I'm down in Atlanta for a few weeks helping my parents clean out their house in preparation for their move to Beijing. After years and years of my dad threatening to relocate to no less than a dozen different places around the globe (including Taipei, Geneva, somewhere in France, Zambia, Johannesburg, South Africa, and also Birmingham, Alabama) for job-related reasons, my head started spinning and I stopped listening. Just call me when you're about to board that steamship and I'll show up on the boardwalk to wave goodbye, k?

So it has really, finally happened. It was bon voyage to dad on Monday, as he took of for his new life and new job in China. My mom is sticking around for another month or so to tie up loose ends before she joins him for their couple of years there. They've rented their house out to several friends of my high school friend, which I think is hilarious, all of my good furniture and books and piano and other possessions worth keeping were shipped to us in Boston several years ago, other large pieces of furniture have been sold or given away, the cars are sold...So all that's left to do is to throw out, pack up, store away 20 some-odd year's worth of clutter. As well as 20 some-odd year's worth of GRIME. The most aggressive kind of grime known to man. That part is making me cry. I now can blame my parents for me not being a neat freak. They are DIRTY PEOPLE.

Anyway, before my dad left we all took one last roadtrip to New Orleans, which is one of our most favoritist cities, so we could eat our most favorite critter, the crawfish.

Crawfish eaten daintily for breakfast. Yeah that's right! I had crawfish at 8 am!

Eating crawfish is probably as much an acquired taste as it is an acquired technique. They are boiled en masse in a vat of spices, to which some ears of corn and chunk of potatoes are also thrown in. To get to the sweet, spicy meat you break the body in half at the tail, suck out the head innards which has absorbed all the flavorings, and squeeze out the tail. It's not a lot of meat, so you have to go through at least 2 lbs of crawfish per person to be really satisfied.

Once you're had your fill, and if the spicing is done right, the outer rim of your lips will be swollen and chafed from the heat, your finger tips will be shriveled from the salt, your shirt will be splattered yellow with crawfish innards, and you'll be half-drunk from all the ice-cold beer you washed down. The whole process is filthy, disgusting and totally AWESOME.

I acquired my taste for crawfish during the several years we lived in Louisiana when I was around 10. Had I encountered my first crawfish plate at this time of my life, this post would be the topic of my Least Favorite Things. Because it really is just about the most unappetizing thing once you've gone through your however many pounds of crawfish, there are flies buzzing all around, and you're left with a heaping pile of exoskeletoned body parts.

Crawfish eaten not-so-daintily (or, the proper way)

It is utter crawfish carnage. Mmmmmm!!

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