EUNICE, La. — We are entering into a celebratory time with Good Friday, Easter and festival season, and how do many of us celebrate?
With crawfish.
So, let's take a look at how the shortage may affect those festivities and what can be done to prepare.
The annual World Championship Crawfish Étouffée Cook-off is a big festivity in the city of Eunice with dozens of participants competing and dozens more tasting, listening to music and having fun, but did this year's crawfish shortage have an effect on things?
"This year, we ended up having about 32 participants in the cook-off, itself, which was a little on the low side, but I guess with the price of crawfish this year and the fact that they are very scarce—I think that had a lot of impact on it, but we still had a lot of fun," said Kayla Heinen, executive director of the Eunice Chamber of Commerce.
In an event centered around crawfish, options were a bit limited.
"I know normally we do have some people that will come in and boil crawfish, so we do sell that, but that was one thing we had to do away with this year," Heinen said.
But even so, she said the event was a success...with a little help from the community.
"We do deal a lot with our local crawfish farmers and our crawfish plants, and they do help the participants. They do try to sell the crawfish to them at wholesale prices instead of retail, so with that being said, everybody was on board to try to make it, you know, a really great community event," Heinen said.
The cook-off was only one of several events and holidays that, for so many of us, are a provided opportunity to enjoy some crawfish.
Good Friday is always a big day for crawfish sales, both live and boiled.
"We'll boil more than we normally would any other day. We will sell more live than we would any other day. It's our Christmas—crawfisherman Christmas," said Erron Derouen, owner of Snack-N-Go in New Iberia.
And how do boilers prep for something like that?
"You do more of everything. You know, you boil more vegetables, you boil more—you start earlier in the morning, you get more crawfish. It's just a 'more' day, you know. It's the same, but you're just doing more of it," Derouen said.
Except this year, it may be a bit more like doing as much as they can with what they have.
"Just being the supplies are so low that we can only get about half of what we normally would get, so might not be able to be open all day. We'll just stay open as long as we can, you know," he said.
But don't worry. Good Friday isn't your last chance.
Just because the Lenten season is coming to an end doesn't mean crawfish season is too. In fact, many industry professionals I have spoken with over the last seven weeks have said they expect prices to drop soon after Easter.
So, go ahead and grab your tray.
