Crab Heaven

I think we died and went to crab heaven today. I wanted to do something special and it was such a beautiful night to be outside, so I thought crabs would be the perfect fit for dinner. After spending the whole day running errands, making s'mores with Maddie, taking the dogs for a walk, cleaning out the fridge and organizing the pantry, Richy and I headed down to Maine Avenue in SW, Washington DC. Years ago my brother and my Dad would head down to DC and bring back a bushel of crabs and we would sit around the table and barely talk to each other as we cracked a bunch of crabs and dipped them in butter.

When we were growing up, one of my fondest memories is of my Uncle Danny. He and my Aunt would drive from Pittsburgh and he would bring his boat and take my brother crabbing for the day. We were living in MD at the time and we were very close to the Chesapeake Bay and they would get up really early and spend a good amount of the day in the hot sun and come home with sunburned faces carrying a big cooler of crabs on ice. My Uncle would steam the crabs and clean them for us and we would eat crabs for hours in the hot summer nights. The crabs reminded me of the fish and the loaves that the Lord provided for the multitude because they were never ending!

The crabs we got tonight were huge and very sweet. We got them steamed right there and had to wait about 20 minutes for them to finish steaming. While we were waiting, we decided to get a half a pound of shrimp and a dozen oysters to split. OMG, they were fantastic! I ended up picking up a pound of crawfish for Steven since that is one of his favorites. When we got home we set up a table outside and spread the crabs on the table and served them with hot butter. Everyone was so generous because when they had a big claw they would throw it my way. Maddie was the most generous because she gave me all of her claws. Thanks Maddie! I ended up eating 3 crabs and probably 20 claws. When I opened the claws, water would gush out and the meat would come out whole. Like I said, we were in crab heaven. Richy said they were the best crabs he had in a long time.

The only problem is what do we do with the 20 or so crabs we have leftover? I was scoping out some recipes and I think we'll make some crab soup as a start. We'll probably finish picking the other crabs for lunch. Here is the recipe I plan to use:

Maryland Crab Soup

adapted from Old Bay

INGREDIENTS

1 (28 ounce) can whole tomatoes, cut into small pieces
3 cups water
2 cups beef broth
1 cup frozen lima beans
1 cup frozen baby carrots or sliced carrots
1 cup frozen yellow sweet corn
1/2 cup frozen chopped onions
1 tablespoon Old Bay® Seasoning
1 pound backfin blue crab meat, picked over

DIRECTIONS

Place all ingredients except crab meat in 4-quart saucepan.
Heat to boil, cover and boil 5 minutes.
Reduce heat to low, add crab meat, cover, and simmer 10 minutes.