Johnny 5 is ALIVE!

Remember the papaya incident? Cutting open fruit has nothing on last night. not. one. thing.

Last summer, at Whole Foods, I bought, successfully made, and enjoyed soft shell crab for the first time.  I later ordered it at a restaurant and enjoyed it.  In the winter, I found a pack of frozen soft shell crab at H-Mart.  All wonderful, although of course the frozen variety left something to be desired. 

Yesterday I remembered that a local grocery store (think something between the big box stores of food and Whole Foods/Trader Joes. Its not exactly a specialty store, but they seem to have harder-to-find items) had soft shell crab in their weekly flyer.  I stopped by after work, bought two and put them in the fridge before my gym class.  I asked the seafood counter guy if they were pre-cleaned, he said no, flipped one over and showed me where needed to be cleaned before eating.

After the gym, I was psyched to go home and cook them.  Every single time I've bought soft shell crab in the past, they were wrapped individually in a little bit of plastic (this means they are pre-cleaned).  I got the pan all ready, opened the package from the store with the crab, got the scissors all ready and said "ok lets do this".  I flip the crab over like seafood man told me to do and attempted to cut the "apron". The crab then FLIPPED OUT.  This thing was ALIVE.  I now had two LIVE crab in my kitchen. WTF?

Boyfriend had a dinner meeting out (and doesn't even really like soft shell crab).  I decided that it was going on 3 hours since he was there, it was time for him to come home and save my dinner, otherwise we had 2 new pets.  I called, explained the immediate situation and he laughed, saying he's on his way.

He went through nearly the same motions I did with the crab before saying "are you sure these are supposed to be alive? I don't know how to make this safe to eat".  Fearing no dinner and actually having to figure out what to do with 2 live crabs, I googled this "How to clean soft shell crabs".  Thank you to the writer of that blog for the reassurance that live is good.  Thank you to boyfriend for actually being able to make them not alive.

I write this the following morning following the soft shell crab debacle.  They were DELICIOUS, I survived, and am sure I will be spending the extra dollar per crab at another store to know they are "pre-cleaned".