A New Job

On June 13th I found out that the Albertsons pharmacy that I had been working at was going to permanently close "on or before June 23, 2006." I had only 3 days to decide if I wanted to stay with Albertsons as a relief pharmacist or take the severance package and find a new job. I had to let my district manager know if I wanted to stay with the company be June 19th.

It was a fairly easy decision to leave. I had not been happy with the company. Over the course of 1 year my check had been wrong 10 times, and I don't think the company is going to be around much longer any way. I didn't even want to contribute to their 401K plan because I felt that I'd be throwing money down the toilet be purchasing Albertsons stock! I contacted several of the large chain pharmacies, and the day after I heard the news, I had an interview with Walgreens. I was offered a job on the spot as a floater with no weekends. . .and I was offered $3/hr more than what I had been making. That was too good to pass up.

The Albertsons pharmacy closed on June 20th. Monday was my first day with Walgreens, and things are going very smoothly so far. This has turned out to be a real blessing. We had been praying for several months for a job situation for me that would allow me to go to church more often, and we're going to be able to use some of the money from the severance package to pay off some student loan debt. God is so good.

Our 5th anniversary

Yesterday was our 5th anniversary. We exchanged gifts and then we went out to eat in New Orleans at Antoine's. http://www.antoines.com/ I had been wanting to go there for a long time, but James never have nice enough clothes with him when we were in town. The restaraunt has been around since 1840, and it was the first restaurant to serve Oysters Rockefeller, Crawfish Etouffee, and Shrimp Remoulade. The service was outstanding and the food was wonderful. The whole menu was ala carte, so you ordered your entree, salad, and side items separately. James had the rack of lamb and I had their filet minion. We shared an order of Pommes de terre soufflées (fried puffed potatoes) They were so good. We shared the Baked Alaska for dessert, which was a layered dish of ice cream, whipped cream, and cake.


I gave James a signed photo of Stan Musial - he played for the Cardnials in the 1940-60's. James is a Cardnial's fan. We've been to St. Louis twice for ballgames. He really was surprised about his present. I found the picture at an antique shop in Denham Springs, LA. We also bought a new buffet for our dining droom there. The traditional gift for 5th anniversary is wood, so that counts.




I had no idea what he had gotten for me. He surprised me with Adobe Photoshop elements. I had asked for it at Christmas, but our OS on our old computer was too dated to run it. I'm going to love it!

How to have a successful crawfish boil

We just hosted our first crawfish boil and I'm happy to say it was a great success.

I didn't know much about boiling crawfish two months ago, but after helping out at a boil and being very inquisitive, I was able to learn a lot. I present to you, the reader, my observations.

How to boil a 30 to 40 lb bag of crawfish (aka, boiled crawfish recipe)

Prep time: 30 min.; Cook Time: 1 hour; Servings: 8 - 10



This is slightly modified from a recipe I got from Janet Simmons of Baton Rouge, LA.

Ingredients:
30 to 40 lb. bag of live crawfish
1 to 2 lb sausage
6 ears of corn
1 medium bag of new red potatoes
½ lb fresh mushrooms
4.5 lbs Zatarain’s dry crab boil (1 large jar)
2 containers salt, 1 lb. 10 oz. each (plus 1 cup for purging)
¼ cup cayenne pepper (for more spicy crawfish, use ½ cup)
½ cup garlic powder
1 cup minced garlic (not dry)
2 cup lemon juice
2 whole bunches celery
½ gallon Zatarain’s liquid crab boil concentrate (in South Louisiana, you can get this in gallon jugs)
5 lemons

Other stuff you’ll need:
80 quart or larger stock pot and basket with burner and propane tank (I have the Bayou Classic 80 Quart Aluminum Stock Pot.)
Large ice chest or plastic bin for purging
Wooden paddle or 1x4 for stirring
Large scoop for serving
Beer trays for serving


Preparation (can be done a few hours before cooking):
Cut up the sausage up however you desire. Cut each ear of corn in half with a sharp knife. Wash mushrooms and cut off ends. Quarter lemons. Cut ends off of celery bunches. Mix together dry ingredients (dry crab boil, salt, cayenne, and garlic powder) in very large bowl. Put sausage, corn, potatoes, and mushrooms in another large bowl. Alternatively, the vegetables (minus the celery) can be tied up and boiled in pantyhose to keep them together.

