Fruge’s Regional Sales Manager Assists in Local Recovery Efforts
By Patrick D. Bonin

The EF5 tornado that obliterated parts of Moore, Oklahoma on Monday hit really close to home for Frugé Seafood’s DeLancey Miller.

Literally.

Miller, 45, who is Frugé Seafood’s Regional Sales Manager in Oklahoma, lives in Oklahoma City, only about 15 minutes north of the massive tornado’s destructive path. A resident since 1998, he’s now seen the aftermath of two catastrophic twisters on Moore, the first one occurring on May 3rd, 1999.

Monday afternoon, he was in the process of returning home from a weekend camping trip in south Oklahoma with his stepdaughter, Brielle, when the tornado struck.

“I was able to pull up a live stream on my phone and watch the tornado live. I know Moore very well because I had helped with the last cleanup,” he said. “I knew from looking at it that this wasn’t going to be a good situation: it was following an almost identical path from 1999. Your heart just sinks when you think about the school and those children.”

Miller and Brielle, 10, had taken part in a camping program through their YMCA called Adventure Guides, where fathers can take their sons or daughters in first through fourth grades on one-on-one campouts at Camp Classen in Davis, Oklahoma.

The fun and camaraderie that developed between the fathers and their daughters through those years of camping trips spurred a plan to help the tornado victims. 

“All the dads were talking over the weekend about ways for us to stay in touch and get together with each other, for us and for our girls,” he said. “That same group of guys decided on Monday that we would go to Moore and cook burgers and hand out drinks for the residents and the first responders.”

Equipped with nine grills, 3,000 pounds of ground beef, buns, water, Gatorade and ice, the group traveled to Moore on Wednesday and got cooking!

“We did about 1,400 onion burgers in the first two hours for lunch, and then we cooked the rest for dinner,” he said. “Thankfully, the police let us into the neighborhoods that were hardest hit, and we were able to offer the burgers and cold water from the back of a pickup truck to the people sifting through rubble.”
Miller said to see the devastation up close was “indescribable.”

“It’s hard because you don’t know what to say. Your heart goes out to them,” DeLancey said. “They were just all so appreciative. We were blessed just to have the opportunity to help those families, even with something small like water and food.” 

But even in the face of total devastation, the spirits of those directly impacted, as well as the thousands of volunteers assisting in the recovery effort, remained high.

“It’s one of the reasons why I decided to stay in Oklahoma. This community and state comes together through any type of tragedy to help each other out. It doesn’t matter what part of the state it’s in, and economics and social status don’t matter: everybody comes together to pitch in,” he said. “People here don’t think twice about doing whatever it takes to help out. It just makes you proud to say that you live here.

“It’s what Oklahoma is all about,” Miller said. “It’s an amazing place.”

If you’re interested in assisting victims of the Moore, Oklahoma tornado, contact your local American Red Cross or go to www.redcross.org/donation.

The support came from many, from the thousands of volunteers willing to do whatever was needed, to the tallest like Kevin Durant of the OKC Thunder, and the famous like Toby Keith.

Frugé Seafood’s Delancey Miller with Toby Keith helping with the relief effort in OKC.

By Patrick D. Bonin

BRANCH, LA. – Out at Frugé Aquafarms, we use a wide variety of transportation options to maintain and harvest our crawfish and rice crops.

On any given day, a multitude of work is accomplished by lots of different employees in pickup trucks, passenger cars, four-wheelers, 18-wheelers, tractors, refrigerated delivery trucks, combines, crawfish boats, pirogues, and even… an airplane!

An airplane? To help grow amazing mudbugs? Really?

Yep, but it’s not exactly our plane. It’s a crop duster, and it belongs to Richard’s Flying Service in Rayne, La. (But we do have a landing strip on site that the pilots use to land and take off to service our property, as well as the surrounding area.)

Mark Frugé, co-owner of Frugé Aquafarms with his brother Mike, explained how there came to be a landing strip located right on farm property.

“My dad had a crop dusting service in the early 70’s until the late 80’s,” he said. “After that we maintained the strip and then leased it to the current tenants.”

