Crab Guts

I had to opportunity to patron Cantler's last weekend. Let me preface by saying, I don't eat a lot of meat. I don't like anything with a bone, or skin, or sinew or that even vaguely resembles an animal (or what was formerly known as an animal). I eat fish, gnocchi and Ben & Jerry's.

But some friends invited Budge Clinic and I out, and out we went… to the Chesapeake Bay. For all of you Westerns, ‘going for crabs’ is quite an experience. If anyone asks you if you want to go, do it – if only once. Just don’t wear anything too nice or rather anything you don’t mind getting crab guts on.

So back to Cantler's…

The nice lady came and put butcher paper on our table. She got us some drinks and we ordered up a dozen and a half medium crabs. They arrived on a large tray covered in Old Bay with there little claws ready to be ripped off.

There is a strategy and order to eating a crab. The way which was explained to me, first the legs smallest to biggest. There is meat in the leg if you pull it out correctly. If not, just disregard the leg and move on to the body. Turn little Blue over and identify the thing that looks like a ‘t’. Rip that thing off and attempt – if you can – to pull the top and the bottom of the crab apart. This is where it gets a little intolerable to us quasi-vegetarians.

Crabs are living, breathing things and such; they have lungs and internal organs. Said organs look kind of like gross green mustard, and the lungs are… well… lungs. This is when you turn the crab over, scrape off the lungs, clean off the mustard concoction and take a deep breath or a a big swig of domestic beer in a can – should you be so lucky.

Now, for the fun part. Start ripping apart the opposite side of the legs for more meat. Doesn’t it just sound exciting?!

I think I had maybe 5 crabs; a record for me. At my previous attempt, more than 3 years ago, I had ONE. And that was just to say that I have had my way with a crab. (And then I ate a whole lot of corn.)

So, in summation… we picked crabs for probably two hours and somehow at the end of it I was still hungry… but crabs are fun, and Old Bay is tasty. But for me, I’ll probably stick to the crab cakes. (See Senator Mikulski’s award-winning Recipe)

For those of you who are really serious, please see this video for a visual representation of that which I speak... Crab Picking 101