While I love living in the Washington DC metro area, I miss Louisiana food. Ok, and my family too. (Hi sis!) Once a year, several Louisiana colleges and Universities get together for a huge crawfish boil, aka a Louisiana style picnic. This was our 10th year attending the alumni crawfish boil in DC!
No matter, what’s going on in our lives, my husband and I block out this one day because it’s like spending a few hours back in Louisiana. Southern hospitality just oozes from everyone, not to mention the southern accents. I mean southern.
We also see college friends that we only get to see a few times a year at the picnic. The kids love it too because they get run around the park with the other kids. Most of the playing involves asking the crawfish dudes for live crawfish and building habitats for them.
While there’s a zydeco band, the food and beer are the big attractions at the picnic. These huge pots are cooking jambalaya (from scratch). Not all the amount of delicious sausage in each pot.
It can’t be a crawfish boil without crawfish! Over 10,000 pounds of crawfish was trucked up from Louisiana. I know in Maryland they steam their seafood and coat everything with Old Bay seasoning.
In Louisiana, we heavily season our water with spices and throw in lemons, corn on the cob and red potatoes along with the crawfish. Everything is boiled until it soaks up all the spicy goodness!
Along with the crawfish, the organizes also brought 50 kegs of Abita beer, a brewery outside of New Orleans. My favorite is Abita Strawberry while my husband loves the Abita Purple Haze, made with raspberries. I can’t find the strawberry in the DC area, but Purple Haze is easier to find,
Dessert consisted of snowcones or as we call them, snoballs from local restaurant Bayou Bakery. These snoballs became my obsession with shaved ice last summer. New Orleans style means the snoballs were also topped with sweetened condensed milk after the flavoring is added, making for a creamy dessert.
I can’t wait to go back next year!
Bring a taste of Louisiana into your kitchen with my Shrimp Etouffee recipe.
I LOVE that pic of you and L at the top of the post! You look like you were having so much fun.