"crawfish" news and stories

It's time for food-fair aficionados to loosen their belts or, better yet, don elastic-waist pants. From plentiful strawberries to mudbug stranglers, local festivals are beginning to bloom -- beauty pageants included. As you'll see, most of the featured events are in the South. With the spring harvest, the South gives good reason for belly-stuffing.

West Tennessee Strawberry Festival, May 2-8, Humboldt, Tenn.: Kick off May in the South by munching on strawberries at tractor and horse shows, recipe competitions, two parades as well as races at which you can burn off those sweet calories. There will be fireworks following the official opening ceremonies on May 3. No word on whether there will be any strawberry-shaped pyrotechnics.

Dermott Crawfish Festival, May 14-15, Dermott, Ark.: In its 27th year, this festival pays homage to the delectable freshwater crustacean in its myriad presentations, including the popular boil. If you plan on attending, please remember the proper method of eating crawfish -- "suck the head, pinch the tail" -- and you'll get the most out of the rides, vendors and live entertainment.

American Craft Beer Week, May 17-23, Nationwide: What's a month without a beer festival? This isn't the only beer bash in May, but it is the largest. From sea to shining sea, get your suds on when craft breweries, beer bars and homebrewers raise their collective pints in your honor.

Spring has arrived! With it, come scads of crawfish festivals along the Gulf Coast, beer and wine festivals nationwide and the heralding of spring harvests. April is so chock-full of culinary merrymaking we can only wish you luck getting through the month without lapsing into a life-threatening -- though joyous -- food coma.

Breckenridge Beer Festival, April 3, Breckenridge, Colo.: American craft beer continues to attract followers and chip away at commercial leviathans. In few places is this more evident than in Colorado, one of the country's beer meccas. Unlimited tasting tickets will set you back $25, but serious beer geeks will want to shell out $55 for VIP passes, which include early entry to the festival, a commemorative glass mug, unlimited tastings, a private VIP room, lunch and a buffet. Raise a pint glass to local and national breweries, among them Oskar Blues, Great Divide and the town's own, Breckenridge Brewing Company.

Share Our Strength's Taste of the Nation Boston, April 8, Boston, Mass.: What's a month without a fine-dining fete? The Share Our Strength series' event in Boston will feature more than 70 area restaurants and 40 wineries, including the Little Pearl, Rialto and Eastern Standard. All ticket sales will benefit Share Our Strength's effort to end child hunger.

The city of Eunice, La., will again host a crawfish étouffée cook-off this weekend, marking 25 consecutive years of failing to agree upon a single definition for the classic Cajun dish.

All comers are welcome to compete in the wildly popular event, whether they swear by – or swear at – butter, margarine, tomatoes, cream of mushroom soup, paprika, roux or pre-chopped onions. The liberal guidelines make for a diverse array of étouffées that annually lure eaters from across the South.

"We don't care what the judges think," Robin McGee, executive director of the Eunice Chamber of Commerce, says of the disparate preparation techniques. "We're too busy saying ours is the best."

What's worse than having to endure a long, hard winter? Enduring a long, hard winter as a crawfish.

Crawfish hate the cold. When the temperature dips, they respond in kind, burrowing into the mud and refusing to eat. That means the few critters that have wriggled into farmers' traps this season are too puny to impress the many Louisianans who traditionally feast on crawfish during Lent.

"Mother Nature's throwing us a curve ball, and the trouble is she keeps throwing them," says Stephen Minville, director of the Louisiana Crawfish Farmers Association.

Minville's 2010 harvest stands at about 30 percent of his typical year-to-date haul, with the most successful farmers topping out at 40 percent. "Optimism is running out," Minville says.

A bulk order of Louisiana crawfish. Photo: nola.agent, Flickr

Louisiana crawfish advocates have finally discovered -- after years of unsuccessfully appealing to economic interests -- that the quickest way to consumers' hearts is actually via their (unsettled) stomachs.

The state legislature this year enacted a law requiring restaurant owners to disclose whether their crawfish is Louisiana-raised. Bill sponsor Fred H. Mills, Jr. -- a pharmacist whose district includes Breaux Bridge, better known to Cajun gourmands as the "Crawfish Capital of the World" -- credits the law's passage to a major tactical shift.

"Everyone was upset that Chinese seafood was being disguised as Louisiana seafood, but the law just never could get any legs to it," Mills says. "The difference this time was we didn't talk about commerce. We talked about public safety."

The campaign against imported crawfish, after the jump.