About

About A Taste of Treats

Sometimes, the sweetest treasures come from the toughest transitions. And don’t we know it.

In our Louisiana family, pralines were always the treat of choice and our brother, Joseph Harris, would whip up a batch for most any occasion, or even for no occasion at all. When I relocated from New Orleans to Houston in 2005 due to hurricane Katrina, it seems I was always calling Joey to ask for a shipment of his pralines. He finally insisted I learn to make them myself and walked me through the recipe many times before I was sure that my pralines tasted like his pralines. Just one taste and I can feel New Orleans and my family around me, still.

Joey passed away suddenly in 2019, but his pralines lived on as a legacy of love. Then 2020 came and, like so many of us, we suffered what seemed like loss upon loss. Six members of our family died in early 2020, including our beloved mom, Mary Harris. Oh, how we miss her still.

By the middle of May things seemed to have settled some and we were all ready for a respite. On Memorial Day morning, my husband and I had our quiet time together before he left for work as a technician for a telecommunications company, eager to earn some extra cash on a holiday. A day off sure felt good to me.

Two hours later I received the call from the police. Darren had been found unconscious and not breathing at a customer’s home. I should meet him at the hospital. When I arrived, even though visitors were not allowed because of the pandemic, nurses ushered me in to Darren’s side, so sure were they that these were his last moments. Doctors put him on a ventilator and told me to say goodbye. “This will be the last time you see him,” they said. “Oh no it will not,” I countered.

The very next day, against all odds, Darren was off the ventilator and breathing on his own. Three days later he was discharged, having been treated for pneumonia. I had told Darren in the Emergency Room that we would get him to the other side of this, and we surely had.

The next day Darren started on a common antibiotic as a follow-up to the intravenous ones he had received in the hospital. He took one pill and immediately started losing his sight. And just like that we began our five-month journey of constant, never-ending, unrelenting hardship. We had more appointments with more varieties of doctors than I knew were possible. Darren couldn’t see so I needed to, and wanted to, be his eyes. When he wanted to move, I moved. When he wanted to read, I read. It was my joy to bolster my husband, but it still wasn’t easy to be all that he needed every moment of every day. The hardest part was watching his body wrestle with loss. Eventually I quit my job, a dream job that I cherished with my whole heart, to be with him. Doctors decided Darren had crossed a threshold of how much antibiotic his body would take and that had caused his blindness.

Just when we thought things couldn’t get more trying, Darren’s work decided that his situation did not qualify for their coverage, and we lost his income. Completely. We were without income, without work, and without sight, but we were not without hope. Our confidence in God carried us and gave us a place of rest and peace in Him.

Near the end of July Darren began experiencing glimpses of sight, very minor, but still a change for the good. Then, gradually, for reasons no one understood or understands still, his vision began to return. By October, he could see as well as, if not better than, he could see before his collapse. By November, Darren’s employer had reversed their decision and paid him both retroactively and forward through the end of 2020. In January 2021, he returned to work.

It turns out that Darren had not reacted to antibiotics, but had suffered a stroke behind his eye that went untreated. According to his neuro-ophthalmologist, he never should have lived through it and he certainly never should have regained his sight. But look at him today. Fully alive and fully sighted. The doctors actually documented “miracle” in his charts.

As for me, you might think I would have returned to my dream job. But instead, I turned to my family’s legacy of love, my brother Joey’s pralines, and started this company instead. We’re so proud and yet so humbled to share them with you. To wrap a hug around you and share a smile with you every time you taste one of these fine treats. To encourage you in your hardships and celebrate you in your victories. To mark a momentous occasion and say amen to simple, everyday pleasures. To let you taste for yourself that, sometimes, the sweetest treasures really do come from the toughest transitions.

And don’t we know it.

About Kerry Smith

On Kerry becoming Evangeline’s business partner

You may have noticed we like sweet things around here. And how Evangeline Williams and Kerry Smith became business partners at A Taste of Treats doesn’t disappoint. Their story is short and oh so sweet.

Evangeline and Kerry met when they were freshmen at Southern University and have been fast friends ever since. They’ve shared getting married, raising children, living in the same city, and living far apart. When Evangeline started A Taste of Treats, Kerry was her go-to person for advice. An experienced entrepreneur, Kerry always seemed to know just what Evangeline needed to hear.

When Kerry shared with Evangeline that it was in her heart to develop a business again, Evangeline was immediate in her response: Be my business partner. Kerry hesitated. “Let me pray about it,” she said. “No,” Evangeline countered. “You’ve been talking to me about this business, giving me tips, telling me everything to do. It just makes sense for you to be my business partner. We’ve been friends for more than 20 years, and I trust you.”

Actually, the friendship was Kerry’s hesitation. “We have such a great friendship, and I didn’t want to ruin it.” But Kerry did pray on it and talk it over with her husband. Two days later she became a partner in A Taste of Treats.

It turns out, the friendship is the best part. “You don’t have to read between the lines because you know that person so well,” Kerry said. “And we’re both women of faith and if there's an impasse with something we stop we pray about it.”

Kerry said her favorite thing about A Taste of Treats is the product itself. Having grown up in New Orleans, Kerry said she has “tasted pralines all my life, and this product tastes better than all of them. I really do love our pralines and I really do enjoy eating them.”

See, we told you it’s sweet. But most things here are.