Fill stock pot a little more than half full with water and heat to boiling on propane burner. This should take about 20 minutes.

While the water’s heating up, purge the crawfish. To purge, open the bag and dump live crawfish into ice chest or large plastic bin and fill with water until most crawfish are under water. Be careful when handling live crawfish – they will use their pinchers if they’re given the chance! Put about 1 cup salt (not quite half of a 1 lb. 10 oz. salt container) over the crawfish and stir gently. Leave the crawfish in the salt water for now.

When the water in the stock pot comes to a rolling boil, put dry ingrediants in. Squeeze lemon quarters over pot and drop into the water (be careful for hot water splashback). Add minced garlic, lemon juice, celery, and liquid crab boil concentrate. Return to a rolling boil.

While the spicy water is reheating, carefully put purged crawfish into stock pot basket and wash crawfish well.

Once the spicy water is again boiling, carefully put the stock pot basket into the stock pot. Put vegetables into the pot and cover. Stir occassionally. Once water is again boiling (in about 3 minutes), boil for about 7 minutes. Crawfish should be floating to the top. Turn off burner and uncover halfway (or put half a bag of ice in the pot and uncover completely - see below). Let stand for about 20 5 minutes for crawfish and vegetables to soak in spices. Individual crawfish can be removed and tasted for spiciness and texture. The longer the crawfish soak, the less chewy and slightly more spicy they will be. If they soak too long, they will get all crumbly and will be hard to peel. Remove stock pot basket from water and serve.

One of our guests made a suggestion and I've also heard this from Mrs. Simmons - put half a bag of ice in the pot immediately after boiling, and let the crawfish soak in the cooler water. This is supposed to contract the meat and make it firmer and easier to peel. Plus, you can let the crawfish soak longer. I think I'll try this next time.

Our First Crawfish Boil

James I just hosted our first crawfish boil at our house this past Saturday. We bought a large 80 qt. crawfish boiler with our tax refund this year. The food was great and the weather cooperated with us. We had 8 guests and 60 lbs of crawfish and corn, pototoes, and sausage. James did the most of the work in preparing the food, so I'll let him tell you about it in his own post. The crawfish came (LIVE) in a mesh sack. We got them from a local seafood market. Our puppy didn't know what to think of them. A few of them tried to crawl away from us before they got dumped in the water. One of them bit James - that mudbug wasn't doing down without a fight! The seafood market (City Cafe) also tossed in some "extras". . .James found a small whole catfish in the sack with the crawfish. We threw that away. YUCK. Lily (the pup) had a feast of her own. She ate some corn right off the cob.

I finally feel like an official Louisiana resident now that I've learned a bit about how to cook crawfish! We've been here a year, and this kinda feels like home, but not really. I do miss Arkansas. I miss the weather! South Louisiana is the sauna of the contienent. I prefer snow and ice storms and the occasional tornado to hurricanes. It is so hot and sticky here. All you folks in Arkansas who say "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" when complaining about the summer weather don't know about humidity. Arkansas seems soooo arid to me now. It didn't get really cold during the "winter" last year at all. There was only one day when I got my coat out of the closet. It just didn't feel like Christmas. . .not that I love cold weather. . .I don't. I would love for it to be freezing for 3 weeks in December though, and then night after new years I'd love to have the spring flowers start blooming. . .which is what happened here minus the 3 weeks of cold weather in December. Another odd thing about the weather is that it rains almost every afternoon in the summer - which really stinks if your'e outside in the middle of mowing or some other kind of yard work and you just have to quit and abandon all your equipment because it has gone from being completely clear and sunny to a torrential rain in less than 2 1/2 minutes.

Lily in a box

Lily was curious about all the boxes in the office the other day, so we decided to let her investigate more closely.

More on our birds

I've taken a few pictures since the last bird post, but what with the new computer and all, I'm having to learn how to crop and resize pictures on the new programs.

Here's Fred, the male House Finch.



The eggs.



And what used to be in the eggs. Aren't they cute!