TableAugust
Crayfish Party
Why everyone eats them in August
For most of the twentieth century crayfish could only legally be taken in late summer, so the whole country ate them at once in August, and the habit outlived the law. The premiere has no legal force now and everybody keeps it anyway.
What happens is this. Crayfish boiled in salted water with crown dill — dill cut after it has flowered, which tastes nothing like the leaf — then cooled and eaten cold with your fingers. Bread, a strong cheese, a pie, and nothing hot.
Then paper hats, paper lanterns with a man in the moon on them, bibs, and snapsvisor: short drinking songs sung standing up before each small glass of akvavit. There are a great many of them and they are all fairly silly.