Tabasco Tour

Today we spent the day on Avery Island.  Avery Island is the home to the McInhenny Co. makers of Tabasco!  It is a beautiful area, in the heart of Cajun country.  The company owns the entire island which is actually a fairly hilly area as it sits on a salt mine.  They not only make the sauce...a 6 generation company...they mine salt and have some oil interests as well.  We took the factory tour, visited the Company Store...they have branding down...so many things you can purchase!  Steve had found that they did a local Cajun food tour so we had signed up to do that in the afternoon.  It was a 3 hour culinary experience that really took me out of my comfort zone.  However in the comfort of a group the experience was made easier.  We visited 6 places and had "bites" not complete meals at each place.  We began with boiled shrimp...had to removed the heads, tails and shells, and onion rings. So good but this was not going to be a kind diet day!!  Our next stop was a meat market where we tasted Boudin-a sausage like substance made with pork, vegies and rice.  It is his specialty and it was very good.  We also had pork cracklins...nothing low fat about this day!!
We spent the rest of the afternoon, tasting more boudin, shrimp gumbo and chicken gumbo, stuffed bread, and ended the day with bread pudding, topped with meringue and whiskey sauce.  Fortunately I don't care for bread pudding so I didn't eat it all...but for someone who doesn't like it...it was good! Needless to say we did not have dinner tonight!!
So looking forward to tomorrow.  On our way to San Antonio we are stopping in Katy, TX so I can see my dear friend Kristen who I taught with at King's years ago and was Bethany's Kindergarten teacher!  What a special treat this is!!