Just Crabby

Aren't these beautiful?! While at the beach, my brother and I decided to buy some live blue crabs to have for dinner. We headed down to the local fish market with our heads held high and acting like we knew what we were doing. We were greeted by the kind, local fisherwoman. Her toothless grin was as endearing as her stories. It took her a total of 2 minutes in our presence to surmise we were totally out of our element. "Have you ever cooked these before?" she asked. Like she needed to even ask. "Here, let me show you."

That genteel lady then proceeded to pick up a live crab from the basket and do the unthinkable.

Giving me a grin, she ripped the back off of that little beast.

While it was alive.

Then she plucked the organs and various oozing body parts from the middle.

Hello.

Do you realize that I can't even watch someone insert a contact lens without seeing black spots dance before my eyes?

I think I threw up in my mouth a little.

Meanwhile, my brother is totally enjoying the irony of his weak-kneed sister getting an up-close-and-personal demonstration of how to mutilate a crab.

We didn't stick around much longer for fear of what she might bring out from the back room for more gore-and-tell.

Once we got back to the beach house, the real fun began:

How do you get a lone crab out of the bag when they think they are monkeys in a barrel?

Lots of squeals (and not just from the children) were heard. One of my girls got so scared, she ran and hid in the back bedroom.

Not wanting my brother to have all the fun, I tried my hand at throwing them in the pot. See the crab in mid-air trying to pinch me and rescue his friend.

I decided that my brother was better at it so I handed him the tongs and backed up as far as I could. Notice my look of terror:

Even though the lady only charged us for 12 crabs, she gave us 15. Wow! We made out like bandits! Or so we thought. Just look at those beauties piled high, ready to be cracked open and enjoyed:
Oh the disappointment.

No one told us (especially the crab-mutilator lady) that it is not crab season. We had such fond memories of visiting our aunt and uncle who lived on the Chesapeake Bay. Looking back, we realized, that the crab feasts we enjoyed usually occurred Labor Day and on into the fall. Not June.

Each of us ate 1 crab. That meant 9 crabs lost their lives for the sake of us learning our lesson. The meat was not sweet, like those in our memories. Besides, I was still having a hard time with the whole guts/green intestine sludge touching my hand. Grody.

If any good came out of it is was this: My 8 year old gave us an anatomy lesson.

She figured out how to tell the difference between a male and female blue crab.

Fabulous.