Saturday

Master got a call from a friend of his Saturday morning. Cathy had plans to go to a crawfish boil and needed to borrow his truck. Since this was a good opprotunity to introduce shayla to crawfish, he gave her a ride, since an offer for the return trip was made by another friend of hers. After leaving shayla with instructions on how much water to start heating and what seasonings to put into it in the unlikely even it'd be boiling before he got back, he left, telling her, 'I'll be back in a little bit.'

A little over three hours later, he comes back with one empty cooler, slightly aggrivated. He returned to the truck for a moment, returning with the cooler of crawfish in tow, and set it by the door. It was a little unsettling, seeing all those crawfish writhing around in the black water. The 'little bit' had been greatly increased by various stops that needed to be made, the longer than expected drive to the boil, and the unexpected complication of the tailgate failing to latch properly when Master picked up the crawfish. A few minutes and a 90-degree turn around a corner later, he heard one cooler slide out and hit the pavement. He didn't tell shayla how long he'd spent crawfish-gathering there by the road, but she can imagine that it was a while. The carnage must have been quite a sight.

Master'd gotten a bag of crawfish to bring home. To an ignorant Yankee like shayla that meant one bag. Incorrect. A 'bag', Master told her, is 30 pounds of crawfish. Yikes. Apparently crawfish boils are outside events, with the water heated over propane heaters. But since this was an un-planned occasion, we improvised with a large pot of boiling water. Master mentioned that the water in the cooler had been clean when he'd put it in. It turns out that crawfish need to be 'purged' before cooking. Cover them with water, pour a large container of salt in (yes, the whole thing, she was told), and wait while the crawfish react to the sudden nausea and indigestion caused by the salt. Once the water was boiling Master collected them one pot at a time, rinsing them in the sink before dumping them into the water.

That's when things got interesting, learning how to twist off the tail, remove the first two sections of shell, pinch the end while you pull the meat out. Messy, time-consuming, generating a lot of trash, as only the tails and claws were saved. The crawfish fat is saved right along with the tails. Thick, yellowish, at first shayla thought it was something inedible until Master told her what it was. But it was fun.

During a lull in things Master decided to appease the cats' curiosity. The pair of outside cats had been nosing around the cooler since it appeared, so Master pulled one crawfish out and set it on the porch. Shayla wasn't sure which animal was in more danger, the cats or the crawfish. Master'd warned her that the crawfish could and would draw blood if they pinched just right with those claws, and the cats aren't even a year old yet. The cats batted it with their paws, licking at its antennae, while the crawfish held up its claws and backed away from one cat only to bump into another. The cats didn't get pinched, and the crawfish wasn't enough, or too much, for them to decide to try to eat. After a couple minutes Master picked it up to go into the next batch.

As Master was preparing the last group, he asked shayla to pick the crawfish that would be granted a repreive. This isn't a Southern thang, this is a Master Marcus thing. He always holds back one crawfish to be released. There was one that seemed resigned to his fate, having been taking a good long look at his fellows in the sink next to him, so shayla picked it out, putting it into a bowl of water on the counter while the rest were cooked. After that last batch was done and in the sink, shayla took Barabas (named after the criminal that was given a repreive to give room for Jesus to be crucified) out for a walk to the drainage ditch near the road. After being tossed in, Barabas flipped himself right-side up, sat there for a moment to evaluate the situation, and began digging, much more rapidly than shayla would have anticipated. Though, if she had been one minute away from being tossed into a pot of boiling water, she'd dig for cover really quick too.

The remainder of the crawfish were peeled and clawed, resulting in two large bowls of a delicacy that shayla had no idea how to prepare or use. Master's planning on showing her how to cook the various recipes that use crawfish, as well as some that he's likely to think up on the fly. By now it was rather late, and Master had get ready to go to work, so there was some time while shayla massaged him and got him something to eat. While Master was at work, shayla got busy cleaning the fiasco that had become of the kitchen and tending to some chores.. It took a while, but it was still fun. Quite the unexpected learning experience.

shayla