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Babineaux’s Slaughter House & Meat Market C. Hebert's Slaughter House & Meat Market Coleman's Sausage & Specialty Meats Eunice Superette & Slaughterhouse |
Coleman’s Sausage & Specialty Meats "Well we – we grind our meat, cut it up, and trim it and make sure there’s on bones or fat, too bad; you know you’ve got to have some fat in sausage to make it good." – Lynn Dale Coleman Coleman’s Sausage and Specialty Meats is tucked away in the Iota countryside, a few miles outside of downtown, on Des Cannes Highway. It’s called the “new store,” but it’s actually the only store they’ve ever had. Mr. Howard Coleman started the business in 1964. He had worked in the oil fields, but learned from a neighbor how to make sausage. He started making it as a hobby at home, and when he realized that he could earn a good living at it, he left the oil fields and started producing sausage full time. His house was his headquarters. He’d grind and stuff the sausage in the kitchen, and then take it to the smokehouse out back for cooking. There wasn’t a public storefront with a display case; buyers would have to place orders in advance, and then his wife, Winnie Jo Coleman, would make area deliveries in her car. Friends who knew the family well might stop by the house to pick up their order of sausage. Occasionally, as SFA member and Coleman’s customer Jim Gossen remembers, the Colemans would have a hot meal waiting for him in the kitchen when he’d stop by in the evenings to pick up big orders. In 1997, after a fire destroyed the smokehouse in the backyard and almost burned the house, Mr. Coleman’s son, Lynn Dale Coleman, rebuilt and moved the business to its present location out on the highway. Once they moved to the “new store,” they expanded. The extra space allowed them to prepare not only sausage, but stuffed chickens and stuffed catfish. And it was at the new store that they developed the now-popular boudin recipe; the original Mr. Coleman had never made boudin. The expanded menu makes for happy customers. Despite the store’s rural location, they never lack for shoppers. Most items are sold pre-packed for cooking at home, but hot boudin links to go are available for passers by wanting a quick lunch. NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here. Subject: Lynn Dale Coleman ----- Mary Beth Lasseter: Hello; this is Mary Beth Lasseter with the Southern Foodways Alliance. And today is Wednesday, February 18, 2009 and I’m in Iota, Louisiana. If you will, please introduce yourself for me. Lynn Dale Coleman: I’m Lynn Dale Coleman with Coleman Sausage and Specialty Meats in Iota. Can you tell me a little bit about this business? Well it started in ’64 with mom and dad; they started it. And then daddy died and the old place burnt down and we had a new location for--for the last--since about ’97. And we added to our menu from just sausage and tasso to a full line of meats. Tell me a little bit about the foods that you offer here. Well we offer just about anything that people ask for. We have sausage, boudin, specialty meats; the holidays we have turkeys and stuffed turkeys, turkey rolls and other kinds of stuff. Tell me a little bit about your parents and your family and how they got into this business. Where did they learn the trade? Well my dad always wanted to do something like that and we had an old neighbor that made sausage and when he died, well daddy kind of started playing with it and--and that’s how they got started. What was your dad’s name and what did he do for a living before he started making sausage? It was Howard Coleman and he was in the oil field. And can you tell me a little bit about your parents; what--what--do you know where they grew up and how they met, sort of their story? See, daddy was from Jennings, Louisiana; my mom was from Evangeline, Louisiana, an old oil field town and I guess they met and things cliqued. They had five kids, four boys and a girl; I’m the second one. ----- And how did you come to be the son who got to take over the family business? [Laughs] I just stayed home--didn’t leave, and I ended up with it, so whether that’s a good thing or not [Laughs] I don’t know. When did you start working here--what age? Well to start with, daddy opened a dairy. We started--started a dairy and I was in the eighth grade and--and worked all through high school and a couple years ‘til I got married in--in the dairy and--and then I--I moved away. I worked for Texaco; I started with Texaco and I moved to Morgan City for about four years and then I moved back home. And--and I helped daddy with all his stuff, you know. And then I just went from there. There are a lot of people in this area who seem to work for the oil fields. Can you tell me a little bit about sort of that industry and who in this community is working there? Well this is you know a farming and oil field country you know around here and we just--you didn’t farm or work in the plants in Lake Charles or somewhere(s) else, well you worked offshore or on drilling rigs in the oil field and--so. Did some of your classmates go off and do the same sort of thing? Where did you go to school? I went to Iota High; graduated