July_Aug_2015_FINAL_62215_bleedless REV

WE ARE WHAT WE EAT

another man’s Evangeline. You say Tabasco, I say Crystal. What’ll it be, Mister — Zatarain’s or Tony Chachere’s? Chee Wees or Zapp’s? Barq’s or Big Shot? We all drink coffee, but if you like yours with chicory (I not only think it’s a little bitter for my tastes), I also probably know where you and your momma come from. (Unless you call her your “mother,” then, well — I might need a minute.) Answer me these following questions, and I know more about you than if you told me your age, gender and job; more about you than your doctor; more, even, than a tarot reader in Jackson Square: How do you like your greens? Chard, turnip or collard? Do you call it a yam or a sweet potato? Snap beans, green beans or string beans? And if you call it a chayote squash instead of a militon (or merliton), I know you’re not from around these parts, Mister, so drop the fork — slowly — and put up your hands. What’s your indulgence – pickle tips or cracklins? And to wash it all down, Tin Roof, La-1, Lazy Magnolia or Abita? And if it’s Abita, is it Amber, Golden, Purple Haze, Wheat, Andygator ... Ok, you get the point. It’s all different, but it’s all the same. It’s what we eat and drink. It is us.

WHAT’S YOUR FLAVOR? Zapp’s sells 16 different flavors of potato chips, including Bar- B-Que, Cajun Dill, Salt & Vinegar and Hotter ’N Hot Jalapeño. For our 50th anniversary, they made a special commemorative run of Spicy Cajun Crawtators just for Rouses. The bag featured J.P.

Rouse’s City Produce Company’s truck and the message: “From the Zappe family to the Rouse family, congratulations on 50 great years.” ​

It is the lulling and contended sense of the familiar that makes a home a home. Oysters breed in cool waters the world over, but if you ask someone from around here what an oyster tastes like, there is only the salty-sweet, chewy brine of a Gulf oyster.

For instance, only in NewOrleans would you speak of the Mandinas and Liuzzas like they’re members of your family tree — even though you’re Jewish. You trust the names Leidenheimer, Kleinpeter and Peychaud like kinfolk, but you’re Irish Catholic.

Crabs come in King, Snow and Dungeness species, among others, but what a crab tastes like to you is what a crab tastes like to me: Blue. Boiled not steamed. You make a roux like I make a roux, and everyone who doesn’t is just making soup.

We’re all closer to each other than we may think, nurtured through generations at the bounteous trough provided by Gulf Coast fields, forests and waters.We are bound less by the existence of our common diet and more by our unwavering ardor for our shared foodstuffs. We are linked by, among other

All those products we recognize from Rouses shelves and freezers — Blue Runner, Blue Plate, Manda, Chisesi, Savoie, Steen’s, Barq’s, Connecuh, Zapp’s and, appropriately, Community — aren’t just names on a label, but part of our lives, literally.

We are what we eat, and that is the world around us, close to us, dear to us.We are the collective experience of our shared meals and bread broken in communal reverie and respect. We are what we eat: Abundant, fruitful, flavorful, messy, spicy, sometimes sweet, sometimes sour and — at our best — very hot. We are unusual, colorful and creative.We are traditional, provincial and communal.We are family.We are what we eat, and we love who we are.

things, the links we love to eat, be they Manda, Savoie, Rouses or Richard’s. These are the comfort names of our comfort foods. They are names — and people, families — you trust, because they have always been there. In the ads, on the labels, right there in your cupboards and pantries. And what on God’s green earth is more sacred in a Southern home — after our requisite alters, devotionals and bathtub Virgin Marys — than our cupboards and pantries?

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