FROM FARM-FRESH PRODUCE TO MEAT, SEAFOOD, SAUSAGES AND CAJUN SPECIALTIES, WE HAVE EXACTLY WHATCHA WANT TO COOK — AND COMPLETE MEALS IF YOU DON’T FEEL LIKE IT.
I cleaned and stocked the shelves. I unloaded the trucks. I washed and crisped (crisping is “produce speak” for misting) spinach, kale and other greens, which are on the wet wall. That’s what we call our fresh greens section.
Not many things were prepacked back then. I cut up ripe watermelons and cantaloupes. You can tell if a watermelon is ripe if it is symmetrical for the shape, heavy for the size, and has a yellowish spot where the melon was lying on the ground. Cantaloupes will have smooth, somewhat sunken, and rounded stems and a sweet, musky aroma. They will smell…like cantaloupe. The grapes came in bulk so we had to overwrap them, which means we picked out a perfect bunch, placed them on a tray, wrapped them, and weighed them. Nowadays they come in baggies
or clamshells. We also overwrapped the strawberries, which came in little green pint containers.
I loved working in the Produce department, learning all of the different varieties of fruits and vegetables — plus, it wasn’t as cold as the Meat department.
My boss was Kerry Adams, who is now one of our top produce buyers. Kerry started out as a Produce Clerk at Rouses #1, our very first supermarket, which was in Thibodaux. It was also the first store to carry the Rouses name. Kerry became a Produce Manager and then, in 2013, he came to work in our office with, among other people, Mr. Larry Daigle, who was our Local Produce Buyer at the time. Larry literally grew up in the produce business. He started growing and selling mustard and turnip
greens when he was just 13. He sold to my grandfather at our first store, Ciro’s.
Kerry loves to tell people that he was my first boss, and also that, when I came to work for him, my dad said, “Do not give him any special treatment, or you’ll hear about it. I want him to learn.” I was the one who cleaned all of the produce cases that summer, so I guess you could say he didn’t give me any special treatment….
We had the idea for the cover of this issue on a Tuesday at 4:57pm. It was Kerry who jumped into action and got our partner Capital City Produce to deliver all of the fresh fruits and vegetables on the truck to our office first thing the very next day for the photoshoot.
Donny Rouse, CEO, 3rd Generation
IT ALL STARTED WITH A PRODUCE TRUCK.
Creative Director & Editor
Marcy Nathan
Art Director, Layout & Design
Eliza Schulze
Illustrator
Kacie Galtier
Designer
Mary Ann Florey
Marketing Coordinator
Harley Breaux
Copy Editor
Patti Stallard
Advertising & Marketing
ron bonacci
Tim Acosta
Amanda Kennedy
Stephanie Hopkins
Nancy Besson
Taryn Clement
Marketing Interns
Peyton finch
Charlotte Ghrist
SARAH BAIRD
Sarah Baird is the author of multiple books, including New Orleans Cocktails and Flask, which was released in summer 2019. A 2019 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, her work has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Saveur, Eater, Food & Wine and The Guardian, among others. Previously, she served as restaurant critic for the New Orleans alt-weekly, Gambit Weekly, where she won Critic of the Year in 2015 for her dining reviews.
DAVID W. BROWN
David W. Brown is a freelance writer whose work appears in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Scientific American and The New Yorker His most recent book, The Mission: A True Story, a rollicking adventure about a motley band of explorers on a quest to find oceans on Europa, is in bookstores now. Brown lives in New Orleans.
Susan Langenhennig Granger is editor of Preservation in Print magazine and director of communications and marketing for the Preservation Resource Center in New Orleans. Prior to that she was a news editor, reporter and feature columnist for The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com.
POPPY TOOKER
Poppy Tooker is a native New Orleanian who has spent her life immersed in the vibrant colors and flavors of her state. Poppy spreads her message statewide and beyond via her NPRaffiliated radio show and podcast, “Louisiana Eats!”
In addition to celebrating 100 years of City Produce, we are celebrating our Rouses Magazine; I’m personally celebrating 10 years as Editor in Chief of the publication. We’ve spent a lot of time, as we worked on this landmark issue, remembering where we’ve been.
We’d seen other grocery store publications, and wanted to start our own. The majority of these publications are recipe-focused, which is great. But the Gulf Coast gives us so much more material to work with — the culture here is like nowhere else. It was important to us that, along with recipes, we also feature the people, places, restaurants, bars, music and everything else that make our region so unique. Those are the things that I love about living here.
From our very first issue, which had Creole tomatoes on the cover — and quite a few typos — we quickly gained a loyal following.
In our early issues, we featured so much about red beans and rice, white beans and catfish, jambalaya, and an inordinate amount of spaghetti — spaghetti and meatballs, spaghetti mac and cheese, even weenie spaghetti with hot dogs or Vienna sausages — that at one point, I worried we might’ve run the same story twice. So, we expanded our menu. New Orleans was home for me, but like most New Orleanians, I was well-acquainted with and cherished all of the Gulf Coast, from the beaches of coastal Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, to the inland towns and rural areas where so much of the country’s produce is grown and harvested each year.
With so many great stories to tell, we also started theming our issues. We began dedicating entire editions to Bourbon, Barbecue, Pizza, Pasta, Hamburgers, Garlic, Seafood, Steaks and comforting Southern Food. (One of the stranger things I learned while researching that Garlic issue is that you can taste garlic with your feet. Really!)
We argued endlessly about gumbo and whether or not it should have tomatoes, as
well as what color jambalaya should be. We unwittingly left the rice out of Tommy Rouse’s jambalaya recipe and got hundreds of calls and letters and emails telling us just that — it was ricemaggedon. We did a word search in our 60th anniversary issue and accidentally cut off the last line.
We blackened absolutely everything for our Cajun issue…including the table that we were shooting on.
We’ve created multiple Italian issues because, let’s be real here, one helping of Italian food is never enough. And two Mardi Gras issues. To be perfectly honest, we might not be done covering these themes; we are truly spoiled with a wealth of subject matter.
We drank so much tequila for our Cocktail issue that I can barely remember writing any of the stories — or my letter. I freaked out a colleague in Thibodaux when I told him that I cracked a very expensive bottle as I was moving it to New Orleans for a photoshoot for our Bourbon issue — that is still one of my favorite pranks. I tried to prank our chef Marc, but he spotted someone filming and quickly stepped out of the way; I got pie in the face instead of him.
In every issue, we’ve shared tips from our experts on choosing steak and fish, and on baking, including sharing popular recipes like our Gentilly cake and Cajun tarte à la bouille pie.
Now, we intentionally repeat ourselves every once in a while, rerunning your favorite stories and recipes; we run our Holiday 101s every year. Thankfully, we have avoided repeating the same holiday recipes and stories every year — do you really need a recipe for a sandwich made with leftover turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce?
One year we fried turkeys with Chef Nathan Richard, a 20-year veteran of the volunteer fire department in his hometown of Thibodaux. Last year we featured an
authentic Cuban flan recipe, porchetta (which almost none of us could pronounce), and the Chinese Zodiac for the Lunar New Year. We also baked so many pans of schnecken, to perfect a recipe that was sticky and gooey enough for Christmas morning, that schnecken became a curse word in our office.
When our first issue hit stores, we were already a few years into our “Where the Chefs Shop” campaign (later renamed “Best Chefs and Cooks Shop at Rouses”), a marketing effort I came up with that included chefs like world-renowned Paul Prudhomme, Cajun cooking authority John Folse and many more. It celebrates our region’s chefs, cooks and food makers. We’re about to relaunch it with some great new faces. I’m super-excited!
Thanks in part to that campaign, we’ve been able to run exclusive interviews with chefs and cooks from all over. I feel like they all talked about learning to cook at their mother or father or grandparent’s side. Like you, roots mean everything to them. To me, too.
For those among us who are cookbook enthusiasts, we’ve covered a range, from chef-driven to community-based, including cherished regional cookbooks that are passed down between generations. Even if you’re not a cook, they make for great reads. I have my own tattered copies of Talk About Good!, River Road Recipes, Pirate’s Pantry and Recipe Jubilee!
We’ve run endless lists, often with contributions from our customers: Best Dressed (po-boys), Pit Stops (barbecue), Pearls
(oysters bars), iconic dishes of the Gulf Coast, essential ingredients of the Gulf Coast, our favorite Asian restaurants for our fabulous Asian Food issue…. Right now, we’re working on the Best Saints Bars for our upcoming Saints issue.
We’ve covered festivals that celebrate food, wine, music, boudin and beer, and anything else recognized with a celebration. Let’s be honest: Down here, we will throw a party for just about anything. Music journalists have delved into the unique soundtracks of New Orleans, Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, Festival International, and other events from around the region. Folklorists have provided insights into local traditions, including Cajun humor. We even drew our own comic strip with the Cajun duo Boudreaux and Thibodeaux.
We’ve shared local traditions of every hometown we serve.
In 2017, we recorded the definitive interview with the Cajun Cannon, Bobby Hebert himself, and then-LSU Head Coach Ed Orgeron, for our Tailgating issue. It took
me four hours to transcribe it, and I’m still not sure I got it completely right because of the accents. Together, the pair brought home the state title for the South Lafourche High School Tarpons in 1977.
Storytelling is so important to a magazine, especially this one, and I’ve heard every excuse for writers missing deadlines.
One writer who lived on the edge and, let’s just say, had a relationship of convenience with the truth, claimed cracked ribs, twice — different ribs, by the way — and two bouts of food poisoning, all within the same year.
There have been a lot of dead relatives and sick friends, excuses I chose to believe, even when the same person died twice. And while no one has ever claimed that their dog ate their story, one writer did miss a deadline because of a goat.
One writer began channeling the poet ee cummings and turned in a story without punctuation. Our copy editor threatened to quit if I hired that writer again.
But, overall, the quality of writing from our contributors has been exceptional.
Sarah Baird is a prolific writer and our most frequent contributor. Baird’s work has appeared in prestigious publications such as The Washington Post, Saveur, and Food & Wine, and she has authored three books on cocktails. She has never missed a deadline. She has also never owned a goat (to the best of our knowledge). Baird also pens our original horoscopes, which we feature once or twice a year.
David W. Brown is a longtime contributor to our magazine. His impressive command
Magazine. Brown has a new book that documents his two Antarctic expeditions, and he asked us to feature an excerpt in our magazine to ensure his mom doesn’t miss it.
I assign any stories on potted meat, pickled pig’s feet, pineapple on pizza or anything unappetizing to him.
Our team of contributors includes “Louisiana Eats!” host Poppy Tooker, cookbook author and Cajun food expert Marcelle Bienvenu, and Southern Food & Beverage Museum founder Liz Williams. Additional food contributors include Toni Tipton Martin, Michael Twitty, Justin Nystrom, Sara Roahen, food editor Judy Walker, and cookbook authors Lolis Eric Elie and Kit Wohl. Our cheese writer, Liz Thorpe, authored her definitive The Book of Cheese. Don Dubuc, aka the Outdoors Guy, covers outdoor topics for us.
Food writer and photographer Pableaux Johnson has been our authority on red beans.
when Pableaux and I were having coffee at a local donut shop, a woman delivered a baby in the bathroom. It was straight out of TLC’s I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.
We’ve also featured excerpts from renowned writers such as Rick Bragg and Ken Wells, who hails from Bayou Blue and began his career at The Houma Courier. Wells went on to become a longtime writer for The Wall Street Journal and has authored five novels centered around the Cajun bayous.
Upcoming issues include our Fall Saints edition, with stories by Mary Beth Romig. The Romig family has a strong connection to the New Orleans Saints, for whom we are the official supermarket. Mary Beth’s brother, Mark Romig, serves as the Saints’ PA announcer; their late father, Jerry, was the original PA announcer for the team.
Our holiday theme is Cocktails, and hopefully Wayne Curtis and Robert Simonson will once again be lending their libation expertise. Curtis has contributed to publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Garden & Gun, and is the author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, while Simonson writes extensively on cocktails, spirits, bars and bartenders for The New York Times.
Writers, if I left your name out, you were probably late turning in your story….
I have been surrounded by very talented people from the very first issue. But if you’ve been a regular reader of this magazine, you’ve surely noticed changes over the years. When our art director, Eliza Schulze, joined our team four-plus years ago, her talents and creativity really took our design to a whole new level. She gives each magazine a distinct feel to match the distinct theme.
Kacie Galtier caught my eye as a chalk artist who created signs for our stores. I was so excited when we brought the Chalk department into our Marketing department! You’ve seen Kacie’s original illustrations throughout this magazine in the past five years, and on our reusable bags. Kacie also designed our 100 Years of City Produce
Mary Ann Florey was practically raised in Regina’s Kitchen, the legendary lunch spot in Mobile, Alabama. She uses her expertise — and friends and family — to help research, develop and cook recipes to go with our stories. Harley Breaux, our marketing coordinator, keeps us in line and on track. She and the rest of our amazing marketing team also contribute ideas for stories and recipes and photos.
Romney Caruso is our go-to food photographer. He has been a professional photographer for more than 25 years. You may not know that we prepare and photograph most of the food in this magazine at our Downtown New Orleans store. The photo studio is really our office. We don’t use any clever tricks to make the food look delicious, like subbing mashed potatoes for ice cream. And we eat almost everything we make on shoot days — everyone brings Tupperware; the rest we deliver to the Community Refrigerators around town.
Patti Stallard is our copy editor, proofreader and copywriter. She has decades of editorial experience in marketing and
publishing, and her copyediting comments are so insightful and witty that we could easily dedicate an entire magazine to them one day — and probably will. We take turns reading them out loud to each other.
I am honored every time you tell me you read an issue. I am tickled pink when you’ve recognized me in one of our stores. I know someone who plays in a second line band who describes himself as “city famous.” Me? I am Rouses famous, and proud of it.
I have shared a lot of myself on these pages. And you have shared a lot with me in return. I love hearing your family stories and reading your family recipes. I wish I had more of my own to share, but I’m better at appreciating food than preparing it.
It’s not just me, either. People tell our Marketing and Advertising Director, Tim Acosta, they feel like they know him from his magazine column, “Cooking on Hwy. 1.” It happened this week on an introductory Zoom call! I’ve been with Tim in
stores when customers have come up to ask him, “Whatcha cookin’?” He needs an hour to answer.
I spent most of my career on the advertising agency side helping a variety of local brands, as well as major national brands like Ruth’s Chris Steak Houses, define their personalities, before I crossed over to Rouses Markets full-time. None of it was as fun — or as fattening — as this.
In my Editor position, and in my role as Creative Director for Rouses Markets, I’m lucky enough to work with some pretty amazing people, and to share my ideas and much of my world with you.
This magazine really has been a passion project for our entire Marketing department for 10 years. The magazine is lagniappe — a little something extra — but we wouldn’t give up the extra work for anything. We do it because we love to do it. And we hope you love it, too.
