A Southern Crab Crackin'

Who would have thought blue crabs were actually blue? And before Ernestine steamed them to death in a giant pot, they were wiggling around, crawling all over each other in this bag. These beauties were for the Hamilton crab cracking festival. The crab cracking where Ernie's dad called me Adolf Hitler because I was disgusted by the whole process. But answer me this. Would you eat eggs out of a cooked she-crab's womb? Cause I think that's pretty disgusting. I will eat crab cakes, crab dip, she-crab soup and just about any other once-removed version of crab. But eating it straight out of the bug's shell was just off-putting. Call me crazy. Or better yet, call me Adolf.

As soon as Ernie saw the crabs crawling around in the bag his mouth started watering. He spread out the newspaper, tucked a napkin into his collar, and waited none-too-patiently for his mother to serve him a heaping platter of fresh crabs and juicy shrimp.

If you have never seen an entire family clamoring around a bucket of crab and shrimp, you are missing out on one of life's greatest experiences.

In order to eat the crab you have to flip it onto its back and rip off the shell on its underbelly. Attached the the shell are the crab's nasty-looking lungs. Ernie called them gills, but they are too hideous, spongy and lung-like for me to call them anything but. They all felt the need to warn me not to eat the lungs. They could have saved their breath, 'cause I wasn't going near those things.

Once you've discarded the lungs, you have the scrape out the mustard-looking "stuff" that no one eats. No one seems to know what it is, either, so I suppose it is a good thing they don't eat it. Then you break the leg-less body in half and suck out all the meat and juices peaking through the crab's membranes. And if you are lucky enough to get the She-crab, you have the joy of munching on the orange-hued baby crab eggs. Now tell me, who wouldn't want to have such a wondrous experience?

It was quite the event, though. As much a social event as a culinary one. With everyone gathered around the trough, we laughed and joked and teased until the heaping platter was reduced to a huge pile of crab shells sucked completely dry.

And since I only ate a couple bites of the giant bug placed in front of me and half of a shrimp (you had to pinch off the head and pull off the legs before eating the meat), Butch has decided that my nickname should be Adolf Hitler. What do you think? Would you have been more adventurous than I was, or would you have joined me as a communist? Yeah, that's what I thought.