rice Mill and we're talking to Mike Davis, the president.

Dave: 0:33

Mike, welcome Well thank you Glad to have you here in New Iberia. Well, we're glad to be here and we came across you in doing some research and it's a neat story kind of about the company and your story.

Jen: 0:46

So tell us a little bit about Conrad and your story. Sure well, conrad Rice Mill is the oldest operating rice mill in America, and it was founded in February 1912. So just, there were some mills that existed before that. By just sheer perseverance we've remained and then become the oldest operating mill, the Conrad Rice Mill. We operate under a brand name of Conrico and that stands for Conrad Rice Company. They tried to register it with C's instead of the K's and couldn't do that for some reason. So they changed the C's to K's and very cleverly came up with the name.

Dave: 1:21

Yeah.

Jen: 1:22

So it's been a good name for us. At first I wasn't too sure what to do with it, but what we do here is principally in New Iberia is medium grain rice. There's three types of rice it's long, medium and short. Short grain tends to be out on the California. Long grain is the nation's favorite, but medium grain is a favorite among the Cajun culture within this area down here, the parishes that we consider to be Acadiana. And what it is is. It doesn't cook real sticky but it has a little more glutinous contributions or attributes than long grain. Long grain tends to be drier, spread out more Medium grain tends to be a little stickier and then short grain real sticky.

Dave: 2:06

Right.

Jen: 2:08

So that's what they like here. But it's interesting. As soon as you go 25, 30 miles east of here, like the Baton Rouge, the Mississippi River it switches to long grain Interesting, yeah, as soon as you hit the Sabine River, go into Texas, to the west, long grain, and long grain is now becoming more popular here okay so it's and. I can't tell you why right, but still in New.

Jen: 2:29

Iberia, lafayette, our area is a medium grain thing, gotcha. So one day I, as I was mentioning, I have a degree in marketing. And when I got back from the service, the first years of integration here in New Iberia, and so I got a job teaching because I was just bigger than the kids and they thought they needed big people, I guess, at the time it turned out we had zero problems. So I was taking some education courses, but I still wanted to be in business. That was what I was looking for, sure. And one day, while I was working for the State Department of Education, I'd gotten a little bit of an advancement. I came down the street right here behind us, ann Street, and the mill was sitting there and I did not know that there was even a rice mill in New Iberia. So I literally just pulled in and there was two cars there and the two Conrad brothers, alan and Julian, were sitting in there and I told them I had been looking for a business like this.

Jen: 3:28

I had looked for like two years. I mean I went to Guatemala, to Belize, to Hutchinson, kansas, I mean you name it, you know, looking for something that was agricultural-based but still has a label of selling kind of thing to it. And they told me they said well, your timing's impeccable, we are just talking about selling. Wow, so great. What do you want? How much? You know I had no money. You know I'm a teacher. So they told me the amount it wasn't that terrible a number. So I said, oh, I'll take it. You know we shook hands on us and give me a week. And in a week I had gotten two guys to back me and in three weeks I was in the rice business. Wow. So we had at that time exactly three grocery stores here in New Iveria and the mill had not run for two years. But the Conrads are a German family and they kept that mill just perfect.

Jen: 4:21

So it took just about maybe four or five days of sweeping and we were ready to go. Wow, great, and that was in 1975. Okay, so I'm now in my 49th year here. Wow, and like I tell folks, when I bought the mill I was 29. So I was the youngest rice miller in the United States. I am now the oldest rice miller. All the guys I knew have all retired. They're out on the golf course having a good time.

Dave: 4:47

Can you talk to us about the process of like? How does the right just the process from the rice to the mill and how does that work?

Jen: 4:57

It's kind of. It's very interesting. Actually there used to be a lot of rice grown here and we're an Iberia parish Right and I'm assuming your listeners know that we don't have counties in Louisiana.

Dave: 5:08

Right, we have parishes.

