Hook, Line & Sinker

 

News of the world of seafood and its impact on you

 

FLOYD'S IS BIGGER!!

 

May of 2013, we had the opportunity to expand our kingdom, so we did.

 

I passed up this opportunity about 2 years ago and vowed that if it ever came up again, I would pounce on it.

Tobacco shop didn't make it after a year and a half, so I jumped on the chance to have more space.

 

The shop was too small the day we moved in March of 2004, 1200 square feet, but I managed to downsize and make it all fit, albeit like a postage stamp, but it fit.....

Landlord came by in December 2012 and announced that Tobacco shop was moving out. Oh, darn, really?

Hate it that another business didn't make it, never like it when somebody's dream crashes and burns, but.........

We pounced.

 

Work started in mid- May with about 3 weeks worth of banging, hammering, cutting, rewiring, moving, painting, sweeping, sweeping again, tearing, cussing, using up a crate of Band Aids, sweating, sweeping some more, plotting, planning, spending money and getting sheet rock dust onEVERYTHING!

We have added 1200 square feet to our store and it looks ........

 

FANTASTIC !!!!!

 

I got rid of my old 10-foot fish case that came over on the Mayflower....

(A moment of silence for my old friend. He served us well for close to 30 years, serving as our deli case for decades then our fish case for years .

I hated to see him go, but the poor old guy was old, not efficient, not holding cold anymore, glass was ugly, he put out lots of heat and noise and he had done his time.

He is now seving as a food pantry cooler to help the less fortunate. Thanks, old friend, you served us well.)

 

I treated myself to a new 12-foot fish display case, a new 2 door upright display freezer, new shelving and lots of new food items.

We have enough room in the customer area to have a square-dance if we want to, now.

Now, keep in mind, it's not done yet, we still have a wall to put up and all kinds of stuff to put on the walls and new goodies to buy and put in, but it's looking�great.

 

Pictures will be on our flickr page soon, watch for the announcement.

 


 

NEARBY COMPETITOR CLOSED DOWN

It has come to light that a meat market in Conway has been shut down and is being sued by the State due to illegal activities involving his food practices.�

Please know that Floyd's has never and will never compromise the purity of our beef, pork and seafood products in any way, shape or form .

I wish my competitor in Conway best wishes in the future.

 

 

FLOYDS GOT EMAIL!!!

Yay! You can now contact us by email.

floydsmeatandseafood@gmail.com

Gimme 24 hours to respond, I might have email, but I don't have a laptop or a smartphone at the shop yet.

I'm slow, but I'm gettin' there......

 


ALLIGATOR PRICES BITE THE BIG TIME

Whoever said TV has no effect on consumer buying and spending habits hasnt been keeping up with current affairs.

The popularity of A&E's "Swamp People" show, following legal licensed alligator trappers in the Louisiana bayous has enticed people all over the country to try gator meat. The problem is, they try it and like it and that has wiped out all the frozen alligator meat stock that was available in the nations largest and smallest cold storage facilities, driving the price thru the roof.

Alligator meat that was ten dollars per pound at this time last year is now at almost twenty, with no end to the price hike in sight as suppliers scramble to secure what gator meat they can get their hands on.

Another problem this has caused is major poaching operations in the bayou state where people want to cash in on the prices and are trapping and killing even the smallest gators, endangering the future of the wild caught alligators that are normally in season only in September and October.

Farm raised gator farms in Louisiana, Florida and Georgia just cant supply enough gator meat. You just have to wait until the gators are big enough to slaughter or you lose money.

All of the alligator is used: skin for boots, belts and purses, meat for food and sausage, teeth for jewelry, claws for jewelry and decoration,feet and hands�for backscratchers, internal organs for Chinese medicine, skulls for novelties and bones for conversation pieces. The only part you can't sell is the bad attitude.

We are having a hard time getting alligator meat and each time we purchase it, the price has increased yet again. But rest assured: Floyds will not nor has ever purchased alligator that has been illegally poached. All our gator is farm raised or wild caught legally and we have the paperwork to prove it.

We do not support poaching. Period.

