Crab for Dinner

Robert, Friday, June 20

We set out to do errands today. I dropped Leslie off at the laundromat with all of the dirty laundry and I headed into town to pick up a few things. Two important stops were for propane and fresh fish. Got the propane and was told that the fresh fish would be there around 4:30 p.m. Places that have fresh fish buy it right from the boat and process it. The boats arrive late in the afternoon. All of the fish is cleaned, cut up, sealed in plastic, and frozen. You can buy fish as it is headed for the freezer. If you go there in the morning, the best you can do is to buy “fresh frozen” fish from the day before. I went back to get Leslie and after a few more errands, we went back to get the fish. When we got there, they said that they were getting Dungeness crabs momentarily. We could stand on the dock and look down at the boat waiting to unload the crabs. The boat pulled up and the crabs were winched up to the dock. We said we would take two crabs in addition to a pound of fresh salmon. The Dungeness crabs are smaller than the King crabs. King crabs weigh 8-10 pounds and Dungeness crabs weigh 2-3 pounds. When we bought the King crabs we paid $14 per pound and the Dungeness crabs were $6.50 per pound. We had to wait a few minutes for our salmon as they were in the back filleting it. As we waited for our salmon, a line was forming for the crabs. The boat had 84 pounds of crab or about 42 crabs. Someone else waiting said that a few days before the boat brought in about 500 pounds. Before we left, they had sold 12 crabs to the first three people in line including us (we were third in line) and there were 5-6 people there with more arriving. I don’t know how the word got out that the crabs were there but as someone said, “Word travels fast!” With that we went back to the trailer to get some things done and to cook crab for dinner. We put the salmon in the refrigerator for tomorrow. As it was a beautiful evening we set up a table outside to eat our crab. Also, peeling and eating crab is a messy thing and being outside is a good idea. After dinner we cleaned everything, did a few more tasks to get ready for tomorrow, and went to bed.