Jen: 5:09

Yes, but it means the same thing basically. Sure, but in this parish there used to be a lot of rice grown, but it's all gone to sugar cane, Okay, and most of the rice has moved further west towards Texas. So what we do is we have a guy who will go out and buy rice for us, we haul it into the mill. We have to then remove the outer hull it's called the shell, if you will. We remove that and that's technically called patty rice, and once, as soon as you take the hull or shell off, now it's brown rice. Okay.

Jen: 5:38

So a grain of rice with the hull removed but all the bran layer still intact, is called brown rice, okay, which is where rice is at its most nutritious, because that's where all the bran layer is still intact. Is called brown rice, which is where rice is at its most nutritious, because that's where all the vitamins and the good stuff are. However, there's a lot of oil in the bran layers, so if you're not real careful that, you can get something called free fatty acids, which is just basically a fancy thing, for gets rancid. So that's that, though. They take the bran layers off through a friction process, kind of like you remove a carrot on a grate.

Dave: 6:10

You take a carrot and you grate it up.

Jen: 6:11

Well, that's principally how they get the hulls off, the bran off. We don't do that, though. Just about everything we do we still maintain that it's brown rice. So, again, we're like into this doing things it's a little harder, but really keeping it clean and right. So what we do then is that we take our rice products who have the bran layer still on them and we do a little technique that lets the water get to the endosperm, the inside, and cooks in 20 minutes instead of 50. Because a 50-minute cook is a typical brown rice cook, because the water has to slowly go through the layers and absorb it. But we have a little technique we've learned in the last, you know, hundreds of odd years, sure, and what we do then is we flush that rice. We take the rice and we put it in a bag, a specialty bag made with a gas permeable barrier in it, and we flush carbon dioxide in it.

Jen: 7:02

And remember back to high school biology everything is either a plant or an animal. So the people don't like to hear this, but the little things that turn into rice, weevils and stuff like that, well, they're laid in the field during the growing season, okay, and under the right conditions they can hatch. It's microscopic, but it can hatch. Well, by carbon dioxide flushing this rice, we do two things. One, we remove all the oxygen. So if we have at least 70% of the oxygen removed, nothing can hatch because it has to have oxygen. Yeah, true, okay. But the other thing that happens is that we reduce the worst enemy that food products have, and that is oxygen, oxygen. Remember that bottle of wine if you leave it out overnight, it turns to oxidation is what it's called. So by putting our products in this environment, the CO2 environment, it's like canning them, if you will, and we've had wild pecan rice.

Jen: 7:54

We've stuck away for 10, 15 years, we've cooked, it's perfect. So anyway, that's what we do, a little bit differently. And then we've also gotten into the seasoning business, because we made a bunch of rice mixes. Okay, you know, you can see one over here. We have a pilaf that we make, and it's a bunch of different ones. And the next thing we knew we have all these spices. So we started then blending those together. Cool, that's cool. And now actually that's really the bigger part, oh, wow.

Dave: 8:25

Except I'm actually.

Jen: 8:25

That's really the bigger part. Oh wow, except I'm talking rambling here.

Mike: 8:28

I apologize for that, but our, but our seasonings all have rice in them okay, interesting.

Jen: 8:30

Yeah, if you're going to do a spice mix and it's got a lot of red pepper and garlic and things like that you, you put something in there to kind of not make it so potent, right kind of a filler.

Mike: 8:39

It's a filler exactly right, very good, yeah, and most people use like a cornstarch product.

Jen: 8:44

That's what 99.9% do we use rice flour.

Mike: 8:48

That's great.

Jen: 8:49

Because it's a natural product, once again, something we make. We know that it's corn. Some people have corn allergies.

Dave: 8:56

Yes, and rice is not it's just non-allergenic.

Jen: 8:59

I mean you can feed that to a baby who's got an upset stomach.

Mike: 9:02

It's one of the first foods you give to a baby. Exactly right.

Jen: 9:06

And it doesn't clump, it doesn't get all yucky. So we think it, and we're the only guys that do that honestly.

