The Ocean Provides, or, Lobster Dinner for the Poor and Destitute

We live in prime lobster country.  There are restaurants scattered around Cape Ann, promising fresh and delicious lobster, caught just off the shore.  We gotta try those! we thought, but the price tag always sends us shuffling right back home to our peanut butter and jelly.  

But the ocean provides.  

And one early morning, a big old lobster cage came bumping up into our backyard in the waves.  I saw it from our bedroom window, and we immediately threw waterproofs on over our pajamas and headed out to snag it.   

Marc heroically hauled it in.  I really wish I had had enough composure to snap a picture when he first went for the cage.  It was crazy heavy,  and before he could haul it in, a monster wave of foamy, stormy sea water rushed around him all the way up to his waist.  But he never let go of that cage!   I was basically screaming while I stared from a safe, dry distance.  Only 15 seconds later, when the wave subsided and he had dragged it further in, did I remember there was a camera hanging around my neck.  I took this picture, which is way less exciting.

The cage ("lobster pot") still had bait in it!  ca-ching!  There was only one thing to do.  Get that pot out into the ocean, with our own bouy tied to it.  

But to do that one needs a lobster boat.  They look like this:

We have ... a canoe.  Same thing, right?

 A day or two later, when the weather was calm enough not to immediately capsize our puny little canoe, it was time!  Just shove the canoe out there,

and paddle on out with the lobster pot balanced precariously on top, and then just dump it over the side.  Easy enough!

Hauling it up a few days later?  Not so easy.  Again I have no picture because I was screaming and terrified, watching from the shore because I refused to go out in the canoe.   But he did it.

And here he comes, approaching the "driveway"....

With a big old dude in tow.

Oh man.

You have to touch them.  You know, to pick them up.  This time I managed a picture even though I was shuddering and wimpering and negotiating the onset of both horror and guilt.  That's disgusting!  and, aww, poor guy! are we really going to eat him?  

Maybe I could get out of it somehow.  See, you have to check to make sure he's a dude.

and you have to measure the shell of his body to make sure he's within legal limits.

In both cases I thought it might be my Get-out-of-catching-and-eating-a-lobster-Free Card.  No such luck, for him, or me.  He's legally edible.

Keep him in sea water until dinner time.

Cook it.

Eat it.

There's this great restaurant called Marc and Katie's: they have the cheapest food and it's always delicious (although sometimes downright creepy).  I highly recommend checking it out.