Thursday, March 27, 2014
By Kaylen Fletcher
We have food seasons and my favorite happens to be CRAWFISH SEASON!
www.lindseyjanies.com
I was born and raised in Southwest Louisiana and can honestly say my favorite time of year is between January and June. Why, you may ask? Louisianans like to joke that we don’t have weather seasons; we have food seasons and my favorite happens to be CRAWFISH SEASON!
Not only do I love the taste of boiled crawfish, but just like food is a part of the Louisiana culture, crawfish brings me back home to a long-standing family tradition.  Ever since I can remember, I've eaten crawfish with my dad and sister. Every year for Easter Sunday we’d invite the family over and have a huge crawfish boil outside and play horseshoes. By the age of 13 I learned how to peel crawfish extremely fast because I realized we had only purchased a certain amount of crawfish to share between my dad and sister.  If I didn’t peel fast, I didn’t get as much as I wanted. By high school I could eat 7 pounds of crawfish by myself in less than an hour. I know this because my dad, sister and I would have competitions on who could peel the fastest and eat the most.
As we got older, we realized it was getting expensive to just buy by the pound so we would plan ahead the beginning of every season and research which restaurants had the all-you-can-eat buffets because it was cheaper for us to eat. We would then typically rotate between the local casinos to taste-test who seasoned the best. To this day, my family and I still get together every year for Easter Sunday and have a huge crawfish boil, and my dad still calls my sister and I every other week and says it’s time for father/daughter bonding and we always know what he means.
If you’re traveling to Lake Charles, don’t miss out on the Downtown Lake Charles Crawfish Festival April 11-13 where Steamboat Bill’s on the Lake will be on site selling over 10,000 pounds of boiled crawfish.

Festival attendees enjoyed the music and food
at the Downtown Lake Charles Crawfish Festival.
Photo by www.lindseyjanies.com
In Southwest Louisiana, you can also feast on crawfish at many of the Cajun restaurants and we even have drive thru crawfish huts where you can purchase live or boiled crawfish.
If you want to learn how to peel like a pro before you feast on some delicious boiled crawfish, check out the video tutorial below and then maybe I’ll have some competition!

1 comments:

Unknown said...

I've recently discovered a nice little hole in the wall in Arlington, TX called Cajun Kitchen - not entirely Cajun, they have Chinese and other stuff on the menu too. About a year ago I tried Boiled Crawfish there for the first time and then would mostly stick with appetizers on return trips. Yesterday got another pound, this time spicy not and I liked them much better - I've seen reviews online where people mention their hot sauce they boil em in - I'd like to know what all they use, great flavor.