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French chickens and fancy hens

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By Addie Broyles | Wednesday, July 9, 2008, 01:46 PM

I had so much fun working on this week’s stories about French fowl and rabbit farmer and chef Sebastien Bonneu and the Cola Sisters, the hosts of the public access show “Cookin’ Good.” Great subjects with interesting stories to tell. Every food writers’ — well, at least this food writer’s — dream.

Sebastien and his wife Esther and daughter Margaux are fixtures of the Austin Farmers’ Market scene, working hard to sell the best chicken, duck, rabbit, pig, etc. they can. They are up early, and Sebastien often works late into the night (or even into the morning) to finish processing animals to fill orders. He’s a funny guy with a great attitude about the nature of his job. (And I want to start a trilingual playgroup led by Esther. Margaux is well on her way to speaking English, French and Spanish fluently and she’s two-and-a-half.)

They raise some tasty chickens, too! We had a couple of birds a week or so ago — cut into pieces and grilled — that made me remember what chicken is supposed to taste like. Certainly makes chicken sold on Styrofoam and wrapped in plastic a little less appealing.

He’ll be at the Triangle tonight selling his goods if you want to try them yourself.

Arcie and Shasta Cola are fixtures on the local public access channel; their cooking show has been running for four years and at the end of each one, they leave a phone number for people to call and leave messages.

I got to listen in on some of them during a taping of a show last weekend, and let me tell you, they have some crazy fans, some of whom leave 5-minute messages professing their Cola love. (If you’ve never seen the show, it’s hard to grasp exactly why they have such a following, but you can get a glimpse of their style in this Austin360.com video.)

Someone made a full-color comic book based on them, they sold a guest spot on their show for charity recently for $100 and Arcie even was offered a ride from some fans who recognized her in public last week. All from a cooking show that would make your grandma blush. These are my kind of gals, even though I don’t think I could ever pull off the outfits.

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