Growing up my parents always had their limit in crab pots, so we always had a heaping pot of crabs each weekend.  We would go check the pots once or twice during the week, baiting them with pigs feet, or fish carcases; and bring the crabs back to the house to store in live-well, until time to clean to steam them.

Here are the Steps of  Catching, Cleaning, Cooking and Eating Blue Crabs:

Find a couple of unsuspecting people to take on a “boat ride.”

(in this case Ryan and my Mom are going along)

Give them some gloves and direct them on how to pull the pots

Wow! There’s a big catfish in that one!

Have them shake the stubborn crabs from the pot

And repeat until all of the pots have been checked

When all of the pots have been checked, emptied and baited,

return home to put the crabs in the live-well.

The crabs remain the the live-well, in the water, until you are ready to clean them.

Now for the cleaning process:

While wearing gloves, and being very careful not to let the crabs pinch you with their claws,

(which are about 100 times stronger than the human jaw, and can certainly do some damage)

grab a crab from the live-well.

Wow! That’s a big one!

Remove the backs from the crabs,

this task takes someone with strong hands.

Once the backs are removed,

it’s time to clean out the insides.

Find another unsuspecting person to do the spraying-

Here, Ryan, has the water hose ready, and

will unwittingly be covered in crab guts before the job is done.

As you can see, Ryan is simply spraying out the inside of the crab

with the high pressure nozzle on the water hose.

Once clean, the crabs are placed in a steamer pot and sprinkled with Old Bay seasoning.

Old Bay is Good Stuff!

Yay! The pot is full!

Now place the pot on a burner.

(shown in the picture is an outdoor propane burner)

Sprinkle with a little more Old Bay seasoning.

Now get a beer, take a sip

(to make sure it tastes okay)

Then, pour the rest of it on the crabs.

And Repeat

Now pour some vinegar over the crabs, put the lid on the pot,

and turn up the heat.

The crabs should steam for 30 minutes.

When they are done, allow them to cool just a little,

take them out of the pot and eat them with Old Bay and butter.

Delicious!!

I would show you pictures of the cooked crabs, and show you how to eat them, but I was too busy stuffing my face to take pictures.

[mappress]

Carova is part of 11 miles of unspoiled beaches, between Corolla, NC and Virginia.  There are no paved roads, no stores, very little cellphone services, very few tourists  and on top of all of that there are. . .

these beautiful banker horses.

The banker horse, are essentially wild horses, that roam free on the beach, in the dunes, and in the canals on the sound side of the island, and are thought to have swam ashore from ship wrecks during the 16th century.

Usually it is difficult to appreciate the beauty of the place where you grew up, or a place where you have lived for a long time, but the extraordinary site of a single banker horse walking in the surf is something that will always amaze me.