Seafood Extravaganza

Friday night we had our long awaited "seafood extravaganza". The last time we did this was several years ago. This is something you want to do with a lot of people. The more the merrier.

I don't know what other people call this type of dinner, but you've probably seen it done on television or in a magazine. It's where you get a bunch of different kinds of seafood (usually shellfish) and some vegetables and just dump all the goodies right on the table. No plates, no silverware. Just bowls for the condiments and lots of napkins and fun.

We invited our neighbors Dean and Nancy, our hay supplier and long time friends Franz and Vicki, and our other good friends Danny and Marylee. Dean's son Randy was also in town so he came over and Carli and Marcus showed up too. Of course our son was there as well.

I'm not going to give exact directions because my husband did all the cooking that night. This is one of those things where you get what you prefer. For our seafood extravaganza we used corn on the cob, red potatoes, onions, artichokes, garlic, and parsley. We had shrimp, mussels, dungeness crab, and steamer clams. There was sliced sourdough baguettes and sweet French loaves. The only condiments were lots of melted butter, mayonnaise, and our favorite hot sauce "Tapatia" (it doesn't have that vinegary taste like Tabasco).

The table is ready for the goodies!

We had two giant pots going on the stove. Both had some crab and shrimp boil seasonings in them. One pot cooked all the vegetables and the other cooked the seafood. The timing has to be just right so some food doesn't get under cooked while other food gets over done. When it's done it gets dumped onto the table (after straining the liquid) that hopefully has a good disposable plastic table cloth on it. Then everybody digs in and goes to town!

Digging in!

After all that some of us even managed to have a slice of either French apple pie or chocolate pie from Marie Callender's.

The clean up was really easy. I simply put what was left back in a pot and rolled up the table cloth and put it in the dumpster.

After our guests rolled out the door we rolled to bed. We haven't eaten yet. (Just kidding.)

Later this week I'm going to make a chowder from the leftovers. Stay tuned!!