#487 Snow What?

Food Food Food. The things you know. The things you think you know. Like the other day when I was talking about the various sizes of shrimp-like things. One of my listeners got upset because I didn’t mention freshwater lobsters. You mean freshwater midget lobsters? I asked. Yep, he said, Crawdaddies. Another regional favorite. At least regionally-named favorite. You got your southern crawdaddy and plural crawdaddies. And of course crawdad. I’m surprised there isn’t a craw-pappa or craw-pappy. Then there’s the crayfish, which I believe is the Northern term for the same Jerusalem Cricket-like mini-monstrosity. Then there the Mason-Dixon compromise, the crawfish. Frankly, they’re all bugs to me.
And speaking of bugging people, apparently there’s also a big culinary controversy over the langostino. Dumb gourmet-challenged guy that I am, I figured langostino was just a Spanish word for lobster. And indeed in some circles it is. Those same circles maintain that langostino is to lobster in Spanish what langouste is to lobster in Italian. Not so, assert others. They assert that the true langostino is actually from the crab family. Although it bears a roughly lobster-oid shape, it is more directly related to the snow crab. My tongue being unable to actually interpret DNA, I’m comfortable with something looking like a lobster being called a lobster, especially if it’s in a foreign language. I know on an intellectual level that the panda bear is more closely related to the raccoon but it’s still a cuddly teddy bear to me. So the fact that unscrupulous cooks are saying they’re using lobster bits in their cooking and that they’re actually from lobster look-alike and taste-pretty-close crabs is not as important to me as, say, over-harvested seafood generally. Or the fact that 15% of Americans have never heard of global warming. Pardon me for assuming those 15% are crawdaddy people. They’ll probably benefit anyhow. Rising global temperatures will give them a lot more bugs to eat.
America, ya gotta love it