Summer Camp Series: Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens is a great summer book. It follows Kya who lives alone in the marshes along the coast of North Carolina. Here are some activities I thought would be fun for the book. Tell me if you’ve read the book and have any other things in mind.

To Do

Do a little painting. Grab a basic set of acrylics and follow along with “how to paint a swamp

Go birdwatching. Even if you can’t go anywhere, you can try to identify the birds in your neighborhood. Audobon has a phone app for this! Bonus points if you have binoculars.

Visit a marsh. If you can go to one, then pack a little picnic (see more below) and make a day of it. A friend and I put on our masks and visited the freshwater marsh of the Ballona Wetlands. If you live in west LA, I recommend going. We saw some cool birds (including a great egret!) and it was overall really nice and beautiful.

To Bake

Real Deal Southern Caramel Cake – an incredible three layer yellow cake with caramel icing!

Additional Reading

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: if you want more southern lit from a female author. Bonus, it also involves a courtroom scene.

The Bird Artist by Howard Norman: if you want another protagonist who lives in a remote place and paint birds

Bog Girl” by Karen Russell: another female author from the south. A short story set in similar environment, but that’s about where the similarities stop.

To Eat

I saved this section for last because it is the longest. All the food in the book sounds dang good! Here is the menu I would put together from all the dishes mentioned. Choose one or two items from each category for a great picnic!

Basket of breads
cracklin cornbread
hush puppies (serve with honey butter)
yeast rolls
sour cream biscuits (add bacon or jam)

beans: red, butter, or baked
hoe cakes
deviled eggs
chicken salad
mashed potatoes with red eye gravy
black eyed peas

corn fritters
stewed turnips
collard greens
peas in butter
sliced red tomato
mustard greens
summer squash casserole

pimento cheese sandwich
backbone soup + biscuits
chicken pie
chicken and dumplings
cold fried chicken
chicken fried steak
fried pork chops
fried shrimp
fried fish with black pepper crust
grilled flounder stuffed with shrimp
seafood medley: mussels, oysters
ham trio: salt-cured, molasses, and fried
hot pork sausage

banana pudding
peach cobbler
blackberry pie
blackberry cobber
pecan pie
4-layer cake
top any with a scoop of ice cream or hard cream

3 thoughts on “Summer Camp Series: Where the Crawdads Sing

  1. Here is my menu (what’s yours?)
    1. Sour cream biscuits with colby jack cheese and bacon
    2. Deviled eggs!
    3. Corn fritters and sliced red tomatoes
    4. Ham trio and pimento cheese sandwiches
    5. Banana pudding

    • it’s tough to only choose one from each category but my menu would be
      1. hush puppies
      2. hoe cakes
      3. collared greens (if cooked with bacon hehe)
      4. fried pork chops
      5. banana pudding x 100

      • Banana pudding x 100!!!!!

        I had a really tough time with this too. My proposal is next time we are together we make both menus and eat in my new garden! 🙂

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s