Sunday, March 15, 2009

Mud Bugs!

I am a very UN-picky eater. I was raised to eat whatever was put down on my plate. I don't think either of my parents are picky eaters. In fact I don't ever recall them ordering anything special.

Growing up in the south I eat some food that Kelli has never heard of....or seen. I grew up eating chitterlings, pigs feet, collard greens, and the very tasty crawfish (aka mud bugs).

img_0779.jpgSwimming around in the sink awaiting the pot



Every year (contrary to Kellis' spotty memory) I have cooked/eaten crawfish. I only cook them if I can buy them live. Frozen/precooked (cold) crawfish aren't my thing. Some years I can't find them live or don't have time and I will buy them freshly boiled at a restaurant.

Kelli doesn't really do seafood. She didn't care for me "killing" animals in her kitchen today (even though she literally never cooks...so it's not really HER kitchen).

Finding live crawfish isn't easy around here. I used to go to the Chinatown area of Arlington to buy them. They charged more than I liked ($3.99 a pound!) but they were large. This year and a few times in the past I shopped at Fiesta Mart. Fiesta Mart is a Hispanic targeted grocery store. I first learned about them when I lived in Houston. They are huge there. Fiesta Mart's in Houston are like a Wal-Mart on steroids. You can do more in a Fiesta than you could ever thing of doing in a Wal-Mart. The seafood section is crazy. They have several tanks of live seafood. Very fresh.

The crawfish at Fiesta were labeled "medium" and were $2.99 a pound this year. I bought 3 pounds. They were more small than medium....but I thought it would be okay.

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From the sink


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To my plate!



Once I got them home I cleaned them (soaking them in water and changing it out a few times to get rid of the dirt) and then boiled them up. Apparently I cooked them a little bit too long as the tail meat in some of the smaller ones was hard to impossible to get out. I enjoyed them though and might buy more.

Maybe I will make some chitterlings. For those that don't know...chitterlings are pig intestines.

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