We had some out of state visitors here as instructors for a medical simulation training workshop. Two were from Oregon and the other from Ohio. None of these folks had ever seen a crawfish much less eaten one!
Dinner plans were set to meet at one of our favorite joints appropriately called "Mudbugs". Once all had arrived, the order was placed, including the mudbugs, but also taters, corn, mushrooms and sausage. The beverage of choice was of course draft beer!
The funniest sight was a young lady at the table next to us. She was enjoying a plate of shrimp, that most likely had been dipped into the same pot of seasoning. The funny part was that she was wearing food service gloves! I couldn't pass up an opportunity like this! While ragging her about the gloves (all in fun), she fired back "hey! The seasoning is too hot for my fingers and in just had a manicure!"
We were well into our beer when our order arrived. We gave our guests the "the how to and why talk" reminding them about the pepper. My burn rule for eating mudbugs 101 is that your fingers and lips are gonna burn, but once you have reached a certain level of numbness, it's time to go for broke!
Their first taste was the mushrooms, and we got a big whoa! Outta that! Then the tail popping lessons began. All three of our guests passed the head sucking contest with flying colors. A few crawfish were sacrificed up front on learning the art of tail popping, then they all were elbow deep into the bugs!
They loved everything about this experience. They could not believe how fast the service was. That led into the discussion of the art of cooking bugs, dumping them into big coolers and serving them up by the pound. One noted that "he didn't think the average tourist could find a place like this!" I replied that he was right, unless they "Google mapped" crawfish!
Lots of pictures were snapped and we're immediately shared with their friends and families by way of test message and FB. The rest of the evening we had the background buzz of the jealous reply messages coming back to their phones!
Two of the workers walked by toting a 55 gallon garbage can full of tonight's bucket trash. I relayed the story about our neighborhood crawfish boils of years past. We would cook, usually on Friday night. The garbage pickup wasn't till Tuesday. You knew it was going to be bad for the trash guys on Tuesday when you could smell it on Monday and our house was four doors down!
The meal was done, and our dinner engagement was a success. One noted that there weren't any mosquitos. I said "of course not, would you want to suck the blood of somebody full of cayenne pepper!" Our guests returned to their hotel rooms to prepare for the next day's lesson plan.
One can only wonder what happened during the night, with all the cayenne pepper floating around!
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