at Iota and that was all the education I got--school education--’61 and I went off and worked for Texaco for seven years and then I worked for Texas Eastern for 10 years and I contract-gauged and worked for myself for about 30 years. And then I went into this on part-time and then full-time now; so--. So how did you get brought into it part-time? Were you working alongside your father then? I was helping daddy out. Yeah; my--myself and my daughter; Tanna kind of grew up in the thing, so that’s about how it got started. When did your--you said it started in ’64? Yes; ma’am. Okay; when did your dad sort of develop his recipes? How--how did that work? I--he just started playing with it you know I guess and that--around in that time and he finally kicked it off and he had a little store. He opened--they moved to Lake Charles--Lafayette for a little while and he--he opened a little store over there and then they moved back to Iota later on; so--. Your family is from this area; can you tell me a little bit about their backgrounds or do y’all consider yourselves Cajun or--? Mama--mama was French. Her--her parents were French and my daddy--I guess we’re Irish or whatever, so that’s how we ended up. So you say your mom was French. Is--is French understood as different from Cajun around here? I don’t know that distinction. Well she’s a Leger so it’s--it’s Cajun. She’s Cajun French. ----- There are a lot of people who have sort of expressed that to me as I go around and do these interviews that it’s--it’s hard work--hard working job. Can you tell me a little bit about sort of your average day? What time do you start and what do you do? Well we start usually about 7:00--8 o'clock in the morning and we open at 8:00--from 8:00 to 5:00 and we’re in here sometimes mostly you know earlier getting things ready and--. But during the holidays it’s--we’ll put in maybe 12--18 hour days for a couple months keeping things going, so--. So everything you sell here is fresh and you don’t do anything frozen? We have some frozen. We have stuffed frozen chickens, boneless chickens and we have a little line of frozen stuff you know, some vegetables, some frozen fish, stuffed fish, stuffed chickens and turkeys and--. Can you tell me a little bit about the traditions of small meat stores in this area? There seems to be a lot more of them here in Louisiana than there are in other places in the State or in the South. Where does that tradition come from; are you--? It’s mostly I guess the culture. You know a lot of the families in the smaller country towns, well everybody they like to--they like to eat and they like to cook and a lot of them just like to get into it and it’s just hard to--hard to say you know. But that’s what a lot of them--they just enjoy doing it, so--. Did you ever make sausage or boudin before you owned the store--during like family gatherings or anything like that? No; ma’am--no, it was always you know in the commercial part--end of it. Yeah; the old time butchering and stuff, we--I never--I never did it. Did your father that you know of? No; no. If you will I know that there is a difference between how slaughterhouses prep their animals and how smaller places like this one handle their meats. Where are you getting your product from and can you tell me a little bit about how you prep it? Well the slaughterhouse, they--they butcher it--they get a lot of meat. They--they get live animals in and they slaughter them and butcher them and cut them, you know hanging meat. And but like most of the stores now, the retail stores like us, well we get our--our meat already cut in boxes and we just break it down and--and cut them up and season them like--like it’s not a whole--it’s not the whole calf or cow anymore. It’s--it’s all broke down in--in big cuts already and we just take them from there. Have y’all always worked with the large cuts of meat or did y’all make a transition when there were changes in the regulations? No; it--it was always like this, uh-hm. Where do you get your product from? Who are your purveyors? We get ours out of a wholesaler out of Carencro, Louisiana; Prejean’s Meats--that’s where we’ve been dealing with them for--well my old daddy deal(ed)--dealt with the old daddy over there and I’m dealing with the son now, so we’ve been there with them quite a while, I guess maybe 25--30 years. And how much meat are you ordering from them? Oh we--we make approximately 1,000 or so pounds of sausage a week and I’d have to--. We can check our records. But you’re--you’re buying pretty good amount of meat for them. Do you have any sense of--? We get 4,000 to 5,000 pounds of meat a week--something like that. Do you have any sense of how the size of this store then sort of measures up with others in the area? Are y’all are about an average size purveyor? Well all we do, we just sell meat here. There’s no groceries, no--you know it’s just meat exclusive I guess how you’d say it but I guess we--a fair size of what we do, just--just meats. ----- Did your dad always own this place by himself or have there been partners in the family business over time? Him and mama; they--he would--he would help make--he would make it. Of course he had a