🦀 Crab Feed 🦀

Our crabbers/fishermen arrived home in the late afternoon on Saturday, here they are pulling in with Kristi to greet them, I happened to be outside and snapped this image.  

They drove to Ilwaco, WA after work on Friday and launched the boat and went out and dropped 9 crab pots. They did some fishing too and here is a happy Caleb with two Sea Bass.  It got dark while they were out there and he told me how the water was black and the sky was black and all you could see was the lights from town on the horizon.  Quite a memory for a 11 year old boy.

Caleb out on the Pacific Ocean pulling up the crab pots, they have to be a legal size of 5 3/4 inches across.

They were very successful!  They each caught their limit of 12 each - 36 in total, they had 9 pots down and limited out with the first 3 and had to return 2/3rds of their catch to the sea.  Those lucky crabs!  :-)  These are Dungeness crabs and are DEEEEliscious!

Happy fisher-boy.

You have to be careful reaching for these guys as they'll pinch you with their claws.

I am very VERY proud of my son Travis, he has learned to run the boat and care for it, learned to fish and crab and most importantly, he learned to clean and cook the crabs right when he returns no matter how tired he is.  And he is now teaching his sons all these skills.  Caleb is really getting into it.  They halved and cleaned them and cooked them in the pot you see over there.

When we were members of the Portland Yacht Club we used to attend the annual crab feeds, one of the members was a spice merchant and made this delicious sauce for the crab. I got his recipe and so whipped up a bowl of it while the crab was cooking.

I highly recommend you try this for anything you'd use cocktail sauce for.  YUM!  A bowl of this with shrimp would be ace.  I did a scant 1/4 tsp of the cayenne.

The first tray of cooked crab.. :-D 🦀

I got a mug of ice water, some paper towels, a plate, knife and fork and a bowl for the shells, the bowl of sauce and set to work picking my dinner.  You take a half crab, pull the legs apart and pick the meat out of the body end, then crack the legs and claws and pull out the lump meat.

Kristi joined me when the guys brought in the 2nd heaping platter of crab, she isn't a fan of Dungeness and prefers the King crab so she picked them and shared them with me and the guys.  By this time Travis and Caleb joined us and we had a great time around the table.  Hayden passed as he'd had leftover KFC chicken for dinner.  

The way I eat crab is I crack and pick until I have a little pile and put some sauce on and eat it then repeat.  Kristi picked all the rest of the crabs out on the deck table yesterday and plans to make crab cakes for dinner.  YAY! We're going to boil some of our garden potatoes and some corn on the cob too.  

Kristi did some harvesting from our garden.

They went over to take a car back to their house and picked up two sunflower heads and she picked out the seeds to roast.  This variety had black seeds.

Here is the 2nd one.

Here they are all picked and the chaff cleaned off.  She will roast these for Travis to eat.

Ozzie making himself at home.  Keeping Dayle's chair warm.  :-)

On the town group on facebook someone posted this photo of her road which is where we lived before we bought this house.  I commented on the post that I wondered who lived in our old house and it was the woman who posted this shot.  I've wondered who lived there and now I know.  Neat.  

I asked if they still had the stained glass window in the front door that I made and they do!  I asked if she'd share a photo of it with me as I did not have a picture.  So here it is!  I made the window and a friend of ours made the door for us.  The barn Dayle designed and built is out the window.  I had a pottery studio in the loft of it and so loved throwing pottery on my kick wheel and glazing and firing the bowls, plates, mugs and pots for plants.

Well.. that was a lot.  :-)  My eye cleared but is still kind of quirky but I hope it will settle down.  Dayle has a few more days of solitary confinement and can then move back into the house.  When he's back in the kids will move back to their own home.  We so appreciate them helping us out during this time and I'm so glad we could offer them shelter when their home was threatened by fires.  Family is everything.  

((hugs)), Teresa :-)