Avery Island (11/04)

Had a leisurely  morning this morning.  Joe went into New Iberia for a hair cut and I just did nothing but read for a while then had to get busy.  Today we are going to go to Avery Island.  This is where they make Tabasco Pepper Sauce.
Once signed in we have to wait about 20 minutes for the next tour to start.  We talked to several couples while waiting.  One of them was telling us all to go to Boulder CO to the Celestial  Seasoning Tea factory, it is suppose to be quite interesting.  So maybe next time we are in Boulder we will take that tour.  It is now time for our tour.  We start by watching a movie on the history of Tabasco Pepper Sauce.  I think the one thing that really amazed me is that Avery Island is on top of the biggest salt mine in the world America.  It is said to be as deep as Mt Everest is high.  I can't imagine that much salt.

The tour is mostly promo for their product but we did get to see some of the process.  They pick the peppers when they are a certain shade of red, the pickers carry a round stick that is painted the correct shade of red to look for, so when in doubt put the stick next to it.  Next they are weighed and then put in the grinder and finally turned into mash that is put in oak barrels for around 3 years.  The barrels they us come from the Jack Daniels factory in Lynchburg TN. Once the mash is cured it goes into vats and vinegar is added and it is stirred for about 21 days then it is ready for bottling.  We did get to see the bottling area not really very interesting.  They bottle 4 days a week and make around 800,000 bottles on each of those days.  There sauce is shipped all over the world.  Once through with this part we went to the country store.  They have all the different sauces made by Tabasco there.  They are all lined up for you to taste with pretzels.  Another surprise is they also make Ice Cream, a raspberry and a jalapeno ice cream.  Both were very good.  We bought a bottle of their buffalo sauce and  their garlic sauce.

Once done with this tour we headed to Jeanerette LA to hopefully tour the Jeanerette Sugar Museum.  Unfortunately they were closed for election day.  So we went back to New Iberia and to the Konriko  Company Store and Rice Mill. This is the oldest continuously working rice mill in America.  Mr Conrad built it in 1912.  They to took the first three letters of Conrad the first two letters of rice and the first two letters for company and changed a couple of the Cs to Ks and came up with Konriko Rice.  We watched a film on how the rice is grown and then went through the part of the factory where the rice is processed and bagged.  This is the original factory the machines are from the 1920's and still working.  The factory has been declared an historical building so no changes can be made to it.  The walls, ceiling and floors are all the original structures.   We were shown samples of all the different processes rice goes through from brown rice to white rice.  Very interesting.

Back home for dinner of Green Onion Sausage and Cabbage.  WOW this is good sausage.  It is made here in this area.  I am bummed that we probably be able to find it in AZ unless we learn to make it ourselves.  Cajun country has so many different flavors that are amazing and I really like the gumbo they make here.

Tomorrow we will tour Jefferson Island.