crawfish

“My parents think I’m on my camping trip. Plus I love beignets and po’boys and gumbo and pralines. Not crawfish though. I can’t eat anything that has eyes.”

During the festival, food available on site includes crawfish bread, pecan catfish meuniere and catfish almondine, cochon de lait and turducken po-boys, boudin, crawfish étouffée, jambalaya, crawfish Monica and shrimp and grits.

“We are so excited,” James Clesi said as he dished out cajun crawfish dirty rice.

The Clesies said their menu will include the dirty rice as well as boiled crawfish, crawfish etouffee and something called a “messi clesi,” which is a combination of the dirty rice and etouffee.

Driven by last summer’s drought, extreme heat, saltwater intrusion on the Mississippi River and a hard winter freeze, the nation’s top producer of crawfish harvested a fraction of what is typical of the tiny crustaceans in a season — with tens of thousands of acres lost or failing.