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.

One Potato Per Person

How do you figure how many potatoes to prepare? How did my grandmother always know how many to chop and cook for that massive pot of mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving? And fruit salad...if I'm trying to feed 6 people, then how many bananas, cans of pineapple, apples and oranges do I gather?

This was part of the lesson on Monday night with my girls, along with chicken and glazed carrots. We really needed a good name for this particular way of preparing chicken, and several ideas were tossed around: Intoxicated Chicken, Drunken Chicken, Tipsy Chicken (are you getting the idea alcohol was involved?) We settled on Rosemary Chicken, since it also took center stage, and is quite a bit less offensive. Rosemary was also involved in the potato endeavor.

There are several favored ingredients in a lot of the things I make, and I always try to keep them around: rosemary and basil (grown in my backyard), fresh onions and garlic, olive oil, white wine, various forms of prepared tomatoes (paste, sauce, crushed, whole, diced, stewed), fresh parsley and cilantro, lemons and limes, cayenne pepper, and a really good parmiggiano reggiano, otherwise known as parmesan cheese - and not the kind in a green can!!!

Menu: Rosemary Chicken (with white wine and garlic)
Roasted Potatoes, Glazed Carrots
Simple Lemon Cake with Strawberries

To roast potatoes, chop one scrubbed but not peeled potato per person. Mix together olive oil, salt and pepper, 1 clove of crushed garlic and a sprig of fresh rosemary together in a small bowl. Pour over chopped potatoes, wrap in foil and put on hot grill for 30-45 minutes. They will be crispy and delightful and you might wish you'd chopped an extra potato!

Our dinner conversation was lively, including some embarrassing revelations and a lot of uncontrolled laughter.

(A note on determining serving sizes: one potato is considered one serving, so one potato per person if you are making roasted or mashed. Fruit salad? One apple is a serving. One banana is a serving. A can of pineapple is probably 4 servings. So if you've got 6 people to feed, then add up the servings of fruit until you get to 6.)

(Another note, on buttermilk...most of us don't keep this strange thick, yellow version of lactose in our refrigerators, so what to do in a pinch? Put one teaspoon of white or cider vinegar in a measuring cup and add one cup of regular milk to it. Let it sit for 60 seconds and voila! Buttermilk!)