Crawdading

Our really cool home teacher and his family took us Crawdading. I had never even heard of crawdading. Around the Wasatch area the best place to get crawdads is at Strawberry Res. It was a long ride but our home teacher had walkie-talkies and we took the girls while they took the boys. The boys played Nintendo DS while the girls watched a movie. So no one whined about the drive.

Once we got there we took a chicken leg and tied a string to it. Put it in the water and waited. Crawdads came to eat and then the kids caught them with a net. I was really easy compared to fishing. Then we washed them good and boiled them. They look a lot like a small lobster. They taste pretty good too but they are so small and the only good part is in the tail the rest is all gray and gooey. Not very appetising. So a lot of their little body gets waisted. My home teacher jokingly said, "go ahead and eat the rest. It's edible."

Max making a face at his crawdad. And his buddy who is 11 but still nice enough to let Max hang around with him. Max was the only one of our kids brave enough to eat one. He didn't like it. I thought they were great. They were a lot of work to eat. You have to crack up their little bodies and eat the only good part near the tail. They look like bugs so it is not for the squimish. But somehow Dan managed. Amelia and her BFF had fun putting the crawdad shells on their fingers. Amelia had no problem playing with crawdads, just not eating them. Here are all the kids ready to eat the crawdads. Our friends kids ate a lot of them. Dan and I had our share. It was a perfect day and the kids had so much fun. We got time to chat with our friends. It was nice of them to take us. I don't imagine I would have tried crawdading without someone to show me how. Now I can survive on crawdads if I am ever stranded in the mountains! Not likely but still a good skill to know.