couple, you know people helping him and then mama would load up the car and go peddle it. She had customers that she had called in Lake Charles, Lafayette, New Iberia, all over and--and it just grew from there. So when he began did he not have a storefront then? No, no; they made it out of their little house out of their little kitchen in the back of the house and then this is--when I opened this well that’s when we had a storefront you know, sold out of the retail part. So this place opened in ’97, so there was no retail component prior to this? No, right; that was it. This--they just delivered and--to order. Now was your mama doing that delivering up until ’97? No; she--let’s see. Ninety-seven, the place was--the old place was burnt down and it went about a year and a half or two years, it was--wasn’t doing nothing. And my daughter, Tanna had, she had taken mama’s place too. Mama was--well she’s 90 years old now, so--so Tanna pretty much run the operation, the delivering and all that. Tell me a little bit about the fire. Was this still when the kitchen was at their home? It was in the kitchen; yeah. I was smoking sausage one night and I don’t know if the old building and everything it wasn’t up to--up to fire code too much and--and had a little wind storm come through and I don’t know if it blew embers and stuff, some fire, around and it--and I looked outside and it--the place was on--you know it was on fire. And it was just a few--a few feet from the house and we have a good Fire Department here in Iota and--and they got out here quick and saved the house and--and not the--but didn’t save the place, so--. Is that a common hazard with people who smoke sausage--flame up? No, not--not real common. It was just something that happened I guess you know. Maybe I should--I could have been a little more careful or--but it was just something we had been doing for years and years and it just happened, so--. Now do y’all have smoke sheds out back of this place? What is--how do y’all go about smoking your sausages I guess? Well I have--I built a cinderblock smokehouse now and so it’s pretty well--it’s pretty well fire-proof, so--. Talk to me a little bit about the process of making and smoking sausage--for people who don’t know anything about it. How--how is that done? Well we--we grind our meat, cut it up, and trim it and make sure there’s on bones or--fat, too bad; you know you’ve got to have some fat in sausage to make it good. We trim our meat good and then we grind it up and season it and mix it and then stuff it. Then we hang it on our racks and roll them into the smokehouse for--. And I heat them up and get my temperature up like I want it and--and I put my smoke and then I let it smoke all night. The next day we’ve got smoked sausage. What are you smoking it? Do you have a preference for the kind of wood that you use? Pecan--pecan wood. Do most people around here use that or is it a personal preference? Different--a lot of people like sweet gum, some people use hickory; I just like pecan. Where do you get that from? From trees--people that’s cutting trees down and I have a couple son-in-laws that they got--they cut wood and they--they find me pecan and bring it to me. ----- Since this is for the Boudin Trail, tell me a little bit about the boudin that y’all make. Well the boudin, mom and dad they didn’t make boudin. Daddy tried one time but it didn’t--it wasn’t great. [Laughs] What was wrong with it? [Laughs] It--it--it just wasn’t good. [Laughs] But then I--we--when we opened up we started making it and I just take a recipe here and there and we just made our own and we come up with what we wanted in--in them and--and that’s how we made it. Without giving away your secret recipe, what sorts of ingredients are you using--what spices? Well we use--we use salt and pepper and different other seasonings and--and we put parsley and green onions and onions and mix--grind--cook all that and mix it and stuff it, but--and rice. Yeah; rice and pork meat we use. Tell me a little bit about the rice ‘cause I understand different people who make boudin have preferences for long-grains and short-grains. What do you like? I use long-grains; I just like it. I find the others are too mushy. Now that’s my preference. And is that a Louisiana long-grain? Yeah; uh-hm. Are y’all using local products in this place or is it difficult to source them? Well our meats and stuff come from Carencro and that’s meat that they--they bring in from up North. It’s all grain-fed stuff, so we don’t have any of that local stuff. And then all our crawfish stuff is all local and everything else is just--. Like chickens, we get it at--we don’t raise our chickens so we get them at the poultry place in Eunice, so--. ----- Today is Wednesday and Mardi Gras is of course--is next Tuesday. Can you tell me a little bit--does that influence how much food you need to make? Is there a rush? Yeah; there’s--there’s a pretty good rush on like boudin, tradition--the traditional foods around here, you know like sausage and boudin and stuffed ponce and different other stuff. Tell me about stuffed ponce. It’s the pig stomach and we stuff it and smoke it and stuff it with sausage meat and--and