Backyard crawfish boil

This was from a couple of months ago and I guess I forgot to post it.

Anyway, near the end of March, our neighbors invited us to a backyard crawfish boil at their house. Our neighbor has a coworker/friend that is from Lafayette (I think), Louisiana and she was talking about crawfish to him one day. A couple of days later they decided to put the talk into action.

They didn't have time or the open wallet to start with fresh, live crawfish but they didn't get some freshly frozen ones. They weren't completely finished when we headed down the block to attend but the smell was very appealing. I wasn't too interested in eating crawfish and luckily I had basically just eaten so I had a decent excuse to refrain if I had to. As you can see, the neighbor's friend did a great job with the ingredients and all. I mean corn, carrots, potatoes and she even had sausage.

For those inexperienced, she had everyone grab a crawfish and she stepped us all through the technique. I partook in the training although I've had it many times before when I was younger. That way at least I didn't seem like an ass for not doing ANYTHING. All in all it was good times, good fun, good food and good music with some dancing thrown in later in the evening.

As a kid, my brothers and I used to ride our bikes to the local high school. It was about a 10-minute ride from our house. We would take some kite string, bacon and/or bologna, a net and a minnow-type bucket. The high school is where we went to catch crawdads (or crawfish to others).

No, there wasn't a pond or anything like that. So, where did we "fish" for crawdads? In front of the high school there was a U.S. highway. At the time it was a two-lane thoroughfare (it is now like six lanes with a center turn lane) and on each side of it there were what is commonly called ditches. Yep, those kind of ditches...the kind that catches water runoff from the road, parking lot of the high school, or just the very small greenbelts between the parking lot and highway. It sounds gross now but at the time that's just what we did as boys, a lot of the neighborhood kids did. It was amazingly a hot bed for crawdads of all sizes. Some would be like 1-2 inches where others could be like 4-6 inches. We captured whatever we could. Most of the time it was for enjoyment and passing the time but occasionally we did bring them home to boil and eat.

I know many people are grossing out and/or laughing. I have the same reaction now that I look back upon those great times as a kid. But you know what, those things tasted just the same (excluding the different spices used) as the one(s) we had this night at the neighbors. Again, I only recall doing it maybe three times max but I do recall the taste and texture now as then. My mom and a couple of brothers would do the brain-sucking thing but I didn't always. In fact, I can probably count on one hand how many times I partook in the brain-sucking. It was just gross to see the orangy, slimy guts that were inside the head. For some reason that I don't know and will probably not take the time to investigate fully, the head area of the crawfish/dad didn't cook like the lower body and tail. Granted there is more meat and muscle I guess in the lower portion but I just think that if the human brain was boiled long enough, it would harden or cook more like chicken/steak meat but the crawfish brains never did/do...at least in all the times I've had them.

Anyway, before I get too much more long-winded, I'll just say that this recent experience was a fun one and the people were great to spend the evening with. The neighborhood has really started to shape up and become more neighborly since the time we moved into it. Not that we were the cause of it, but there weren't so many kids around and the tenants weren't so friendly/neighborly (some still aren't but they are the rarity).

I'm gone!