“I don’t think there is any other supermarket that has a better magazine, and I don’t know if there are any food magazines that are better, anywhere.”
— Donny Rouse, CEO, 3rd Generation
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Back in college, I knew there was something different about my New Orleans upbringing the first time I suggested to someone that we cross the street to the “neutral ground.” He looked at me as if I were from Mars and asked, “The what? Do you mean the median?” Until that moment, I don’t believe I’d heard that word before. I only knew that grassy strip as the neutral ground.
The same style of New Orleans idiosyncrasy holds true when it comes to shallots vs. green onions. First as a student and later as a teacher, I would hold up the green shoots in question and ask the assembled: “What do you call this?” Inevitably, non-New Orleanians would answer “green onions” or “scallions,” while locals definitively pronounced them “shallots.” This anomaly passed all class and neighborhood distinctions. If you grew up anywhere in New Orleans, those green onions were shallots!
While a little historical research quickly yields several plausible explanations for our neutral ground vernacular, the same does not hold true for the shallot. As a child, I first learned about those little bulb onions, French shallots, from Julia Child on PBS. Even then I was puzzled, but no one could offer an explanation why — despite what Julia said — in New Orleans green onions are shallots.
Then one year I planted French shallots in my garden, and up from the ground came green shoots that looked and tasted much like green onions. That’s when it dawned on me that those original French settlers must have brought root vegetables and seeds with them to plant in New Orleans. It seems very plausible that, when old Creole recipes called for shallots, they were using the green, shallot tops, likely from their own gardens. Some Creole recipes even specified using only the green shallot tops while discarding the white bottoms with roots.
So…why do we call green onions shallots? Let’s just say it’s a neutral ground kind of thing!
– Poppy Tooker, Producer and Host of “Louisiana Eats!”
As we’ve been gearing up for our 100 Years of City Produce celebration, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about shallots. While some may argue that what much of Louisiana calls a shallot is actually a spring onion, I challenge anyone to convince the farmers in Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, where sprawling fields of shallots were grown for generations. In photos, the shallots really are a sight to behold, with their giant green onion-like stalks and flowering bulbs.
We looked through the Packer Produce Red Book from 1927, which is like a phone book for farmers. It lists scallions and shallots, but no spring onions. We also looked at our old City Produce ad, which screams: “All shallot growers, we are now buying Shallots bunched or in the field, see us before you sell!” The City Produce phone number was only a few digits long.
My father-in-law and our founder, Anthony J. Rouse, Sr., worked at the T&P Shed washing and sorting shallots for his dad’s company, City Produce, and he was always telling old stories about loading shallots onto the railcars in Thibodaux to be shipped north.
I can remember passing fields of shallots in Chackbay and Schriever, and seeing the old trucks parked beneath the stately oak trees, loaded down with bushels of shallots
alongside crisp heads of cabbage and other vegetables.
Mr. Anthony really was a farmer at heart; he had his own backyard garden. I would sometimes help with harvesting the shallots. We would separate them into similar sizes, and secure them into a neat bunch with a blue rubber band. (They still bunch them that way today.) What the family didn’t need, Mr. Anthony sent to the Thibodaux store.
All of this talk about old-time shallots has our produce team working with today’s growers to regionally source spring bulb shallots throughout the year. Stay tuned.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Elmer’s CheeWees are a snack made in New Orleans. Unlike most cheese curls, they are baked instead of fried. The Green Onion flavor is crafted using a blend of aged sharp cheese and Elmer’s own mild, sweet green onion spices.
Delight your palate with Italian quality, taste and style (and no artificial sweeteners!). Rouses Italian Sparkling Mixers are designed to make every cocktail and mocktail taste delicious.
Available in these varieties: Ginger Beer, Tonic Water, Club Soda, Light Tonic Water
EXCLUSIVELY AT
INDULGE IN THE SMOOTH PICK-ME-UP YOU CRAVE. AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL ROUSES
Vidalia sweet onions are exclusive to a specific region in South Georgia, which encompasses 20 counties and is centered around Vidalia, Georgia and Toombs County. Most onions owe their pungency to sulfur in the soil, but the soil in the Vidalia region contains very little sulfur. As a result, the onions grown in this area are exceptionally mild and won’t make your eyes water when you cut them. The weather in the region is also ideal for growing Vidalia sweet onions, with average winter temperatures in the mid-50s, spring temperatures in the mid-70s, and an average monthly rainfall of 3.5 inches during the growing season.
By Ali Rouse Royster, 3rd Generation
Long after he opened our family’s grocery store, my grandfather’s heart was still in produce, which is where he got his start. I can practically still hear his voice lift up in excitement, about to tell a story of going out into the fields or down to the packing sheds with his dad — my greatgrandfather, J.P. Rouse, who I unfortunately never met. More than just telling stories about the past, Pa continued to work with produce farmers, both locally and worldwide, for as long as I can remember, and right up until the end. He loved visiting fields near and far, to purchase directly from farmers where he could, and to learn about innovations in farming — and with the modernity of global shipping, to see what was amazing and available to bring in for his neighbors, our customers at Rouses. When Pa started to slow down a little from actively managing most aspects of the business he founded, leaving the hustle and bustle to his sons, one of the first things I remember him doing was planting a few rows of crops on the batture, a little section of land that fronts the bayou across the street from his house, adding to his already large collection of backyard crops. I remember crossing the road to go see him when he was working in the garden with a few of my cousins, tending his cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant and, at one point, watermelons. I know a lot of his fondness for produce fields is a testament to his early life with his dad, and a lot of my fondness for local produce certainly comes from him, which links me back to a greatgrandfather I wasn’t lucky enough to cross paths with, but whose roots still certainly ground our family.
Photo by Channing Candies
That’s exactly what you’ ll get today when you buy Savoie’s. Trusted by real cajuns who grew up learning recipes from their parents and grandparents. nothing says flavor like savoie's.
& still family since 1955
IT ALL STARTED WITH A PRODUCE TRUCK.
J.P. Rouse founded the City Produce Co. in 1923, bringing fruits and vegetables from local, independent farms to the rest of Louisiana and eventually to stores around the country.
Scan to experience our City Produce story.
“Around 1899, my greatgrandpa came over from Italy,” says Donald Rouse.
“He came in through New York with a sponsor, and he had to get work. He had to be settled in before he could send for his wife — my great-grandmother — and my grandpa.” The immigrant moved to Westwego, adjacent to New Orleans, where there was a thriving Italian community. There, he found a job on a little farm, and worked tirelessly until he could afford to set up a sharecropper deal with the landowners. “That is how he started in the farming business.”
Donald’s great-grandmother, and two children, came over in 1900.
Donald’s grandfather, Joseph “J.P.” Rouse, was barely a year old then.
In the early 1920s, J.P. moved to the Thibodaux, Louisiana area, because he felt the ground there was fertile and would be good for farming. Eventually, J.P. was able to buy 10 acres of land. At first, he planted watermelons, tomatoes and shallots — good, reliable local crops. To sell his produce, he opened a little stand on Jackson Street; he would load up whatever he had grown, then bring it all to the stand to sell. Over time, he managed to buy additional land and grow yet more.
“When he did that,” says Donald, “he started growing more shallots and bringing them to New Orleans to sell.” He founded his company in 1923, calling it City Produce.
As the company grew, every day he and his small group of employees would load his big green truck with the best produce he had grown, and drive it all over to sell. Because his crops were so prolific, he also brought shallots to what, at the time, were called “the sheds” in Thibodaux, where wholesalers would buy the crops, load them up on railcars, and ship them to other markets. (The sheds were a lot like the stands on docks today where you can buy fresh shrimp.) J.P. quickly figured out that he did not need to sell his products to other people to do the shipping — he could do that himself.
Eventually, when a shed opened and J.P. could set up shop there, he started selling his shallots to other markets. When demand exceeded his supply, he started buying shallots from other local farmers as well. For the Rouse family, supporting local farmers has always been a priority, and this is one of its earliest instances.
Unlike other shippers, J.P. or a member of his team would actually go into the fields where farmers grew shallots, and would talk to the farmers to get a feel for the crops, their likely yields and their quality. J.P. would buy entire fields rather than what was later harvested. Though he never knew exactly how much he was going to get from a harvest, he guaranteed farmers a certain amount of money for the crops — which was a win for everybody — and many local farmers soon worked out similar deals with him.
J.P. and his men began shipping produce out of Thibodaux to markets such as Dallas,
Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh — even as far away as the Caribbean. And they extended the reach of where they bought products, acquiring such crops as potatoes and sweet potatoes from Fairhope, Alabama and rural Mississippi, and red potatoes from areas in South Louisiana.
When Anthony Rouse, who later founded Rouses Markets, reached age 14, he climbed into the truck driven by his father, J.P., and joined the family business, going dutifully to the sheds for the unloading, sales, loading and shipping of the produce. Much later, when Donald was a boy, he would join his father, Anthony, at those very sheds.
“I remember going to the shed as a kid and watching them load shallots,” Donald recalls. In those days, workers would load shallots into barrels, fill the barrels with ice, stack barrels in a railcar, and add more ice yet, to keep the produce fresh even as it traveled to places far from Louisiana.
The produce business had high times and low. City Produce weathered the Great Depression, though Anthony learned well the lessons of that hard time in American history. When J.P. died, Anthony Rouse and his cousin, Ciro, took over City Produce. But there was trouble on the horizon. The produce export business slowed as more products began shipping from Mexico. Concurrently, the oil industry in Louisiana was reaching its peak, and Anthony realized that farmhands would have other work options and would soon be in short supply, which would make
For the Rouse family, supporting local farmers has always been a priority.
City Produce is the first company that the Rouse family started after arriving in America from Sardinia.
the company harder yet to keep going. So Ciro started looking far and wide for what could be the family’s next move in the food business, and soon settled on the idea of opening a grocery store in Houma.
“They named it Ciro’s because, when you hung the letters on the outside of the store, Ciro’s had fewer letters than Rouse’s,” says Donald. “That’s a true story.”
The two put all their money (and a lot of the bank’s money) into this tiny, 7,000-squarefoot store, hiring two workers and doing everything else themselves: from stocking merchandise to working the register. Donald joined the company when he was old enough, bagging groceries and rounding up carts out front. When Ciro retired in 1975, Donald bought out Ciro’s interest in the company, and he and his father renamed the store “Rouse’s.” You might have noticed that Rouses stores today lack the apostrophe. The reason is because in those early days, the lightbulb in the punctuation mark kept burning out, and rather than continuing to spend the money fighting a losing battle, Anthony — ever a practical man — decided to take the apostrophe down from the store sign and solve the problem permanently.
“We still have relationships with local farmers,” says Donald Rouse. That is one of the best things about being a local company, he says, and generations after the founding of City Produce, Rouses Markets is more committed than ever to local farmers, and to bringing store guests the very best this region has to offer. “I feel like our responsibility as a company is to give back to the local community. Our responsibility is also to our team members and to our customers.”
To serve store guests today Rouses has also established a new partnership with Capitol City Produce in Baton Rouge.
For over 75 years, Capitol City Produce, a family-owned company, has provided the best produce of the highest quality for some of the most celebrated members of the culinary world — everyone from The Windsor Court hotel and Ruth’s Chris Steak House to the Ritz-Carlton. Now, shoppers at Rouses can enjoy that same quality, practically year-round.
“It’s a good partnership we have with them,” says Donny Rouse, the CEO of Rouses Markets. “We are two family-owned companies with strong roots in the produce business, and with our partnership, we’ll be able to expand our offerings and build more relationships with farmers throughout the Gulf Coast, so we can get that product to our customers.”
In addition, the Rouses team travels the country and goes around the world in search of the very best produce grown anywhere, anytime of year. Rouses Markets was one of the first grocery stores in America to offer organic produce and one of the first to bring in such once-exotic items as kiwis from New Zealand, guavas from Honduras and hatch chiles from New Mexico. Today, every Rouses location routinely offers hundreds of different fruits and vegetables for shoppers to enjoy.
When it comes to produce, Rouses prides itself on giving busy customers plenty of options. “One thing we continue to do in produce — that a majority of other retailers have gotten away from — is cut and package fresh fruit for our store guests,” says Donny. “We have that in every store — watermelon chunks, pineapple chunks, cantaloupe slices — we still do that every day. The national chains have stopped doing that just to cut their labor force, but that’s not important to me. We will continue offering cut fruit because it’s just what we do and how we will always do business. We offer our customers the best quality and convenience of fruits and vegetables there is.”
Innovation, quality and devotion to the community have always been essential parts of the Rouses ethos. They are intertwined with the entrepreneurial spirit that motivated J.P. Rouse and made City Produce a success. That dedication has carried across the generations, to every Rouses location. It is something the Rouse family has been doing for 100 years now. And it all started with a produce truck.
Innovation, quality and devotion to the community have always been essential parts of the Rouses ethos.... That dedication has carried across the generations, to every Rouses location. It is something the Rouse family has been doing for 100 years now. And it all started with a produce truck.
When someone mentions heading to the “truck farm” to buy produce, what picture springs to mind? Perhaps it’s the booming voice of the late, great Mr. Okra in New Orleans, driving his veggiepainted technicolor truck through the 9th Ward announcing, “I’ve got mirliton! I’ve got tomatoes! I’ve got cucumbers! It ain’t no use in cooking, if you don’t use fresh veg-e-tables!” Perhaps it’s swinging by a roadside, makeshift farm stand housed on a truck’s tailgate outside of Breaux Bridge, grabbing bundles of collards or turnip greens and slipping cash to the guy sleepily manning his sales post under an umbrella.
Between the end of the Civil War and the suburban sprawl of the mid 20th century, though, a very different type of “truck” farm was crucial to the agricultural ecosystem of South Louisiana. Truck farms were an enterprising, fresh-food-forward way of life for growers and families, feeding residents in urban centers like New Orleans using the yet-tobe-developed fertile lands in places like Gretna and Metairie (which even means “farm share” in French) to grow small and mid-sized farm plots of produce intended to be sold hyper-locally to the surrounding community. If heading to Rouses Markets is your idea of buying local in 2023, then checking in with your truck farmer was the 1923 equivalent.
Etymologically, the use of the term “truck” farm doesn’t refer to any four-wheeled, rattling Ford or Chevy, but instead comes
from the French word for bartering, troque
“The ‘truck’ in this sense comes from Middle English, trucken, from Old French troque, both meaning to trade, to barter, and springs from the fact that such commodities were often used as items of exchange — paying the local pastor with an occasional bushel of corn, for instance,” explained Merrell Knighten, an English professor at Louisiana State University , in a 1984 syndicated column. It wasn’t long after the rise of truck farms in Louisiana that the term “truck” even became synonymous with fruits and vegetables, the barteredand-sold items themselves.
