I am convinced that, one day, Fresh Dungeness Crab will be my ticket to hell… Really.

I was raised to believe in the Seven Deadly Sins, (a fallen Catholic, if you will) and have come to the conclusion that my personal Chariot to those fiery depths will be teathered to multiple crabs, side-stepping their way right past pergatory, and will proceed directly down to Dante’s infamous inferno.

Unfortunately even knowing this does not help.

MY SEVEN DEADLY CRAB-ALIFIC SINS:

LUST: I can go to the grocery store for toilet paper, and suddenly find myself idly fingering the seafood case, tracing my fingers delicately across the glass, as if the partition doesn’t exist and I can feel their cool temperature, the slight slickness of their bumpy, spiny shells. I ‘check out’ their size, calculate their weight, and critique their color. I look at their eyes, the thickness of their body, the length of their legs. Lustfull, and torn, for dinner is probably already on the stove, or I have all the ingrediants for a pre-planned dinner at home.

I was just going for toilet paper, and now… I feel a little dirty.

GREED: I do not want to share my crab. I don’t and I won’t. I am the Veruca Salt of fresh Dungeness Crab. Spoiled, and I want it now! If you want to experience having crab with me, you must have your own, for I can eat a whole Dungeness Crab without a thought, except perhaps… ‘Gee, I could eat more!’. My greed may be unnoticeable to you if you are sitting next to me at the time. Do not take my passiveness for granted. I am in a temporary state of bliss. Do not look at me mournfully for a leg, or a claw. If you attempt in any way, shape, or form, to share in my crab… You will be denied, and you will then know of my crab-compulsive-greed.

GLUTTONY: I say I can eat a whole Dungeness Crab, and yet each one is of a different size. I will purchase the fattest crab, with the longest legs, and the largest claws I can find. I don’t trust left-over crab, for that is truly spoiled goods in the making… and besides, it’s just one, so I must eat until the crab is done. Stomach distention be gone. I will eat copious, even gluttenous, amounts of MY crab, and perhaps, if you are gullible enough, even some of yours.

SLOTH: I will eat crab until I can no longer move. I will eat until walking my plate to the sink feels like a marathon to a smoker. I will blissfully enter into a full-on crabolicious coma… Sloth oozing out of every one of my lying-on-the-couch pores. Most importantly I won’t care. I will be completely apathetic at having overeaten. Willful apathy that won’t even be a blip on the concern radar.

WRATH: If, for some odd reason, something brings me out of my complete crab stuper, my crab-drunk, and I must leave the table to attend to something… and you touch my crab? I will shower you with a wrath unknown to man. I will pummel you in a complete verbal diatribe, spittling, whilst I shudder at the attrocity you have committed. You will be left in a fetal position of remorse for your nibble.

ENVY: If you are my friend, and I have planned spaghetti for dinner, and we talk on the phone, and you say something like, ‘Bob and I are having Crab’… For a nanosecond?… I might just hate you. My flash of envy might be so great as to unconsciously, uncontrollably, instantaneously hang up on you. It won’t be on purpose. There will be no premeditation on this one.. It would be purely reactive.

I will, of course, call you back, after a pause, and asked what happened(?), and extoll on and on about how the cell service in my neighborhood sucks; but just know this: I really did hate you for a nanosecond because you were having crab and I was having spaghetti.

I will also admit that if you are my friend, and we are talking on the phone, and you tell me that you are having spaghetti tonight, I will puff out my chest, my cheeks and ears will warm, and I will probably experience giddy, almost gleeful pride in telling you that we are having fresh dungeness crab this evening, with a garlic butter lemon dip, to be accompanied with both artichokes and rice.

I might tell you this (even if it weren’t true) just to see if you would hang up on me.

Caveat: Eating crab that has already been cooked and purchased in a store is nothing like eating freshly boiled Dungeness crab. I would do it, of course, but only after all live crab sources had been exhausted. Why? First, you don’t know how many days ago it was cooked, so the potential is that many of the juices have slowly leaked out into the crushed ice of the deli counter bin. Second, you don’t know how long it was cooked, so you don’t know if you are getting overdone, or god forbid, underdone crab. Third, freshly boiled Dungeness Crab is so much more rich, juicy, and crisp in flavor. It’s like the difference between a fresh apple, and one that has been sitting in your kitchen fruitbowl for seven days.

It’s beyond better… It’s the only way to go!

I wanted to show you all the steps to picking, boiling, cleaning , and cracking a dungenous crab, but I didn’t want to do the work myself. Unfortunately, no video on the web is good enough (for my readers), so I will add one of myself this weekend. Then we will do a plethora or crab recipes!

God, if only I didn’t have a 9-5 job!

In the meantime, here is a video on how not to boil live crabs. I saw this a long time ago, but I am a teenage boy at heart sometimes, and this one still cracks me up!