With thousands of acres to cover, aerial applications are a cost-effective, time-efficient way to do business here on the farm.

“We use the crop duster for chemical and fertilizer application for the rice crop, and fertilizer application on the rice stubble in the fall to benefit the crawfish crop,” he said.

Generally speaking, the crop duster sprays two applications of pesticide, herbicide or fungicide on the rice crop, depending on what individual fields need, as well as two or three applications of fertilizer. The mixture is applied based on 10-gallons of water volume per acre.

The rice is harvested in late summer, generating the necessary stubble that will feed the emerging crawfish later in the fall and provide for another bumper mudbug crop.

“Fertilizing the rice stubble maximizes the plant biomass and provides more food for the crawfish to eat during the growing season,” Mark explained.  “The more quality food available, the more the crawfish will grow.”

So the next time you sit down to an awesome crawfish etouffee, remember how important that crop duster is to our operation here on the farm.  Your fluffy rice and awesome mudbugs might not be the same without our pilots in the sky!

“This is a ‘make a day before’ recipe that is out of this world! Very rich and great for parties or get togethers as it makes a lot. Serve on crackers.” — KSHARP01

Recipe from allrecipes.com

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
2 pounds crawfish tails, with fat
4 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, room temperature
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (e.g. Tabasco™), or to taste
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, or to taste

Directions
1.    Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add half of the green onions, and cook until wilted. Add the crawfish tails, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.
2.    In a large bowl, stir together the cream cheese and mayonnaise until well blended. I like to use an electric mixer. Season with hot pepper sauce and Worcestershire sauce until the mixture is pink in color. When the crawfish have cooled slightly, stir them and the butter into the dip along with the rest of the green onion. Mix well, cover and refrigerate overnight to properly blend the flavors.

Planning Your Memorial Day Crawfish Boil
Memorial Day is just around the corner and the warm weather party season is officially in high gear. So to get things started off on the right note, why not throw a Memorial Day crawfish boil? After all, a crawfish boil is as American as hot dogs and burgers, only a lot more fun to eat!

Of course, if you have never hosted a crawfish boil then this may sound a bit intimidating. But what exactly is necessary to have a successful Memorial Day crawfish boil? So, glad you asked! Here are some tips for throwing the perfect crawfish boil – no matter where you live.

6 Tips for the Perfect Memorial Day Crawfish Boil
1. Order at least 3 pounds of live crawfish per person who will attend. (Rule of thumb for purchasing food for a Louisiana crawfish boil– 60 pounds of crawfish will feed 15 – 30 guests; 90 pounds should feed 25 -30 guests.)

2. A few days before your Memorial Day crawfish boil, check to see that you have paper products – don’t forget newspaper to line the serving table with, propane for the grill, a large pot (think big – perhaps grandma’s big stew pot!) and an equally large paddle with which to stir the pot. You will also want to order, or reserve the crawfish, so that on Memorial Day, you can just go pick up your crawfish. To keep it truly patriotic, you can even ask for some of the blue and white crawfish, too!

3. On the day before you do your shopping. Be sure to also pick up corn on the cob, potatoes and onions to toss in the boil along with your crawfish seasonings, plenty of beer and lots of ice! You may also want to include watermelon, as a dessert, as the sweetness of the melon is great foil to the spices and heat of the Louisiana crawfish boil seasoning.

4. When your guests begin to arrive for your Memorial Day crawfish boil, you will want to be ready to start cooking. Place that large pot on your bruner, fill it with your seasonings, and of course, a healthy amount of beer and add the potatoes first –these will take the longest time to cook! Now, when it comes to the perfect recipe for the proper Louisiana crawfish boil, there is a wealth of opinions, so be sure to check out our How To Boil Crawfish page to determine what appeals to you.

5. When the cooking is complete, drain the basket and pour down the center of a newspaper lined table or, you can put the food in several Styrofoam containers lined with foil. Then give out a holler, and let everyone know the Memorial Day crawfish boil is ready to devour.