Mike: 9:13

I love that because you know, corn is, I think, one of the most genetically modified crops here in America. Yeah, you know, it's just.

Jen: 9:22

Well, we're real anti-GMO.

Mike: 9:25

Yeah, we are too.

Dave: 9:27

Well, we noticed that we were doing the research and we were really impressed by that. The non-GMO and the stance on the pure foods Talk to us about that.

Jen: 9:35

I'd be happy to. There has been some rice that was genetically modified and they sent some of it to Europe and the Europeans sent it promptly right back. I'm sure they did.

Mike: 9:47

They did not want anything to do with it and there's no reason for it.

Jen: 9:54

You know they want to take rice and cross it with, like salmon jeans, I mean it's like Quasimodo food. Why do you want to do that? What we like about rice in its natural form is that it is non-allergenic, that it's gluten-free, that it's easy for people to digest. It's just a naturally God-given, well-made product.

Jen: 10:16

And there's no reason to mess with that. I agree, and so we don't. So we consider ourselves to be a non-GMO company. Everything we make is gluten-free. That's a big, big deal with us. We don't think you need to have that. We don't believe in MSG either. We don't have any products with our name on it that has MSG.

Mike: 10:35

That's great, and that's rare, I'll tell you Especially in the seasoning blend.

Jen: 10:47

In that category of seasonings and creole seasonings and gumbo and all of that. It it's very prevalent. Our best-selling product, if we have the single best-selling product, is it is a. The seasoning line is our creole seasoning. Okay, but if you take, we have two different sizes of our greek season.

Jen: 10:57

If I put those together there's more tonnage that way and we have one competitor from you know I'm not going to mention who they are, but they, they have a greek seasoning as well, but, like, the second or third ingredient is msg and they don't understand that you don't have to have that right and and. But it's work, it's hard, it's, and you got to figure out how to make it. How can you take flavors? And we've found there's a few things we can do to it that will just knock your socks off and really enhance the flavor of the product without, I mean msg is what they call, it is monosodium glutamate, right, and my understanding of it is is that what it does is it makes the, the taste buds, if you will, in your tongue salivate more and enhance the flavor right, it's a flavor enhancer some people call it accent.

Jen: 11:42

That's on in the grocery store. Accent Accent is pure MSG and in the seasoning business everybody's loaded with MSG except us. It's one of our little bragging things. We love that and it gets us in places that we normally probably wouldn't have gotten into.

Mike: 11:58

Well, that's right up our alley and our listeners know we're always talking about read labels 't. Don't do the msg if you can help it. You know non-gmo all that well msg too is uh and it's.

Jen: 12:13

I mean I can't, I'm not trying. It's a big business and a lot of people do it. I was always told if you've ever gone to an oriental restaurant and there's some great ones here in town but you wake up the next morning, maybe you have a little dull headache or you're thirsty you have a reaction to that sure, so why put yourself through that?

Dave: 12:31

you don't need to do that sure yeah sure so let's talk about rice in kind of south louisiana. You've been in south louisiana for how long now?

Jen: 12:38

oh, I was, I'm 77, I was four, so I've been here a little while yeah, rice is a huge part of the culture and the cuisine here it is.

Mike: 12:49

Do you have a favorite rice dish or kind of in the whole kind of Creole-Cajun repertoire? Yeah, what's maybe your favorite, my favorite?

Jen: 12:57

rice dish is not really a Cajun-Creole thing. Okay, it's just called green rice. Okay, and it's one of my wife's recipes, gotcha. And it's basically, it's broccoli and cheeses and wild pecan rice. Oh wow, wild pecan rice is our signature product and it has this nutty aroma. Okay, the seed originally came from French Indochina. Now you know it as Vietnam, okay, but when the French were in Vietnam, it was called.

Dave: 13:21

French Indochina.

