faulker054

When I think about it, it's only been 9 years since I started eating seafood again. Before that, I was on a nearly 18-year hiatus from eating seafood due in part to a bad food poisoning incident and being a picky kid. And when I was able to take down my first sushi after so long, new doors to weight gaining opened up and I was loving life. Now, I really can't imagine having a meal without seafood. There's a reason why the french refer to seafood as "fruits of the sea", and they sure are. Abundance and variety allow us to eat copious amounts of it, as though we're doing a favor by keeping them from overpopulating the sea. But we do stay away from over-fished things like tuna, and Jeni and I try to follow this Seafood Watch guide provided by the Monterey Bay Aquarium . With McCall's Meat and Fish Co. providing a very nice selection of seafood, our love for seafood was taken to another level of aquatic heaven. Rather than the usual coursed dinner, we ...

On Sunday night, my new family and I sat back in our seats in relief and satisfaction. We were at Boiling Crab, and examined the aftermath of our seafood genocide. Our hands sticky with sauce and spices; the outer edges of our lips slightly burnt from the slight heat. On a large piece of white butcher paper lay the remains of the insects of the sea. Shrimp completely stripped of its natural clothing, crab shell pieces smashed like a car in an accident and tiny crawfish severed at the midpoint. It was in fact, a battle scene the insects of the sea had no chance of winning. But they were doomed to begin with the second they entered The Boiling Crab in Alhambra. These guys are either boiled, steamed or deep fried. From there, they are lathered in your choice of sauce – the whole garlicky, lemony, spiceful, buttery sha-bang in our case. And finally, tossed into a plastic bag and shaken up till they are painted a new color. Oysters , catfish, gumbo – are also on the menu but not ...

It was a Saturday afternoon and I sat patiently hunched forward with hands crossed on a table with a lazy susan. Jeni was by my side and so was Eddie , Rickmond and Javier . Eddie, also known as the ultimate predator and every animal's/insect's worst nightmare had invited us to a day of adventurous eating. Just before, we had stomached a Filipino duck egg in its nascency – eyes sheathed with very thin veiny skin, claws just firm enough to give you a nice prick in the throat and enough feathers to remind you that you were in fact, consuming a dormant mammal. We had also just finished live spot prawns that jumped out of the pot brought out by the server. About 10 minutes before, they had added a Chinese rice wine and covered the shrimp with a lid, intoxicating them to a lethal state. We picked up the shrimp with our hands the second we their antennaes became limp. We took off their heads, exposing their brain and pulled off its shell. The shrimp was so sweet and fresh, ...

We all have our fears, whether or not we're willing to admit them. But we're all human beings, and it's one of the many things that sets us apart. I've got a whole list of them. For example, I loathe the glaucoma machine at the optometrist's office. You know the one that blows AIR into your eye at like 528 mph. It takes me a good 4 minutes per eye and I wish I was a pirate or cyclops so I'd only have to endure the suffering for 4 minutes total. Another thing I fear is anything in tiny dot patterns. Blackheads, blueberry pies and bad 80s polka dot clothing. I'm not sure why but I think it might have to do with this cartoon I've watched before... where this character had 18 eyes on his face... all blinking at different times. Weird I know. And finally... my apparent condition of bakephobia . I've talked about it in my pizza posting a few weeks back and just can't get myself to appreciate baking because of the necessary precision and limita...