CRABS!

I grew up in Baltimore, hon, and when you do that, you eat a lot of crabs in the summer. I remember with fondness, picnic tables spread with newspaper in my Aunt Elizabeth's backyard in Ellicott City, Maryland. All the grandparents, aunts, uncles and distant cousins would pile their cars in the yard, unload their bring-your-own-beer, while Uncle Earl dumped bushels of steamed blue crabs on the tables. As a child, I never questioned how or where these crabs were prepared, nor did I appreciate the effort put into all the side items that went with: corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes, gallons of beverages, desserts. I just remember running around her house and yard, away from our city row-house life, and feeling special. Eating crab is such a monumental effort; I don't know how the adults in our midst had the time or patience to teach us youngsters how to dissect one for consumption. Maybe we were born with the ability to do so, like an instinct. But it seems to me that I was able to find the meat inside a crab, and spend hours on many a hot Independence Day and have enough.

Other memories of eating crabs: I was TERRIFIED of eating the "dead man." No, there was not a rotting corpse or his body parts in the bushel basket with the crustaceans. "Dead man" is the term that was used to describe the feathery gills/lungs that the crabs use to extract oxygen from the sea water. I was warned every time I ate crab, not to eat it, or I would DIE. Literally. Now, I'm dubious that it was quite that serious of a culinary infraction. I really started questioning this when I realized that people (in Baltimore) eat soft-shell crab sandwiches - which is the whole crab, eyes, legs, guts, etc. - all the time and don't perish. Surely the dead man is in there still, right?

And "mustard" is really crab poop. Some people love it, but I think it is disgusting. So I would gingerly scrape it out of every cavity and crevice in the body and be quite careful not to let it touch anything that went in my mouth.

When I first moved to North Carolina, I was appalled by a "pig-pickin'," a Barbaric sort of summer ritual where a complete pig is slow roasted all day, and then you go and pull the meat off the carcass. Yuck. (The meat IS tasty, but I prefer fetching it from a serving dish.) But then I considered the summer feasts we enjoyed tearing the legs off of bottom-dwelling garbage collectors of the sea, and didn't judge so harshly. I guess every culture has its nasty culinary delights.

So, along with my two trusty Virginia Beach natives, we steamed some live crabs (males only, please) early this summer and introduced our friends to our favorite summertime treat. Steaming crabs is not for the faint of heart - there is the sad detail of putting those lovely bright blue and gray critters, so desperate to live, reaching out with their vice-grip claws for your hands as you squeeze them with the tongs, in a pot of steaming water and vinegar, sprinkling them with a generous portion of Old Bay seasoning, and putting the lid on their sad lives. They claw away, trying to escape, until after about 30 minutes, they turn a lovely shade of bright red-orange and stop moving.

Then you must dump them unceremoniously on the newspaper strewn picnic table, pass out a knife and a crab mallet to each person, along with a stack of napkins and dive in. The verbal instructions go something like this: "First, you tear off the claws. Then the legs, but be careful to pull firmly from the joint between leg and body; then you can get the backfin meat from the body cavity." Sounds awful when I put it that way.

The requisite corn on the cob and sliced tomatoes go around the table. Beer, lemonade and sweet tea is enjoyed. Since we did this at dinner time, we are still sitting around the table outside at 10 pm, pounds of crabs left untouched. Apparently, a bushel of crabs feeds 10 Baltimore and Virginia Beach natives, but is way too much for novices. We had a ton leftover. So Grandma came the next day and picked all those leftover crabs and made crab cakes for lunch. So delish.

There wasn't much 'refinement' (at least by Southern cotillion and debutant standards) in my mid-Atlantic urban upbringing. But I am so grateful for the rich experience of this one Chesapeake Bay summertime tradition.