Jen: 13:22

Okay, and that's where this aromatic variety that we have came from. And there was a guy named Joe Don, Professor Joe Don, with the LSU Experimental Station, Went to Southeast Asia, brought this seed back, started growing it at the Experimental Station in Crowley, had this really good aroma, but it would just get to a certain height and would just fall over. The stalk was too weak. So he'd cross that, which is a big deal, because rice is a closed pollinating plant. It's not like it's floating. The pollen flows, like in corn, to here, to there, whatever.

Jen: 13:55

So he painstakingly crossed this rice and he made it. It was called Della rice and he had it in cold storage enough to grow about 10 acres and nobody knew what to do with it. And I had a partner when I first got started to help. I mean I couldn't have done anything without him. His name was Claude Brewer and he was in the seed rice business and he knew about this rice. So he got it and we grew the 10 acres worth and we coined the name wild pecan rice because it has a nutty aroma and I guess if I had been a Californian I'd have called it almond rice or something.

Dave: 14:30

But being a Louisianian, pecans are what we think of.

Mike: 14:32

Sure pecans are huge in the culture.

Jen: 14:34

And I will tell you, it literally will fill your home with this most enticing aroma. I mean it just brings people in.

Jen: 14:41

So by using that in these rice dishes, it adds an element that you normally wouldn't find Sure, add in these rice dishes, it adds an element that you normally wouldn't find sure. Uh, if I'm going to just eat regular rice rice, I'm going to do it with gumbo, and there we have a you know like a scoop or two of that, and then we put that on top. Yeah, so that's that's kind of my favorite, if you will, okay well, what's next for, uh, the conrad rice company?

Dave: 15:04

I mean I know you said you I liked what your statement on the website about how you know the kind of the market's moving to this clean, simple thing and it fits right up your alley and you guys are kind of getting in some new markets.

Jen: 15:17

Well, I've been here almost 50 years, as I mentioned to you, and you kind of think you got it figured out, but you really never have it figured out because it just keeps changing. And think back in your lives. Nothing is the same when you start to where we are now. That's right, and I really think that's the secret that I'm still working A lot of people have retired is that I'm willing to make the changes.

Jen: 15:43

But, as you get a little older, you kind of don't want to do that, you know do that, I'm not comfortable with that, but I'm still uncomfortable not changing.

Jen: 15:50

I want to change. I want to see if there's not a better way to do it, because there's a lot of smart people out there. But we've gone from where we started out just selling white rice in this local area, to where we developed a specialty food product line that's the wild pecan, the pilafs, the seasonings and they're sold through distributors that put them into stores like the Publix chain in Florida, the southeastern part of the United States, heb over in Texas, hy-vee in the Midwest, meyers up in Detroit. So we have these distributors and they have gotten much more difficult because we had 50 distributors when I started. We're down to like four and they've just gotten gobbled up.

Jen: 16:29

So now we're working in a more corporate environment and I have some issues with that because I'm just not a corporate guy, so I'm having to learn how to do that and that changes. So while that's changing, we also are saying look, we're sitting here in our Conrico reception center, our our conrico stores. We are the number two attraction in the iberia lafayette area wow number one now is way ahead of us, that's the macklehenny's I mean they're tabasco sauce but as far as that we're, we're number two.

Jen: 17:00

That's great. A little over 50 000 people come through here, oh wow so, but right now you can see it's hot, it's summertime, summertime the tourists are not here. What are we going to do to fill this? So we're starting to try to work doing some sandwiches. Oh cool, If you look outside in our parking lot we've got this big grain bin and we're not using that bin, so I envision that being a restaurant.

Dave: 17:21

Fantastic yeah.

Jen: 17:22

So I've started making a Cuban sandwich. So we call it a Creole Cuban sandwich because it's using our seasoning, not the Cuban seasoning which is a little more citrusy, ours is a little more heat-oriented red pepper.

Jen: 17:36

So on Wednesday it's our hot off the sandwich press day. Wow, and I have never done social media before. Somebody showed me how to do Facebook and they had literally come and sit there and show me how to do that. So I've been doing that five days a week, been making these posts, and I'd be dadgum. If it really works. That's fantastic. Yeah, so on Wednesday, only from 11 to one, we make these sandwiches and then if we don't sell them all, then we we freeze them because, they taste really good frozen.

