The Velocipede A.K.A. Penny-farthing.

Fantastic.

It’s funny that those used to be desirable characteristics in hot dogs. Now it has gone the opposite way. people want natural casings and a “snap” which actually means “hard to cut.” Maybe the fact that there is a demand for “old school” hot dogs and such is a good sign. Maybe the post war trend of fake processed food is just a trend? I sure hope so, but I’m not holding my breath.

link to the post.

I’ve never rendered my own lard, but I am a fan of the wonderful substance. It isn’t exactly health food, but Lard has half the cholesterol and half the saturated fat of butter. I don’t eat it every day, but I think Americans need to get over the fear of the stuff.

One of my favorites The Homesick Texan has written all about
how to render lard.

For more pork flavor you should go see wooly pigs.

One day, coming home from a Saturday evening meeting a friend for a drink in Oakland, I ran into this guy on the Muni. He was this weird fat guy with a cart, 40oz, and a crabnet. I asked him what was in the bucket and there were at least a half dozen crabs in there. He said he had been crabbing right off the embarcadero. Until then, I had no idea that anyone even did stuff like that in San Francisco.

A few days later I googled something like “crabbing san francisco” and came accross Jeff’s Captivating Guide to Crab Fishing. I emailed Jeff and I emailed the California Dept. of Fish & Game. and they both told me the crabs were edible. Why go crabbing if you can’t eat them? After that, I knew I was good to go.

I decided to spend one Saturday afternoon taking a bus to the outer richmond to Gus’s Discount Fishing Tackle (the woman working there reminds me of Rhea Perlman in a good way) and then to Shanghai Dumpling King nearby. Visiting a bait & dumpling shop in the same day is actually my idea of a good time.

Maybe a month or two after that little shopping trip, I decided to actually go crabbing. I bought a bunch of chicken wings and threw them in my crab trap (with bait box!) and the wings fell out every time. I think the sea lions got them. Jerks.
Then this afternoon, after a pretty decent lunch in Berkeley, I decided to take a second crack at crabbing. I grabbed some super cheap chicken parts for bait and headed to the pier near chrissy field. It’s hard to imagine a more beautiful spot to catch crustaceans, if you ask me. See gallery!

I tried one spot for about an hour and caught plenty of seaweed and wood snags. I also attracted a sea lion or two. Jerks. I decided to head to the other side of the pier and I snagged 3 crabs with the first cast. They were all way too tiny to keep, so I sent them back to their watery environs. There were also a few Dungeness crabs which are illegal to take inside of San Francisco Bay. You have to go to Pacifica for that. I ended up catching 2 keepers and took them home.

These are Rock Crabs (Cancer antennarius) .I was conflicted weather to attempt to cook them in the Than Long/ Vietnamese style with garlic noodles or to cook them in the Blue Crab/ Cajun style that I am more familiar with. I decided that with minutes-fresh crab, there really is no wrong way to cook it.

I washed the sea-mud off my two crabby little friends and started the steamer pot. I put about 2-3 inches of water in there and added some stuff I had lying around. 1/2 bunch of celery, some bay leaves, lotsa kosher salt, 1/2 onion, an entire garlic bulb. I let all that stuff develop a nice perfume and then tosses in some waxy potatoes (yukon gold maybe?). I let them steam for a few minutes while I clarified some butter. I added an entire bulb of garlic, minced and sived it out at the end. It turns out garlic fried in clarified butter is quite delicious by itself. I mostly used it as a garnish though. Anyways, after the potatoes had steamed for about 5 minutes, I added our reluctant crustacean crab friends. They steamed for 10 minutes (maybe?), but really until they became red(er) and I just decided they were done.

I plated the food and realized that rock crabs are not called that because they live on rocks (they probably do) but because their shells are friggin ROCK HARD. I haven’t yet invested in the proper crab utensils. You know, the mini-fork and the cool shell cracker thing? I only had the primitive tools of pliers and hammer. There isn’t much about eating a crustacean that is polite. I think I like it that way. There is something very primal and human about sharing a meal of self-caught sea-animal. It feels good to see what happens to your food from start to finish. I like knowing I treated my crabs; well, before I killed and ate the bastards, of course.

Maybe next time I will try the Pacifica pier. It’s not all that far from my place and you can actually find Dungeness.

Anyways, I highly recommend this activity. There were at least 20-30 other crabbers around when I was doing my thing, so I am not some lone crazy person. I highly suggest you contact me, and we can go crabbing. Why not?

link to flickr gallery detailing this special moment.