The third annual crawfish boil happened a few weeks later than usual this year, and I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of it. At least, this year felt completely organized and relaxed from beginning to end. The seasonings... well... let's just say that switching vendors every year and getting a different boil every year makes it hard to know what to do.
I'm putting some notes here so that way I'll know exactly where to look next year when I'm figuring things out all over again:
* After adding the crawfish, bring it back to a boil, boil 3-5 minutes, then take the pot off the heat and let it poach for 10-20 minutes. (It's cooked in about 10, but I need to work out the timing to get the seasoning right.)
* If using LA Crawfish boil, use at least two pounds to 7 gallons of water. Or maybe just spike it (hard) with some cayenne and salt.
* The 40-quart pot takes about 40 minutes to hit a hard rolling boil.
* I added 4 lemons and two heads of garlic to the 40-quart pot, but didn't taste the citrus at all in the end.
* Next year's extras (trying to hone in on the right quantites): 2 pounds shrimp, 3 kielbasa ropes, 5 pounds potato, 2 pounds mushroom, 1 package frozen corn (12 half-cobs).
* 2.5 hours from lighting the burner to start of eating is enough time with a small cushion.
This year, there was a survivor of the crawfish massacre. One of the bugs was sufficiently still in the final run to be overlooked and left for dead. Later, when returning to the kiddie pool during clean-up, there he was, with claws raised as if to announce his victory. After some consideration, I've decided that I will try to keep him alive for a while as a pet. I'm not going all out on this, so right now he's sitting in a plastic kitchen container full of water, and I put a small piece of leftover shrimp in there for him to eat. Crawfish are scavengers, so this seems to be not unreasonable. I'm not sure if I'm going to do anything to enhance his living conditions, like buying some fish gravel or something like that because I don't expect him to live long. But he outlived all of his friends, so maybe that's saying something. (Officially, he has no name because naming things you would potentially eat is a bad idea, but if I were to name him I would name him "Mr. Pinchy.")
Also, after everyone left, I still had about 5 pounds of cooked crawfish left to be harvested for tail meat. But I felt really wasteful just throwing the heads away, so I ended up standing over the kitchen sink for 20 minutes sucking the heads of 5 pounds of crawfish, after having grazed on a significant quantity of food over the rest of the day. I don't know if that was a good decision or a bad decision, but I do know that it was a tasty one. I haven't decided yet what I want to do with the tails, but I'm thinking either a cornbread or an etouffee. I'm doubtful that there's enough for both, but one can always hope.
But enough about the cousin of the cockroach. I've been working surprisingly long hours in the last week. It seems that I'm putting in more hours while I'm off compared to when I'm on. Part of it is my tenure application, which is coming along smoothly (if not a little slowly). Another thing is that video editing is a slower process than I thought it would be. These 5-10 minute pre-lecture videos feel like they just chew up time. I spend about 15-20 minutes making the original recording (because I have to repeat myself a few times before I feel like I say it right), and then I have to go back and edit out the stuff I didn't like. Fortunately, Camtasia is easy to work with, and it's going okay.
I can't really think of much else going on. I might be heading out to Southern California for a weekend soon, and I still don't know whether I'll be able to make a San Diego run before the Catalina Island conference/retreat.
