Becky and I landed in South Texas right at the 1st of November and will be preparing to leave on the 1st of December - it was a very quick month! Before I forget... Happy Thanksgiving everyone... even our Canadian friends we've met here in South Texas.
So...South Texas.... if you've never been, what image of landscape comes to mind when you hear "South Texas"? Flat lands, Prairies, The Bad Lands, Mexico, Cacti, Clay, Desserts or is it Deserts - never did learn the spelling of that word. That word - meaning a really hot place with a rattlesnake behind every rock no trees no water - ya know - the stomping grounds of John Wayne, Roy Rodgers, Kit Carson, The Lone Ranger Hi Ho Hi Ho its off to work... oops, wrong jingle, and Gabby Hayes.
Speaking of John Wayne... I saw a Western on TV the other day. Rock Hudson was in it and his role was that of an outlaw. I'm surprised he wasn't wearing pedal pushers instead of cowboy chaps. I wonder if he had to run off stage to gargle after having stolen a kiss from the the Sheriff's captive daughter. What the hell brought this up I'll never know but I wrote it under no particular duress so I will leave it where it is!
Where the heck was I? Ahhh... South Texas! Actually this part of South Texas is on the Gulf of Mexico with all the bays, "back lakes", rivers, deltas, and all the SEAFOOD they hold. Like the oysters shown below. There are so many oysters available that seafood mongers won't sell you a few dozen - you have to buy a burlap bag full of ''em - roughly 10 to 12 dozen. As a side note, you can get a bag of them for about $27.00 - do the math folks, that's about 19 cents apiece.
I was in the mood for oysters last week - that's when I found out that I couldn't buy 3 dozen. I elected to pass on the peck (I'm sure "peck" isn't the proper unit of measurement for a bag of oysters but I think it's a pretty cool word) because I really wasn't in the mood for a shucking party. Honestly...can you follow my "writing style"? I try to avoid reading what I've written because it gives me a headache - it's like watching one of those movies where they bounce around between "present day", "4 days ago", "2 years into the future", "12 years ago"..... Gawd I hate that! Maybe this is why my posts are so disjointed. C'est La Vive - there goes the Canadian influence of this RV park.
OK OK... the oysters. I was out wade fishing in a stretch of bay waters I had never fished before. Wade fishing... I hope you don't think I was out fishing FOR wades. Never heard of anyone fishing for them - they're just too damn tough. I was out in water up to my butt which isn't all that deep if you know me. Anyways I was using "live finger mullet" for bait - here we go again, a finger mullet is not a fish that looks like a finger. Rather it indicates the size of the mullet - oddly the length of a finger and do not even start thinking which finger! I won't go there.
After an hour of butt deep wading, and no tugs on my line, I got into an area with a sharp rocky bottom. The water was pretty darn clear and I could see the "rocks" and picked one up. Sure enough a OYSTER. There were hundreds of them just laying there on the bottom. I put my rod up on shore and let the bait do it's own thing while I went back out with a canvas bag and in 10 minutes filled it with 36 oysters.
As soon as I got home I opened one up and slurped it down. Other than being bay water warm, it was very, VERY tasty. I continued to rinse off the remaining oysters and put them in the fridge to get icy cold. Last night I shucked half of them for supper - I just don't know how it could be any fresher than that and although there we slightly smaller than you might buy at a fish mongers', they were no less tasty, briny or juicy.
Now then, if you allowed your eyes to look at the picture below you might be confused. NO! The creatures in my hands are not South Texas Oysters... they are Blue Crab, cousins to Chesapeake Bay Crabs. Actually, they are the same animal only instead of living in Chesapeake Bay, these guys lived in "Red fish Bay" in South Texas.
Blue Crap's are the second reason I love the Corpus Christi area of South Texas. You can set crab traps (similar to lobster traps) out in the bays and back lakes areas as I did when we were living here full time or, you can buy them. Buying them is a whole lot easier - these were about $1.50 each and were the largest Blue Crab I have ever seen. If you have ever eaten this particular species of crab, you know it is a lot of work and if the crabs and on the small side, the work required to break into them increases exponentially. I claim "writer's licence" - just as a poet would have "poetic licence". Exponentially is certainly NOT the proper description but why not exaggerate. I have writer's licence to do so.
Suffice to say these guys are unbelievably tasty - just douse them with Old Bay and steam them till they turn red, and then a little bit more. Crack, crush, rip, tear em open and dip in white vinegar, open a bottle of your favorite ale and you are "good to go". By the way.... you WILL end up with "paper (IE crab) cuts" on the fingers of one hand or the other so open each crab up with the same hand - if you get cuts on the fingers of both hands and you start dipping into the white vinegar - next time you want to eat Blue Crab, you'll most like go to the super market and buy them already shelled and in one of those plastic tubs. By the way, once you've had them fresh steamed, you'll never settle for one of those tubs of crab again.
And yes... I noticed the typo in the second paragraph above referring to them as "Blue Craps" - shit happens. No pun intended!
Speaking of "paper cuts" - when we lived in Corpus Christi in the late '60's I used to regularly wade the Laguna Madre for oysters. Would sometimes shuck and eat them in the water- now that's FRESH.
ReplyDeleteFirst time I did it I lacerated my fingers and palms. Didn't feel anything until I was through and all the salt water dried off my hands. After that, I used gloves.