A Tale of Two Boils

I had never been a part of a seafood boil before, and then randomly last weekend, I went to two in 24 hours.

The first one was with Christina's wonderful family. Raymond Sr and Jr were boiling and frying some amazing shrimp that came straight from the Atlantic Ocean, via Raymond Jr's fiancee's dad's boat. They were all camping at Stone Mountain last weekend and they welcomed me into their campsite for dinner. Never fear, this campsite was not without the modern conveniences. I was endlessly intrigued by the 5 flashlights, portable grills and ranges, several lanterns, and of course, the wind-up radio and portable adult size potty. Because you never know when you have to go!!

A seafood boil consists of usually at least shrimp and some other kind of seafood, boiled in with potatoes, sausage, and corn. So it's sort of like a weird stew but it's not soup like. At the campside we ate them on plates with forks, at the second boil, well, you'll see.

Fri night was my campsite extravaganza. I left feeling full, happy, and grateful that I could go home to my bed just 15 minutes away. The next morning I got a phone call from my friend Shannon who had won tickets off the radio to go to a really awesome crawfish boil in Smyrna. Her husband hates seafood, so she was trying to find someone to go with her. I had to baby sit for my cousin that night and she lives over there, so I thought, sure, why not?

This one was a little more fraught with peril. First of all, as soon as I got to Smyrna, it was POURING RAIN. I got out of the car and made my way to the restaurant, dunking under overhangs and cursing myself for not bringing my umbrella. Shannon wasn't there yet but would be momentarily. We both realized once we got there that the boil was supposed to be outside. Crap. We somehow squeezed our way inside and waited. And waited. When the rain let up, the servers tried to reconstruct the boil, but many folks were bailing. Not us. We drove 30 min to get there dangit! They gave us a huge pile of food, complete with crawfish and shrimp, and granted us access to as many damp paper towels as we wanted, explaining, "all of our wetnaps blew away and we can't find them." Okey dokey. As soon as we sat down, it started to rain again. "To the truck!" Shannon exclaimed. We brought everything in the truck. Shannon had to move a cooler she had in the cab of the truck (with a cake inside for a church function to be attended later) and put it in the bed so we could sit inside and eat. It was hilarious. The food was soooo messy. I guess at this place you eat it all with your hands. Crawfish is weird too. You only eat like 1/8 of it and it's sort of gross to open. By the end we had seafood juice all over our pants, our hands, our faces, and the truck. Shannon volunteered to drive to a gas station to clean up (it was still raining). When we got to the gas station, she discovered that the cooler was missing. WHAAAT. Now the tailgate was open when we were driving, but we didn't hear the cooler fall out. We quickly wiped ourselves down with paper towels and drove slowly back, straining our necks looking for the cooler. We never found it. Apparently someone had stolen it while were sitting there. We just kept staring at each other in shock. So someone in Smyrna enjoyed a nice cake with a platter than night!! What the crap. Shannon was ticked and rightly so! As anyone would do it this situation, we vowed never to go back to Smyrna.

Luckily, babysitting that night was not very eventful. But I was thankful for my gum and to wash my hands really good!