Monday, May 4, 2009

Well That's Enough to Make Skippy Crabby


Pun Intended! :)
For Mother's Day this year [combined with our Anniversary] we decided to go BIG! and have a crab feast for dinner on Sunday. We are huge fans of the delectable Chesapeake Blue crabs and used to eat them with a fair bit of regularity. Until, that is, the population dwindled and crabbing restrictions were put in place. The prices skyrocketed and we sadly curtailed our crab eating habits to, perhaps, once or twice a year.
The industry is rebounding [YAY!] but we have not purchased crabs in the past two years because at the market price they were truly a luxury, more expensive then lobster or steak. Or a corned beef "out of season". hee!
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This year is the year- we said! We were going to buy them come heck or high water - price is no matter -we said! It is a special anniversary AND Mother's Day - it is worth it!
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Or so we thought.
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I called our local crabshack yesterday to place an order for next weekend. To say I choked while on the phone with the lovely Capt. Pell would be a slight understatement.
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A bushel of large males? Yes - 5 dozen crabs - is $210. TWO HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS.
A half bushel of large males? 2 1/2 dozen - $110 ONE HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS. [This would leave the kidlets out of the crab eating equation anyway ;) ] still.....
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He asked if I wanted to place my order. I sputtered, stammered and finally gasped "I have to talk to my husband. Gotta go!" click.
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TWO HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS?
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Hot dogs anyone?

5 comments:

christopher said...

5 dozen crabs? holy my goodness, that is a lot of crabs! how many crabs per person?

SkippyMom said...

I emailed you Chris, but with all the kids here it is about 8 per person...with a few left over for crab cakes - they only produce and ounce or so of meat between the body and claw....so it really isn't that extravagant

SkippyMom said...

I can't believe I typed "and" before ounce...PET PEEVE...LOL...

I meantn "AN OUNCE" ...argh

Yvo Sin said...

Hmm I don't know, that sounds about right to me, it's early in the season... at the crab bar back in the days, we charged about that much... $25/dozen for the 'larges' that we could get our hands on, which weren't that big to be honest, always much bigger in MD... I paid $84/dozen once and they thing was bigger than my face, so it was worth it.

BTW, I've never bought a bushel because that is way too much even for my crab crazy family...

christopher said...

Ah, now that makes sense. :) I've only ever had these really big crabs (no idea what kind) at Chinese banquets, and dozens of them would be crazy lots (at least to me). Oh, I didn't see an email from you in my inbox.
Now I want crab though. :)