April 10 - 11, 2011 Marcia duz crayfish...

We backtrack a little, heading south-east to Abbeville, LA, recommended by the Cajun caravan. This, like Eunice and Mamou, is another small town we would have buzzed right through if we hadn’t had caravan contacts.

Cajuns improvise - in this case, a homemade 5th wheeler.

The Abbeville RV campground is very nice and casual – we can find no one to check with for an opening, so we simply find a vacant spot and set up; that evening a woman comes to our door and we pay our $20.

We drive to the central square, where a street fair is underway. The music is Cajun and the oaks are huge, altogether a pleasant half-hour, even with oak worms dropping on us.  Abbeville has history: a statue in the square honors the mam who died giving assistance to the scores killed by yellow fever here.  But today children are playing, couples are dancing, and everyone is having a good time.

For dinner we go to Richard’s Seafood Patio, pronounced with a French accent. This is a  wood and cinder-block nearly windowless buiding on a gravel and weedy parking lot. The caravan visited Richard’s to experience crayfish, and we are here separately for the same reason.

Inside the restaurant is lit by fluorescents and a few Budweiser and Coke signs. We take a seat where we can see the action, under a Budweiser sign that flickers on and off each time I accidentally bump the loose and dangerous looking electrical receptacle.

Faced with choosing between 3 or 5 pounds of crayfish, Marcia wisely goes for 3; the locals seem to favor the 5-pound size, served in great flat aluminum boiling pot.  I order 18 drunken shrimp, boiled in Budweiser. I also order a trip to the salad bar, which is roughly five feet wide and consists of lettuce, your choice of dressings, oddly sliced tomatoes, croutons, and baco-o-bits. It tastes fabulous – I guess I needed some greens.

Before...

...and after.

Casey, our server, shows Marcia how to shuck crawfish and mixes a dip from the many hot sauces on the table. I try a crayfish but I’m a little intimidated by the visible “vein” (do crayfish have colons?) and the strange dark stuff within the body cavity. Casey says she eats that stuff, no worry.  Marcia pronounces the crayfish good but they aren't worth the effort to me.

We know the crayfish are grown in the many rice fields in the area. I ask Casey if the Deep Horizon oil spill caused any problems with the shrimp but she isn’t certain. She leaves and returns, telling me that they had no problem with supply, but the price jumped. I enjoy my shrimp, dipped in Marcia’s hot-sauce.