Well, the plan was to do a pretty big (but no where nearly as glutinous as what my friends had performed a couple months back) crawfish boil yesterday in celebration of my friend David's birthday. And after making what seemed like the safer bet: having the good, local seafood place order the live mudbugs for pick-up as opposed to having them shipped to me directly from New Orleans on dry ice -- I was rather saddened and disappointed when I received bad news from the seafood place: the 30 pounds of crawdadas were D.O.A.

So, we had to change the plan: it became a shrimp boil (8 pounds of pretty brown shrimp) with a few dozen oysters tossed in to sweeten the deal. But at least this was lucky: went to the same seafood place for the substitutes and ordered the shrimp (a bigger order than what was up front) and requested the oysters. They had about 8 different varieties (a few each from both coasts) and when asked which I wanted I told the guy serving me to give me a good variety. He told me he would pick out the best ones for me and it was then that I quipped, "well, good- you owe me a favor after my crawfish debacle."

The counter guy turns around and says, "that was you?" Luck was shining on me in that the guy who I had spoken to turned out to be the same guy who was helping me in person. He was very apologetic and seemed near as sad as I that the planned crawfish-boil wasn't going to happen. Additionally, he took 20% off our total which was pretty cool of him. The shrimp were fantastic and the oysters divine and buttery so I will give props here to Coastal Seafood and will return for the next crawdad-deserving bash and for Dungeness crabs come November.

I also picked up an oyster knife there and I shucked the first dozen oysters. I caught the most uneven of the mollusks but kind of got it down (first time I have shucked oysters properly) and the 2 friends who did the other 2 dozen had easier, more uniform ones to shuck and did an even better job that me.

Breaking in Paul's new stand-up, pretty intense double-burner outside cook stove (one 60K BTU burner, the other still a mighty 30K) the shrimp were boiled in a good heaping amount of Bay seasoning (I kept adding more for each round of shrimp; I lost count, but I would guess 5-6 rounds as I didn't have the biggest pot to cook in), some really fragrant and bright green young celery (leaves and all), a lemon or two halved and squeezed and some white vinegar which makes it easier to peel the shrimp when they're done.

The veggie pot also contained the Bay seasoning, but less early in the day, more as I was feeding only adults and not kid-palettes. Into the other (too-small) pot when about 3 dozen ears of fresh sweet corn, a nice mix of both new & pink potatoes and some more of the young celery. Toward the end of the night and after I had probably spent too much time in front of the dual burners, I forgot about the pot of simmering corn until it was too late. All the water had boiled away, the corn was starting to join the pot in being burned when I found them and rescued the ears. Now, the pot is going to take some work to salvage: it's a very nice All-Clad and it is now very burned on the bottom, but the corn? Amazing deliciously spicy! All the seasoning and everything else that had gone into pot #2 over the course of the day had reduced into something of a mole. The corn was great and I hope I remember it well as I am using up a day's worth of elbow-grease restoring the pot to its previous condition.


I've actually only caught highlights of the last 2 Yankee games and what I've read in the NY Papers. The salient stuff we missed? CC got rocked by the Rays on Friday night, but again like Mo, that is just a "blip" -- it's the new Yankee buzzword for the week. But Hughes righted the ship with 6 solid innings toward a 9-2 victory yesterday- the star of the show though was the previously-benched Jorge Posada who made a big show of it with 3 hits, 6 rbi's including a game-opening grand slam.

Girardi caught a little bit of a break with his decision-making progress in regard to re-reducing the 6-man starting rotation to a proper 5-man: although I think AJ Burnett has earned a demotion out of that starting core, apparently Freddy Garcia cut his finger in a kitchen mishap and will miss at least 1 start. AJ got spared; let's see if he, like Jorge, can shine when given an opportunity to redeem himself and perhaps his season.

Today's series finale vs the Rays was washed out so I can go to an art & music fair (Slim Dunlap, guitarist #2 from The Replacements is playing on his 60th birthday) with a clearer conscience.

Cheers,
Brian