Jen: 18:04

And we figured out how to do all of that Nice, but it's really fun and we're meeting a whole other group of people. We started doing a little bulk section over here. I'm now working on a couple, two or three other sandwiches that I think will all fit together, and so I'm trying to put something like that that gets more local people coming here Right, and in addition, like this summer starting today, actually for the month of July if you've got a school-aged child who's from the kindergarten to a senior in high school, they can come here for free and give the tour Awesome Because we want them to learn about agriculture.

Jen: 18:39

The economic energy. That's a big engine for the state of Louisiana.

Jen: 18:43

Oh, it is and we want to take them next door to the mill and we have a Cajun video that takes 20 minutes to see. Okay, we have some people in there seeing it right now. We want them to kind of educate them and it's not all being nice guy either If we can get these younger people to know who we are and remember us, because in just a few years they'll be out of high school and they're having their own families and their own homes. You know, maybe when they go to the grocery store and they see Conrico they'll think of it Absolutely. But we've got a big-time sampling thing going on back there with coffee and seasonings and we make something called Bay Island secret sauce. You've got to try that.

Dave: 19:21

Oh man, that sounds good.

Jen: 19:22

Yeah, it's good stuff. I have to tell you, my poor wife makes that we had this couple from. They lived in Belize, they were expats that ran a big plantation down there and they retired, they moved back to Lafayette, louisiana, and they made it for us and now they're like 90. And they called us up and said we can't make it anymore, we're tired. So we were able to work something with him and and my wife took that on but takes her four hours to make a batch of only 19 little bottles. Wow, oh my goodness.

Jen: 19:53

But it's really worth it and we're not changing, it's going to be. That's the and once again, it's wheat free, it's gluten free, it's shelf stable, it's all of those, yeah, tag yeah, and, like you said, it's funny how the markets this is new.

Dave: 20:07

It's all this new clean.

Mike: 20:09

And yet it's old, because it's how people just used to cook and do things.

Jen: 20:14

Well, you see, I'm glad you mentioned that I had a grandmother. She was in Fort Scott, kansas. She was 100 years old when she passed away and she had this huge garden. In fact we used to hate to go visit her because she'd put us out there with a hoe, you know, and go out there and get the weeds and can't. But she didn't know that. But she lived an organic lifestyle. She didn't use commercial fertilizers, she didn't spray it with anything. If there were some bugs on it she'd go on the tomato plant, she'd just take them off. You know, have to go fishing with them, but but so kind of. I guess maybe it was ingrained in us, but that's how we. So we're really just back where we started from, absolutely, but trying to do it better. Right, yeah, yeah.

Dave: 20:54

I think that's great, yeah, well, cool. Well, thank you for that. That was awesome. We just learned so much. Mike, we really appreciate your time today and appreciate getting to come here and check it out. We're really happy to have you here. Tell people where they can find your products. Where can they find ConRinco?

Jen: 21:12

And now that you're on Facebook, they just look for Conrad Rice Mill, conrinco, k-o-n-r-i-k-o. We've got a pretty fair presence there. We have a website which is secure. That's a good way if you can find it. We sell quite a few of the independent stores and some of those major chains I mentioned Publix and and we can't even figure that out Hy-Vee is located in Des Moines, iowa. I don't know if you've ever been to Des Moines.

Mike: 21:38

Iowa.

Jen: 21:39

You would never think those people would eat hot spicy foods. We sell more of our jalapeno seasoning up there than anywhere. That's crazy.

Dave: 21:47

I can't figure it out. I'm glad we're very happy.

Jen: 21:51

And it's just so wonderful. The Midwest work ethic, it's just something special. Those folks are just ready to get it and they work hard. But you can go in those stores. And the nice thing about it if you have a store that you shop in all the time, you ask your manager for it and he'll get it Okay. It's available for him. Okay, it's good to know, because they want you to keep coming back. Yeah, awesome.

