sarah
And so am I. I shall repost what I sent to rec.food.cooking last week for the benefit of those who don't read there:
Little known fact - the American crawfish (you know, those mudbugs that infest the bayous) have somehow escaped into the English countryside and adapted... possibly through escaped aquaria collections.
They are not only adapting but eating all our smaller native crawfish (crayfish here) species. If you catch one of these big red monsters, you are not legally allowed to throw it back.
So a few weeks ago, a friend turned up at my door with a dozen live US-species UK-adapted crawfish, as a gift... caught in a Surrey pond.
Result.... I had 12 mini-lobsters in my shower cubicle for a few days as I didn't have anywhere else to put them. Every time someone visited the bathroom to relieve themselves, these thing would wake up and start skittering around in there going "clack clack clack clack"... Those big snapping claws gave one of my male friends quite a fright and connected directly to an archetypal castration complex.
It was several days before I could pluck up the courage to liquidate them by throwing them into boiling water, even though my trips to N'awlins have taught me that they are better tasting than prawns-shrimp.
My neighbour plied me with several bottles of South African white, and finally, at about 3.30 am, I found the right time to cook them.
If someone could work out how to farm them here, I think they'd catch on, but I'd probably be beheaded by AR activists before they'd had chance to realise cold English mud is just as good as warm Louisianan.....
At least my male friend can now pee in comfort when he visits.
Sue Portsmouth, UK -- pen-drake location ntl-world-.-com minus hyphens.
