Last week I went out to San Francisco to visit some friends and Teddy, Stella and Vicent and I took a weekend camping trip to Bodega Bay. We arrived at our ocean front campsite Friday night just in time to pitch our tents and watch the sun set over the Pacific. We built a fire and made a simple dinner of sausages and corn on the cob with s’mores for dessert.
Saturday morning we cooked bacon and eggs and skillet cornbread (from jiffy mix this time) over the fire for breakfast. But the real highlight of the trip was our dinner that night. We drove into town and went looking for live crabs without a viable plan for how we would cook them with nothing but a large frying pan. We went to two different fish markets before being tipped off to follow the big orange signs around the bay to the marina. We found our way to the dock where a friendly fisherman was selling the biggest crabs I’d ever seen right off his boat, and when he heard we didn’t have a pot he offered to lend us one. He sent us on our way with four live crabs in a garbage bag and a big pot, and told us to cook them in sea water. Teddy made me hold the bag of crabs for the car ride home.
When we got back to camp I sent Vicent down to the water to fill up the pot. We started a fire and set the pot over it to boil, and I wrapped up a few potatoes in foil and set them in the fire to bake. When the water came to a boil we dropped the crabs in and let them boil for about 15 minutes. We were the envy of the campground, using stones gathered on the beach to crack open the shells and dipping the briny meat in melted butter.
4 Comments
May 24, 2009 at 10:36 pm
envy – I’d say!
cheers and enjoy your holiday weekend,
*heather*
May 25, 2009 at 12:32 pm
I’m so glad you discovered the Anello’s crab boat here in Bodega Bay. They’re good people and I’m not at all surprised they loaned you a pot. I blogged about them a couple of months ago if you want more info.
http://www.bodegabaylife.com/2009/03/live-crab-for-sale-in-bodega-bay.html
Cheers!
Kathlene
May 26, 2009 at 10:20 am
Awesome, Kate! Mmmm and thanks for the postcard.
May 28, 2009 at 1:05 am
yup! anello’s, that’s them and they were so nice! they said the huge crabs were “small ones” so we got them at a discount. compared to the crabs on the east coast though, they were HUGE.