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One entire wall of Bellue’s on Jefferson Highway in Baton Rouge is dedicated to freezer space. Why? Because owner Wirt Bellue is like a persnickety little squirrel who has stocked up more specialty meats, birds-stuffed-with-other-birds, and bags of homemade etouffees and sauce piquante than you can shake a stick at. The other thing he has is real beef jerky. So, with a serious jones for the dried stuff (it had nothing to do with being pregnant) I made my inaugural visit to Bellue’s new location last week.

Real beef jerky does not grow on trees, so it’s a big kick to unearth it. It’s a bigger kick to drive down one of BR’s toitier roads gnawing on it like a German Shepherd. Talk about stares. The best beef jerky I’ve ever sampled is from a tiny 100-year-old haunt somewhere beyond Thibodaux called Bourgeois’s Meat Market. But Bellue's runs a close second. Nose-watering-spicy, Wirt Bellue's flat vacuum sealed packages of jerky are smoked up and authentic.

In other food adventures, I finally made it to Bourque’s Supermarket, fifty miles north in Port Barre. Famous for jalapeno sausage bread, Bourque’s had been in the back of my mind every time we made the dreadful and dull journey to visit family in Alexandria. This time, we stopped.

Bourque’s is an ancient multi-purpose grocery replete with hardware, foodstuffs, plate lunches and rusty, quarter-operated rides for children. Fresh loaves of the famous bread and Bourque’s other noteworthies like bread pudding are available daily. I thought the store was a super, quirky diversion, but the bread, which I’d envisioned being like the stuffed crawfish bread at Jazzfest, was only so-so. The pull-apart loaf was studded throughout with awfully tiny pieces of ground sausage, a handful of jalapenos and melted shredded cheddar. I never managed to get a satisfying hunk of any of the three flavors.

Eat on.