Dungeness Cab

Growing up this was a family tradition,

When Grandma and Grandpa came out to spend Christmas with us they arrived about this time in December. They had packed their belongings and a steamer trunk full of apples and scooted on the California Zephyr. The trip took them out of down town Grand Junction in the rail yard. It was often snowy and icy most of the way to California.

They traveled by train because it was considerably less expensive than air travel. Just 24 hours later and a ton of snow upon the tracks they arrived at Jack London Square in Oakland ready to make the journey across the bay by ferry to the station at 4th and Townsend. This is a foggy unpredictable time in Northern California. It is not, however snowy. Which is another reason that the Grandparents would arrive to spend at least two weeks with us.

We were always excited to pick them up because it meant that school as out and our family events could occur. One of these events included a gigantic crab feed. We would go down to fisherman's wharf and Dad and Grandpa Bayard, known to his compatriots as BW, would pick out about 3 of the juiciest crabs they could find. If it wasn't busy, we would ask the man in charge of the pots to crack them up for us. A couple of fast cracks with a little wooden mallet and a quick wrap in butcher paper would have is headed back to the dinner. Mom would have a big pot of minestrone soup warming up on the stove and San Francisco sourdough french bread would be broken and consumed along with the picking through of the meat from the crabs and the steaming soup.

It was winter in the city and it was pretty nice. I think that one of my sister's didn't think that eating crab was proper. Mom and Dad had the perfect answer for this... all the more for the rest of us. The crab from the bay area when it is freshly cooked and right out of the cooking pots is very hard to beat. There as some in my family that prefer it to lobster... nope.. I won't tell you who.

Another memorable crab feed happened one time when we were visiting Kelly, my younger sister. She was living in Sebastopol. Every year the local grocery store has a knock down the doors special on fresh crab that comes from just over the hill in the sea based towns surrounding Jenner by the Sea. As a family we were gathered to support Heather as she was attending Santa Rosa JC nearbay. The call had come out from the grocery store adds that that weekend was the indeed the special dungeness crab special. Kelly got down there and nosed out a couple of people to bring back 4 wonderful crabs. We spread some newspaper on her dinning room table and we went to it. There was crab and crab shell all over everywhere until the last claw was investigated for remaining meat and we had completely had our fill of dungeness crab.

So tonight I bought a couple of fresh crabs (not frozen)from Costo.  I was thinking of these events as I was smashing claws and ferreting out joint meat on two specimens. Happy dungeness crab days.. its still a family tradition!
: ) Pat