The Crabs

My father was from Jersey City.

And as I recall, we'd pulled the motorhome onto a campsite in North Carolina. I must have been seven years old.

Context: I moved to Maryland around age 8 or 9 and grew up a Marylander. I've been to Baltimore Blast games, saw the Skipjacks back in the day, and learned to pick a crab long before I'd managed to master long division. Grew up on Wilkens Ave in that strange hinterland between Arbutus's Westland Gardens to the south, the Paradise 7-11 to the north, Our Lady of Victory to the east, and the Inner Loop of 695 to the west. I played on both the Arbutus and Violetville Little Leagues. Not that any of this means much to someone who isn't familiar with the little culture that comprises the land between Southwestern Blvd. and Frederick Ave., but for those of you who did or do, you know what I'm talking about. I'm a Marylander. I know crabs.

You can tell where someone is from by how they eat crabs. If they smash their crab's shell with a mallet, they aren't from Maryland (mallets are for cracking a particularly tough claw and that's it). If they can't tell the difference between a male and female before opening it up, they are not from Maryland (nature marked the belly-side of the shell for you). If they complain about the 'yellow stuff' in the crab's torso, they are not from Maryland (it's mustard and it tastes great). If they eat the lungs they are definitely not from Maryland; and if they ask you to pick their crab for them and they are either over the age of ten or don't have a baby sitting on their knee, they are not from Maryland.

All you really need to pick a crab is your fingers. A butter knife helps, but is hardly mandatory.

And it's real easy: just turn the crab over (males are better), slide a finger or the edge of a knife under the key, pull it up and the shell starts to rise, turn the crab over and break the shell back towards the eyes. Then, clear out the lungs, break in half, quarter those, remove the claws, and dig in. The best meat is the lump closest to the chest.

My father, mind you, was not from Maryland. He was from New Jersey. In fact, a part of New Jersey where 'crabs' meant only one thing. So I guess -- even in my pre-Maryland state -- I was both confused and excited when he came back to the motorhome with a half bushel of blue crabs.

Just the fact that we were camping in a motorhome should suggest to you a difference between the way my father and I see things. Nonetheless, I was interested in the crabs. They were alive, of course; and they began dropping out of the wet cardboard box he'd placed on the picnic table.

I know that my father had never in his life prepared crabs.

The proper way to prepare a blue crab is to steam it covered with a nice layer of Old Bay seasoning. You throw the crab in alive and blue, it comes out cooked and red. Easy.

My father, however hadn't bother to read the directions.

Which explains the grill.

Yes. The grill.

My father attempted to grill live crabs.

Everything gets a little hazy in my memory at this point, though I do remember hiding in the motorhome as my father ran around the grill cursing the crabs who'd applied themselves to his arms and fingers with their strongest Chesapeake Bay vice-grips.

Maybe the old man should have stuck to kielbasa and pirogies.

But maybe I should give him credit for at least attempting something new. I mean, who would have thought that cooking a crustacean could turn into such an amusing fiasco.

I guess I'm kinda like the old man in certain ways. Especially when it comes to either following directions or finding out the proper cooking procedure for whatever dish you happen to be preparing. Maybe that's got part to do with why I don't cook anything that could potentially attack me. It's bad enough when things get hairy with a vegetable stew.

Cast-Iron: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Ever want to run a campfire kitchen like the cowboys in those old Spaghetti Westerns?

Well you are gonna need a cast-iron frying pan. My friend Carmen lent me a copy of the world-famous Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery. If you do not have a copy, please stop reading this go straight to a bookstore and purchase or order one. I've got the ninth edition here in front of me.

Why own this book?

Name another tome that will give you detailed instructions on everything from the proper procedure for pruning fruit trees to the best practices in preparing your dead for burial.

And right there on page 34 of the ninth edition: everything you could need to know about cast-iron cookware and campfire cooking.

Here are some of the important points. I'll trust you to pick up a copy of the book for acquisition of the more salient features.

1. Never overheat cast-iron. Although it is true that if you can wield a cast-iron pan, you own death, you should be aware that your pan can crack if heated to temperatures above 300 degrees.

2. Keep cleaning to a minimum and don't use any sort of abrasive to get the job done. Cast-iron will last forever if maintained properly; get used to cleaning with a little oil and a towel.

