Crawfish Etouffe-ish

My love of cooking and baking undeniably stems partially (majorly) from my upbringing. My whole family loves food, though we of course have our own favorites. Combine this with the thriftiness (not cheapness!) trait that seems to have been passed on from both sides of the family, and the results are creatively delicious. Casseroles? Not in our house. Fried rice is served with leftover jerk chicken. Overnight French toast from homemade French bread. Ribs, sausage, corned beef, turkey - you name it, it's been in a sandwich.

In college, this heritage has expanded to a whole new level. Why buy food to cook with when there's plenty available in the university cafeteria? With the introduction of reusable to-go containers last year, I don't even have to sneak in Tupperware in my backpack. One of my friends used baked potatoes from the grill line for his Thanksgiving potluck mashed potatoes. When they put out the good apples (read: not Red "Delicious"), I snag four and two more Granny Smiths to make my award-winning pie.

Some people take it even further. They go for the display vegetables, the onions/zucchini/carrots that are displayed in front of the food as if to imply that yes, this really does have real carrots in it, look there are some right there.

The cafeteria isn't the only venue for "free" food. At the end of every school year, the Residence Hall Association holds their annual crawfish boil - and this year I was ready. Once Christian and I had eaten our fill, he peeled our leftovers (and another batch straight from the pot) to use later. Trevor, a Louisiana mostly-native, had told me about crawfish etouffe, and I wanted to give it a try.

Styrofoam container in hand, I looked up a recipe, and we started cooking… and then started running into problems.

"Okay, now we add the fish broth… Oh wait. We don't have fish broth."
"Should we go get some?"

"Nah. Hey, here's some canned tuna. If we use the juice from that, do you think it counts as fish broth?"

"...no."

"...almond milk it is!"

Two minutes later

"Alright, it's simmering. Now add the tomato paste."

"Where's the tomato paste?"

"Oh. We don't have that either."

[Trevor makes the face of disapproval.]

"But here's some pasta sauce!"
"I'm hungry. Close enough."

Four minutes later:

"'Cajun seasoning'? That's kind of vague. You're from Louisiana, what's 'Cajun seasoning'?"

"I don't know, I normally just eat it. Pepper?"

"How about I Google it?"

In the end, we wound up just throwing it all together and serving it over (healthy!) brown rice. Trevor said it wasn't really crawfish etouffee, so I compromised, and it now lives on in history as the infamous crawfish etouffee-ish.