School's out for summer!
Brooklynne finished her first year of teaching yesterday and we wanted to whoop it up doing something fun and crazy, but we didn't know what exactly. So we drove into the District just hoping to stumble onto something great. But after driving randomly through several shady neighborhoods, we decided to drive back out of the city and continue our quest in the countryside. In the end, we found ourselves up to our elbows in some of the best Maryland steamed crabs I've ever had in my mouth! 
I'm not sure what the difference is, but we ordered a dozen (but somehow got several extra) medium males. This was more than enough to make us sick by the end of the night and we went to bed still licking the Old Bay-like spices from the corners of our mouths. It was heaven and a special memory that I doubt either of us will soon forget. Could this be the beginning of an end-of-school tradition? We can only hope! Now, I can't let this tasty dish escape me so the challenge becomes finding instructions to do it ourselves. Any ideas? Also, click the "continue reading" link to see my own walk-through for gutting a steamed crab.
After spending what seemed like hours in the car (mostly because it was, due to all of the Friday DC traffic) it was nice to find this little hole-in-the-wall crab place. It was awesome and definitly will become an end of the school year tradition... maybe a beginning of the year and in the middle of the year tradition as well! It was only the second time that I had ever had steamed whole Maryland crabs. The first time was with my uncle Jasper and aunt Becky a couple of summers ago.
You are truly missing out if you have not had this kind of crab. I think that Miles and I are going to have to start taking people to a Maryland crab place when they come to visit. Hint hint... come visit us.
Although, I have to admit the first crab that you work on takes for ever. I was thinking to myself, this is not worth it, but Miles was right, by the end of the night I couldn't finish what I had because I was so stuffed and sick of crab. Just imagine, sick of crab. I know, I thought it was impossible too.
Miles' diagram of how to "gut" a crab is great. Trust him on his last hint... don't eat the poop.
On the difference between males and females (crabs, not people):
Brooklynne's Aunt Becky taught us that if you look at the underside of the crab (see step 2), a male has a center segment that looks like the Washington Monument, and a female has a center segment that looks like the Capitol.
I think the female meat has a stronger taste.
I had fogotten about that Elizabeth, it is so funny that you remember that. The ones that we had were medium males, so we only dealt with Washington Monuments.