TWO LOBSTERS

 

AS I'M SURE YOU RECALL

I love seafood. Being from New England. lobster is a true fave. Whenever I go back I'll have it every night. When my mother and I rented a little place on the Cape one summer, Falmouth Harbor, I think, we'd go to Sam's Clams and have a lobster roll every day.

Recently, my wonderful friend from college, who still lives in Manhattan, told me one of her pandemic coping mechanisms. She would plan some really nice thing to do each day, a kind of reward to look forward to, and that day it would be lobster. In fact, she was on her way to buy it right then. She was going to cook it and melt the butter and have a private little feast.

Oddly, I had been thinking of lobster myself. Another friend who now lives in Maine told me of a place near her where they boiled the lobsters to order, out on the pier, right where they came off the boat, and then boiled the corn on the cob right in the lobster water. Yum!

My father owned his own business but mainly he was a salesman. He traveled all over the country selling mops until it was the second biggest mop company in the states. Part of his success was based on telling jokes. I am sure many of the jokes he told were not suitable for his five little kids at home, but he did have at least one for us. About a lobster.

"A man was walking out of the fish market with a lobster under his arm. He bumped into his buddy who said, "Hey, what are you doing with that lobster under your arm?" 

"I'm taking it home for dinner," said the first man.

The lobster popped up and said, "I've already had dinner. Take me to a movie."

See? suitable for children.

A few years ago, my two sisters, two husbands and one brother rented a house right on the sand for a week. It rained every day we were there, and only one bedroom was suitable for a couple, so we had to switch off. We still managed to have fun. Brother went to market and bought lobsters, which we prepared to cook by taking two huge pots, and boiling water. When I, oldest, designated lobster killer, put the live lobsters into one roiling pot, one of them leapt right out and landed in the boiling pot right next to it. AS I said, we still had a good time, tho' the lobster scared the shit out of us jumping like that however futilely.

So when my son asked me to host a birthday dinner for his fiance outside on the pool deck of our condo building, where it is easy to social distance for small groups, I thought of lobster. It's festive, rare enough, and by golly, the supermarket was having a sale. Small cooked lobsters for $12 each. Cooked! Perfect and red and festive.

It was amazing. Son and I split the cost. I had fun getting the accoutrements--huge lobster bibs, butter warmers, sharp little pokey things to get the meat of of the claws, and of course the shell crackers. We had corn on the cob and salad and bread.

It turned out that the birthday girl and another friend had never taken a lobster apart (thermidor only?) before, so I gave a demo. I stood, took my lobster in my hands (after donning my bib) and twisted off the tail and the big claws. We had a discussion about the tamale (green, liver, delicious but not for everyone) and I showed how to crack the claws and slice the softer underside of the tail. When I sat down, my lobster was ready, and everyone else was happily attacking their meal. Really yummy to be all having such a luxurious yet kind of DIY meal together.

You are not going to believe this, but there was one lobster left over.

I looked forward to it all the next day. And here is where I finally make sense of the title, TWO LOBSTERS. Because sitting alone, with butter up to my elbows and dripping down my chin, I enjoyed that one even more. Or at least differently.