Crabbies!

One of the nicer things about living on the Outer Banks, and especially right on a canal, is that I can go right outside and catch my dinner.

Here, we're on my pier, shaking blue crabs out of a crab cage just pulled up from the water.

Delicious blue crabs that will be dinner tonight.

Mr. Hawthorne is getting ready to clean the crabs before he cooks them. In case you're wondering, that's the female with the wide apron on top. The male crab is on the bottom.

Mr. Hawthorne pulls the shell off.

He cleans out the gills.

And he removes these two items from the female crab. He doesn't know what they are and the chef at one of my cooking classes didn't know what they were either, so I've decided they are breasts.

Crab, coleslaw, leftover frozen crab cake with tartar sauce (mayo/dill pickles/sweet relish), shrimp with cocktail sauce (ketchup/horseradish/Lea & Perrins/lemon juice). And the butter from the Amish store in Yanceyville that is out of this world.

Crab meat dipped in butter. There's nothing better than this.

Crab carcasses.