The Place
The region around Crowley LA is located in the Cajun prairie
(can you say flat, flat, flat?) and is subdivided into rectangular fields, some
flooded and some dry. In some of the
flooded fields you see tidy rows of red or white circular tops of crawfish
traps. They grows rice in the paddies,
and then rest the paddies for a season by growing crawfish in them. Beside (or in) the paddies stand snowy, white egrets.
Apparently egrets like crawfish, too.
The Adventure
We went on a tour of the Crystal Rice Heritage Farm. The farm grows rice and crawfish. They also makes the “enrichment” vitamins that
gets put on rice after all the vitamins are stripped off when they make it “white”
in the mill. The farm was founded in
1890, and according to the tour guide, the founder developed the first domestic
rice seed, previously rice growers had to import their seed.
When you think of it, crawfish
and rice make a perfect couple, not only on the dinner plate but in farming.
Crawfish need water and so does rice. So the food chain goes a little like
this:
1) Rice provides a continual influx of plant
fragments that are in turn consumed by bacteria and other microorganisms; and
2) Crawfish consume a high quantity
food such as epiphytic organisms and invertebrates
which can survive in this wet food rich environment.
Voila, crawfish boil and dishes such as
crawfish etouffee, gumbo, bisque, boudin …..
Pretty interesting!
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