Crawfish and Yuengling

I spent yesterday laughing.  Seriously laughing.  I haven't laughed like that in ages. 

My lovely friends, Tommy & Dyann, celebrate their ties to Lousiana several times a year with a huge crawfish boil.  They are always fun events as we dig through giant tables of crawfish pulling handfuls of spicy goodness out of those little tails.  

There's something simply joyful about spicy, juicy hands holding on to a crumpled up paper towel and a cold plastic cup of beer.

 Yuengling always makes me think of home, so it was nice to see a big ass keg of it.  We were having some trouble with the tap, though, it wasn't pumping very smoothly so I went on a hunt for some WD40.  I couldn't find any, but Dyann came through with her suggestion to use Pam on it.  The boys standing around nearby were skeptical and wondered about the potential butter-flavor impact, but it worked beautifully!  

Tommy cooked up over 200 pounds of crawfish and all the fixin's.  There were about six rounds of them, I think...I lost track.  He orders them up from Louisiana and they're alive when they get here.  In prep for the pot, they go through a bath step and that's the part all the kids were loving.  They basically got to fish for them in a big tub.  I'm not sure how many kids were traumatized when they saw their new friends go into the boiling water.  

I just couldn't find the wherewithal to actually suck on the heads.  I know it's the best juice, but if chunks come out with it, I get a little grossed out.  I'm not the only one who felt that way as we sat and picked and cleaned these babies to get out a little bit of perfect meat.  I used the heads, instead, as props for my little iPhone photo shoot.  :)

 After a certain point in the day...and into the evening...we were laughing so hard that I actually had to take a knee in the muddy grass.  Then, I thought that was so funny I actually took a picture of my one dirty knee.  haaaaaaaaaaaa  

My bud, Crackin', took this shot as I got ready to enjoy the last lemon cupcake.  These cupcakes were handcrafted by my friend, Vanessa, and she is an icing goddess.  Seriously.  It's the best icing ever.  She said these were an experiment and they ended up being a complete success...so much so that I carried this last cupcake around for 15 minutes just so no one else would get it.   

Then, after the damage was done I took this shot and call it:  "sadness"  haaaaaaaaaaaaa  

A lonely, empty cupcake cup.  I think that's going to be my shot of the week.

I wish I had one of those cupcakes right now. :)  But, I couldn't really enjoy it because my abs still hurt from the laughing...and that is a wonderful feeling.