Crawfish

It's all about these little fellas this time of year in H-Town. Mudbugs, Crayfish, Crawdads, Yabbies, Crawfish. Whatever you want to call them. Crawfish is on restaurant menus. Crawfish boils abound. And of course there is the annual Crawfish Festival. It means that Spring is here!

Parker has been so excited to get some crawfish this year. He has been cracking us up. On Saturday we went to a huge crawfish boil. They have been having this crawfish boil for the last 10 years and every year it has grown until this year they were boiling around 1000 pounds of crawfish and were expecting around 300 people. They sell t-shirts which help finance it a bit. And this year they had a great Zydeco band as well - which is synonymous with crawfish in my mind.

Below the kids are playing with the crawfish before they go to their doom. They are kept alive in a big black plastic pool of muddy water until they are scooped up and dropped in a boiling pot. Poor little guys. :(

Below is a pic of Robert's sister Dorri and her darling little girl Presley. They have on their t-shirts from the boil. :)

Both Demi & Parker loved crawfish. They got the hang of eating it pretty quick, although Robert, Kelsey and I had to throw them a bite every minute or so or they would get frustrated and hungry. :) You definitely have to work for your food when you eat crawfish!

Here are a few interesting crawfish facts:

- Louisiana supplies 98% of the crayfish harvested in the United States.
- In 1987, Louisiana produced 90% of the crawfish in the world and 70% was consumed locally.
- 70-80% of crawfish produced in Louisiana are red swamp crawfish with the remaining 20-30% being white river crawfish.
- Louisiana crawfish are usually boiled live in a large pot with heavy seasoning (salt, cayenne pepper, lemon, garlic, bay leaves, etc.) and other items such as potatoes, corn on the cob, onions and garlic.