 

BLUE CRAB IN THE FUTURE??? 

 

A lot of people have been asking about live blue crabs, cooked fresh blue crabs, heads on shrimp and other items.

Well, how serious are you??

I have found a source outside New Orleans,Louisiana that can get us  the items I just listed (and more!) and fly them in to us weekly, but I need a customer base beforeI go jumping into this.

So, now is your chance to sound off and be heard: call or email us and let us know if this is something you want and we will respond with crabs.

Floyds email address is floydsmeatandseafood@gmail.com.

Leave us your name and daytime contact phone number- don't forget the area code!!

Please tell us how much you might desire to purchase and any other items you are interested in and we will see what kind of response we get.

I have been trying for several years to get this off the ground, but I have run into suppliers who are all talk and no action.

I think I may have found a source that can put their crabs where their mouth is.....and maybe in ours.

 


CAJUN JOKE PAGE COMING SOON


 Now that I have email on this thing, I can have some fun and so can you.

Email me your Cajun jokes and we will put them on our new forthcoming joke page.

We will have a contest to see, by vote, who has the best Cajun joke.

Please leave us your daytime contact phone number in case we need to clarify anything and put 'cajun joke' in the subject line.

Send jokes to floydsmeatandseafood@gmail.com.

 

There are a few rules:

1) Keep it clean.

We have people of all types looking at this, so nothing over PG rated. We hold the right to edit anything that is a little too racy.

2) Keep it short.

 No 'War and Peace' length jokes. We want people to laugh, not fall asleep.

3) Keep it nice.

Hog fans, no pulling Tiger tails, LSU fans, no snout poking. It's all clean fun and love in the SEC family here.

 Hogs and LSU jokes involving the Aggies, however, are fair game.......

4) Keep it in context.

We are looking for jokes about Louisiana, the South having to do with LA, Cajuns, cooking, gators, crabs,heritage, etc.

5) Leave us your name.

 When we post the joke, we will use your first name and last name initial as well as your town and state.( Lisa M., Jacksonville AR) 

 


RECIPE SHARING PAGE COMING SOON!!!

 

Yeah, I've opened a can of worms with this email stuff, but I hear they are great in a sauce piquant.....

Just kidding. We will soon have a new recipe sharing page on our site, details coming soon.

 


Mississippi Gulf Coast Vacation

Larry and I went back down to Biloxi MS in August for our well deserved summer vacation and timed it just right. We got there and left just two weeks ahead of Hurricane Issac, a class1 storm that watered south MS and LA real good.

We went to the annual Louisiana Restaurant Association food show, looked around, ate all their samples met some folks and made some connections.

The Zatarains people were the only disappointment. As a huge business, they just don't seem to care about helping a small business like mine keep their products on my shelf.They were bought out by McCormick Inc, a few years ago and since then have gotten way too big to deal with us little red potatoes. That is fine with� me, after several visits yielding no results, I have decided to drop their line from my store and replace it with a family owned label from Prairieville, LA as soon as all the Zats stuff is gone.

Look for it soon in the shop.

Larry and I paid a visit to our buddy Gus Harris, owner of the Cajun Crawfish Hut in its new location just across the street from the beach in Long Beach, MS. His new restaurant is just beautiful, the food is great and the beer is real cold. If you're in the area, go pay Gus and his wife Donna, a visit and have one of his excellent Po Boy sandwiches.

www.cajuncrawfishhut.com

 

We spent a day in Dauphin Island AL, had a cold beer or two at the Pelican Pub, petted the shrimp boats and dodged one heck of a thunderstorm. The next time we go down there, we will tour the USS Alabama battleship, which sits in Mobile Bay. It's huge, you can't miss it.

The next day went back to Alabama and went down to Bon Secour Fisheries�to tour the plant.

