A Crawfish Boil

Southern Louisiana is famous for Cajun culture, and one of the best parts of Cajun culture is Cajun cuisine.  Being from Georgia and not knowing how to seek out the best Cajun food in Baton Rouge, I was excited when it turned out Cajun food was coming to me.  The High Grove was going to have a crawfish boil.

The staff talked about having the crawfish brought in cooked, but instead they decided to cook them at the apartments!  This was great fun because we got to have a crawfish race, the staff pulling their favorite mud-bugs from the baskets of live crawfish.

I got to see the whole process from start to finish.  We had our crawfish boil by the pool, with the Mediterranean villa-style apartments around us, shielded from the sun by a thick layer of clouds.

They put the vegetables in the spicy stew and let it cook until everyone’s mouth was watering.  Then the crawfish went in…

And once the crawfish were boiled red, they added the white button mushrooms.

Then it was ready to serve up, and we gathered around tables with pails to dig in.  Jana, the fiery Cajun-Irish leasing agent (from a small town where Cajun is even more authentic) taught me to peel the shells off my dead bugs.  In doing so, I also broke the head, sending the juice splattering all over both of us.  Oops.  But she didn’t kill me.

What a fun opportunity, to gather outside for a Cajun cook-out.  It’s an experience I won’t get in a restaurant here.  And again, I feel lucky to be here, lucky to be able to hang out with the good people of Louisiana, and lucky our Cajun cuisine doesn’t include worse things than crawfish.

~ The Dauntless Princess ~