The truck farms were also sometimes known as market gardens; the produce raised on truck farms (leafy greens, peas, artichokes, radishes, tomatoes, orchards of figs — the list is endless) was delicate, meaning that even if it could be shipped long distances to the likes of Memphis or Chicago, the risk of spoiling was too great a financial and product-wasting risk. This ensured that, for most of their popularity, truck farms sold almost exclusively at local public markets, becoming indispensable
community resources and a productive use of the rich farming land that hadn’t yet been targeted for any other type of development (like, ahem, suburban neighborhoods).
“The vacant lands in and about New Orleans are the most prolific in the United States, and equal in productiveness the richest soil in the world. The soil is especially well-adapted to the culture of vegetables, and the products are not only large and plentiful, but the flavor of certain kinds is superior to those raised in other and less favorited sections of the country,” The Times-Picayune proclaimed in an 1887 story. “There are thousands of acres of land, relegated to the alligators, snakes and other reptiles, swampy and subject to overflow, which with but little expense, compared to their ultimate value, could be drained and converted into truck farms which would more than doubly repay the cost of reclamation every year.”
The same 1887 Times-Picayune article also made note of how different truck farms around New Orleans had found a range of crops that grow splendidly in their specific locations — even if those garden
If heading to Rouses Markets is your idea of buying local in 2023, then checking in with your truck farmer was the 1923 equivalent.
plots were mere miles apart. “Various localities around the city are devoted to particular kinds of vegetables; thus large, fine onions, garlic, sweet and Irish potatoes come from St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parish...Grand Island and vicinity [is] noted for furnishing the finest and earliest cauliflowers...Metairie and the rear of the city for the earliest potatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers, eggplants. The best cantaloupes come from the farms along Metairie Ridge.”
Truck farms soon became viewed as economic engines for cities, serving as catalysts for growth and sustainability by keeping precious grocery consumer dollars local. “Fully self-sustaining, close enough to the city to be called ‘suburban’ and far enough out to enjoy country life... truck farms are city builders. Why should not Shreveport export green produce instead of import it?” The Shreveport Times lamented in 1924 as part of an impassioned plea for truck farms entitled — yes, all caps — TRUCK FARMS NEEDED HERE. “As much as those who started truck farms would benefit, the city would be as much
bettered. Prices of vegetables would lessen; the town would thrive because the merchants would have more customers to purchase their wares; the half million dollars that now goes to other cities would remain at home.”
Truck farms were also a way for lowerincome Louisianans to not only corner the market on a potentially well-paid agriculture career, but find a place to call home: Truck farms were quite often residential spaces for their growers, meaning that buying into the pastoral life of a market gardener was a 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year lifestyle commitment. Many truck farms across the region were operated by African Americans, while Italian American truck farms operated all over Harahan, Kenner and St. Bernard Parish, growing herbs, beans, peas, zucchini and beyond. (A teenage J.P. Rouse got a job at a truck farm in Marrero raising potatoes and cabbages!)
Immigrant families — including Chinese laborers who farmed in a collective model near Gretna, both for their local community and, eventually, nationwide shipping
— were particularly drawn to the truck farm ideal, and local newspapers were consistently rich with advertisements promising a better existence, and plenty of opportunity, through classifieds about the draw of the market garden lifestyle:
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT BE INDEPENDENT 1926 RAISE WHAT YOU NEED ON A TRUCK FARM
(The Shreveport Times , 1926)
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT WAVELAND, Miss.— 35 acres, with improvements, $750; good for truck farm; adjoining Brown’s vineyard.
(The Times-Picayune, 1899)
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT IN THE “MAGIC CITY” OF BOGALUSA. For sale, 26 truck farms. If you are interested call to-day or to-morrow.
(The Times-Democrat, 1907)
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT PARADIS TRUCK FARM. $500 buys an improved truck farm; any vegetable you grow will make every payment except the first; all farms front the railroad and a good wagon road. (The Times-Democrat, 1906)
With the rise of refrigerated railroad cars and technological advancements that
helped move prone-to-rotting fruits and vegetables longer distances, truck farm produce was also eventually carted out of Louisiana to wholesalers nationwide — though the emphasis on local-first sales never waivered when compared to the gambit of out-of-state shipping.
“At present, satsuma oranges are moving to markets in large express shipping from Oakdale. Saturday one dozen crates left for northern markets carrying fine samples of the Oakdale fruit. This fruit was shipped from the John J. Seily truck farm of Oakdale and according to report are of the best on the market,” detailed a 1929 Clarion-News article about the bounty being hauled out of the small Allen Parish community. “The truck farm...contains around 105 bearing trees...[with] an average of 500 orange or more. They are now good and ripe and will be harvested within the next two weeks. Already many crates have been sold to local markets.”
By the 1950s and 1960s, though, the small-is-good, market-selling ethos of truck farms found itself beginning to look like a relic of the recent past as highway
systems with refrigerated trucks spread tentacles across America, making moving produce long-distance simpler, and airlines took flight, eager to take shipments of produce in their bellies. In the span of a decade, large-scale, big business farming — complete with mechanization and lab-engineered chemical sprays, like herbicides — squashed the homespun truck farms in a David vs. Goliath battle that was over before it even began.
“The thoroughbred truck farmer is, like the whooping crane, a vanishing breed...[and] truck farming as the sole source of income is becoming a scarce situation,” Kathy Tilley wrote for The Town Talk in 1971. “The shrinking truck farm industry is directly related to labor problems. The small farmer can’t afford mechanical harvesters and at the same time manual labor is not available in abundance. Competition is another problem, not rivalry between local farmers but crops imported from other areas.”
Even still, the crop-based culture built by truck farmers — where local residents celebrate produce that’s special to their area — hasn’t faded with time. Take
Tangipahoa Parish, for example: Amite City was described as a strawberry-centered growing spot for truck farmers as far back as 1892.
“Amite City is surrounded by a country which is an ideal one for perfect truck farming. It is considered to be the best in this whole section of the country. Strawberries…are produced in abundance and form the main shipments from this place to the markets North, West and South,” The Weekly Times-Democrat of New Orleans proclaimed in 1892. “The industry, truck farming, peculiar to this part of the country, is in its highest element of success in and around this town.”
The strawberries grown in and around Amite City today might not be on truck farms, but the spirit of the market gardeners’ ingenuity lives on through sheer quantity — Tangipahoa Parish presently grows 79% of Louisiana’s strawberry crop. The ways in which seeds planted by truck farmers have sprouted into deeply rooted cultural phenomena will continue to grow, even as market gardens themselves are tilled over into the fertile soil of memory.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Spring onions are known as shallots in many parts of Louisiana. Young onions that are harvested before they have fully matured, spring onions have a bulbous white base that looks a bit like a mini onion. The have a mild, slightly sweet onion flavor.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Green onions, also known as scallions, are also sometimes referred to as shallots, especially in New Orleans. These onions are harvested when they are very young and have not yet formed a bulb. The white bottom part is usually firmer than the green top and has a more intense flavor, while the green part is milder tasting with a more delicate texture. The green part can also be used raw as a garnish — and is often used as a topping for a whole host of Cajun and Creole dishes, like crawfish etouffée and jambalaya.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT A leek and a green onion are related, but they are not the same thing. Leeks have a mellower, less tangy flavor compared to most varieties of onions, with a subtle hint of garlic.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Shallots are another form of onion altogether. They have a more complex and nuanced flavor than green onions do, with a subtle sweetness and a hint of garlic-like flavor. Their flesh is whitish-purple. Shallots do form a bulb, which is made up of multiple cloves similar to garlic. Shallots are grown in many parts of the world, but they are particularly associated with France, where they are an important ingredient in classic French cuisine — and are always found in the culinary arsenal of gourmet chefs in any country. Dried shallots are typically sold as a spice, while fresh shallots are sold as whole bulbs, with the brown papery skin intact. You can find them in the produce department alongside onions and garlic.
Joseph P. Rouse immigrated to America from Sardinia, Italy’s second-largest island, in 1900. He arrived at Ellis Island, New York, accompanied by his mother, Marie, and an older brother. His father had come over more than a decade before. Joseph was barely a year old.
The Rouses were part of the New Immigration of Italians. That period between the 1880s through the 1920s saw the arrival in America of more than four million mostly southern Italian immigrants who’d left their homeland in search of work and a better life. Many arrived wide-eyed and anxious, having left family back in their Italian homeland. Nearly three-quarters of those immigrants who arrived during the New Immigration were farmers and laborers.
J.P. Rouse’s first job in America was at a family truck farm in Marrero raising garden vegetables.
There were truck farms all over the West Bank of New Orleans, in Harahan, Little Farms (now part of River Ridge) and down in St. Bernard Parish. Farmers who worked at places like the Picone truck farm and Lauricella family truck farm raised artichokes, tomatoes and fava beans; the literal fruits of their labors were then trucked to New Orleans’ public markets.
Italian immigrants also settled in the part of Kenner that runs from Williams Boulevard and Kenner Avenue to the St. Charles Parish line. Produce grown in Kenner’s “Green Gold” fields was ferried to the French Market via the O-K Rail Line, which ran between New Orleans and Kenner from 1915 to 1930. Kenner’s large Italian population still celebrates St. Rosalie, the patron saint of Palermo, with a procession every September.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT In 1923, having saved enough money working at the family truck farm in Marrero, J.P. Rouse and his wife, the former Leola Pitre, moved to Thibodaux, where he opened City Produce Company He bought fruits and vegetables from big farms in Chackbay and Choctaw, then trucked them to the public markets including the French Market.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Many budding Italian entrepreneurs had stalls at the French Market, where business was almost all wholesale. Chisesi Brothers, now famous for their hams, started in the French Market selling live chickens from a basket. Other immigrants peddled food from horse-drawn carriages and later trucks. Each salesman traveled the same route every day, so people knew when and where to look for him.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The Dole Fruit Company traces its roots back to the early French Quarter fruit carts. The Vaccaro brothers, who peddled fruit, joined another immigrant family, the D’Antonis of Baton Rouge, to form Standard Fruit & Steamship Company. They dominated the banana business and helped make New Orleans the world’s largest fruit importer in the early 19th century. Dole acquired 55% interest in the Standard Fruit & Steamship Company in 1964. It later acquired 100%.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Giuseppe Uddo, the founder of Progresso Foods, also started as a peddler, selling olives, cheeses and tomato paste in New Orleans, first from a horse-drawn carriage — his horse was named Sal — and later from a truck. Eventually Uddo purchased a small warehouse on Decatur Street. After World War I, Uddo bought a tomato paste factory owned by the Vaccaro brothers in Riverdale, California. Business expanded from there.
Like farming, produce vending was a common livelihood for Italian immigrants who settled around the Gulf Coast.
...when J.P. Rouse and his wife, Leola (née Pitre), moved to Thibodaux, where he opened City Produce Company. Rouse bought fruits and vegetables from big farms in Chackbay and Choctaw, then trucked them to the public markets.
...when J.P. Rouse and his wife, Leola (née Pitre), moved to Thibodaux, where he opened City Produce Company. Rouse bought fruits and vegetables from big farms in Chackbay and Chocktaw, then trucked them to the public markets.
...when L.H. Hayward, founder of produce and dry goods company Camellia, began selling red beans at the Old French Market in New Orleans.
…when Elmer’s Chocolate, having discovered a delectable candy made and sold at a Canal Street department store, bought the recipe and began producing it themselves. Thus was born Heavenly Hash.
…when L.H. Hayward, founder of produce and dry goods company Camellia , began selling red beans at the Old French Market in New Orleans.
...when Frank Mosher and Mose Lischkoff started a company called Magic City Food Products in the basement of a Hill’s Grocery Store in North Birmingham, Alabama. Magic City Products would officially become Golden Flake, Inc., in the 1940s.
…when Frank Mosher and Mose Lischkoff started a company called Magic City Food Products in the basement of a Hill’s Grocery Store in North Birmingham, Alabama. Magic City Products would officially become Golden Flake, Inc., in the 1940s.
...when Elmer’s Chocolate, having discovered a delectable candy made and sold at a Canal Street department store, bought the recipe and began producing it themselves. Thus was born Heavenly Hash.
…when entrepreneur Alvin Baumer borrowed some cash from his future father-in-law to purchase Mill’s Fruit Products, a small syrup company in New Orleans whose product was used to make the shaved-ice summer treat called sno-balls. Part of the sale included a recipe for a hot sauce made with cayenne peppers called Crystal Pure Louisiana Hot Sauce. Today you can find Crystal Hot Sauce everywhere.
It has been tremendous to see the growth of Rouses over the years.
...when entrepreneur Alvin Baumer borrowed some cash from his future father-in-law to purchase Mill’s Fruit Products, a small syrup company in New Orleans whose product was used to make the shaved-ice summer treat called sno-balls. Part of the sale included a recipe for a hot sauce made with cayenne peppers called Crystal Pure Louisiana Hot Sauce. Today, you can find Crystal Hot Sauce everywhere.
To see a strong Louisiana business continue to grow, as we both have, from generation to generation, is a testament to the values that our families have instilled in us. The way Donny has expanded the Rouses footprint across the Gulf Coast has been amazing. It is pushing me to strive to leave my own legacy at our company.
…when the Curtiss Candy Company of Chicago, Illinois, came out with a sensational chocolate-covered, crispy peanut butter candy bar and held a public contest to choose its name. The winning entry: “ Butterfinger.”
...when the Curtiss Candy Company of Chicago, Illinois, came out with a sensational chocolate-covered, crispy peanut butter candy bar and held a public contest to choose its name. The winning entry: “Butterfinger.”
…when the first filled candy bar became the coveted delight of children and discriminating adults everywhere. They called it Milky Way
...when the first filled candy bar became the coveted delight of children and discriminating adults everywhere. They called it Milky Way.
— Alvin “Pepper” Baumer III, President, Baumer Foods, Crystal Hot Sauce
...when — as if all that weren’t enough — severy brown bag school lunch in America soon packed a new chocolate drink called Yoo-hoo and sandwiches filled with newfangled Welch’s Grape Jelly.
… when — as if all that weren’t enough — every brown bag school lunch in America soon packed a new chocolate drink called Yoo-hoo and sandwiches filled with newfangled Welch’s Grape jelly.
It can sometimes feel impossible to separate iconic buildings and public spaces from the role they play in the identity of a city and the greater public consciousness. When a typical person looks at the Eiffel Tower, they don’t think about how it once housed both a post office on the first floor and a newspaper, Le Figaro, for six months in 1889.
The Sydney Opera House, with its one-enveloping-the-other shell structure, is among the most photographed buildings in the world, but few people remember that the forecourt of the space became a venue for sheep shearing and ski-jumping into the harbor when Australia celebrated its bicentennial in 1988. Easily recognizable spaces live many diverse lives, most of which are forgotten in the shadow of their enduring grandeur.
The same depths of storied — often forgotten — history is true of New Orleans’ French Market, a public space that has bustled and thrived for centuries while reflecting the wants, needs and desires of an ever-changing city. It can be impossible for casual visitors snacking on beignets at Café Du Monde to visualize all the intricate parts that have whirred as part of the French Market’s role as the city’s culinary and agricultural lodestar, not to mention how its position as a living, breathing organism has shifted over time. Long before there were grocery stores, the French Market was the hub for ingredients and wares, and wandering through the market’s (messy, assuredly boisterous) buildings was a liveaction stroll through the bounty of Louisiana’s rich meat, seafood, vegetables and fruits.
