Thursday - April 5 - Today was a beautiful day, sunny and cool this morning but it got up to about 69 this afternoon which was very pleasant after all the hot, humid weather we’ve had.

We drove down to Morgan City then returned on back roads, what a lovely drive and we were amazed at the number of beautiful homes along the Teche River. There were also lots of live oak trees, which were the first we’ve seen this trip. On the way back we checked out Jefferson Island and Rip Van Winkle Gardens, they look interesting but we were too late to do them today so will go there either tomorrow or Saturday.

When we got back I went over and asked Betty where a good place to go for a crawfish dinner would be and she recommended Cajun Claw if we wanted boiled crawfish. When we got there we were told it would be about a 45 minute wait so we made a reservation for 7 then went to Wal Mart. When we got back we got a table right away then the fun began, what do you order, the waitress said they came in either 3lb or 5lb orders. We ordered 3 lbs and a Pistolette, which is a deep fried bread stuffed with crawfish, onion, etc and a sauce and was it very good. We had to wait a while for our crawfish and noticed everyone else had ordered either the 3 or 5 lbs each and here we are going to split 3 lbs., wow, are we going to go hungry? The waitress brought us each a dish of mayo and on the table were all kinds of condiments - ketchup, Tabasco, a garlic hot sauce, Worcestershire, etc. and you mix what you want with the mayo for dipping the crawfish. We finally got our crawfish and what a huge tub of them there was and they were very large, we were both full when we finished and really enjoyed them.

When we were finished eating a man at the table behind us asked where we were from, so I asked if it was that obvious that we hadn’t done this before. He said no, we had done very well but he had heard the waitress ask where we were from (but not our answer) and noticed she had shown us how to break them apart (much like a lobster). Anyways we had a nice chat with them, they come to Cajun Claw once a week from Lafayette, which is about a half hour drive as they say it is the best crawfish around (and they all ordered the 5lb serving!). They told us the crawfish season is almost over and the ponds we saw are used to grow rice for part of the year then crawfish. When we were leaving I asked the waitress what the restaurant does when the crawfish season is over and she said they close from June to February, so not much of a season.

The woman behind us suggested we try the Cajun desert which was the same fried bread as the Pistolette but stuffed with ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce. I couldn’t resist so we split one and it was delicious. As you can see we enjoyed our Cajun crawfish.