Blue Crab Boil!!

This morning, TLMM and JAM set out to find scallops at our local seafood market. Imagine my surprise when they returned with at least three dozen live blue crabs!! Fortunately, I had Zatarain's, lemons and Old Bay Seasoning on hand. We carefully put the crabs in a large cooler covered in a thin layer of ice. You don't want to dump a lot of ice on live crabs because as the ice melts, they will drown. Your goal is to keep these little buggers alive until you cook them.



I didn't have a super huge stock pot to use to boil the crabs, so I used a large pot and cooked them in three batches. A dozen at a time was perfect since that is what the instructions on the Zatarain's box called for.



Simply follow the instructions on the box (I had two boxes of regular and one box of spicy). We have a burner on our propane grill, so I decided to do the boiling outside. Any part of crab cooking you can do outside is a good thing. Trust me on this!

Put 3 quarts of water, 4 tablespoons of salt, the pouch of seasoning and a quartered lemon in a large pot.  Add a teaspoon of vinegar to make cleaning the crabs easier later.  Bring to boil.  Add crabs.  Boil crabs for 6 minutes for medium-sized crabs. Turn off heat and let them sit in water for 20 minutes. Remove, cool and either eat them immediately or refrigerate until you're ready to eat!  

The recipe is easy- it's the cleaning and eating where the work comes in.  You can either clean them "a la Pop" (pick some crabs clean until you have a nice, tidy pile of crabmeat, then go wash your hands and then eat) or just eat them like normal people do (pick and eat all at once)!  Use a small wooden mallet or a hand held nutcracker. Dip in hot melted butter. You are guaranteed fresh, delicious, sweet sweet crab meat...and the eggs.

Tobacco Road!

Tobacco Road, Miami's oldest bar, has been around since 1912. Tobacco Road is still a bar, but it's also a restaurant and concert locale.  We recently had lunch there and learned that they serve a mean hamburger and fries!  They have a large salad and sandwich menu, which you can find on their website here.   Here are just some of the burger and fries and salads our group enjoyed there.

Classic Roadburger with fried egg.



Classic Roadburger with salad!



Caesar Salad with chicken breast strips.

We also had a classic burger with jalepeno peppers and fries and Q ordered a turkey burger. They were fresh out of turkey burgers, so she opted for a regular burger on healthier bread.

The burgers were delicious- the service was slow.  You have to accept this place for what it is and not expect professional, detail-oriented service staff.  It's a bar that has a decent food! Don't expect more and you will not be disappointed.  There is a large section outside which would be a blast to hang out in for happy hour.  I would definitely go back there to hear a band, have a drink or even for a fantastic burger and crappy service...and the eggs.

An Interesting Statistic

While listening to the radio on the drive to work this morning, I heard a commercial for Publix brand paper towels, which are on sale right now for $.89 a roll with a 4 roll limit. In the commercial, the voice tells us that the average American family uses one and one half rolls of paper towels per week. I consider myself fairly average- but my family of two people, three dogs and one bird is evidently anything but. We go through at least one roll of paper towels per day. That is at least seven rolls per week! Bounty. Regular or Mega-Rolls, Select-A-Size (which TLMM loathes because she never can select the size she needs)-- it makes no difference. Where did Publix get that statistic? Could we really be that abnormal, using almost 700% more rolls of paper towels than the average family? How many rolls does your family use?? I've gotta know...and the eggs.