Crab Feast!

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent the past week at the beach with my family. I think I need to spend a little more time describing the crab feast we had on Wednesday night. Steamed crabs is a Maryland tradition. The Chesapeake Bay is the largest blue crab fishery in the world, at least it was until overfishing and pollution pretty much destroyed it, but that is a rant for another day. Anyway, crabs and beer is a standard summer time activity in Maryland, but crabs have gotten super expensive, and are nonexistent here in Florida, but are both plentiful and affordable in North Carolina, so the crab feast has become an annual part of our summer family vacation.

I feel like I should mention that Brian, Greg and Diane, as native New Yorkers, are relatively new to cracking crabs, but have taken to it like they’ve been doing it their whole lives. How Brian made it through college at the University of Maryland without going to a single crab feast is beyond me. He did not crack his first crab until we attended a crab feast held by Joey’s Uncle Mike in Rockport, TX. I have to digress for a moment and mention that Joey’s family puts on a crab feast that rivals any I’ve had in Maryland, and it is always a treat when a crab feast is part of our visit. If it weren’t for Joey’s family, we might not have discovered that Shiner Boch is a great beer to have with crabs.

The crabs were ordered, shrimp for the few non-crab eaters, the newspaper was spread out on the table, the Shiner was passed out, and we all started in. Now my family is really social at the dinner table as it is, but cracking crabs is a social occasion at a whole other level because it takes a while to fill up when you are pulling apart a crab to get the meat. We had lots of fun, made a big mess, and the crabs were super yummy!