bethk wrote:It was interesting. Poppy Tooker showed how to tell the difference between a female and male crab. I knew there was a difference in the 'apron'. But she said the boy crabs are all blue claws and the girls have red at the tips, like they spent time getting a manicure.
More stupid info to store in the deep back of your brain! LOL
It's really fun to read about it, hear it and see it even if you don't end up remembering it when you need it, isn't it Beth? (That's what Google or Alexa is for!) I knew how to tell the sex via the apron since I was a kid, but never noticed red tips on any crabs until they're cooked, of course. Which brought me back to an incident which probably happened around 1995.
Brian went crabbing one day by himself many years ago when he was off work and I wasn't. I got nervous 'cause he'd been gone so long and hadn't phoned yet and started worrying about him being out there where we normally went (outside of St. Bernard Parish in an area called Shell Beach in Yscloskey, LA) all by himself. (Cell phones were just coming to pass but Brian had a huge brick of a phone since he was in the steamship industry; his industry had the precursors to cell phones probably 3 years before they initially came out to the public in their first expensive brick iteration! People would FLIP OUT when I called them from the car when we were heading over! The difference back then was there was a base unit in his office so everyone in his office with a phone could hear your conversation, not a bad thing as long as you remembered not to discuss anything personal or use profanity.)
Anyway, he finally called me around 3 p.m. -- you normally crab early in the morning until about 10 a.m. or so, as usually, in warmer weather anyway, the crabs stop biting and get kind of lethargic as the day gets hotter. So I figured he hadn't caught much since he'd stayed out there so long in that heat! He said he'd started out really slowly, having nothing but teeny tiny crabs in each net he pulled up, but then just when he was pulling up his nets to call it quits and head home, he started catching a couple of big ones so he stayed a while longer. He said he had an ice chest full, so I assumed he meant the smaller type Igloo cooler made for one person to carry, the kind that holds about 9 or 10 beers.
Anyway, when I got home from work, my Yankee husband had them in a clean plastic garbage can he'd bought on the way home and had filled with fresh water, just like we used to do when we crabbed (okay, he'd gone with us a few times but who knew Brian had actually paid attention?!). It looked like a lot of crab and he said, "I TOLD you I'd filled an ice chest," and then he pointed to the big ice chest! He said, "You'd better call some people who like crab 'cause I'm boiling these suckers tonight." I called my sister and she and her husband Ed and our good friend Pete came over -- Brian loved it, as it was so typically a "boil" by Louisiana standards, which means everyone who arrived had their own suggestions on how to cook them, what to put in the big pot along with the crab boil, how long before you knew they were done, etc. Brian loved every minute of it!
We not only had tons of delicious boiled crabs (remember, Brian doesn't eat seafood so just sat there and listened to the compliments and finger-sucking going on), but I sent each person home with at least a half-dozen boiled crabs and kept a few for me to peel the next day for some crabmeat for the freezer. I'm bad about peeling and/or picking things except when I'm actually at a boil so I knew better than to keep too many or they'd have just gone bad before I picked them.
But what prompted this particular lengthy story is that I decided to count the crabs as we dropped them into the big boiling pot. I was in charge of grabbing each crab (with LONG tongs mind you, as I'm no dummy!) and dropping them in the pot. Brian had not only caught 77 good size crabs and everyone cheered as the count grew and grew, but what fascinated me was that every single crab he caught was a female! Usually the really big ones turn out to be males (or so had been my experience) but these were some really good sized crabs. I don't know enough about crab life or crabbing to explain this but when I just googled "Yscloskey" in order to spell it correctly (it's pronounced WHY-CLOS-KEY), I saw a blurb about a crabbing spot noting "...you'll usually catch more females here than male crabs..." but it didn't explain why and it seemed to be just mentioned in passing.
I haven't had boiled crabs in probably 15 years. The one good thing about a boiled crab is it has a decent amount of meat in it but boy, if you've got any little cuts on your fingers or a ripped cuticle or two, that crab boil really wakes up those little wounds. I do buy a couple boiled ones when making seafood gumbo or Shrimp and Crab Stew as I use those to add flavor to the dish due to the crab boil and seasoning used to cook them -- plus the bright red color really perks up your dish. The gumbo crabs turn red, too, when cooked but they're not big and flashy like a big ol' boiled crab with all its big claws and pincers still attached. Who knows == maybe I'll pick up a couple of them next time they're looking gorgeous in the store just to take a trip back in time.