Dave: 22:13

Talk to us real quick about your product line.

Jen: 22:15

Sure.

Dave: 22:16

Yeah.

Jen: 22:16

Okay, so we started out as a white rice operation.

Dave: 22:19

Okay, right.

Jen: 22:20

We really do very little of that anymore. Everything is a brown rice type product. So we have under the Conrico brand and we had another brand or two, but really we just concentrate on the Conrico the.

Jen: 22:30

Conrad Rice Company thing. So we have quite a few rice mixes. We have like four or five really good seasoning blends a Creole seasoning, a Greek seasoning, all MSG, non-gmo thing. We make one called Chipotle seasoning, and then we have the jalapeno seasoning and the newest thing we're working on right now is called gravy thickener. It's called pasta and gravy and pasta thickener. Okay, and instead of using corn, once again I go back to the analogy with people with corn starch.

Jen: 23:01

I've made in our house something called cream of asparagus. You put over toast. It's very simple. So you pour the juice into the saucepan and you put some cornstarch and water and you mix it up and you pour it in there and you heat it up Kind of like a slurry. You make a slurry and I invariably either don't put enough corn in it or I put too much.

Dave: 23:22

And I get bumps and lumps and all this kind of stuff.

Jen: 23:24

Well, this rice pasta thickener we use gravy thickener you just sprinkle it right in the can. You just sprinkle it into the liquid, stir it and it just thickens up and it doesn't get lumpy, and it doesn't get clumpy and you can put whatever you have left over in the freezer, bring it back out. It doesn't break down. That's cool and that's our newest thing and we've been selling it here really we don't sell it too many places.

Dave: 23:53

And trying it out here and we got some really good cooks here in South Louisiana?

Jen: 23:55

Yeah, no doubt, and we got some folks that are believers in this product.

Mike: 23:56

Oh, fantastic yeah.

Jen: 23:57

And so I'm saying you know, yeah, I mean, they believe in LSU and gravy thickener. You know what I mean. You can't go wrong with those two things, right, absolutely.

Mike: 24:04

Well, I would imagine it might even work in lieu of a roux, sometimes in a gumbo or something, I don't know.

Jen: 24:10

Well, I got Californians that tell me well, we don't make gravies out here. I say no, but you eat pasta, right? Oh, absolutely Don't. You make a sauce that goes with the pasta.

Mike: 24:19

Just a white sauce is sort of how you make a roux, so that's why we call it gravy and pasta.

Jen: 24:25

Oh, that's fantastic, so I will send you home with some. I think you'll enjoy it.

Dave: 24:30

Thank you so much.

Mike: 24:30

We'd appreciate it. We'd love to try it. Yeah, great.

Dave: 24:34

And that was our interview with Mike Davis at Conrica Rice Company. You can read more about them at conradricecom their history and you can shop their products and find out more about them. Uh, as mike said, he did send us home with a few things and of course, this was not a sponsored podcast. We had no monetary gain or anything but he was kind enough to send us home with a few things yeah, that was awesome and uh, let's see what would we he?

Dave: 25:01

so, okay, we made some of the wild pecan rice, we fixed that we. We did like the day we got home, we got home and, like he talked about, it smelled wonderful and it tasted

Mike: 25:16

wonderful yeah, it was super easy to make and uh didn't.

Dave: 25:21

It didn't get gummy no, and some rices will get gummy or sticky or whatever.

Mike: 25:24

No, it cooked up great I think it was, because it's that brown rice and they have that special technique and everything.

Dave: 25:29

Well, it was good.

Mike: 25:31

Yeah, we enjoyed that.

Dave: 25:32

And then the next day, because we were on our theme here, I cooked red beans and rice and used some of their Creole seasoning.

Mike: 25:39

Yes, and you also thickened it with this gravy and sauce thickener.

