The Crawfish Boil fundraising event was finally here and so was the drizzling rain. Easter Sunday morning the drizzle was coming down fairly steady at 11:00 when the final touches were being put to setting up, but we had our fingers crossed that by Noon, the start of the event, it would not deter folks from coming out for a day that promised so much fantastic food, fun and, hopefully, provide some much needed funds for sustaining the Lost Pines Nature Trails and Colorado River Refuge.
The event was initiated by the Keep Bastrop County Beautiful group, supported by the many organizations now called Friends of The Lost Pines, and organized by The Bastrop River Company.
Julia Akin, Audrey Ambrose, Dave Hill, Beverly Kithcart, Frank May and Cat May were on hand at a photo display to talk about the LPNT/CRR project.
The Lost Pines Toyota folks cooked the massive mounds of crawfish, two kinds of sausage, corn on the cob, red potatoes, and whole onions — all dumped on an 8 foot square table top on saw horses with a kayak on top for the discarded crawfish shells.
Fortunately when the DJ started the music folks started drifting in. A beer and wine booth was at the bottom of the stairs leading down to Neighbor’s yard, the cook tent was at the other end of the yard and the bandstand in between. Down on the lower yard, Bastrop River Company had set out a dozen canoes and kayaks, in and around which were hidden 400 Easter eggs.
When the first ice chest size batch of “boil” was dumped on the table, the crowds moved in to “bite tails and suck heads” as they say in Cajun country. I was among those and it didn’t take but five minutes to have crawfish juice dripped down the front of my shirt — some of the most luscious foods in the world are messy and we just have to live with it. Families filled buckets with “boil”, returning to their tables to eat in a more civilized manner, but no matter how you chose to indulge in the feast, it all tasted wonderful.
At 3:00 the kid’s egg hunt began. The youngest group was allowed a few minutes head start, but when the older kids were released it was a stampede down the hill at break neck speed. When the last egg was dropped in a basket, the eggs were counted and awards were given to those with the most eggs.
The event was scheduled to end at 4:00 but the truth was, it ended when the last crawfish was consumed. A day that started out under gray skies and drizzling rain, ended under gray skies, but with a lot of folks full of great Cajun food and a smile on their faces — including me.
