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Hometown Stories: I Wish I Liked Lobster

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My hometown is on the coast of Long Island Sound in Connecticut. One would think that, growing up on the coast, I would enjoy eating seafood. Alas, I do not. Sometimes I think it’s because I was forced to sit at the table and finish my fish sticks, which I recently learned was my father’s comfort food. I can see why this was foisted upon me – there are meals I make for Kyle that I am flabbergasted when he refuses to eat them. Broccoli! Is delicious! What’s wrong with my child?

Then there was my first job. I was a counter help person at a seaside fried-fish and hot dog joint. I arrived every day that summer at 9am, and for two hours I would help to bread the fish and onion rings, and when I turned 17 I also operated the hot dog slicer. The breading of the fish involved dunking giant baskets of raw things into milk and then dumping them on a heaping pile of flour, tossing them about with one’s bare hands, dunking them again and then tossing them in something called cracker meal: shrimp, scallops, soft-shelled crabs in their entirety, clam strips, and most disgustingly, whole-bellied clams.

Ick. I recall one fine day on which the stoners (there were several on staff, and one day one of them asked me, the squeaky clean straight-A student, “do you party?” and of course I thought that she meant do I like to go to parties? So I said yes. Duh.) started a clam fight. Have you ever thrown a raw whole-bellied clam against the wall? They explode. And then nobody cleaned it up, so for days there was crusty clam oog all over the wall. Where we prepared your food!

So I continued not liking seafood, especially super-fishy-smelling fish. I remember very clearly the first few times I actually ate it. When I first visited Auntie Lisa in California, her mother made us a wonderful lavish dinner, which I came to find out later was simply an everyday occurence in their house, and the main course was fish. My memory says it was salmon, but Auntie Lisa may remember differently. Also, Auntie Lisa’s mother, who I think reads this blog.

Anyway, I didn’t want to turn down the meal so I sucked it up and ate it. I don’t think there was a parting of the clouds or a choir of angels and a sudden conversion to being a fish-eater, but I didn’t hate it. Since then I have willingly eaten salmon steaks, swordfish, shrimp, tilapia, and some sort of fish that basically jumped out of the water and into my taco during one of my camping trips with Stew in Baja, Mexico. I mean, how could I not try the fish that my manly hunter caught for me and fried under the stars? (I have since managed to avoid such a meal, but at least I did it once.)

I draw the line, however, at foods that require too much work for the reward. I’m talking, of course, about lobster. All of that cracking, putting-on-of-bibs, dunking-in-of-butter, and digging-about-of-lobster-poo is just too much for me. The end result is often tasteless and rubbery and really just a vehicle for eating butter and salt. I like my butter and salt with popcorn, thank you very much.

Stewart, on the other hand, is a religious disciple of the Church of Lobster. For years he has yearned to go to a “shack on the side of the road” and get the fabled lobster for cheap. In California, the lobsters don’t have claws. In New England, however…

…the claws are so tasty and big that Stewart prefers to order two at a time! On the way back from our trip to Maine, we stopped in Booth Bay Harbor for this tasty meal.

Kyle checks out the lobsters who are still alive.

On another occasion, we went to The Place in Guilford, CT, as rustic as you can get. The seafood is grilled or steamed over giant crusty pits outside. All seating is on tree stumps, and they invite you to bring your own sides and dessert. We happened to go with a bunch of friends during a thunderstorm. Luckily, the seating area was protected by a tent-type apparatus. It was kind of cool, actually.

After an appetizer of a giant pile of steamed clam-type things, (I don’t even know what they are. Fish-eaters call them “steamers.”) Stewart had 2 lobsters again. He wasn’t even that hungry. He just loves lobster that much.

Having married a non-fish lover, Stewart has turned his efforts to our children. When Kyle was only a year old, he helped Stewart catch and release a fish at our friend’s lake house. Kyle touched the fish when no other child would. In Maine this year, Kyle actually caught the fish himself.


He’ll tell anyone who listens that he caught “five fish! Wind it up! Wind it up!” And not only does he like to catch the fish, but he also likes to eat fish. At my parents’ house he asked for second helpings of swordfish. I think Daddy’s influence is working. Just wait until he introduces Kyle to hot sauce.

This is an original post from www.kimtracyprince.com. Please don’t steal it.

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Comments

  2. candy says

    i don’t like seafood either. i will, however, eat unlimited crab legs at the chinese buffet, which is probably the least sanitary form of seafood. but i’ll take any excuse to get butter and salt in my system.

    Reply

  3. Lisa says

    So the smell of lobster makes me sick, and I hate almost all cooked fish. But when I met Russ, one condition of marriage was that I like sushi (OK, not really, but it was rather early on in our relationship that he took me to sushi.) So now I am probably the only person in the world who hates cooked fish and love sushi.

    Reply

  4. kate says

    I love love love fish. I grew up with a mother that does not like fish, but my dad did and we always got to eat it out.
    I love lobster tail it is so much less work!

    Reply

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