Guess What I Ate!!!!!!

Yep, I had my first crawdad yesterday at lunch. It looked pretty much like this, except it was bright red and dead. If it had looked like this I don't know if I would have eaten it. I wish I would have taken a picture but I didn't think about it until it was too late.

And where did I get this exotic creature? At the Chinese buffet of course. A coworker and I went to lunch at Four Seasons and they had a whole pot of crawdads. He's had them before and showed me how to eat them. First you snap the tail off, then you peel it and grab the meat out. Simple, right?

Messy is more like it. The first crawdad I tried ended up having a little bitty tail so it was really hard to get any meat out of it. Also, you know how shrimp have the "poop chute"? Crawdads have it to, and it's much bigger. The second crawdad I ate had a huge one, and I pulled it away from the meat only to get it stuck in my fingernails. So not only do I have the greasy juice from the stuff the crawdad was cooked in all over my hands, I also have crawdad intestine in my fingernails. I think I went through about twenty napkins to clean up. I ate a third one, and that was enough.

And the verdict? Eh, it was okay. The meat did taste like shrimp, so that was a plus, but it was way too much work for not a lot of reward. But as Lou pointed out, a real Southerner would have eaten about a dozen in the time that it took me to eat three. So I think those were my first and last crawdads. But at least I tried them! Next time I will stick to the potstickers and seafood delight.

Further evidence that the fortune cookie writers have completely given up. Lou's fortune was "You can't aim a duck to death". WTF?????? What does that mean? My fortune was "Your fortune is on the way". I'm still waiting...........

Into Thin Air

I just finished reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. This is an absolutely amazing story of his trip to Mt. Everest in May 1996. Jon was a journalist with Outisde magazine at the time of this trip, and his assignment was to write an article about the commercialization of Everest. Instead, he told the story of the death of five of his fellow climbers, including two guides.

I've caught Everest on the Discovery Channel a few times, and I was just stunned at the determination of these climbers. Often, these climbers would frostbite, sleep deprivation, and oxygen deprivation. They would also commonly pass the bodies of other climbers who didn't make it, or even worse, climbers who were still alive but with no way of rescue. Similar situations are described in this book, and there is no shortage of traumatic events on this climb.

Near the start of the story, Jon talks about the moment when he realizes just how high he is going to climb-the same altitude as the plane he is taking to reach Everest. That put the height of Everest in perspective for me, otherwise 29,028 feet is just a number. Jon also intersperses his story with a history of Everest, and this brings a lot more richness to the story. There were some knocks from Amazon reviewers who thought that the narrative was a bit scattered, but I didn't think it was hard to follow at all. In fact, it was really hard for me to put the book down. I wanted to know what drove people to climb this high, and how the disaster unfolded. It also made me wonder if I would have the drive to do something like this. I think it would be quite an adventure to go to Everest, but I don't think I'd want to go much higher than Base Camp.

Thanks, Motos, for putting this in your garage sale. It was definitely a worthwhile read.

Orange Juice and Disgusting Houses

Every week, I make orange juice for Sunday breakfast, and every week, I have leftover juice that we never bother finishing. We also have a freezer full of vodka (that makes us sound like alcoholics, really, it's just martini experimentation!). You would have thought I would have figured it out much earlier, but the light bulb just went on tonight. Take some orange juice, combine with vanilla flavored vodka, and you have a Dreamsicle screwdriver. Admittedly, it's not quite chocolate and peanut butter, but it's pretty good.

So while I'm drinking this concoction, I was watching an episode of Flip This House. If you've not seen this show, it centers around three different companies who buy houses cheap and fix them up fast, with the expectations of making a nice profit. In this episode, the Montelongos from San Antonio chance upon a house that has basically been abandoned. They buy the house without seeing the inside. (!!!!!!) Once the property is theirs, the main guy, Armando, goes inside and finds a disaster area. If this show would have been on Discovery, Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs would come in, taken one look, and ran screaming like a little girl. That's pretty much what every contractor did who came in the house, as well as Armando's family (who are in the business as well). Armando can be kind of a jerk sometimes, he's one of those people who bitch about an $1000 plumbing expense then drives away in his Hummer to his brand new ginormous house. I know that the object of the game is to spend as little as possible so you make as much as you can, but still, at some point you're going to have to pay. Armando gets the house done, but not without a huge financial and emotional cost. As much of a jerk as he can be, I did feel sorry for him at times, although I was also laughing at him. Seriously, why do they buy these houses sight unseen????? It wasn't that cheap! Anyway, if you have cable, check out this show. It's much more entertaining reality TV than some of the crap that's out there.