Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Eating Ocean-Spiders

Our friend Monicaroni from Texas came to visit us! We thought the most fun we could have on a weeknight would be to stuff our selves full of things that normally crawl on the ocean floor. I showed Eustice a picture of crabs on the interwebs and he was very excited... he says that he likes the flavor of spiders. I didn't ask for details.

First we had to pick out what we wanted to eat. Here is Eustice enjoying the sound of a bubbler. Pretty arty for a camera phone... don't you think?

I'm sure that these are just as tasty as they are pretty.  Then we came across this...


It took us a while to get Eustice to calm down enough to understand that this is a type of fish... I'd never seen him so upset before.
Once he calmed down (and we stopped laughing at him) he agreed to pose with the sheephead. But you can tell from the look on his face that he was pretty annoyed with us for laughing at him.







While Monicaroni ordered fish, and husband got a beer, Eustice and I staked out a table and waited for our live crabs to be cooked. Eustice refused to pose with living crabs. I think maybe he thought they'd be smaller? Or maybe he was afraid of being pinched. Still, he looks excited about it all, doesn't he?


When I brought the bag of steamed crabs to the table, he wasted not a moment to get a good look...

This crab had one of the thickest shells I've ever seen. Even Eustice's hooves were not strong enough to break it! Much mallet whacking and flying debris ensued. Sure was sweet and tasty tho. Once you got past the dirt... I grumbled about the fact that they didn't rinse it before steaming it.  Eustice just stared at me. "What's wrong with eating dirt?" He asked. "MY MOM," he said "told me it's a great way to get your minerals." I'm not gonna disrespect Eustice's Mom.

Other things we ate included: 

And Monicaroni had to reassemble this one for the picture. It was so delicate that it fell apart (but boy oh boy was it tasty!)

It was about this time that I noticed while Monicaroni and I were busy talking and stuffing our faces with sweet delicious crabs, husband had been letting Eustice take sips of his beer...

Eustice keeps asking when we're gonna see Monicaroni again and when are we going back to the Redondo Beach Pier and if he can have more beer.