6. Every good party needs some entertainment, so consider having live music or a DJ, plenty of games and places for mingling and dancing.
And there you have it – the steps to planning a perfect Memorial Day crawfish boil. So, whatcha waiting for? Get those invitations out and get ready to have a great Memorial Day crawfish boil!

You can order your live crawfish from us right now!

1 lb. alligator meat, cut into strips
All purpose flour
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup hot sauce
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 bottle of your favorite dressing for dipping

Lightly season gator fillets with salt and pepper. Roll in flour. Combine buttermilk and hot sauce together. Drop gator strips into the mixture. Remove and roll again in the flour. Place in deep fryer until golden brown (just a couple of minutes). Drain on paper towels. Serve with your choice of dressing. Ours it ranch.

By Patrick D. Bonin

BRANCH, LA. – The American alligator is the largest reptile in North America, and south Louisiana happens to be home to the greatest gator population in the United States.

Their wild population is booming here, and so is the alligator industry: recent estimates place its value at $50 million annually for Louisiana! And although over 300,000 alligators are harvested each year from both farm and wild sources, their population remains constant or slightly increasing, proving their worth as valuable renewable natural resources for the state.

Alligators are slightly less than a foot long when hatched from their eggs, and females will grow to approximately nine feet long and weight about 200 pounds. Males, on the other hand, can grow to 13 feet in length and reach more than 500 pounds!

The gators range from central Texas all the way to coastal North Carolina, with Louisiana’s estimated population at about 2 million. Here, they can be found in ponds, lakes, canals, bayou, rivers and swamps, with the highest population concentrations in coastal marshes.

The gators mate in spring, and females retreat to isolated ponds or interior marshy areas to select a nesting site. They build their nest by pulling vegetation together into a mound, two to four feet high and four to eight feet in diameter. After laying an average of 35 eggs, she covers the eggs with plant material from the nest. The decomposing plants provide heat for the eggs, and after about 65 days, young will hatch.

A unique characteristic of alligators is that sex determination is dependent upon incubation temperatures. More males are produced when eggs are incubated at 90 degrees and above, while more females hatch when eggs are incubated at 87 degrees and below.

The vast majority of alligators harvested in Louisiana come from “alligator ranches” located here. Louisiana started a program in 1986 which allows licensed alligator farmers to collect alligator eggs on private lands and hatch them under artificial conditions.

Typically, farmers raise alligators until they reach approximately 3’ to 5’ in length. But to participate in the program, farmers must agree to release back into the wild what would have typically survived to the 3’-5’ size class, usually about 12% of a hatch.

Releasing these mature gators back into the wild has several advantages, including better survival rates and consistent alligator production. (If predators or flooding would have destroyed a wild nest, no eggs would hatch and the population would not have had the chance to increase.)

Although just about all parts of the alligator are used, the meat and skin are the most valuable. Alligator skin is salted and then tanned, and used to make a wide variety of items including belts, boots, shoes, purses and more.

Alligator meat is a tasty treat, and can be prepared in a variety of ways. If you’d like to sample some awesome gator fillets, just click here.

Source: Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries

Read all about the Alligator that we found in our crawfish pond!

Order your Alligator fillets today

2 ducks (if you’re from Louisiana, freshly shot!)
1-1/2 cups chopped onion
1-1/2 cups chopped celery
1-1/2 cups chopped green bell pepper
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
1 jar of light Roux
2 lbs sliced okra
1 lb. peeled and deveined shrimp
1 lb. deer (or italian) sausage, cut into 1/2 inch slices
3 cups water
Seasoning to taste

Place the ducks in a slow cooker, fill with enough water to cover, and cook on Low until juices run clear, about 8 hours. Remove, reserving 3 cups of duck broth, and debone, discarding bones.
Place the water and 3 cups of duck broth into a slow cooker. Add the garlic, onion, celery, bell pepper, bay leaves, and roux. Cook on high until the mixture boils. Reduce heat, and stir in the duck meat, okra, shrimp, and sausage. Season to taste. Cook until thickened, about 30 minutes. Serve over rice.