the great seafood boil

my daughter and i have both been to a couple of places in our area that do these fabulous seafood boils that they pour out onto a thick layer of newpaper on your table, and we have also seen them on the food network.  they just dump the tons of clams, mussels, shrimp, crab, potatoes and corn onto the center of the table, and you just eat till you are stuffed, or the food runs out...usually the first!  we have been saying for some time, "we gotta try that at home someday!"  well, we finally did, and it turned out so incredibly delicious!  we used a recipe from my williams-sonoma 'new orleans' cookbook and added a few of our own touches too.  this was the result.  uh, yum!

there was so much food, and we just kept eating, even after we were all soooo full!

my son's friend also made crabcakes that were awesome too, and i made some garlic bread, and we had plenty of beer to go with too.  and we also had a last minute, afterthought chocolate cake that was the perfect topping off to the feast!  we had planned to brew some beer after, but we got a late start, and were so stuffed we just decided to save that project for another day!