smoke it. Some people prefer it not smoked--fresh; some people like it smoked. It’s a good seller and it--and it’s good eating. How do you eat it; do you slice it? Yeah; right. So you’re eating the pig stomach in addition to the stuffing, the whole--? It’s just a big--a big casing--well it’s the stomach and it’s stuffed with meat and then it’s all cured and seasoned and--and smoked. Tell me a little bit if you will about Mardi Gras here in Iota. What--what’s it like; what is the schedule like? What do folks do during the season? Well Mardi Gras--Mardi Gras has been around here for as long as I can remember since I was a little kid and everybody gets kind of geared up for it and have people from all over--all over the country come over here and a lot of--a lot of--some out of the country. They come celebrate; we have some friends that’s been promoting Mardi Gras all over the country for--for a lot of years and--and they had--they ended up with a lot of friends from all over the country that--that come for Mardi Gras. And--and she goes around; they both go around like to Virginia and Carolina and all that and she--and she--she’s teaching them Cajun cooking. And a lot of our product goes--goes to that, so that’s how a lot of it gets started too you know. Does the City sponsor Mardi Gras events--dances or parades or anything? Oh yeah; they have dances. For Mardi Gras day up here they have--they’ll have dances all--a band all day long on the bandstand and they have parades coming in--in the evening with the Mardi Gras(ers) and that’s--that’s a sight to see. What--what does it look like? How many people are involved? Oh they’ll have probably 30--30 or 40 Mardi Gras(ers) and they’re all dressed up in their traditional masks and copuchons and--and costumes and it’s just--. So when you said 30 or 40 Mardi Gras(ers) you’re talking individuals who are dressed in costume? Yeah; right, yeah to--the--the old traditional costumes. And who is doing that; is it a social club in town or anybody? It’s--it’s the Mardi Gras Association that’s been around for probably 70 years maybe and it’s all just--keeps growing you know. Now have you or anybody in your family ever done it? No; well my--one of my daughters, yeah. One of my daughters used to run; she--she grew out of it. [Laughs] And what do they do on the run? What is that? Well they go to different houses and chase chickens and they just--and at night--that night they make a big gumbo with the chickens they catch and the money they--they beg off of people and that’s the tradition you know--getting—sans souci, so--. Now do y’all ever contribute any sausage or ingredients to the big gumbo? No; it--a lot of it is--sometimes sausage yeah but a lot of it is--something they’ll make their self and--so. I’m interested in the French culture. You said your mother was French. Can you talk to me a little bit about the language? Are people around here still speaking French? Yeah; we have--we have some that--quite a few that still talks French. But a lot of people years ago they didn’t--they--in school, a lot of them they came to school and they didn’t know nothing but French. And the schools tried to discourage it and they--they--they didn’t want you talking French at school. And then it--then I guess the Cultural Revolution or whatever--something--it started getting popular again and--and now they’re teaching it in schools and everything trying to get it back. So when was it; do you know what time period it was that they were trying to discourage it? Oh it was in the earlier years. I don’t remember it you know but--. So there wasn’t French at the time that you were in the schools? They weren’t discouraging--? No, no. So it was earlier than that? Yeah; it was a little before that I imagine. I don’t remember it you know but--but I hear some of the older people saying that--that they were discouraged from talking French in school, like they get--some of them say they’d get punished you know for talking French. ----- Tell me a little bit about who’s working here; how long have they been your employees? Well my daughter and I and my--I have like three others employees; they’ve been about 15 years and one of them about five years and the other one about 15 years, plus my daughter that’s been--she’s been delivering sausage for 20 years I guess. Are you hiring people who have experience in the business or are you teaching them when they come to you? Well most of them are--the ones that will come they’re usually not much experience. It’s--and they just learn over here, so--. They’re not very experienced when they get here. And then you just teach them your recipes and your ways? Yeah. All right; the last thing I was going to ask--we’re doing this interview, for those who can't see, in your office. Lots of shelves, papers, phone numbers, but no computer; tell me a little bit about your record-keeping. Oh we just keep them by hand and I’m too dumb to do a computer. No; don’t say that. But we never got one; we just don’t find the need for one. So this is a computer-free zone. That’s right; that’s right. ----- To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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