Confessions of a Non-Seafood Eating Cajun

I hate seafood! There, I've said it. I don't like the taste, texture, or smell of seafood. It makes my stomach turn. The only seafood I can mange to eat, without my gag reflex kicking in, is tuna fish, fried catfish and alligator. After all, alligator does taste like chicken, and I'm not sure if it's actually considered seafood. I'm sure my fellow Cajuns are shaking their heads sadly, but it's the truth.

I REALLY hate crawfish season. The list of restaurants I frequent dwindles down to the ones that do not serve boiled crawfish. In this neck of the woods, that's not many. If I walk into a eatery and I smell crawfish, I turn around and walk out. Ask my poor crawfish eating children. They have to eat crawfish with their friends.

As you can imagine, I'm not high on the list of who to invite to a crawfish boil either. I can remember when we'd have crawfish boils when I was growing up. They were fun, except for the smell. It's like a party, lots of people, music. I'd stick to eating the boiled corn on the cob and potatoes. Everyone would always try to get me to eat crawfish. "Just try it." Sigh. They still do that. I think after almost 40 years of not liking crawfish, they'd give up. But then, stranger things have happened.

Obviously, I am a minority in my dislike of crawfish since many of the local farmers have decided to add crawfish to their crops. I say this not because of some statistic I've read, but because of the growing number of crawfish fields I see everyday while driving around where I live.

For those of you who may not know, crawfish can be farmed. Fields that are normally used for growing rice are flooded and traps are set. This is not a hardship since most farmers have irrigation systems in place. Louisiana rice fields are an ideal place to grow crawfish since they feed off of insects, plants, small fish and algae that grow in warm shallow water. If the temperature rises too much, the crawfish will dig down into the mud to stay cool. This is why crawfish are sometimes reffered to as mudbugs.

The traps are checked by hand. Most farmers use boats like the one seen here. The wheel attatched to the front helps pull the boat through the shallow water and over the levees. The live crawfish are then put in mesh sacks to be sold by the pound.

 While I may not enjoy eating them, I admire how much the industry has grown. I don't forsee the demand for crawfish deminishing, only growing. That has to be a comfort to the local farmers.