Crabby, Crabbing, *Crabbed.

Have you ever been on the beach and noticed small crabs scurrying across the pale sand?    The one's I've seen are usually white and not very big but they love to scurry and when in danger, they bury themselves in sand.  I think I mentioned many months ago that my brothers would capture these and store them in the freezer complete with sand attached to their bodies.  My mother really hated it when they did that because she had to clean all the sand out of the freezer.

Those crabs are not edible and even if they were, I wouldn't eat them!  The crabs most people eat, tend to live further out.  I know you can make crab cakes out of them or eat them in a fancy way such as black pepper crab, crab chowder, crab salad. 

Most of the time I've eaten crab, its been cooked in boiling water, then drenched in plain melted butter so its really messy to eat.  You open the hard protective shell using a nut cracker, those metal ones you find in your misc drawers in the kitchen.  The drawer, you shove stuff in that you don't know where else to put.  The crab is usually hot, perfectly cooked and sooooo mmmmm that it melts in your mouth.

Most people buy the crab at a market, take it home and cook it.  If you are like my brothers and you live in a fishing town,  you just pop your boat, going out and checking your friends crab pots until you've found enough for dinner. 

When I lived on Diomede, crabbing was the big activity in the spring when the daylight got longer and it was warmer but there was still thick ice between Little Diomede and Big Diomede.  Out there, they did'nt use crab pots.  They caught crabs using a twisted rope decorated with large beads!  They tied strands of beads down towards the bottom of the rope.  When the rope was dropped through a hole in the ice, the beads would capture the crabs attention and the crabs would start climbing to rope only to get caught in the area between the strands of rope.

They pulled the rope up out of the hole, plucked the crabs off, threw them in a bucket and when they  caught enough crabs, they went in and cooked them.   Of course, the only real way they served crab with enough butter to have a beautiful mess on you and the table when done.  Talk about a memorable experience!

*Crabbed is a real word.  It means illegible handwriting.

crabs and freezers.

When you talk about crabs you think of a marine crab, you think of dinner.  You know!  Crab legs!  Where you splurge and buy a bunch of crab legs to eat.   Lots of people eat their crab legs dripping in butter and tell me they are soooo good.

I looked for a picture of what I grew up with as a Sand Crab but couldn't find any.

This creature was the color of the sand and kind of flat and more roundish with the correct number of legs but they never got very big.  For all I know, they are not crabs, but some other crustacean.

I do know you do not eat these .  Not used in soup or crab cakes or any other type of delicious food.  

My brothers would spend so much time down at the beach playing, swimming and digging.  They  always seemed to bring these guys home on a regular basis. 

Rather than putting them out in the garden, they threw them in the freezer to be preserved for an eternity.  They would also leave a trail of sand on the floor from the door to the freezer.  Mom really hated it because they would throw these crabs in completely coated in sand and my brothers would never sweep up after themselves.

Every so often mom would have to clean the freezer out of creatures and sand.  She was always grumbling and threatening my brothers but it never did any good.  They would sneak in, throw the crabs and head out to play.  If they stopped to clean up, it was themselves in the shower and they'd leave a sand encrusted shower in their wake........LOL.