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Good old-fashioned entrepreneurial spirit has produced a slew of local register-food favorites that loom, just inches away, as a quick-fix for hunger pangs.
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Photo by David Lee Simmons
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Mr. Ed's Deli and Catering is one step away --
in speed, not quality -- from fast food. Only about eight minutes pass between
asking for a catfish-jambalaya plate and enjoying it. Some days, that's still
too long. If you're someone who falls into hunger-induced delirium tremens, you
know the restorative powers of register food. You also know that your only option
when those hunger shakes set in is to grab whatever's within reach, hope it's
edible and maneuver it toward your mouth.
When I reached this state in line at Mr. Ed's, what lay within
reach was not penny candy or a run-of-the-mill chocolate bar; it was a moist,
coaster-size pie with the least presumptuous hint of cinnamon-type spice and
a filling of fine amber threads suggestive of fresh sweet potatoes. The label
said it was made in Harvey.
A few weeks later I made a second trip to Mr. Ed's, this time
just for pie. The woman at the register shook her head.
"It was like you, me and maybe three other
people who ate those,'" she said. "We don't carry 'em no more."
A wilting disappointment, but she pointed
in the direction of a store she once frequented that sold the same brand. "I
swear, if you get another one, you won't be looking for another pie for the
rest of your life," she testified.
Gloria and Harold Peaden of Southern Sweet
Potato Pie Company couldn't have commissioned a better sales pitch. Their pie's
original recipe came from Dorothy Caradeen, Gloria's 85-year-old mother, although
Caradeen long ago relinquished her baking duties. When Harold first began tinkering
with his mother-in-law's recipe, says Gloria, "We'd have church members calling
and asking us to bake extra. When it got to be 50 or 60 pies in the kitchen,
we decided to make a business out of it."
A chemist and a chemical engineer by trade,
the couple started selling the pies made with Louisiana sweet potatoes three
years ago. Harold designs and builds most of the company's production equipment,
and they collaborate on recipe development and field research (i.e. pie eating).
In April they introduced a pecan variety.
In keeping with the entrepreneurial spirit
of secrecy, Gloria doesn't divulge much. "I can only tell you that we put sweet
potatoes in the sweet potato pie and pecans in the pecan pie." (The wrapper
also lists butter, coconut and lemon juice.)
Tracking down register food, which is necessary
when someone discontinues a good pie, is as ridiculous as ordering it by the
case (Mr. Ed's has resumed selling the Peaden's pie). It negates register food's
most basic virtue: that it just happens to be there when you need it -- or think
you need it -- most. Yet it's near impossible not to get choosy when you spend
a lot of time around registers, like my fellow pie fanatic at Mr. Ed's or the
man who works a Spur station in Mid-City who's so covetous of Annie Reed's banana
nut cake (locally produced) that you need to arrive with the deliveryman to
get one. There's also the Nic Cage look-alike at Verti Mart who sermonizes Hubig's
fried pies, New Orleans' archetypal register food.
My sister started buying Cup of Gold snack
bars by the box after plucking one from a basket at Foodies Kitchen. With ingredients
like reduced-fat peanut butter, oats and honey, the all-natural, puck-shaped
bar gets most of its exposure in the heath-and-fitness market. Keep reading,
sedentary gourmands: Cup of Gold is dotted with chocolate chips, which attain
a slow, dark state of ooze at room temperature.
Danielle Ontiveros, now 28, created Cup of
Gold at 16 when she found that other, overly sweet breakfast bars left her still
hungry. She began packaging and selling her invention the following week and
has never changed the recipe. If you can't find Cup of Gold's Space Age metallic
wrapping, look for Cake Man Steve Himelfarb, who sells his friend's product
along his cake-peddling route.
Regional snack specialties are often positioned
closest to the register, like the Praline King's candied pecans, Angelo Brocato's
fried bits of sugar-glazed dough (pigniolata) and those teeny, dried shrimp
that mostly come from around Morgan City. I once got worked up over a paper
bag of Turtle Food at a filling station in Houma. Neither Cajun trail mix nor
a Ben & Jerry's alternative, it turned out to be actual turtle food.
Another Acadiana specialty, distributed in
New Orleans by Hubig's, moved me to road trip to its source: Original Old Fashion
Ginger Cake from LeJeune's Bakery in Jeanerette. Opened in 1884, LeJeune's is
one of Teche country's main suppliers of soft, wide French bread loaves. They
also bake puffed gingerbread "stageplanks," bread-cookie-cake hybrids that are
about the length of a man's hand, vaguely sweet, oddly delicious and begging
for a steaming cafe au lait.
A jug of molasses as big as a garden shed
sits just inside the door at the actual bakery, where a fine, buttercream-colored
topcoat of flour dusts the tidy production area. The woman who's been working
LeJeune's warehouse store for 20 years is no good at small talk, but she'll
devote three minutes to printing your receipt by hand.
Sixty-seven-year-old Carlita Epperson has
been making fudge for 40 years. While that makes her a teenager in LeJeune years,
her chewy chocolate pecan fudge smacks of a mature technique; her Gourmet Nilla
Goodies, made with white chocolate, nuts, cereal and potato sticks, is a fantastic
mingling of sweet and salt -- better than Reese's Pieces jumbled with movie
popcorn.
In 1997, Epperson and her husband, Ohrie,
moved the family fudge recipe and everything else from their hometown in Missouri
to Baton Rouge, where their son-in-law had pioneered a church. Within short
season the whole family was pitching in to make a go of Maw Maw Carlie's Fine
Fudge.
"Paw Paw Carlie has come a long way," Epperson
says of her husband. "His recipes in the past have been toast and microwave
popcorn. Now his job is that he measures the original ingredients. I line the
pans that they're molded in, and we both cook, and he cleans. That's the way
it goes."
Epperson cuts each batch of fudge by hand
the old-fashioned way. "I think it makes me feel good to do the cutting on a
marble slab," she says.
Needless to say, few register foods carry
the sentimental weight -- certainly not the cool packaging -- of a Hubig's fried
pie. Not yet, anyway. Still, like Hubig's and Zapp's, many lesser-known snack
foods produced locally are supported by stories of hard work and entrepreneurial
spirit that are nearly as powerful as their pull on your impulse control.
Who's Who in Register Food
Southern Sweet Potato Pie Company, $.99 for a 3-inch pie; $6 for a 9-inch
pie. Found at Walgreen Drug Stores, Langenstein's, News & Brews, Robert Fresh
Market, Casey Jones Supermarket. (504) 328-2221.
Cup of Gold, $1.99. Found at Elmwood
Fitness Center, Bayou Bicycle, Body Art, Foodies Kitchen, Smoothie King. (504)
364-4488.
LeJeune's Ginger Cake, $1.29 ($1 at
the bakery). Found at a multitude of convenience and grocery stores, especially
where Hubig's pies are sold. (337) 276-5690.
Maw Maw Carlie's Fine Fudge, $1.49.
Found at Robert Fresh Market, Fisherman's Cove Seafood, Deanie's Seafood Market,
Luigi's Fine Food, Foodies Kitchen. (225) 445-4303.
Editor's note: All prices provided are
average prices. Real prices vary.