Today, it’s easy to see the French Market as the iconic sum of its parts, but by puzzling out the cogs that have made the French Market hum throughout history, we can get a more holistic and enduring picture of what this public space means not just for today, but for yesterday and tomorrow.
The history of trading, bartering and selling wares next to the Mississippi River outdates both the French Market and the City of New Orleans itself. As far back as 1675, nearly 100 years before the first “official” iteration of the French Market opened, indigenous groups like the Choctaw, Chitimacha, Ishak, Tunica and Natchez nations traded provisions on the riverbanks, not only among themselves but with exploratory parties from other countries. The native name for the trading post was Bulbancha — meaning “land of many tongues” — in reflection of how many different cultures gathered there to swap necessities.
The French Market’s architectural design has been a revolving door of construction styles and bottom-up rebuilds over its lifetime, but one feature has always remained: It is a series of buildings — largely open-air — and not a single structure.
“The pile of buildings that composes the French Market consists of several different edifices — the Meat Market, the Bazaar Market, the Fruit Market and the Vegetable and Fish Market. All of these are under different roofs. The medley throng of life that goes on [there] is as picturesque, as unique…as if overhead were the gay tents of Constantinople stalls,” writes journalist Catherine Cole in her 1916 work, The Story of the Old French Market. “What a mingling of people it is!”
While the oldest extant French Market building dates back to 1813 and housed the anchor industry of the operation, the Meat Market, the market’s first “official” build-out dates back even earlier. According to the French Market Corporation’s historical archives, the Spanish erected the city’s first open-air food market building around the year 1782 (through some records indicate an earlier date of 1770 for the first market) on the corner of Chartres and Dumaine streets, which was relocated to a site on what is now Decatur Street between St. Ann and Dumaine in 1790. “A series of hurricanes destroyed several early structures at this location,” the record notes, “but the building erected in 1813 as the Meat Market has survived to the present.”
Until the restoration and cleanup efforts funded (in part) by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s, the French Market was characterized largely by its grit and chaos, both structurally (the first iteration of the market was built out of cypress wood) and on an active, day-to-day basis. The Meat Market, seafood stalls, fruit stands, flower sellers, vegetable hall and — eventually — coffee purveyors all clamored loudly with their sales pitches, spilling over into one another’s action as groceries were made, and the richness of South Louisiana put on full display.
Before the French Market was given its current moniker, it was known throughout town as Le Halle des Boucheries — or the “Meat Market” — due to the fact that it was the
only place in the French Quarter allowed to sell meat because of the decidedly hands-on and (let’s face it) gory nature of butchering.
“Plunging incontinently into the meat market, a great clatter of coffee-cups, a cheery chumping as of chopping meat, various cries and polyglot invitations to buy, an omnipresent hum and hustle, with other sights, scents and sounds of traffic — all these await us,” proclaims an 1875 edition of The New Orleans Bulletin. “The butchers are naturally lords paramount of the scene. Here are butchers rotund, sturdy and civil, the Anglicism of their features Americanized by three generations’ descent; butchers of the old French type, so elderly, clean shaven and obsequious that you would not be surprised at a pig-tail being whisked into your face during their brisk gesticulations; butchers akin to the modern Parisian, with the closest cropped heads; butchers more or less remarkable, but all busy, and all more or less animated.”
Today, the Meat Market building is home to the constantly photographed, ever-recognizable Café Du Monde.
The Fish Market inside the French Market rotated locations several times over the course of its lifespan — and was often bundled together with the Bazaar Market — but never lost its undulating spirit of watery aliveness.
“The glistening slabs of gray marble reflect the overhanging pent roofs, and Spanish mosses are twisted about the slender bars of iron on the stands. In baskets of latanier lie blue and scarlet crabs; in others are dark red crawfish looking like miniature lobsters. On beds of moss, like smaller lobsters still, the delicate river shrimps are fighting for life. They may be still powdered with the grits that tempted them into the fisherman’s net,” writes Cole in 1916. “Croakers hang in silver bunches; flat pompanos, their sleek skins shining, lie side by side with bluefish, Spanish mackerel, and trout for tenderloining. If you buy crabs, by the way, the dealer throws over them a handful of Spanish moss in which they tangle their claws and cannot get away.”
In Charles L. Thompson’s 1950 work, Chronological History of The Old French Market: The most historic spot in America’s
most interesting city from 1770 to 1937, Thompson discusses in great detail the French Market’s ever-shifting seafood hall. “The first fish market was erected in 1840 and was for sea food only. However, it became overcrowded and when the new market was erected…originally intended for a vegetable market, [it] was given over to the fish dealers, to relieve the congestion…. From that period on the little fish market was transformed into a Bazaar; in fact, it became known as the Bazaar Market, and from that time on it was occupied by numerous dealers in dry goods, notions, etc., as well as a number of novelty dealers…it resembled a mid-way plaisance of a fair or Carnival.”
This swapping and sharing of space between divergent products at the French Market wasn’t unique to seafood, though. In the late 1800s, the Fruit Market often found that poultry purveyors would set up shop in its midst — squawking, feathers flying and all — until the rebuild by the WPA largely sanitized and separated the spaces once and for all.
Thanks, in part, to the French Market’s unique position near shipments coming off of the Mississippi River and, more important, an entrepreneurial free woman of color named
Long before there were grocery stores, the French Market was the hub for ingredients and wares, and wandering through the market’s (messy, assuredly boisterous) buildings was a live-action stroll through the bounty of Louisiana’s rich meat, seafood, vegetables and fruits.
Rose Nicaud, the French Market has been synonymous with the development of New Orleans’ coffee culture for over 200 years. After purchasing her freedom, Nicaud sold café au lait from a pushcart around the French Market beginning in the early 1800s, eventually saving up enough money for an uber-popular permanent coffee stand inside the French Market and inspiring countless other African American women along the way.
If the Meat Market was the lionizing head of the French Market, then the stalls of the Vegetable Market (known, at times, as the “hall of vegetables”) were its ever-bustling, whipping tail. This became particularly true by the turn of the 20th century, when Italian immigrants, many of whom operated truck farms, largely ran the show at the Vegetable Market and provided ample, locally grown produce to a public that had become increasingly interested in adding greenery to a collective diet that was, until then, almost exclusively meat- and grain-based.
“On the vegetable stalls…the faded red column that helps to support the roof wears at its capital a gray drapery of cobwebs
looped loosely over the graceful iron brackets that spring toward the roof. All the rich wonders of an almost tropic garden are piled about this column,” Cole observes. “Shallots savory enough to tempt one…hang in bouquets; crisp salads, chicory, lentil, leek, lettuce, are placed in dewy bunches next radishes, beets, carrots, butter-beans, alligator pears (a sort of mallow or squash), Brussels sprouts (idealized cabbage); posies of thyme and bay and sage and parsley; a bunch of pumpkins; and overhead, like big silver bells strung on cords, those everlasting garlics braided on their own beards.”
J.P. Rouse even brought local produce — shallots, cabbage, potatoes — from nearby farms to sell at the Vegetable Market in the 1920s, establishing a precedent for a commitment-to-local through public market sales that set the stage for future generations to build a produce shipping company and, eventually, grocery stores.
If you thought that vendors selling items outside of the agricultural framework — hand-poured candles, artisanal soaps, local artists collectives like today’s Dutch Alley Artist’s Co-op — were only modern-day
additions to the fabric of the French Market, think again. Almost from the market’s beginning, indigenous craftspeople offered their wares alongside the agricultural mainstays. “In the early American days there were several tribes to be found here including Indians from Bayou Lacombe as well as...from several tribes the remnants of which still existed in Mississippi, some of them came right to the French Market with their herbs and roots as well as basketry and beadwork and disposed of their merchandise,” writes Thompson, who also notes that vaudeville shows and traveling dentists were commonly seen throughout the mid- to late-1800s. “They were to be found in the Bazaar Market and also in the Vegetable Market and are remembered by many of the older merchants and inhabitants, as they were still to be seen up until 1910. The also sold…handmade pottery that did very well.”
Beginning in the mid-1800s, a middle section of the French Market known as the Bazaar Market brought dry goods, fortune tellers, trinkets, flowers and knickknacks of all types from a diversity of sellers, contributing to the multicultural, ever-cacophonous sounds of space.
New Orleans’ first public market, the French Market, was once the centerpiece of 34 public food markets, which formed one of the most extensive municipal market systems in the United States.
Café Du Monde is the oldest tenant of the French Market dating back to 1862.
Like Café Du Monde, most coffee and chicory brands originated in New Orleans, including Luzianne, CDM, French Market and Union, all of which are owned by Reily Foods. William B. Reily started a wholesale grocery business in Monroe, Louisiana, then moved to New Orleans in 1902, where he founded the Luzianne brand.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT There are 24 sugar parishes in Louisiana. The warm climate is perfect for growing sugarcane
Most years, Louisiana produces more than 15 million tons of sugarcane, which yields about 16 million tons of raw sugar. At Rouses Markets, we have our own brand of sugar. It is 100% Louisiana sugar, grown by Louisiana farmers.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Matt Ranatza is a third-generation farmer who calls Belle Chasse, Louisiana home. Back in 1937, his grandfather sowed the seeds for what would become a farming legacy by growing the first-ever Creole tomatoes. Since then, Matt has been carrying the torch and expanding his farm to include cauliflower, cabbage, peppers, squash, eggplants, satsumas and navel oranges.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The Steen family is one of the country’s last remaining producers of unrefined cane syrup. Their syrup, which has a rich caramel flavor, has been a local favorite for over 100 years. They also make a thick, syrupy molasses.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT
The Garber family, consisting of Michael, Matt and Wayne, continue a farming legacy that dates back to 1881 in Iota, Louisiana. Their farm, spanning 5,000 acres, is situated on a sandy ridge between Bayou Nezpique and Bayou Des Cannes in the heart of Cajun Country in South Louisiana. The region benefits from the gentle, moist breezes blowing in from the Gulf of Mexico and the nutrient-rich sandy loam soil, which provides an ideal natural environment for cultivating their signature Louisiana yams, known for their sweetness and golden hue.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Louisiana’s citrus groves span nearly 600 acres of fertile land, yielding a bounty of oranges, grapefruits and lemons every year. The crown jewel of the harvest, however, is the seedless and delectably sweet satsuma.
Louisiana’s citrus harvest takes place between October and February and includes a variety of fruits such as Washington navel oranges, satsumas, mandarins, lemons, grapefruits and kumquats. The most abundant time for Louisiana citrus is during the period from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day. These fruits are primarily grown in the southern region of the state, with Plaquemines Parish being the top producer.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT At the H.J. Bergeron Pecan Shelling Plant, located near False River in New Roads, Louisiana over five million pounds of pecans are shelled every year. The Bergeron family not only manages their own orchards but also procures pecans from over 90 growers across Louisiana.
Courtesy Steen’s Cane Syrup Courtesy Bergeron Pecans ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Liuzza Produce Farm, a fifth-generation, family-owned business, is the largest strawberry and vegetable farm in Louisiana.ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The warm climate and fertile soil of the Gulf Coast are ideal not only for growing tomatoes, strawberries and sweet potatoes, but also for cultivating cabbage.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Ben Becnel, Sr. and Ben Becnel, Jr. are a father-and-son duo who have been cultivating their family-owned farm for over 40 years, representing the fifth and sixth generations to do so. According to the Becnels, the key to their success lies in their fertile delta soil, which is located in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, along the Mississippi River. With 250 acres of fields and trees, their land is situated roughly 15 miles downriver from the Belle Chasse Tunnel, around Jesuit Bend, resulting in their satsumas, oranges, grapefruits and Meyer lemons having a distinctively rich and sweet flavor. The Becnels also supply Rouses with Creole tomatoes during the tomato season. Before hitting the shelves, their sweet potatoes must undergo a weeklong curing process to deepen their flavors and set their skins.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Sessions Farm, a family-owned farm situated in Grand Bay, Alabama, has been passed down through second and third generations. Initially, the farm grew corn, soybeans and watermelons. Now, the farm has diversified, harvesting a wide range of crops all year round.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT
strawberry industry in the Florida
of Louisiana traces its roots back to the 1800s, when enterprising immigrants from Hungary and Italy began cultivating the fertile land, now recognized as Louisiana’s Berry Belt. Ponchatoula, Louisiana is known as the Strawberry Capital of the World, a title it holds with pride.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The fertile fields of St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, located in the southeastern part of Louisiana, are where Creole tomatoes thrive. Thanks to the unique river soils and warm climate, these parishes produce tomatoes that are incredibly sweet and bursting with an intense, “tomatoey” flavor. While Creole tomatoes are the star of the show and even have their own festival, a range of tomato varieties are cultivated along the Gulf Coast. Tomatoes typically reach their peak during the hottest days of summer.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Florida produces more watermelon than any other Southern state. With its long and hot summers, the Sunshine State offers the perfect climate for growing. While watermelon is available year-round, the sweetest and most succulent fruit can be found between the months of May and September. During this time, production peaks in top watermelon-growing states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, California, Georgia, Florida and Texas. So, if you’re craving the juiciest and most flavorful watermelons, be sure to keep an eye out during these peak months.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Trey Harris of Harris Farms (located in Springfield, Louisiana, approximately seven miles west of Ponchatoula) dedicates acres of land to growing strawberries exclusively for Rouses Markets.
This year, New Orleans celebrates the 100th anniversary of Camellia Brand Red Beans. This means that for over 5,200 Mondays, Camellia has been on our stoves during the day and on our plates at dinnertime. Just as important, however: They’ve been at the center of our community and our culture too.
“We feel more like a citizen of New Orleans than just a company here,” says Vince Hayward, the CEO of L.H. Hayward & Co., which owns Camellia. “Red beans are one of the great traditions of the city, and we are so fortunate to be part of what makes New Orleans what it is.”
Though a hundred years is a long time for any company, the story of Camellia goes back even further than that. Like so many Louisiana culinary success stories, the tale of Camellia Brand beans began at the French Market. In 1850, a ship carrying an immigrant from the West Indies named Sawyer Hayward docked in the port of New Orleans. Industrious and looking to make a living for his family, he got into the into the business of dry goods and beans, which he sold to French Market vendors. Even then, the French Market was old — it had been the city’s produce hub for more than half a century — and Sawyer’s crops were a success.
In part, it is because Sawyer was from the Caribbean, where beans are a dietary staple. He knew what the people wanted, and how best to cook and eat them. In the 1800s, just as today, New Orleans was a food city, attracting immigrants and empires from all over the world, and the tradition of red beans and rice on Mondays was going strong.