I have done business with them for years and finally got to meet my sales rep, Sheldon. We also got to meet the man whose family founded Bon Secour Fisheries, Mr. Nelson. Sheldon took us all over the plant, showed us the shrimp room, where fresh shrimp are brought in, headed, sized and packed into 5 pound boxes to be frozen and shipped. Too bad my camera battery died about then so I had to use Larry's camera and got no pictures of that cuz the room was closed and the crew went home by the time we went and got the  other camera. He also showed us the freezers, the fish room and Larry's little bit of Heaven, the oyster cooler. Just imagine a huge room, stacked from floor to ceiling with bags and boxes of fresh shell oysters, just brought in, plus gallons and gallons of fresh shucked oysters sitting all over the place.

Larry wanted to be locked in overnight...........

The oyster shucking room was real neat. We got there after everyone had gone home, the crew of about 50 people comes in about 3 am and starts shucking oysters by the mountains. Huge piles of clean oyster shells were piled up outside the plant and I took a bunch home.

We ate at a restaurant called The Tin Top, there in Bon Secour. The food was excellent, fresh triggerfish was the daily special and it was cooked just right, the portion was so big I had to take it home and had it for breakfast the next morning. Larry has a huge seafood platter with shrimp, fish, oysters and crabcake. No leftovers with him!

We had planned to go back to New Orleans and look at the cemetaries and eat at the Oyster Bar, but decided that 'Nawlins is not where we wanted to be on a Friday or Saturday night. Neither of us has tolerance for drunks and idiots.

We spent one evening sitting on the beach watching a thunderstorm way out in theGulf with our feet in the sand and a beer in our hand, talking about stuff. It was a great night. The next day Larry tried his hand at net casting and actually caught us some decent shrimp, enough for a nice shrimp cocktail. We also bought a few from a rather grouchy shrimp boat captain who could have been much more friendly but wasn't.

I entertained myself later that day on the beach by finding 3 hermit crabs that were out walking around and had a impromptu hermit crab race. Number two won, number one came in second and number three never moved an inch.

The Gulf is no fun to swim in.You can't swim, cuz its too shallow, jellyfish are everywhere, and you must shuffle your feet when you walk cuz you might step on a skate or a small ray. Now, fishing, thats worth it. We caught a few fish, most not the eating kind or too small but we had fun doing it.

I think next year we will go somewhere else, three years in a row to the Gulf is OK, but we want a change of scenery.

 


HOME TO LOUISIANA FOR EASTER

 

Larry and I made it to Lake Charles, Louisiana for Easter to see the family for the first time since last August.

 

We took the opportunity to load up on Louisiana Brand crawfish and crab boil as well as Zatarains products and other goodies we have a hard time finding here at home for the shop.

 

We brought some of our world famous Angus hamburger patties and fed about 30 aunts, uncles, cousins and second cousins.

Cousin Greg did a fantastic job on the grill cooking the burgers and the sausages.

 

There was some good- natured ribbing and teasing going around, as we are Arkansas Razorbacks and they are LSU Tigers.

But once the fur stopped flying and mud got washed off, we all ate, drank, made merry and STILL love each other, even outside of football season.

 

My Uncle Kenneth Abrahams ( LSU Alumni) loves to tease me about being from "AR-Kansas", he just is never prepared for me to dish it back at him in true Razorback style.

I gently reminded him that the year his Coach Les Miles referred to us as " AR-Kansas",

we beat LSU-

on TV-

at Tiger Stadium-

after several overtimes.....

 

We had a great time and we got to see some cousins that were just toddlers when I last saw them.

 

My cousin David Lee now has two beeeeutiful girls, Ashlyn and Emma that I had never met.

My cousin Mike Aleshire's daughters (more beautiful girls, and smart, too!) and sons (look just like their daddy) have grown like weeds and they are all almost teenagers !!

 

Cousin Jeffrey Abrahams' oldest son, my cousin Christopher has grown at least a foot since August (those Cajun boys know how to put away the groceries!)



Catfish Prices Continue to Swim Upstream

 

American catfish prices show no intention of coming down anytime soon. Fillets and random cut fillets are still on the rise. Nuggets, steaks and whole fish are still priced fairly decent, so if you are having a fish fry,consider those items. Also consider tilapia , cod and swai fish fillets for your fish fry. They are priced very reasonable.

See our Fish and shrimp deals page for current prices.