use real butter

Happy Birthday to all my mates born on this day! I know the autumnal equinox bops around a bit, but I love it when the first day of autumn coincides with my birthday. Why? Because it means the ushering in of a favorite season with pumpkin pies, fall colors, cooler weather, Halloween, apple cider, autumn harvest, hearing children at play in the school yard, the smell of smoke from chimneys drifting through the air, and frosts.

But today we managed to skip over all of that and plunge into winter. Okay, to be fair, the forecast calls for warmer temps and sunshine in the coming week. However, today I could pretend it was winter – except it didn’t require much pretending. On our drive to the trailhead this morning, the roads were completely slicked with a sheet of ice. Although I love winter, this punch of winds and then cold temperatures seems to have some aspens going from green to brown. Thankfully, there is still some color to spare.

Kell and I have been discussing seafood of late. We are both seafood WHORES. But what’s so exciting is to explore what the other side of the globe likes to nosh on from the sea. Those yabbies are beautiful, and I was delighted to learn that Kell used to fish for yabbies as a kid. Because I too was a seafaring huntress in my youth…

If you live on or near the Chesapeake Bay, you have probably heard of the famed Chesapeake Bay blue crab. There is a joke (I guess it isn’t really a joke because it is true) that people who crab on the Maryland side use bull lips for bait, and people who crab on the Virginia side use chicken necks. Someone told me this in junior high and guffawed while I stood there with brow furrowed and wheels turning… I used chicken necks.

It’s remarkably primitive, yet effective. Tie a string around a raw chicken neck. In a pinch, you can grab some piece of dirty old string stuck on the pier from a previous crabber – as long as it doesn’t break. Chuck the chicken neck into the water while holding on to the other end of the string. Wait. Sometimes you wait for the string to wander in a direction counter to the current, other times when the gettin’ is good, you just slowly begin pulling the string in. As the chicken neck rises, there will usually be a crab clinging to it, eating, moving its happy mouth parts to suck in the treat. Typically you don’t want the crab to be scared away before you scoop it up with a net. I have memories of the hungrier and bolder crabs who clung to the chicken as you dangled it in the air because you forgot a net that day. Drop crab in bucket – resume crabbing.

For the more invested crabber kids, we tied our strings to the pilings along the dock, and monitored as many as 5 strings. A good way to keep you off the streets.

My father who is far more industrious than the average crazy person, purchased a crab pot – or a cage. Leave it for a few days and come back to harvest the crabs. One time we hauled it up and had caught two eels (well – not really caught, they slithered out easily enough). Another time we had caught a giant mud cat and my dad took great pains to release it without harm.

I still think the manual version of crabbing is a great activity.

Today was not a productive Big Diss Day. I think all of my anger from the week has worn me down. We set about cleaning this morning and taking care of house things while listening to Weekend Edition Saturday, Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me!, and Marketplace Money. I rarely get Saturday mornings like this because normally I’d be outside at the crack of dawn hiking or shooting or both – and while working on the Big Diss I can’t listen to radio or anything for that matter. I did manage to make some chocolate chip banana bread, once again because I failed to eat all of the bananas I bought in the hopes of well… eating more bananas.