Sawyer’s son, Lucius, and grandson, Lucius Jr., eventually joined the nowburgeoning business of beans, and in 1923, the latter founded the L.H. Hayward & Co., naming their brand Camellia after the favorite flower of Lucius Jr.’s wife, Elizabeth. That same year, the company moved into an old cotton warehouse on Poydras and South Front streets in New Orleans — present-day Convention Center Boulevard.
An early indicator that the company would be around for a hundred years was its willingness to adapt. At the time of its founding, you bought beans in brown paper bags that were filled with a scoop from big burlap sacks. With supermarkets growing in popularity in the 1940s, Gordon Hayward, son of Lucius Jr., had a stroke of genius: Why not prepackage beans in store-ready, individual, one- and two-pound bags? Gordon’s revolutionary cellophane packages, each adorned with a camellia flower, soon became synonymous with premium-quality beans.
That high level of quality is exactly why the city embraced Camellia Brand, and why it is still going as strong as ever. “The fact that we’ve been doing this for 100 years means we’ve learned a lot about what it takes to source the beans, we know which characteristics our consumers have come to expect, and learned a lot about what it takes to clean them up properly,” says Vince Hayward, who is the greatgreat-great-grandson of the company’s founder, and the fourth generation of his family to lead the company.
Beans are an agricultural item, he explains, describing how they vary from region to region and year to year. They are like fine wine, in that soil, sun, weather and water affect flavors in subtle ways.
“Many of our efforts are centered around making sure that we have consistency in the package, and that when our consumers cook our product, that it comes out like they expect it to,” says Vince. “And we are really, really selective.”
Being around for so long means that the company’s relationships with their growers have deep roots. “We have generational relationships with our growers,” Vince says.
“We’ve been working with our growers for many, many years — in some instances, my
grandfather did business with their grandfathers! So there is a real continuity there, where they’ve come to know what we expect, and they grow what we need.”
And they need a lot. Every day, L.H. Hayward Co. packs a stunning 100,000 pounds of Camellia peas, lentils and beans for grocery stores everywhere, including your local Rouses Market. In fact, Camellia Brand beans are the best-selling red beans in the United States, by far — which makes Camellia not only a business success, but a sort of international ambassador for the city that made it all possible.
“If you mention the dish of red beans and rice anywhere in the world, the city of New Orleans instantly comes up in that conversation,” says Vince. “The dish is tied to the city, and vice versa. It’s one of the emblems of New Orleans, which is one of the great food cities in the world.” Though there are many theories for why this dish specifically so conjures the spirit of New Orleans, given that the city is celebrated for so many culinary creations, Vince thinks that it is because red beans and rice is the rare, almost universally affordable dish that — when cooked in that New Orleans style — is utterly filling and lands perfectly on the palate.
“A dish of red beans and rice is a tradition that crosses economic and geographic boundaries,” he says. “It’s something that we all enjoy, no matter who we are. So for that reason, among so many others, I feel very fortunate and blessed to be able to operate this company.”
To celebrate its 100th anniversary, Vince says that the company is engaging artists, the city, schools — everyone. The goal is less to throw a party for themselves than it is to throw a yearlong party for the community that has for so long embraced Camellia Brand. First, they’re making a documentary. “We commissioned a filmmaker to create a film on the relationship that the city has with the dish of red beans and rice, and the culinary implications of that,” Vince explains. “In essence, how the dish has impacted families for generations.”
Another way they are celebrating is by literally giving back to the community, making significant contributions to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater
New Orleans and Acadiana, the largest food bank in Louisiana, feeding about 32 million meals to over 200,000 people a year across 23 parishes.
Lastly, he says, the company and Camellia Brand are taking their show on the road, touring public schools in the state. “We’re talking about beans and where they come from and how they make it from a farmer’s field to their table, and of course, the dish itself,” he explains. On these stops, they will also be exhibiting the documentary they filmed, which helps contextualize red beans and rice in our culture, and how the local cuisine is as much about spiritual and cultural nourishment as it is physical. So far, Vince says, the tour of schools has been a great experience. And it might also be contributing to the next generations of entrepreneurs in the state. “It has been wonderful having conversations with the schoolkids. And interestingly enough, many of their questions have been about business: what it’s like to run a company and how can they get in business.”
Everyone knows Camellia Brand beans. And for 60 years of the hundred-year journey they have been on, Rouses has been there. Rouses Markets has proudly worked with L.H. Hayward & Co. to carry their products even when we were a single, small, family-run store in Houma, and Anthony Rouse himself — the founder
of the company — was the one who was on his hands and knees unloading packs of Camellia Red Beans and stocking the shelves. His son, Donald, would later do the same thing, and his grandson, Donny, would again do the same. Three generations of the Rouse family are proudly part of the hundred-year, four-generation Hayward legacy.
Ultimately, though, it is the guest pushing a buggy down the dry goods aisle who has given Camellia Brand and L.H. Hayward & Co. a century of serving Louisiana, and who, it is certain, will give it another.
“We wouldn’t have been around for a hundred years without the support of our consumers,” says Vince. “We feel a deep sense of gratitude for that relationship, without a doubt. And with that comes the responsibility of being a good citizen in your community. You help people when they need it, you show up when it’s called for. And you add to the collective success of everybody around you. That’s been our attitude toward how we show up as a company and an organization.”
Every day, L.H. Hayward Co. packs a stunning 100,000 pounds of Camellia peas, lentils and beans for grocery stores everywhere, including your local Rouses Market.
Rouses Markets and Sanderson Farms had similar origins, with the two local, family-owned companies starting out initially in the produce business. In 1947, Bob Sanderson decided to move from produce into the feed and farming supply business, opening a Purina feed-and-seed franchise in Laurel, Mississippi, about two hours north of Gulfport. Not long after, his dad and uncle added poultry to the burgeoning family business, starting a hatchery to sell baby chicks at the supply store.
After a few years, the Sanderson family decided to go all in on chickens. In 1955, Sanderson Brothers Farms opened their first dedicated feed mill and hatchery. Six years later, they acquired a poultry processing business and rechristened the company “Sanderson Farms.” They opened a major poultry complex in Laurel at the very same site that once hosted the feed and seed store. In the years to follow, they would branch out to multiple plants across the Gulf South. No one then could have imagined the astounding success that Sanderson Farms would one day become. It was inevitable that they would end up in the Rouses meat department.
“The Rouses customers in South Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama — they know Sanderson Farms,” says Steve Barkurn, the company’s vice president of retail sales. “Rouses has been in business for over 60 years, and we’ve been in business for over 70. We grew up together.”
Today, Sanderson Farms processes about 16 million chickens a week in five of the newest facilities in the United States, each built from the ground up and including everything from hatcheries to feed mills. They even make their own feed, which is composed of corn and soybean meal. The chickens love it!
Hilary Burroughs, vice president of marketing and communications for Sanderson Farms, says, “We have veterinarians who check on the birds; we have service
techs who service the farms several times a week. Houses for chickens must be built a certain way — we handle it all from start to finish.”
“It’s all natural, and the quality is the best in the industry because we handle things from the beginning to the end,” says Barkurn. “We lay the eggs, hatch the eggs, raise the chicks.” Sanderson Farms employees go through a rigorous training program to make sure everything remains top of the line.
In addition, Barkurn explains, Sanderson Farms “runs to order” rather than “running to inventory” — and in the poultry industry, that’s a big deal. “When we get an order, that is when we run it, which guarantees freshness and convenience.”
Barkurn says it takes complex logistics to get chicken on store shelves. “It’s not that easy, with a lot of players involved in it. Once we hatch the chicks and get them to the farm, you’ve got to bring feed there at the same time.” The chicks are monitored continuously. When they get to the right age, they move to a USDA-approved plant, and from there, they eventually end up packaged and shipped in a cold truck bound for Rouses.
Operating humanely is paramount at Sanderson Farms as well. “We take the best care of that bird,” he says. And over the years, because of the reputation his company has built, he reiterates that customers know what they’re getting. “Every one of them, when they walk in a Rouses, they see our label and know what they’re getting. They’re getting fresh, they’re getting quality, they’re getting a good price.”
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Find Sanderson Farms always fresh, never frozen, great-tasting, 100% natural chicken right next to our Katie’s Best air-chilled organic poultry, and our own Rouses Market brand of chicken. If our name is on the label you can trust it’s good.
For both Rouses and Sanderson Farms, “local” and “family” are more than sales pitches. Local companies mean local jobs, not only for those directly employed, but also for area suppliers, and the local startups that only local companies tend to take risks on. Last year, the company employed 18,000 people.
The Sanderson Farms commitment to the local community extends beyond the payroll, however. “If we have a processing plant in Hammond, Louisiana, some of our growers may be in McComb, Mississippi or on the outskirts, and we support those local areas as well.”
Both companies are also known for giving back to the community, as the Gulf Coast sees firsthand every hurricane season. Rouses always endeavor to be the last stores to close and the first to open for communities after hurricanes and storms, and has always given away truckloads of water and ice and food at locations right after the storm. Sanderson Farms is out there as well, feeding their communities. Says Burroughs: “We don’t seek glory for doing the right thing. We just do the right thing, the responsible thing, especially in times of great need.” Especially
in the aftermath of storms, she says, “we’re one of the first ones in with ice and trucks and boxes of chicken.”
She adds, “It’s just the culture of our company. The Gulf South is where we originated, and where we live and work. And we are so excited to be at Rouses.”
For both Rouses and Sanderson Farms, “local” and “family” are more than sales pitches. Local companies mean local jobs, not only for those directly employed, but also for area suppliers, and the local startups that only local companies tend to take risks on.
Bring the cool, refreshing taste of blueberries home with convenient and versatile frozen blueberries.
Perfect for frozen treats, drinks, baked goods, smoothies and sauces.
Everyone on the Gulf Coast knows Crystal Hot Sauce, that culinary staple found on home dinner tables, at restaurants, and in kitchens the world over. What you might not know is that this year, Baumer Foods, which makes Crystal, is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The company produces 4.5 million gallons of their hot sauce every year, bottles of which can be found in 30 countries around the planet. (Next time you are in Dubai and want the taste of New Orleans, you will be in luck.) Which means Crystal isn’t just a local tradition — it is a global phenomenon.
The story of Baumer Foods is, in many ways, the story of America. The company was founded in New Orleans in 1923 by Alvin Baumer, who came to the city after the Civil War. Though the finer details of the story have been lost in the mists of time, according to legend, Alvin, using a loan from his father-in-law, bought a sno-ball syrup manufacturing facility on Tchoupitoulas Street near downtown. While going through the files of the company they’d just bought, Alvin ran across a hot sauce recipe (which is the ultimate ironic find at a sno-ball company). He gave it a go and, like everyone who has had their famous hot sauce for the century to follow, he was blown away. Thus was born Crystal Hot Sauce.
If you live in the city, you might have noticed a giant “Crystal Preserves” sign over a renovated apartment complex on Tulane Avenue in Mid-City. That is indeed the very same Crystal of Baumer Foods fame. That building was at one time their main production facility. During World War II, to help the war effort, Crystal got into the preserves business, making jams and such for U.S. soldiers overseas. They moved from Tchoupitoulas Street to the Mid-City site, where they had more room to bottle, jar and can their products. After the war’s conclusion, they continued doing so, as they had exploded in popularity.
The company was a fixture there, operating continuously until 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which devastated Mid-City, flooding and ruining everything in the 75-year-old plant. It took several months to get back to work after the storm. About two years later, Baumer Foods moved a little down the river to Reserve, Louisiana. Flooding was no longer a threat, but it would not be the last trial the company faced.
“Remaining in operation for a century is not something that is easily done!” says Pepper Baumer, the president of Baumer Foods. “That’s a testament to my family’s legacy and our devotion to quality and taste.”
Of late, the company has had to contend with the fallout from the pandemic, which first brought the global supply chain to a halt, and now leaves it in terrible disarray. And yet Pepper, the third-generation leader of the company, hasn’t stopped finding ways to keep Louisiana well-stocked with
Crystal. And because Baumer Foods is a family business, he always has his father as a sounding board.
“My father is great for that. He’ll say, ‘Yeah, we’ve done that before and it didn’t work! But maybe you can try this, or try that,’” says Pepper. “So it’s good to have that voice of reason.”
Today, Crystal is the most popular hot sauce in Louisiana and one of the top 10 hot sauces in America. Not that Crystal is Baumer Foods’ only product, however. “Crystal Hot Sauce is our flagship, obviously, but we make soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, steak sauce, teriyaki sauce and wing sauce,” says Pepper. In addition, they own a liquid smoke company called Figaro. On top of that, they have an industrial business line in which they make their product for other food companies to use as an ingredient.
Crystal’s bottle is famously bigger than Tabasco, but on industrial scales, companies need bigger containers yet. “We sell entire tanker trucks full of hot sauce,” he says.
To make all that hot sauce, it takes an astounding 15 million pounds of crushed peppers. Their lines are rolling out threeand-a-half million cases of product per year. And though supply chain hiccups have dampened the company’s big plans for their hundredth anniversary, for Pepper, just continuing to produce their Louisiana sensation is a triumph — and anyway, there is no rush to throw any parties. They can always roll out the festivities well into next year, which in a sense is the perfect New Orleans way of doing things.
“Our tagline is ‘How New Orleans Does Flavor,’” says Pepper. “Our product really encapsulates that New Orleans way of
life. We are so proud to be part of the city’s culture.”
Their plans for celebrating a century are big and small. Every bottle will be emblazoned with a commemorative label with a “100 Years” badge. In addition, there will be a marketing blitz — everything from advertising in Louis Armstrong International Airport to a social media splash. They are also planning parties and festivals to celebrate the entire Baumer Foods lineup, as well as Louisiana food in general.
To prepare for the next hundred years of Crystal Hot Sauce and Baumer Foods, Pepper says the first order of business is restoring the supply chain. Beyond that, it is a matter of keeping up with current technologies. “We’ve got some things in the works,” he teases.
But when you get down to it, he says the secret to a successful second century is the same as the secret to a successful first. “You can’t be around for a hundred years if your products are bad. We’re not resting on our laurels. We work constantly to ensure that we are putting out the highest quality product — something that people enjoy — and we will continue to do that.”
As for the anniversary itself, it does not escape Pepper’s notice that a hundred years is a really big deal, rarely achieved even by multibillion-dollar, international business empires.
“Obviously, there’s a sense of pride,” he says. “I mean, to be a third-generation company in the state of Louisiana is such a great honor, and I’ll do everything I can to keep it going.” How serious is he? “My name is Pepper !” he says with a laugh. “I’m a walking billboard. It is ingrained in my DNA, and everything that I do is a reflection of the brand, positively or negatively.”
It can be stressful, he says, but he doesn’t shy away from that responsibility. “I take pride in it, just as my father and my grandfather did. We are proud of our company. We are a successful brand. People love our product. And we just try to deliver to the best of our ability.” One key to the success of Crystal Hot Sauce — something, he says, everyone at Baumer Foods takes great pride in — is that they are “the chef’s best kept secret.”
