Snow Crab Dinner

This week I started my first week of my last clinical.  Basically, I'm working full time alongside a nurse and transitioning into the role of a nurse.  This means we take on all aspects of their care- including using a pager to talk to physicians and hope I don't make a fool of myself.  Considering the only pager I'd even handled was a sparkly pink one that came with gum in it when I was five, I had an awkward learning curve.  But I'm getting it down!

I worked four days and then had Friday off, so Joe and I obviously had to celebrate- I'll take every excuse to celebrate- so we got hard to work at making dinner.

I have been in this phase where I'm obsessed with crab for a little while now.  It's less than ideal that I'm in the middle of the freaking country, but I'm making due.  Fortunately we have three grocery stores within a 15 minute walk/train ride, so I've surveyed the options before.  Trader Joe's has frozen crab cakes that are okay at best, and I barely trust Dominick's to sell edible chicken breasts.  That leaves us with Whole Foods.  In general I really can't stand this one, as they have 30 kinds of milk, none of which are just regular freaking milk, and it takes me an eternity to hunt down the essentials.  It's a great place for people with weird diets, but it's too much for me.  That said, they have a fantastic meat selection.  It's too pricy for my blood normally, but for celebration it's totally fine.

The snow crab we got was $28 for close to 2 pounds.  Which is a lot, but when you figure that Joe and I usually spend $30 a person out at dinner, and never less than $30 to order in it isn't really that bad.  Plus we seriously made it way better than my favorite seafood restaurant around the corner does.  With the rest of our food included (potatoes, corn, and pasta) our dinner was $40.  I'll take it!

On to the cooking!

The basic premise is that you boil your potatoes on the bottom of your big pot, with the water level just above the potatoes, so that your crab can steam on top of the potatoes.

Old Bay is an essential ingredient in there with your red potatoes. 

That's Old Bay sprinkled on the crab legs too.

Our corn went in a separate pot with sugared water (probably a couple tablespoons or a really big pinch worth).

The Chef!  Joe is responsible for everything but the pasta sauce in this dinner, although I did help a little.

Even Oy helped!

Joe was concerned we didn't have enough food, so we threw some pasta in yet another pot.

The sauce was a simple one- I poured some white wine and lemon juice over the noodles, and added some fresh garlic and shredded parmesan.

Then pile up everything on top!

As a funny aside, I brought my wine, butter, and lemon juice over to the table to find this:

So I took a much needed cleaning break to clear the table while Joe did the finishing touches.
What can I say, we take Father's Day seriously around here- we did some serious watercolor cards!

So as I was saying, our amazing dinner...

You really can't go wrong with putting Old Bay on anything.  My brother always puts it on his grilled corn- he's pretty damn smart.

Joe's successful crab acquisition!  For the record, we don't have nut crackers, so we just used our hands, teeth, and forks.  And it was super fun- no need for fancy tools around here!

Seriously though, this crab meat was fantastic.

Just look at that claw!  It's my favorite when you get that little wiggly piece at the end out.

And we finally worked our way down to those starches.

And that's it!  You can melt a little butter to dip your crab in, but I personally love dripping lemon juice on mine.

This little groveler didn't get any of this meal!

And now it's time to settle into that food coma...