On Crawfish....

Corp chat turned to food a few moments ago, specifically crawfish. Every time anyone discusses crawfish, I think of this real life experience & giggle, so I thought I'd share...

In the mid 80's, I was an internal auditor for a company that had sea port operations in New Orleans. Another internal auditor, Jim, & I went to visit the terminal and do a couple of days of routine reviews. Jim is a man of some size. At that time, 6'4" & about 265 lbs.

The terminal manager, being a good host, invited Jim & me to accompany him to his church parish's crawfish boil. Now I love crawfish, so I was in from the start. Jim had never eaten one before, but he was game, so off we go.

The crawfish boil was taking place on the grounds of a little country Catholic church outside of town. Huge cauldrons of crawfish, potatoes, sausage & corn on the cob were being tended to over open fires. Every now & then one of the cooks would dip a wire basket into the cauldron, carry the load of love to wooden planks set on top of 55 gal oil drums under the trees, walk down the plank spreading the contents in front of the eaters. Cold beer was on ice & Cajun music filled the air. It was like a movie set!

Jim & I took our place across the plank from 3 aged, Catholic nuns. Greetings were exchanged & everyone got down to the serious business of breaking down crawfish. Jim, being a rookie at this, was not very speedy in the whole "twist, pull, pinch, bite" approach of getting a crawfish tail consumed. In fact, he was struggling...

With out a word of consultation, the 3 nuns began to place peeled crawfish tails in front of Jim. They would each eat one, then shuck one & place in front of Jim.

Jim, wanting to acknowledge the grace gift of these 3 fine women, says "Ladies, thank you so much for your help!"

The smallest of the nuns, in the thickest Cajun accent you can imagine says "'Sha! You was goin' to starve plum to death trying to feed yo big ol' self and the Church would take a dim view of us if we allowed that to happen."

I was still laughing the next day... :)