“We are not going to take away from the artistic creativity of a chef,” he says. “We are just going to enhance his or her flavor. So, some of our competitors, when you put their hot sauce in a dish, all you taste is their product. Crystal Hot Sauce, on the other hand, enhances the flavor component of a dish, but never becomes the star of it. We are
the supporting cast, so to speak.”
Whatever they are doing, it’s working. Crystal can seem less like a sauce than a culinary way of life for some people. Pepper told me that he’s heard of people using it on their ice cream and salads, and even getting tattoos of the bottle. He once met someone with a 12-ounce bottle inked on his bicep. Running from the bottle was an IV line leading into a vein. “There are some diehards out there,” he says.
One hundred years may have shaped the New Orleans palate, and by extension, the world’s, but Baumer Foods is just getting started.
“Three generations is not something that is easily done,” Pepper says. “It is a testament to my family’s legacy, and how we are trying to move the company forward. I have two daughters — a two-and-a-half-year-old, and a seven-month-old — and my dream is, hopefully, that one day they take over and move Baumer Foods into the next generation. It is not an easy feat, but I believe we will be doing this in another hundred years from now.”
“Our product really encapsulates that New Orleans way of life. We are so proud to be part of the city’s culture.”
By David W. Brown
When we think of liquor, we oftentimes think of something made far away, with ingredients grown in places we’ve never heard of by people we’ve never met. But Louisiana is an agricultural state, whose crops feed mouths around the world. From those crops, local distillers have found ways to make some of the best spirits on Earth. And in our hearts and in our glasses, who has better spirit than someone on the Gulf Coast?
Consider Contraband Gulf Coast Corn Whiskey, which, as its makers describe it, is “small batch, handmade firewater.” It is made by Bayou Terrebonne Distillers in Houma, Louisiana, and can be found at many Rouses Markets locations. The company’s success is a distinctly American success. And it has to be, because Bayou Terrebonne Distillers traces its lineage to Prohibition.
It was during that time that the first Mardi Gras queen of Houma — the owners’ greatgrandmother, Lily Lirette — sought a way to support her family. Thus was born her pastime of making contraband liquor. Oh, the cops knew what she was up to, but nobody stopped her because the hooch she was brewing was too darn good!
In 2017, Noah Lirette, Rodney Lirette and Nick Hebert bought the historic Blum & Bergeron Dried Shrimp packaging plant located in Downtown Houma; they renovated it and dragged out the very same copper pot used by Grandma Lily. In her honor, they created Contraband Whiskey. They also make a barrel-aged bourbon called Good Earth.
The company’s ethos is that “honest joy is distilled from hard work and earned victories,” and when they say they are a local company, they mean that in every sense of the word. For Bayou Terrebonne Distillers, it’s not just local crops. It’s also local people.
“The community means everything to us,” says Noah Lirette, who describes himself as an “owner, operator and janitor” of the distillery. “Bayou Terrebonne means ‘good earth’ in French. The good earth, Terrebonne Parish, our home — its greatest asset is its people. We do everything locally to give back to the community.”
One way it manifests for them is through a nonprofit they formed called the Hache Grant Association, which raises money for local revitalization issues. And a century after Grandma Lily made moonshine on the bayou, her family is still at it. It’s legal now, but they’re still keeping things disreputable — after all, it’s a family tradition!
Whiskey isn’t the only local player on the liquor market, however.
The best rum, as anyone can tell you, is made on small islands or in small towns.
Towns don’t get much smaller than Lacassine, Louisiana, population 57, and home most notably to Louisiana Spirits, makers of the world-famous Bayou Rum.
The secret of Bayou Rum’s craft distillery is its location on the Gulf Coast, in a humid microclimate that fosters a smoother, less “woody” rum than that which you can find in the Caribbean. And Bayou Rum’s master blender & product manager Reineil Vincente, a second-generation rum maker originally from Cuba, sings the praises of the quality sugarcane growing right in his Louisiana backyard.
The secret to Bayou Rum is the “solara method” of rum making, in which barrels are filled with Bayou Rum, placed sideways and stacked into a pyramid, with the oldest rum barrels on the base and the youngest at the apex. “When a batch is created, the bottom barrel is tapped for part of its content to be bottled. Then that bottom barrel is topped off from the next oldest barrel above it, which is filled from the next oldest, and so on,” they explain.
Because Bayou Rum is made by local people with local ingredients, its flavor profile pairs perfectly with such local signature dishes as crawfish, shrimp, jambalaya and andouille.
Today, Bayou Rum is one of the most popular rum brands in the United States, and its products — everything from dark rum and white rum to spiced and premium rums — are sold in liquor stores and bars throughout the country. The brand has won numerous awards for its high quality and unique flavor, and it is considered to be one of the best rums in the world.
In addition to producing high-quality spirits, Bayou Rum is committed to giving back to the community. The company supports local farmers and businesses, and it has created an army of jobs in the Lacassine area. The distillery is passionate about their
community and their sugarcane, and they believe that their rum can help to promote the culture and traditions of Louisiana.
“At Bayou Rum, being local means far more than an address,” says Angelo Torre, the company’s manufacturing director. “We intentionally build relationships within our community. A perfect example is the relationship with our molasses supplier, M.A. Patout & Sons.” Located in Jeanerette, Louisiana and founded in 1825, M.A. Patout & Sons is the oldest family-owned manufacturer of cane sugar and molasses in the United States.
“They have been our partner at Bayou Rum since day one. For every bottle of rum that leaves our bottling line, we sustain jobs for sugarcane farmers, cane mill employees, and the truck drivers hauling the cane and molasses.” The Bayou Rum team, says Torre, proudly resides in a three-parish area of Southwest Louisiana and represents the diversity and unique culture of the region.
“With every pour of Bayou Rum, you are experiencing the flavor of Louisiana,” he says.
Another local rum making major waves is distilled and bottled near Baton Rouge, and made at a local sugarcane farm that’s been in the owner’s family for generations. Three Roll Estate — named for the process by which the sugarcane is crushed, running it through three steel rolls — puts out six types of rum, as well as a vodka.
Each alcohol is made a little differently. The company’s premium label is made from sugarcane a mere 90 minutes after its pressing. You can’t get fresher than that. Their Brazilian-style rum is fermented with Brazilian-sourced yeast. The Three Roll Estate white rum, as they describe it, is “unaged, untouched, unadulterated.” Then there is their dark rum, which is aged in French and American oak barrels. My favorite, though, is their Red Stick rum, which is made with cinnamon bark.
In 2020, a readers’ choice poll from USA Today ranked Three Roll Estate as one of the top 10 craft rum distilleries in the country. Meanwhile, in Branch, Louisiana, in the heart of Acadiana and not far from Lafayette, is another local institution.
The story of J.T. Meleck Distillers began in the late 1870s, when John Meleck and
his family immigrated to the United States from Germany, settling in South Louisiana. There was a freshwater marsh on the land where they set down roots, and by 1896, Meleck had built a farm and began growing rice there. Fast forward to 2023, and they still do.
“My family has been here for four generations,” Mike Fruge, the owner of J.T. Meleck, said in an interview last year. “I’m always one of those people looking for what’s next.”
He and the J.T. Meleck team were sitting around one day wondering what they could do with their rice crop. The price of rice had plummeted to the point where it was not going to be profitable to plant that year, and like many farmers, they were thinking of ways to add value to it.
“Somebody said, ‘I wonder if you can make vodka with it?’” Fruge recalled. By an amazing coincidence, there happened to be a distillers conference going on right at
the same time, and Fruge immediately registered and attended.
“I was as green as you could be,” he said. “I didn’t know a thing about it.”
As it turned out, he learned that no one in the United States made a spirit out of rice — but that was about to change. After extensive experimentation with a local distiller, Fruge and his team got to work learning how they might turn their crop into a premium vodka. They soon found their footing, and thus was born J.T. Meleck Distillers Louisiana Handcrafted Rice Vodka, released in 2018, and Louisiana Handcrafted Rice Whiskey, released late last year.
“It would make our Uncle John proud,” he said, “born right here on our farm, just off Highway 35 in Branch, Louisiana. We’re proud to take our rice from grain to glass. We work the dirt and grow the seed, just like Uncle John did.”
Today they still grow rice, and for that local crop, as well as sugarcane and molasses, you have to raise a glass to local Louisiana farmers; to the spirit of our distillers, and to the spirits they give us.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Abita’s Strawberry Lager is brewed with juicy, ripe Louisiana strawberries harvested at the peak of the season to give the crisp brew its strawberry flavor and aroma. The lager’s crisp drinkability and 4.2% ABV strength makes it the perfect beer for crawfish boils. Every year’s batch, although brewed with the same recipe, is a little different because of the natural variations in the annual strawberry crop. Abita Strawberry was brewed specifically for Louisiana’s Ponchatoula Strawberry Fest back in 2004 (Rouses was a sponsor of the festival again this year) and distribution began in 2006. This local favorite can be enjoyed all year long.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT We work with local breweries and a top-notch cheesemaker from Vermont to craft small-batch beer cheese exclusively for our stores. We have collaborated with Abita Brewing Company in Abita Springs, Gnarly Barley Brewing in Hammond, and Parish Brewing Co. in Broussard. Currently, our stores have an aged cheddar made with Gnarly Barley’s Jucifer, a New England IPA style beer, and we have more delicious creations in the pipeline. Keep an eye out for the release of Urban South’s Holy Roller Aged Cheddar and Paradise Park American Lager Aged Cheddar, both of which will be available later this summer.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Classic Cajun dishes generally call for medium grain white rice. It can go in just about anything, though it is particularly suited to something like étouffée, with its oftentimes rich and thick sauce. If you are preparing a gumbo, on the other hand, you might consider a stickier grain of rice, since gumbo typically has a thinner broth. Short grain rice releases more starch as it’s cooked, and that starch is what makes it sticky. When preparing a jambalaya, cooks often go for a long grain rice. Now, I am sure half of the entrants in the Gonzales Jambalaya Festival’s cooking contest disagree with this, but hold your fire, friends: When you are making a pot of jambalaya the size of a bathtub, do what works for you. Because when it comes to jambalaya, there is no wrong rice! Only a wrong color. (Red. Red is the wrong color.) Beyond Cajun cooking, different types of rice yield different dishes. Jasmine rice is frequently used in Middle Eastern dishes because that rice exudes a floral scent that elevates shawarmas, grilled meats and kibbeh. You might also consider jasmine rice when making a pilaf or any dish where the rice stands alone. Wild rice is great with wild game — duck, rabbit or venison, for instance — because it has a stronger flavor profile and can stand up to proteins that possess a stronger, gamier flavor. (That’s why, when you see a duck dish at a restaurant, it’s frequently served with a wild rice pilaf.)
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Crowley, Louisiana, in the heart of the American rice belt, is home to Supreme Rice Mill, the largest rice mill in the state and one of the oldest, going back to 1936. Supreme Rice Mill’s state-of-the-art milling equipment processes over one billion pounds of rice annually, including long and medium grains to brown and American-grown jasmine rice. Supreme Rice’s passion is closely entwined with the cultivation of rice and the American farming families who grow it.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The Falcon Rice Mill, also in Crowley, has remained one of the oldest family-run rice mills in the country. It opened in the 1950s and began selling rice under the names Ed’s, Randy’s and Falcon rice. Later, other brands were developed to include their popular Cajun Country brand of long, medium, brown, jasmine and popcorn rice.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Second-generation rice farmer Michael Frugé of Eunice founded Parish Rice in 2018. Grown and harvested in South Louisiana, Parish Rice has 53% more protein and a low glycemic index value, because the higher protein changes the way the carbs in rice affect your body. The variety, officially called Frontière, was developed at the H. Rouse Caffey Rice Research Station in Rayne by LSU AgCenter scientists Herry Utomo and Ida Wenefrida.
Steve Bernard was 14 by the time he was actually paid to work with the bees in his family’s apiary business in the Atchafalaya Basin. But by then, he was well-acquainted with the hives.
“I’ve been getting stung regularly since I was 10 years old,” he said, chuckling as he remembered how he quit playing baseball in the summer when he turned 14 so he could work for his family’s business. “I made $5 a day, for an eight-hour day. I guess it paid off; now I own the company.”
Bernard and his wife, Jeanise, run Bernard’s Apiaries in Henderson, Louisiana, honey producers and bottlers of the popular Bernard’s Acadiana Honey sold in all Rouses stores. Thomas Bernard, who also was a postmaster and railroad agent, sold just about everything, including bees, which he wholesaled to beekeepers around the country, shipping them by train (which stopped right near the general store).
Bernard took over the company from his father in 1988, but its roots go much further back. His grandfather, Thomas Bernard, ran a general store and fish dock in Atchafalaya, Louisiana near Butte La Rose, serving all the needs of the small but bustling community of fishermen, pipeline workers and families. “The earliest records (for the store) are from 1918,” Steve Bernard said.
“They ran about 2,500 to 3,000 (hives) at that time,” Steve Bernard said. They used boats to access colonies deep in the basin. “There was a big need for beeswax in the 1940s because of World War II,” he said. (Beeswax was used for waterproofing. The military coated “airplanes, shells, drills, bits, cables and pulleys, adhesive tape, varnishes, canvases and awnings” with it, according to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.)
The general store and fish dock are long gone, but Bernard’s Apiaries is still busy with its bees. Over the years, the business changed to primarily a honey farming and
bottling operation, rather than wholesale bees. Bernard keeps about 2,500 hives today and procures honey from other local keepers, which he bottles for distribution.
The sweet stuff isn’t quite liquid gold, but it is big business. Louisiana ranks in the top 10 honey-producing states in the nation, bringing in 2.15 million pounds of honey in 2021, worth about $5.37 million, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Louisiana has more than 45,000 bee colonies throughout the state, with family-owned businesses — like Bernard’s — responsible for much of the production. (While Louisiana is a big producer, the state’s haul is dwarfed by the nation’s leading honey producer, North Dakota, which racked up around 28 million pounds of honey in 2021. Nationally, honey production was valued at $321 million that year.)
Other Gulf Coast states are also in this sweet business, with Alabama producing 273,000 pounds of honey in 2020, worth about $1.5 million, while Mississippi brought in 1.83 million pounds, worth $3.54 million.
Though he still enjoys keeping bees, Bernard’s focus is mainly on bottling. “It’s two different businesses, production and bottling,” he said.
Not far from Bernard’s is Carmichael’s Honey in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. It bottles about 4 million pounds of honey per year according to Nathan Carmichael, who founded the business with his wife, Marcela, in 2013.
Like Bernard’s, Carmichael’s Honey has deep Louisiana roots. Nathan’s family has been beekeeping for three generations. “By the time I was five years old, my dad was teaching me a trade that would forever change my life,” Nathan Carmichael said on the company’s website. “When I was
eight years old, I bought my first beehive from my dad. I remember bottling the honey with our little hand filler and selling it to neighbors, church members and family friends. I kept my own hives on and off throughout childhood, and even into my college years.”
