Cooking & Crabbing

Today Chris, Zack and Andy went crabbing with Walt and Dena. I had way too much cooking to do for the tea and William just didn't feel like feeling nauseous for half a day. So Will stayed home and helped me. He was a lot of help! He peeled eggs for egg salad, scraped icing off Oreo cookies, entertained JD while Susie and I worked and offered his services to make sure all the items were satisfactory. "You don't want to serve bad food at your tea."

headin' out

peelin' eggs

While we were busy cooking away making tea sandwiches, cheesecakes, cookies and chocolate-covered strawberries, the guys were out on the Columbia Bar trying to replenish our crab supply.

Susie n' me making chocolate-dipped strawberries

mini Oreo cheesecakes

chocolate-dipped mini Oreo cheesecakes

They had pretty good weather but pretty bad luck. The first pot they tossed off the side promptly sank to the bottom of the river (they almost lost 2 more after that but were able to save them). Most pots had crabs in them, but they were mostly girls or puny boys and had to be thrown back into the wild to make more baby crabs for next season. Remember crabs, make big babies!

got one!

too small

lots of crabs but no keepers

The highlight for the boys was the wildlife. A very large sea lion followed the boat for most of the trip waiting for extra bait to be tossed overboard.

a movie by Zack

Of course wherever there's food there will also be seagulls.

A couple of bald eagles also joined in on the list.

I have to admit I was kind of glad there weren't any more crabs to kill and clean after cooking all day, but I would have liked to stock the freezer with a bit more crab. We did boil up the one keeper they brought home, but I was disappointed that we didn't get to hear him "scream". Is that mean? :o)

the keeper!