Listen to the Mustn't

Listen to the MUSTN'T, child,

Listen to the DON'Ts

Listen to the SHOULDN'Ts

The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'Ts

Listen to the NEVER HAVEs

Then listen close to me--

Anything can happen, child,

ANYTHING can be.


Shel Silverstein

They

Texas U.S. Representative

CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 10
CONGRESSMAN MICHAEL T. MCCAUL
Address: 415 CANNON HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2401

State District Offices

Texas State Senator
SENATE DISTRICT 17
SENATOR KYLE JANEK
Capitol Office: CAP 3E.16
Capitol Address: P.O. Box 12068
Austin, Texas 78711
Capitol Phone: (512) 463-0117
District Address: 7777 Southwest Freeway, Suite 102
Houston, TX 77074 District Phone: (713) 272-8929

State District Offices

Texas State Representative
HOUSE DISTRICT 132
REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAM A. "BILL" CALLEGARI

Capitol Office: EXT E2.608
Capitol Address: P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
Capitol Phone: (512) 463-0528

District Address: 1550 Foxlake Dr., Suite 114
Houston, TX 77084
District Phone: (281) 578-8484

Texas State Board of Education Members
SBOE DISTRICT 6
MRS. TERRI LEO
District Address: 23516 TWIN OAKS DR.
SPRING, TX 77389

Where's the LAG KNEE UP ??

Our Mission: Crawfish Boil

Now I had to work Good Friday but Brian, since he has a real job, was off. Louisiana Foods, which sells crawfish is just around the corner from where I work so we decided to do lunch, then he would pick up the mudbugs there.

Turns out Louisiana Foods was out of crawfish. Well the alternate plan was Fiesta and it worked out well enough. Our recipe was borrowed from the Gumbo Pages and is posted here.

So check the list of ingredients:

"30 pounds live crawfish
15 ounces cayenne pepper, plus 5 ounces additional Lagniappe
2 ounces Tabasco sauce
20 cloves garlic, cut cloves in half, do not peel or crush ng
3 dozen lemons, sliced in half
1 cup olive oil
20 bay leaves
4 ounces Louisiana hot sauce
52 ounces salt (approximately 2 pounds)"

This plus corn, sausage and those little potatoes. Yes Sir !!

Now most of this stuff is easy to find. I knew he had purchased the crawfish and the plan was to get the other stuff the next day. Well we are sitting on the patio at Son In Laws house beside the pool enjoying a cold one and I mention "the stuff".

With an expression of mild alarm he says, " I hope you didn't buy the stuff !"

"Dionne and I bought all of it. The corn on the cob was pricey we only bought eight ears instead of ten....." he continued. "... but we couldn't find the LAG-KNEE-AP ...."

My wife and I smile to each other.

" Couldn't find what ?" I said, making sure I got this right.

" The 5 ounces additional LAG-KNEE-AP"

" ummmmm ... that would be lagniappe .."

From the New Orleans Dictionary .

LAGNIAPPE - Pronounced LAN yap. A little something extra. Also, the name of the entertainment pull out section of the Friday edition of The New Orleans Times Picayune.

Now in fairness Brian is from Chicago. However, Dionne, coulda, woulda shoulda knew, being born in New Awlins. I think she is a Texan now. She forgot what the neutral ground is.

Bunny Matthews

Searching for the Bunny Matthews cartoon where the crawfish are eatin' humans.

Found this one.

The Art of George Rodrigue

The Art of George Rodrigue

Immigration Assumptions

"Ask real Americans (citizens and legal aliens) if the federal government lets them break laws to "improve their economic circumstances." Ask the guy who holds a commercial drivers license. Ask the broker who trades stocks. Ask the Klamath Falls farmer or the fisherman on Oregon's coast how many federal laws they are allowed to break just to keep their jobs -- and not multiply their wages tenfold as the average illegal does.

The thousands of children from families of illegals who crowd school classrooms puts a lie to the claim that illegal workers contribute more than they consume. Tell me how many pay the $10,000 in taxes that a single child costs to educate for a year in Oregon schools."

Immigration Debate

Lars Larson

Crawfish Boil

A recipe from The Gumbo Pages





The boiled crawfish recipe was adapted from the old Jazz and Heritage Festival Cookbook, now sadly out of print. This is the way boiled crawfish were prepared by Jazzfest food vendors The Fontana Family, of New Orleans, Louisiana. Comments and instructions from the original recipe are in quotes; all other comments are mine.
"The Fontanas are one of the largest, oldest, and best known Italian families to settle in New Orleans, originally coming from various parts of Italy and settling in Louisiana in the early 1850's. This recipe is the one served at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival boiled crawfish booth. The secret is to serve hot."


30 pounds live crawfish
15 ounces cayenne pepper, plus 5 ounces additional Lagniappe
2 ounces Tabasco sauce
20 cloves garlic, cut cloves in half, do not peel or crush ng
3 dozen lemons, sliced in half
1 cup olive oil
20 bay leaves
4 ounces Louisiana hot sauce
52 ounces salt (approximately 2 pounds)
10 bags of Zatarain's crab boil, or 10 recipes seafood boil seasoning
"Place all ingredients but the crawfish in the biggest pot that you can get your hands on and bring to a good boil for about 15 minutes. As all comes to a boil, put you face over the steam and take 10 deep breaths, as the boiling cayenne, garlic and lemon mist is good for your soul - being careful to breathe only throughyou nose.
"In the meantime, the crawfish should have been soaking in cold fresh water, with a couple of boxes of salt emptied into it as to allow "mud bugs" to be spitting out the mud.

"Put crawfish in boiling water. After water comes to boil again, add 10 ears freshly peeled corn of the cob and 20 small potatoes. Allow 8-10 minutes cooking time. Remove and add a bag or two of ice to cool the crawfish water, and allow the crawfish to soak in the pot for another 10 minutes after turning off the boiling water. Strain and serve the crawfish hot with the garlic cloves, potatoes and corn." (Alternate method: Remove the hot crawfish from the boiling pot and layer in ice chests with sprinkled Tony Chachere's seasoning.)

Some people also like throwing anything from andouille sausages to whole heads of garlic to hot dogs into the boil ... be creative, but not foolish!

For a great seafood dipping sauce, take some ketchup, add horseradish and Tabasco to taste, and finish with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice (never use that swill out of the bottle). Mix and dip. That's how we do it in Louisiana.

Eating instructions: Find the biggest crawfish in the pile. Break the tail off of the crawfish, and slurp all the good juice and fat out of the head (optional). Peel off the first section of the crawfish tail shell, pinch the bottom of the tail, and the meat pops right out. Eat. Drink. Repeat. (Some people save time by pinching the tail and removing the tail meat with their teeth and eating it immediately, rather than wasting a few precious seconds getting the meat out with their hands. As one hardcore native crawfish eater once put it, "That way I could eat four crawfish to maybe y'all's one."