Today, Carmichael doesn’t have hives, but instead procures honey from producers around Louisiana, Texas and elsewhere. He offers state-specific products for Louisiana and Texas, with bottles filled with honey collected only in those geographic areas, including for Rouses Markets’ private label Louisiana honey. He also sells certified organic honey nationwide.
When he started out, Carmichael was selling in bulk to wholesale companies, which were putting the product into cereal bars. “I knew we had great honey,” he said, “and I thought it would be delightful to see consumers get it in a bottle and put it on whatever they want.”
The company, whose labels specify that the honey is “100 percent pure, raw and unfiltered,” has grown exponentially, going from hand-filling and capping bottles to a state-of-the-art facility that just added another 3,000-square-foot processing plant scheduled to start work soon. Just one of the tanks in that new facility can hold more than 50,000 pounds of honey.
Bernard’s Apiaries also initially sold its honey in bulk, not in bottles. “My grandfather always wanted to get into bottling but never did,” Bernard said. “We did bulk sales even after I bought the business. We used to ship a lot of barrels to Ohio.”
Around 1990, Bernard started experimenting with bottling. “I remember I’d stay after work and bottle honey by hand. Once I sold five cases, I thought, ‘Hey, it’s taking off,” he said, laughing, estimating that he now bottles more than 250,000 pounds of honey a year. “It’s really grown, and we’ve been really blessed.”
If you love Louisiana honey, you can most likely thank the Chinese tallow tree (Triadica sebifera) for your sweet treat. Though the plant is an invasive species — and there have been efforts in recent years to reduce the trees’ population — much of the honey
in Louisiana comes from the nectar from this tree, which produces flowers as early as February and lasting through May.
Tallow “can be found in all 64 parishes in Louisiana and also in 55 counties of Texas,” according to the Louisiana Farm Bureau. Although it’s a major source of Louisiana wildflower honey, tallow isn’t the only one. Other major nectar plants in the state include willow, clover, American buckwheat vine, aster and goldenrod, according to the LSU AgCenter.
Some wildflowers “are not abundant enough in any one location to be good sources for any volume of nectar but can help colonies make it through times of need,” according to “Louisiana Honey Plants,” a 32-page book by entomologist Dale Pollet published by the LSU AgCenter.
Bernard’s favorite honey comes from willow nectar. “You can tell willow honey by the fragrance and flavor,” he said. “It’s lighter in color.” Willow trees bloom in the spring in this area.
Bernard also loves a honey made from a plant in the mint family that grows deep in the Atchafalaya. “It makes an excellent honey, but you can’t depend on it,” he said.
Tallow is summer honey. “It’s a little darker in color with a very mellow flavor,” he said. “That’s our volume honey. In the fall of the year, goldenrod and aster are the predominate ones. They’re darker in color.”
Bernard’s hives are mostly along the basin. “We also go out in St. Landry, Iberville, the edge of Lafayette Parish and St. Martin Parish. He’s supplied honey to Rouses Markets for 25 years.
Marcela Carmichael, a native of Brazil, loves to bake with the honey she and her husband bring home to their two daughters, Nathan Carmichael said. But he has a more direct way to enjoy the fruits of his labor. “I like to take a half-scoop of peanut butter, hit it with some clover honey,” he said, laughing. “Then I chase it with some milk.” Now, that’s a sweet treat.
When planning for the afterlife, ancient Egyptians wanted to cover all their bases — even the need to satisfy a sweet tooth. So, they tucked pots of honey into the tombs of great pharaohs.
When planning for the afterlife, ancient Egyptians wanted to cover all their bases — even the need to satisfy a sweet tooth. So, they tucked pots of honey into the tombs of great pharaohs.
In 1922, when British Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb, he unearthed more than 100 baskets filled with the remnants of food, including a ceramic jar that still had honey residue inside, according to National Geographic . As the story goes, some (fearless? crazy?) archaeologists even tasted it, and it was perfectly edible.
In their quest for immortality, Egyptians turned to a remarkable product that truly has a nearly eternal shelf life: honey. The secret lies in its high sugar content, low water content and acidic pH.
Naturally antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral, honey is truly one of the world’s most magical substances, used for centuries to brew beer, make wine, sweeten foods, heal wounds, embalm the dead, fight wrinkles and even help with upset stomachs.
“The medicinal importance of honey has been documented in the world’s oldest medical literatures,” according to the National Library of Medicine. “Human use of honey is traced to some 8,000 years ago as depicted by Stone Age paintings. The ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese, Greeks and Romans employed honey for wounds and diseases of the gut.”
So just how do bees make this magical elixir? They’re busy.
Long before the golden liquid lands on store shelves, female worker bees (yep, just the females) fly out of the hive, landing on flowers, where they fill their “crops” or “honey stomachs” (a real term) with sugary nectar. Inside their bellies, the nectar is broken down into simple sugars. Once their bellies are full, they return to the hive where they then regurgitate the nectar. (As tempting as it might be, don’t call it bee vomit. Many apiculturists take issue with that term, pointing out that the bees are not digesting the nectar in the way that mammals digest our food.)
After they spit up their nectar, it gets passed around the hive. “Each bee chews the nectar for around half an hour before passing it onto the next bee, slowly turning it into a syrup,” according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (a British registered wildlife charity). Once the honey is ready, the bees store it inside honeycomb cells.
Making honey is no small task. “Bees will fly upwards of 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) to collect nectar and pollen from flowers,” according to Arizona State University’s “Ask a Biologist.”
Bees don’t do all of this just for humans to sweeten their morning oatmeal. Honey is the primary food for bees and bee larvae.
Pollen, which gets picked up on the bees’ legs and hair when they’re crawling around the flowers, also becomes a good source of protein for bee larvae back at the hive. But before they return home, the bees accomplish an important task in the food chain. All that buzzing around facilitates pollination, allowing the plants to produce fruit and seeds — leading to crops that end up in the produce aisles of your neighborhood Rouses, the perfect symbiotic relationship. (Isn’t Mother Nature fascinating!)
Almond growers, especially, rely on bees for their crop. “In order for the almond flower to be fertilized, it has to be cross-pollinated with pollen from a different variety of tree,” according to Select Harvest USA. “Bees provide the perfect mechanism of transferring this pollen from the two or three varieties of almond trees that the typical farmer has in his orchard. And in order to create a single almond, an almond blossom needs as many as a dozen visits from bees.”
Beekeepers have been harvesting honey from hives for centuries. Each hive, on average, produces about 55 pounds of surplus honey per year, according to the National Honey Board. “Beekeepers harvest it by collecting the honeycomb frames and scraping off the wax cap that bees make to seal off honey in each cell. Once the caps are removed, the frames are placed in an extractor, a centrifuge that spins the frames, forcing honey out of the comb,” the Honey Board says.
Once the honey is extracted from the comb, commercial bottlers strain it to remove any bee bits (legs, wings, wax and other things you don’t want in your cup of tea).
“After straining, it’s time to bottle, label, and bring it to you,” the National Honey Board says. “It doesn’t matter if the container is glass or plastic, or if the honey is purchased at the grocery store or farmers’ market. If the ingredient label says ‘pure honey,’ nothing was added from bee to hive to bottle.”
Honey has very little moisture content, and bacteria needs water to survive. Keeping the hive dry is key, and bees make sure of that. By flapping their wings inside the hive, they help to evaporate the nectar.
“The sticky goo starts out as flower nectar, containing about 60% water,” McGill University reports. “Bees add enzymes that break down the complex carbohydrates to simple sugars and then store the nectar in honeycombs where the water content is reduced to about 18% through evaporation.”
Another key to honey’s longevity? Bees have an enzyme that mixes with the nectar to make hydrogen peroxide, helping to make honey antibacterial, according to the National Library of Medicine.
And the western honeybee Apis mellifera (also called the European honeybee) is the main species responsible for bee pollination worldwide, according to the National Library of Medicine. So, if we want a healthy dinner menu, we need bees.
In recent years, alarm bells have been sounding about the health of bee populations, both in the United States and around the globe, with hives threatened by parasites, pests, poor nutrition, pesticides, climate change and Colony Collapse Disorder.
“Colony Collapse Disorder is the phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen, plenty of food, and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining immature bees and the queen,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency. “Once thought to pose a major long-term threat to bees, reported cases of CCD have declined substantially over the last five years.”
Still, beekeepers and farmers remain concerned — and vigilant — to threats to the bee population. “Beekeepers across the United States lost 45.5% of their managed honey bee colonies from April 2020 to April 2021,” according to Auburn University’s reporting on a nationwide survey conducted by the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership. “These losses mark the second highest loss rate the survey has recorded since it began in 2006.”
Because of the threats to bees, it’s become an all-hands-on-deck effort to figure out the best ways to keep the hives healthy. Beekeepers, agricultural agencies and researchers, Auburn says, “have been working together to understand why and develop best management practices.”
☀ Temperatures inside a hive can reach 91 degrees, which helps remove moisture from the nectar. — Livescience.com
☀ Worker bees are all female and are all offspring of the queen. But there are males in the hive called drones. Drones fly off to reproduce with other young queens who will start a new colony. — Arizona State University’s “Ask a Biologist”
☀ A single bee can bring back a pollen load (to the hive) that weighs about 35 percent of the bee’s body weight. — University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences
☀ It takes approximately two hives’ worth of bees to pollinate every acre of almonds trees, meaning California’s almond crop requires a total of around 80 billion insects in 1.7 million hives altogether. — Select Harvest USA
☀ Honeybees are not native to the New World; they were brought here from Europe in the 1500s and 1600s by colonists. — U.S. Department of Agriculture
☀ Honey can range in color from clear white to dark amber, “depending on its mineral content and floral source. Light colored honey typically has a mild flavor, while dark colored honey is usually stronger.” — Alfa Farmers
☀ Honey contains 64 calories per tablespoon.
☀ Crystalized honey is perfectly fine to consume and can quickly return to its liquid state. Just place the honey jar into a pot of hot water and stir until the crystals dissolve.
Enjoying a spoonful of honey in your yogurt isn’t the only way that humans benefit from bees’ hard work. Honeybees pollinate nearly 80% of all flowering plants, including more than 130 types of fruits and vegetables, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which estimates one out of every three bites of food is created with the help of pollinators.
☀ Louisiana produced 2.15 million pounds of honey in 2021.
☀ The western or European honeybee (Apis mellifera) is the state agricultural insect of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.
BEE’S KNEES
Makes 1 cocktail
The classic cocktail is made with a dry gin like Beefeater, Tanqueray or Bombay Sapphire, but for a less juniper-y drink, try Hendrick’s, which is made with juniper (all gins contain juniper) but also has infusions of cucumber and rose along with 11 other botanicals.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
2 ounces gin
¾ ounce fresh lemon juice
¾ ounce Honey Syrup (recipe follows)
Peel from 1 lemon, for serving
HOW TO PREP:
Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice. Shake until chilled, about 10 to 15 seconds. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Express the oils of a lemon peel over the drink and drop into glass.
HONEY SYRUP
Makes enough for 4 drinks
Great for lemonade and sweet tea, and to use in place of simple syrup in cocktails.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
2 ounces honey
2 ounces hot water
HOW TO PREP:
Combine the honey and hot water in a sealed container. Shake until completely integrated. Let cool before using in beverages and recipes.
HONEY STRAWBERRY TEA COOLER
Makes 4 servings
Recipe courtesy of the National Honey Board
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
1 pint fresh strawberries, stemmed and cleaned
½ cup water
¼ cup honey
1 6-ounce can frozen orange juice concentrate
2 cups brewed green tea, cooled
HOW TO PREP:
In a blender or food processor, combine strawberries, water and honey; process until smooth. Add orange juice concentrate, and process until well blended. Stir into cooled tea over ice.
WEST INDIES SALAD
Makes 4-6 servings
Alabama restaurateur William “Bill” Bayley created the exotic-sounding West Indies salad — layers of onions and crabmeat soaked in oil and vinegar — in 1947. You can order versions of this delicious salad today at restaurants throughout Lower Alabama.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 pound fresh crab claw meat, picked through for shells and cartilage
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup apple cider vinegar
½ cup ice water
HOW TO PREP:
Spread half the chopped onion over the bottom of a large bowl. Cover with separated lumps of crab claw meat and then the remaining onion.
Season with salt and pepper. Add the oil and vinegar.
Strain the ice through a sieve to remove the ice cubes, then add the well-chilled water to the salad. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 12 hours. Toss lightly, then taste and adjust for additional seasoning with salt and pepper, if needed, before serving.
FRIED EGGPLANT STICKS
Makes 4 servings
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
2 medium eggplants
2 teaspoons salt
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
½ cup all-purpose flour, for dredging
Pinch black pepper
Pinch paprika
Pinch cayenne
Vegetable oil for deep-frying
1 cup confectioners’ sugar, for dusting Hot sauce, to taste
HOW TO PREP:
Trim and cut eggplants into 3-inch strips, about ¾ inch wide. In a bowl, toss eggplant with salt and let stand for 1 hour, or until it gives off most of its liquid. Rinse eggplant strips and pat dry with paper towels.
Prepare an egg wash: In a small bowl, beat the egg with the milk and set aside.
Place the flour in a shallow bowl. Mix in black pepper, paprika and cayenne. Lightly dredge the eggplant strips in the flour, shaking off excess. Dip them into the egg wash. Lightly dredge the strips in the
flour a second time, shaking off excess.
In a 4- to 5-quart heavy saucepan, heat 1 inch of oil to 375°F (as measured with a deep-fat thermometer) and fry eggplant strips, stirring gently, until golden brown. Transfer eggplant strips to a plate lined with paper towels, and repeat process with more oil and eggplant until all the eggplant is cooked. Dust tops of fried eggplant strips with confectioner’s sugar and a few drops of hot sauce.
Makes 2 servings
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
2 bone-in pork chops, 1¼ to 1½ inches thick Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 tablespoons butter
2 (4-inch) rosemary sprigs
2 thyme sprigs
2 sage sprigs
4 medium garlic cloves
HOW TO PREP:
Heat oven to 350°F. Pat pork chops dry. Season with salt and pepper.
Heat a large cast-iron skillet over high heat and add 1 tablespoon olive oil. Sear pork chops on one side for 5 minutes, or until golden brown. Gently turn over chops and cook for another minute. Add butter, rosemary, thyme, sage and garlic and cook, basting pork with butter and drippings, until a thermometer inserted in thickest portion of meat near the bone registers 130°F, around 2 to 4 minutes. Transfer pork chops to a plate, and let rest for 5 minutes before serving.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT We take pride in crafting our own fresh sausages in-house, made fresh daily with the finest ingredients. Our fresh green onion pork sausage stands out as a customer favorite. It’s made with fragrant green onion tops and our own blend of Cajun seasoning. It’s a Rouse family recipe that has been passed down for generations. Cook fresh sausage in a hot skillet for a crispy sear, let it sizzle on a grill, bake it in the oven on a sheet pan for
that perfect balance of juicy and crispy, or try the air fryer method to get the casings nice and crisp. Just like hot dogs, you can dress up fresh sausage with condiments and toppings to tantalize your taste buds. Think tangy Dijon mustard, spicy ketchup for a fiery kick, fresh-cut fruit for a burst of sweetness, and zesty green onions paired with mozzarella for a Cajun combination. Our brioche buns add a touch of sweetness.
