Another Vacation Food Story: Crab Legs

It just leaves itself open to so much innuendo, doesn't it? Beginning with J.R.'s love of a new girlfriend (I think we can refer to her that way now), at the announcement that we were having these delicious delicacies for dinner and the following discussion about the best way to eat them, looked doey eyed at him and asked if he would crack her legs. Off to that start, it just had to be all downhill from there.

We surrounded the dinner table, covered smartly by Keela with a plastic table cloth (but red, for the season) and had placed before us a bowl of cold boiled shrimp and a small container of zesty cocktail sauce, another bowl of hot shrimp sauteed in spices, and then the piece d' resistance of the meal: a platter of hot pink crab legs. Grab a knuckle and go to town.

With only two mechanical crackers to share amongst the six of us, there was very little waiting or resting on ceremony. We regressed to the behavior of our cave-dwelling ancestors and, with atavistic hunger and glee, ripped the piping hot legs open with bare hands and pulled, or sucked, or dug out the meat inside. Ahs and grunts and cheers accompanied us, and we competed to retreive the longest, thickest piece of claw leg. Dip it in butter and pop it your mouth in one continuous motion. Ah the joyous carnage if it all. 

And of course, with all that clawing and plunging and biting and dripping, there was bound to be  equally enlightened table talk. I have to admit, I took the lead...what can I say? It was all good funky food fun--some of the best food porn ever.