3. If you plan to cook baked beans or roasts that are gonna take some time, you are going to have to season your pan first. This means that you'll create a seasoned coating between the food and the metal. Otherwise your pot roast may have a tangy metallic taste. Here's what you do: wash and thoroughly dry your new pan, grease the inside with a good coat of vegetable shortening (rub a bit on the outside as well), then bake the pan overnight in an oven set on low heat. Voila! In my experience, this also works for seasoning a stainless-steel wok, but you dry it on the range rather than in the oven.

My wife had a doctor who wanted her to increase her iron intake. He told her to pour tomato juice in a cast-iron pot and leave it in the fridge for a few days. The idea was that the acids in the juice somehow help the juice 'soak-up' a bit of iron from the pot. Don't know if it's true, but I wouldn't bet against it. I'm sure Spaghetti Cowboys weren't short on iron.

For more about the book, check out the 'Country Living website'.

On Returning to the Bustle, Thinking of the Campfire

I'm back, and the raccoons have never had it so good.

A week at 3000 feet on a bump in the Appalachians was good for me -- mostly pleasant weather, good canoeing, and a never exasperated campfire putting the heat on a grill filled with veggies and mush. Good camping, indeed.

Let's get one thing straight right off. Camping takes many forms, but in its truest form (especially in the communal form where there's a kids' tent) it is the art of sharing -- sharing the woods with the animals that are of course more permanent residents and sharing space and food and conversation among friends and family. Even when the trip is undertaken alone, one soon senses that 'alone' is a futile notion (usually around midnight when the owl begins to call his cautious summons and the denizens of scrap-eaters wander on-site).

I'm planning on closing out this week with a couple posts about camping and eating. I think that's worth writing about. At its most essential of course, camping is really just celebrating one's ability to subside. And this gets to the heart of the matter.

Further, camping brings out something of the nomad in me. In the last thirteen years, I've had nine addresses; however I've been at the current one for the last three years. Camping gets me back out there into different surroundings and I think that's got everything to do with its appeal. MJ and I have camped from California to Massachusetts and set fires and tarnished grills all the way across this nation. The camp and the campfire represent the stops along the road where the abstract notion of space and country were superceded by the more intimate and personal acts of cooking, eating, and resting.

There is something holy about eating and sleeping and living outside of walls; and it centers around that campfire. The campfire is the hearth of the camp. It's the source of warmth on a damp morning and the source of light amidst the howls of the late-night coyotes of wilderness; it is stove and artwork and entertainment. By its presence, it teaches us that all of these things are interconnected and one; it breaks down the categories we love to encumber things with. The campfire is the most simple physical reminder of humility. Without it, we perish.

Campfire Mushrooms

So, tomorrow is Independence Day here in the States and on the day following I'm headed out to the Appalachians with the brood for a week of camping.

On my mind: campfire food.

Last night we picked up groceries for the trip including the requisite Morningstar burgers and dogs and marshmallows and chocolate for the kids' 'smores.

Here's a quick and easy technique for cooking mushrooms on the campfire... I've found nothing else that produces such audacious results:


- Put eight ounces of small whole white mushrooms (or baby ports) on a sheet of tin foil (the tin foil should be large enough to wrap everything up into an onion-shaped package when done)
- Add two tbsp chopped garlic, spreading evenly
- start to wrap up the mixture, creating a 'bowl' with the tin foil
- add enough olive oil to cover about a 1/4 of the mushrooms
- add a few drops of lemon juice and a sprinkle of white wine
- sprinkle with Montreal Steak seasoning (or equivalent)
- wrap the tin foil into an onion shape, twist at top, and poke a dozen holes into the top and upper sides (not bottom) with a fork
- in a separate piece of tin foil, place a handful of mesquite chips
- sit the tin foil of mushrooms within the tin foil of mesquite creating the effect of a round pitcher sitting in a bowl (you are going to have to scrunch parts of the two layers of foil together at points to make 'em stick; just make sure to leave it loose enough that smoke from the mesquite can escape)
- punch a few holes in the sides of the mesquite layer
- place directly on the coals and leave for ten or fifteen minutes, depending how hot you've got the charcoal (do NOT place directly in the fire or you will have wasted ten minutes of your life)
- open the mushroom bag being careful not to allow any of the mesquite into the bag and serve over rice with grilled green peppers

YUM!


Have any good campfire recipes? Post them. I'm looking for ideas.