Of Microwave Resurrection and Escrevisse

Kathy is so HAPPY!  We have a new microwave and it's working and looks very pretty. Here's Kathy holding a freshly popped bowl of popcorn - proof that the microwave works:

When readers last tuned in, we had ordered a new microwave to replace the one that got fried in the Campground from Hell in Fort Stockton, Texas.  Home Depot "said" it could deliver the new microwave to us today.  We move Monday.  No margin for error.

Sure enough, promptly at 8:00 a.m. today, the delivery men called and said they were at the front of the campground.  We guided them back, and by 8:15 our new microwave was sitting on our picnic table, waiting for us to install it.

We had planned the re-install very carefully and made sure we had all the tools and hardware.  We all know the rule that every home improvement or repair project requires at least THREE trips to Home Depot.  We were hoping that we could keep it to one.  We succeeded.

Everything went according to plan.  The new one seems to hang more solidly and securely than the old one did.  It'll take a few bumps down the road to be sure that's true, but we'll keep an eye on it.

So here it was, only 11:00 a.m., and we'd finished a project we had expected would take all day.  What should we do with ourselves?  "I know!" David exclaimed, "Let's check homemade Louisiana jambalaya off our 'to taste' list!"  "Right-o!" Kathy rejoined.  (Well, in fact, that isn't EXACTLY what she said, but that's the general idea.)

Here's a photo of Kathy enjoying really scrumptious jambalaya at a local cafe - nothing like we've been served in Philly, and oh-so-much tastier:

Since this is an equal opportunity marriage, Kathy also got to check something off HER "to taste" list, and she chose to get some bayou-cooked crawfish to peel for eating and cooking.  Now, David is infamous for not wanting to play with his food, but he's a good sport, so he accompanied Kathy to the seafood shack, where she bought, then brought home, lots of crawdaddies.  She then spent the rest of the afternoon shelling those little yabbies:

Her comment when she was done?

"If I ever tell you I want to get crayfish to peel for eating or cooking, just say the words, 'Baton Rouge!'  It'll surely remind me HOW MUCH WORK THIS WAS!  Why would anyone want to do all this work just for such a tiny bit of freshwater lobster meat???"

She does whine, but she sportingly followed that up with a list of the dishes she plans to try out with the fresh mudbugs, starting with an omelette tomorrow morning, prepared with freshwater decapod crustaceans of the genera Astacus  and Cambarus.

Yum!  That idea was enough to drive David to astacology.