When Aaron Faxas has a craving for Cajun crawfish, he wants to share his love of southern food and tradition with the rest of the community.
The third annual cookout will take place on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Island Park in Mt. Pleasant.
Aaron Faxas, host and slot technician at the Soaring Eagle Casino, said the main boil, composed of crawfish, potatoes, corn, sausage, garlic and onion, will be made in an 80 quart pot with a propane jet burner. He also said it’s large enough to contain the fish and all of the fixings.
“I’m also thinking about making a jambalaya or maybe some boudin sausage,” he said.
Faxas is getting 40 pounds of pre-cooked, frozen crawfish shipped from the Louisiana Crawfish Co.
He said that the rest of the ingredients are locally sourced. He also allows people to bring their own dishes to supplement the boil.
“It doesn’t always have to be Cajun food,” Faxas said, “I’m sure there are people who don’t want to eat seafood or have food allergies that don’t allow them to eat potatoes, corn or crawfish.”
The event is free and open to the public, but small donations will be welcome, according to Faxas.
The first boil happened three years ago and had only five people attend. Twenty people came to the second boil. According to the Facebook event page, around 53 people are going to this year’s boil, with 503 people saying they are “interested.”
“It hasn’t really grown that much,” Faxas said, “I think I got a bigger response this year by far.”
Faxas said that the idea for the boil started as an annual event for him and his co-workers. Being born in Texas and living in Louisiana and made him miss the southern tradition. He also said that boils happen in Mississippi and Florida.
He said that he opened up the event to the public because local people don’t eat seafood or southern spices often.
“It started as something I do for my own birthday,” he said. “I started inviting co-workers because who wants to eat 10 pounds of crawfish by themselves?”
He said once people got a taste, the word-of-mouth help bring awareness to the event.
Faxas said he will keep the yearly event going for the time being.