1. Preheat oven to 425°F.
2. Scrub sweet potatoes, then halve them lengthwise. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper or foil. Toss the sweet potatoes with oil and season with salt to taste. Arrange them cut-side down on the prepared sheet pan, and place on the middle rack of the preheated oven.
3. Bake, without flipping, until thoroughly soft, about 30 to 45 minutes depending on the size of the potatoes.
4. When tender, remove from oven and transfer to serving platter or dish.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Sweet potatoes grown on the Gulf Coast have a distinct difference from those grown in northern states. Thanks to the rich soils in the South, our sweet potatoes are notably softer, resulting in higher natural sugar content, moistness and a vibrant orange flesh color. In fact, this soft variety of sweet potato is commonly referred to as a yam. The Gulf Coast’s sweet potato season kicks off with the planting of “seed potatoes” (small-sized potatoes saved from the previous crop) between April 1 and June 15. These potatoes are planted in rows and covered with plastic to retain heat in the soil until they start sprouting. The harvest season usually begins in early August and lasts until mid-November, with most of the work being done by hand due to the delicate nature of sweet potatoes.
To prepare sweet potatoes for sale, they must undergo a curing process, which involves storing them in hot and humid conditions for a minimum of one week. This step enhances the flavors and solidifies the skin.
Sweet potato fries are really easy to make, even without a fryer, but you can also use Alexia frozen fries and bite-size sweet potato puffs, like we did here. We paired them with Cedar’s Tzatziki Dip, which is made with cucumber, garlic and Greek yogurt; our Rouses in-house Fresh Guacamole; our Soicy Tomato Ketchup; Louisiana Fish Fry Garlic Butter Sauce; our Honey Mustard; and a fresh beet dip we whipped up using canned beets. Get the recipe on our website.
Makes 8 servings
Refrigerator pickles, hard-boiled eggs, Brussels sprouts, asparagus and other soft vegetables can be quick-pickled in about a half-hour. Add a tablespoon of sugar to the brine if you want a sweeter flavor in your tangy vegetables.
2 1-quart mason jars
1 handful fresh dill
1-2 bay leaves
Garlic cloves (optional)
4 cups cut vegetable of choice
1 cup white vinegar
¹⁄₃ cup white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons whole peppercorns
1 tablespoon mustard seed
1 tablespoon celery seed
1½ cups cold water
Stuff both mason jars with dill, bay leaves, garlic cloves (if using) and cut vegetable of choice.
Combine white vinegar, wine vinegar, kosher salt, peppercorns, mustard seed and celery
seed in a small saucepan, and cook over medium-high heat. Don’t forget to add a tablespoon of sugar if you want a sweeter flavor to your brine. Stir occasionally until salt (and sugar, if using) is completely dissolved and mixture comes to a full simmer. Remove from heat and stir in cold water. Pour enough brine into jars to cover the fillings entirely. Allow to cool on the counter before covering with lids. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours before enjoying.
Pickle juice makes a great meat tenderizer and flavor enhancer. Marinate chicken pieces in pickle juice to pump up the meat’s juicy tenderness before breading and frying. And add a tablespoon or two of pickle juice to potato salad, or a teaspoon to your Bloody Mary, for a more complex flavor in each.
Makes 8 servings
WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 8 medium tomatoes
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The Pickleback is a shot-and-chaser combo of whiskey — usually Irish whiskey — and pickle juice. The Pickle Shot is equal parts tequila or vodka and pickle juice, shaken with ice, then strained into a shot glass.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Silver Queen corn reigns supreme in Lower Alabama, boasting small, tender, white kernels and an irresistibly sweet flavor thanks to its high sugar content. Quick blanching is all it takes to achieve perfect firmness and, contrary to popular belief, adding salt to the boiling water won’t toughen it up. Just three minutes or less in salted water is all you need for the perfect ear of Silver Queen corn.
Salt, to taste
1 cup bread crumbs
2 garlic cloves, smashed
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
1 ounce of grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
HOW TO PREP:
Heat oven to 375°F.
With a paring knife, core tomatoes. Use a spoon to scoop out the pulp and seeds. Season the insides of the
hollowed-out tomatoes with salt, then rest them upside down on a sheet pan lined with a wire rack to extract juices, for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, mix together the bread crumbs, garlic, parsley, basil, thyme and cheese. Season with salt and pepper.
Transfer tomatoes to a baking dish. Stuff each tomato with 2 to 3 tablespoons of the breadcrumb mixture. Bake for 30 minutes, or until bread-crumb mixture is nicely browned and tomatoes are soft. Let cool slightly before serving.
G RILLED CORN
CACIO E PEPE
Makes 4 servings Cacio e pepe means “cheese and pepper” in Italian.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
4 ears fresh corn, shucked 4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
¼ cup finely grated Parmesan, plus more for serving
¼ cup finely grated Pecorino Romano, plus more for serving
¼ cup cold water
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more for serving
HOW TO PREP:
Preheat grill to medium-high. Grill corn, turning occasionally,
until cooked through and lightly charred, 10 to 12 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, toss together the butter, Parmesan, Pecorino Romano and black pepper. Add the cold water and, using a fork, mash mixture into a thick paste. Transfer hot corn to a platter and top with the cheese paste. Sprinkle more cheese over the ears, as well as a few additional grinds of pepper just prior to serving.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Sweet corn is a type of corn with a higher sugar content than field corn, and it is harvested while still immature to prevent the sugar from turning into starch. The result is juicy kernels that release a creamy juice, also known as “milk.” Sweet corn comes in white, yellow and bicolored varieties.
1. Preheat grill to mediumhigh. Remove the outer layer and trim the bottom of each onion, making sure to keep the onion intact otherwise. Brush with olive oil and season with salt.
2. Place the onions on the hottest side of the grill and
cook, turning occasionally, until tender and browned, about 5 minutes per side.
3. Transfer to a platter and serve with lime wedges.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Those of us who are old enough (ahem) can remember that, at one time, everyone referred to scallions as shallots. (I have no scientific basis for my theory — only memory and a hypothesis.) Scallions were often used in French recipes in place of shallots, because shallots were hard to find in American grocery stores, and scallions had a milder flavor than regular onion, making them seem more akin to the delicate taste of shallots. Also, the slim onions that we call scallions, or green onions, used to stay in the ground until they were a bit “rounder” in the bulb than they are today, so they did somewhat resemble the smaller shallot. Today, with both shallots and scallions readily available, we have to call a shallot a shallot, and a scallion a scallion. (Well, we could also call a scallion a green onion…) – Liz Williams, founder of the Southern Food & Beverage Museum and of the National Food & Beverage Foundation
Collard greens, with their thick and sizeable leaves, make for a perfect slow-cooked vegetable. However, their intense bitterness often calls for a touch of sugar.
Mustard greens pack a pungent punch with their peppery taste, akin to mustard seed or prepared mustard. While they can also be quite bitter, a balance of sugar and salt can mitigate this taste.
Turnip greens have a sharp and biting flavor. Salt or salt meat can help reduce the perception of bitterness while balancing the overall flavor.
Beet greens are sweet and mild and the leaves cook up faster and get very tender and soft, like spinach.
Photo by Romney Caruso
Makes 6 servings
To add even more flavor, stir in some sliced fresh green onions.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
1 pound fresh green onion pork sausage, casings removed
¼ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 chicken bouillon cube or 1 tablespoon chicken broth
2½ cups whole milk
Salt, to taste
In a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat, cook the sausage, breaking it up into crumbles with a wooden spoon, until it is no longer pink, about 5 minutes.
Sprinkle the flour and pepper over the sausage and cook,
stirring constantly, until the flour has been absorbed by the fat, around 2 to 5 minutes. Add the bouillon cube or chicken broth. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly. Bring to a boil; cook and stir until thickened, about 2 minutes. Serve over biscuits.
B UTTERMILK BISCUITS
Makes about a dozen biscuits
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
3 cups White Lily Self-rising Flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, diced and chilled, plus 4 tablespoons, melted, for brushing
1 cup buttermilk, chilled
HOW TO PREP:
Preheat oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment
paper and set aside.
In a food processor, combine the flour and salt. Add the diced, chilled butter and pulse until the mixture is crumbly (with a few larger pieces of butter scattered throughout) for a total of about 15 one-second pulses. Transfer to a large bowl. Form a well in the center of the flour mixture and add the buttermilk. Using your hands, mix the buttermilk into the flour mixture. Turn the bowl as you go, lifting your hand from the bottom of the mixture to the top, almost in a folding motion. At this point, the dough should still be shaggy, with plenty of flour left in the bottom.
Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Pat the dough into a rectangle, incorporating the remaining flour. Fold the dough over onto
itself and then pat it back into a rectangle. Repeat a few more times to form a dough that just holds together when cut. Use your hands or a rolling pin to press the dough out until it is about ¾- to 1-inch thick. Use a 2-inch round cutter dipped in flour to punch out biscuits, making sure not to twist the cutter as it goes in and out of the dough. Place biscuits 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheet. Press any scraps into a rough rectangle and punch out additional biscuits. Discard any remaining scraps; do not re-roll more than once.
Brush the biscuits with some of the melted butter and bake until risen and golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes. Immediately brush with the remaining butter and serve hot with Fresh Green Onion Sausage Gravy.
1. Preheat grill or grill pan to medium-high.
2. Brush pineapple wedges lightly with olive oil and place on hot grill.
3. Cook for 6 to 8 minutes per side until nicely charred and lightly colored, and you can easily insert a paring knife into the center of a piece.
4. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
1. Preheat oven to 425°F.
2. Remove the woody ends of the asparagus spears; discard woody ends. Brush asparagus with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
3. Spread asparagus on a baking sheet in one layer and roast until lightly browned and just tender, about 10 to 12 minutes.
4. Serve with a squeeze of lemon juice.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The season’s first cherries are the delectable California cherries, and they mark the start of the short cherry season that runs from mid-April through early June. In contrast, the Northwest cherry season lasts from the first week of June all the way through to the end of August. For the ultimate cherry indulgence, be sure to try the deep, mahogany-red Bing cherries, which are firm and juicy, or the large Rainier cherries that have a striking yellow hue with a red blush. For those who prefer a milder sweetness, the heart-shaped Sweetheart cherries are a perfect choice. These firm cherries will leave you wanting more with their irresistibly mild and sweet flavor.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Beneath the tropical sun, bananas, pineapples, mangoes, papayas, guavas, lychee, dragon fruit and jackfruit flourish in regions that boast temperate climates, heavy rainfall and sandy soil. Honduras stands out as a particularly bountiful region, with its abundance of bananas, mangoes, pineapples and plantains. Here, under the tropical skies, these fruits grow in all their juicy splendor.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Michoacán, Mexico is a veritable powerhouse when it comes to avocado production, harvest and exportation to the United States. Not only is Michoacán the central hub of this thriving industry, but it is also the only place on Earth where avocados can bloom throughout the year, without any interruption. Indeed, at the heart of Mexico’s booming avocado industry, Michoacán reigns supreme.
Makes 6 servings
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
3 tablespoons butter, softened
6 slices pound cake (about 1-inch thick)
3 firm-ripe peaches, halved and pitted
Vanilla ice cream
Caramel sauce
HOW TO PREP:
Preheat a grill to medium heat, ensuring the grates are very clean.
Spread butter over both sides of each cake slice. Grill, uncovered, over indirect medium heat for 1-2 minutes on each side or until light golden brown.
Grill peaches, cut sides down, until softened slightly and caramelized, 4 to 5 minutes, turning occasionally.
Serve each slice of pound cake with half a peach; top with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of caramel sauce.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The sun-kissed fields of Titan Farms in Ridge Spring, South Carolina are home to Lori Anne peaches, a prized variety of freestone peaches. Unlike clingstone peaches, which have flesh that clings to the pit, freestone peaches are easy to separate from their pits. What makes Lori Anne peaches particularly special is that they are left on the trees for a much longer period of time to ripen to perfection before being hand-picked and placed into small totes, instead of machine-harvested into large bins. We receive fresh deliveries of these delectable peaches throughout the week, ensuring that the Lori Anne peaches you find in our stores were still on the tree just days ago. This exclusive Rouses Markets summer fruit has become a customer favorite. If you prefer firm peaches, store them in a bin at the bottom of the refrigerator. For softer peaches, leave them at room temperature to ripen further.
Makes 6 servings
Chef’s Tip: The colder the cream and condensed milk, the easier they will be to whip.
15 full-sheet graham crackers
3 cups super ripe mangos, peeled and diced
1 ¾ cups heavy cream, chilled
¾ cup sweetened condensed milk
Place mixer bowl in freezer for at least 20 minutes to chill.
Cut a length of parchment paper long enough to line the bottom of 9-inch square baking pan with enough parchment overhang to cover the sides. Line the baking pan, and press a crease in the parchment at the edges, so it fits snugly into the bottom.
Line the baking pan with a layer of graham crackers.
In the chilled bowl, use a handheld mixer to whip the heavy cream to soft peaks. Continue to whip while slowly adding condensed milk. Whip to firm peaks.
Spread ¹⁄₃ of the whipped cream mixture over the graham crackers, smoothing evenly with a spatula. Layer in ¹⁄₃ of the diced mango. Cover with a layer of graham crackers. Repeat twice by adding another layer of whipped cream mixture followed by mangoes.
Cover the pan with plastic wrap and freeze until the dessert is set and has an ice cream cake texture, at least 4 hours.
To serve, lift the cake out of the pan using the parchment paper overhang. Transfer to a serving dish and cut into slices.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Our Gentilly Cake is a three-layered showstopper, the foundation of which is our Rouses-exclusive almond cake piled high with fresh berries. The layers sandwich and are nestled within a mound of smooth, decadent and delicious frosting. You wouldn’t believe how much.
The third layer of almond cake is positioned on top and the whole thing is draped in that frosting, with the smooth flourishes that only our bakers can do. Then yet another layer of frosting — this time piped from a bag with a leaf tip — goes around the sides to create our signature lacelike embellishment. Lastly, it is artfully garnished with berries, just so. That gives it some serious Instagram power. While we sell a three-layer version of this cake, the recipe for a two-layer version that is easier to make at home is on our website.
Photo by Romney Caruso
*Artificially flavored
J.P. Rouse founded the City Produce Co. in 1923, bringing fruits and vegetables from local, independent farms to the rest of Louisiana and eventually to stores around the country.
