crabby.

aka: 

today's post is one of those times where i knowingly and willingly look like an idiot for my blog readers.  i just love you all so much is all. 

and i can't believe it took me this long to blog about this, but here we finally are!  when the fam and i were in d.c. over memorial day weekend, we spent a day in annapolis, maryland (awesome little town, btw!).  for dinner, we went to the place for maryland crabs in the area: cantler's!

and guess what?   i failed it up.  big.  time.  

so we get this plate of whole crabs and our little wooden hammers....

  and i just start going to town on those poor little crabbies...

flashforward about 15 minutes, and there i sat: barely any crab meat consumed, and the beginnings of a tummy ache...

so this is about the time the waitress happens by. 

she notices my mess of a plate: stray crab legs and other bits and pieces flung about.  

i tell her i'm done.  

and she just looks at me and i just know i've done it all wrong.  instantly proving my status as an outsider to the world of maryland blue crabs. 

but she smiles, and takes my little hammer and what's left of the crab on my plate, and she shows me exactly what to do to get all the awesome crab meat still inside.  but then she also mentions...i had already eaten the crab's lungs.  

WHAT?!?!  so first of all, in my horror, the fact that i don't think crabs have lungs escapes me.  they don't, right?  they only have gills?  but that aside, that's about when the tummy ache really kicked in.

i don't know what i ate that i wasn't supposed to (lungs?  see below, i think it was the "inedible gills."), but it wasn't very fun.

the bright side?  (1) i now know how to properly eat a maryland blue crab, (2) they're delicious, and (3) now i shall share the tips with you all - which, ironically, showed up in my martha stewart living the very.  next. week.  just one week earlier, and i wouldn't have made a fool of myself.  but that's the way it goes...

ta da!

xo. di.

*all images from my personal collection