Crabby

On Friday Todd and I went to a crab feast in Annapolis. Annapolis is the state capital, and is a cute little old town on the Chesapeake Bay. We really like Annapolis--we probably go there more often than we go to DC.

I have been nerdily looking forward to this event for a month. The stars aligned and Todd was actually home in time, so we got a sitter (hooray!) and drove 30 minutes to the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium (what a cool place for an event).

Now, I love crab. It's probably my favorite seafood. So I didn't really think this through before I bought tickets. But as we got closer to the stadium, it suddenly dawned on us that we were in serious seafood territory, not land-locked Las Vegas, and we were probably going to be fed more than just crab legs.

Todd: "Do you think they're serving whole crabs?"
Jen: "Ugh, I hope not."

And then we entered the gates and saw table after table lined a foot high with whole crabs. Shells, eyes, paddle-legs and all.

Luckily I have become a much smaller food pansy than I used to be, plus I knew this would be a really fun experience fairly unique to where we live, so we dove in.

We got our plates piled with eight to ten crabs each. Then we sat, and stared at the crabs. Then we looked at the people around us, delightedly eating meat from their open crabs. How did they do that?

I swallowed my pride and begged the man across from us to show us what to do. Luckily he was an expert and was very friendly. So we now know how to open a whole crab. That's pretty cool.

And disgusting. You take off the pincer legs, remove some T-shaped back flap, then open the crab oyster-style from the front. THEN you watch all the guts and who-knows-whatever-else liquid nastiness flop out of the crab. Professionals can then easily find the meat, but I just clumsily dug around, breaking parts until I found meat. Trying desperately to avoid the gills.

Crabs have GILLS. And they're spongy and they're in the way and they look so gross and . . . ugh, the gills almost did me in (I have a thing about texture). Seriously, the first time I opened a crab I had to fight a wave of nausea. But I kept repeating to myself, "This is a really cool experience." And we got through it. And it was super tasty. And a really neat experience. And I wouldn't do it again.

After I ate my entire one plate of all-you-can-eat crabs (I win!), we filled ourselves on hot dogs. I don't know what's in a hot dog, but I certainly don't have to sift through it to eat it.