Dave: 25:45

Now what's interesting about that? And we kind of started a thing a few years ago where we started making latkes on New Year's Eve, yeah, and we kind of, from those recipes, discovered a lot of times we were using potato starch to help them firm up, thicken up, thicken up, firm up yeah. So we started using potato starch as a thickener and other things.

Mike: 26:08

Right, like a powdered potato starch.

Dave: 26:10

Yeah, so we actually buy it. Yeah, when you make the latkes, it's kind of a byproduct of soaking the potatoes.

Mike: 26:17

Right, but this is a thickener you know that is a similar consistency, but like you were talking about Dave, sometimes that potato starch can taste like raw potato.

Dave: 26:32

Right, that's the one thing I've run into and I've used it in something else yeah, and this I mean we just put it in kind of right at the end because ours did need thickening it was a quick red beans yeah, and man, you didn't taste it at all.

Mike: 26:45

I mean it didn't. Of course we were eating it over rice, so if it had tasted like rice, that would have been fine, but there was no kind of raw weird taste or anything it was. I mean, we were really impressed with this product. And it's just on the ingredients rice starch.

Dave: 27:02

Yeah, and then we he sent us some of that Bay Island sauce and tried some of that. Right, it was really good yeah.

Mike: 27:09

You put it over the cream cheese.

Dave: 27:11

Yeah, I did that and it was like the crackers you put it over the cream cheese. Yeah, I did that.

Mike: 27:14

And did it with like the crackers.

Dave: 27:15

You know, that's a real kind of Southern thing to do. That's what it reminded me of, was that stuff, yeah, but it'd be great on fish or shrimp.

Mike: 27:20

Oh yeah, you could use it all kinds of ways to season things. But there is that whole thing that people do at parties, where they get the cream cheese out and they put that kind of sauce or they'll do like a what like a jalapeno jelly, some such yeah.

Dave: 27:38

But uh, yeah, I had a great trip to new iberia and lafayette area. If you ever get a chance, new iberia is really cool. Lots of foodie things to do yeah, and beautiful too.

Mike: 27:49

I mean we were just amazed just the humongous live oak trees and I mean it was just a gorgeous area. There are a lot of companies down there that you know, produce food items, as well as the Conrico and what else.

Dave: 28:10

And well, there's also that area is known for. Louisiana has what they call the Boudin Trail. So Boudin is kind of a thing unique to the Cajun area and so there's a lot that's kind of the heart of that area.

Mike: 28:21

So, you know it's a great little side trip if you want to do something in Louisiana and maybe not New Orleans, and I mean, new Orleans is fantastic and you can't go wrong with that, but this is a lot less touristy and you just really kind of get a little bit more of a feel for the everyday kind of culture you know, and like we discovered a brand of coffee that's produced in Lafayette that we had never heard of and you know, they were just kind of all these little hidden gems that it was really, it was just really neat.

Dave: 28:51

And those were fun.

Mike: 28:52

Yeah, and the.

Dave: 28:53

Atchafalaya.

Mike: 28:55

Yeah, or however you pronounce that. However you pronounce it, y'all need to let us know.

Dave: 28:58

Atchafalaya or Atchafalaya. We actually looked it up and there's several ways to do it.

Mike: 29:03

It sounded like there were several ways to pronounce it, but we went to a visitor center and it's like in this really swampy area, this really swampy area, yeah, um, but the visitor center was great. It just talked all about the culture and the food and you know just how to live in the swamp and the bayou and we really enjoyed that a lot yeah, it was a neat experience for your, you and our daughter's, first time being in that area. I think maybe you have driven through lafayette but not stayed not eaten you know, not had the full experience by any means.

Dave: 29:38

Very cool.

Mike: 29:39

Yeah.

Dave: 29:39

So there you go. That's Sweet Tea and Tacos for this week. Finally back producing some things. And a new thing we have a support link on our website now. If you enjoy listening and want to help us create some more content, check it out. And there you go, and hopefully we'll have some more podcasts coming very soon.