11:30 a.m. - Sunday, Jun. 01, 2003
Why yes, Ms Leslie DOES suck heads

I had an early dinner yesterday with two of my �hippest� friends. Deana, who is finally scheduled for a hip replacement tomorrow, and her latest boyfriend Craig (ironic, huh?), who has already had both hips replaced. Oh man, irony on two separate levels, for those who understand who the other Craig is. They�re cute together, in a macabre sort of way, hobbling along together, swaying from side to side in time, like two ancient sailors turned vaudeville actors. If it wasn�t for the fact I knew Deana�s in pain, I�d laugh.

We sat on the porch of a local seafood shack on the beach, enjoying the warm breeze and the odor of hot spices and boiling crawfish. Deana and Craig ordered beers, I had the Diet Coke.

As a born Yankee, I never really understood what all the fuss was about gumbo. It�s brown. It�s not quite soup and not quite stew. It looks a little bit like chili but tastes nothing like it. I made the mistake of thinking it�s all the same. Wrongo Pongo, my friend.

After eating several bowls of bland and tasteless stuff with varying combinations of chicken, sausage, shrimp, okra, and assorted leftovers, I discovered Little Ray�s gumbo. He�s famous along the coast for his gumbo, served with lots of seafood and okra, too spicy for the faint of tongue, and with whole crab claws poking askew from the bowl. Oh�. So THIS is gumbo! It was fabulous, and became the standard against which I held every other bowl of gumbo I ever tasted.

But last night, I found a new standard. The gumbo at this seafood shack was absolutely sublime. The roux, or liquid part of the gumbo, was dark brown and spicy, but with no hint of burned flour, the basis of all roux. It was like red pepper and paprika, wrapped in velvet, if that makes any sense. And the stuff was loaded with tidbits of every kind. There was sausage, shrimp, crawfish, oysters, crab, and of course, okra, which I don�t normally like, but it goes real good in gumbo. Even the born southern diners raved about this gumbo, and here�s the funny part: The owner and cook is a Yankee. I guess he�s like me. I wasn�t born in the south, but I got here as soon as I could.

I had a pound of crawfish too. The owner is proud to tell anyone that if it isn�t alive, he won�t cook it. That�s how he knows it�s fresh. I believe him, because the plate of crawfish the waitress brought out was succulent without being fishy, and there wasn�t a soft one on the plate.

Eating crawfish is a cross between an art and a religion. Real eaters are expected to twist the head and thorax from the tail. They then suck out the juices, brains and assorted innards from the head part before pinching the bottom of the tail to release the lobster-like flesh from shell so it can be popped whole into the mouth. The whole thing about sucking heads and pinching tails always leaves loads of room for rowdy innuendoes and hard-core flirting. I was never a fan of sucking the head matter out of a dead crawfish, until last night. I brought another pound of the fish home with me and had a solitary feeding frenzy over the kitchen sink later that night. As I stood there dismembering the crusty bodies, crawfish juice running down my arms to the elbows and bits of shell stuck to my chin, I realized to the sound of a heavenly chord that what I was eating with such relish was really nothing more than a pile of really big bugs. Having gotten used to that idea, it didn�t seem like such a stretch to just go ahead and suck the bug juice too. Now I suck heads like an expert and pinch tails like a pro.

And so here I am again�. Going on about my favorite subject; Food. Maybe this is a good place to point out that today, at last, I weigh less than my 30 day average weight. I owe it not to watching my diet, but to the daily exercise I am getting. This morning, I did 21 sit-ups, mililtary style, and I rode my air bike 23 miles in one hour. I�m huge, but I�m strong. I�m hoping that today begins a new trend of being strong and not quite so huge. Baby steps.

Happy Thoughts, Deep Breaths,

Coming Soon: Or maybe not.

-Ms Leslie Goes to the Dogs� the Greyhounds

-Little Theater in a Little Town

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