MY favorite things

(As opposed to my son's)..

What have we here?

Oh, I love it beyond words when The Big Guy walks into my house with a 5- gallon bucket brimming with crustaceans. I don't care what kind of crustaceans. I'll take anything I can get. I'm sleazy that way.

This night it happened to be crabs.

(I don't see much in the way of lobster in these parts. He once said, "If I were a jeweler, would you expect me to bring home diamonds every day?" I think I put Ex-lax in his dinner that night. I don't like to be Out-logic-ed. Shut up, that is too a word.)

Oh, the beauty of the crabbage! All hail the crabbage!

They begged, begged I tell you, to be sauteed with some garlic and hot oil.

(Do you make hot oil? You should! Just put some olive oil- and don't let Martha or anyone else tell you it has to be $15 oil, any olive oil will do- into a jar, add some split hot thai peppers, and let set for a week or so, covered, in a cool dry place. After a week or so, it should live in the fridge so it doesn't turn rancid, but it will still impart flavor. Make sure the seeds are out there, fornicating mingling with the oil. Mmmmm.)

      I know the Old Timers left this out indefinitely, but they left meat out all day, too. And butter. And eggs. Apparently, things were different then. Better to be safe than sorry. Food poisoning not only sucks, it can kill you.

pardon my steamy, garlic infused, sauteed-ness! I wish you could smell me right now!

And when mixed with some basic seasoning, like my ever-present fresh basil plant here...

And some tomatoes...

And yet more hot pepper flakes...

Fra Diavolo.

meaning: from the devil.

I made 2 pounds of cappellini with this gravy. It was gone in two days. 

He's under strict orders to bring in another bucket tomorrow.

Crabbage

Oh, the joy of a bucket of crabs!

It's a great ending to any day when Hubby calls on the radio, meet me at the dock...I've got something for you...

and all the lobstermen snicker....and then they realize it's me he's talking to, and know what a crab fanatic I am, and know it has nothing to do with anything to snicker about...

And I go get a bucket of crabbies!

Sometimes it's shrimp, rarer still, lobster.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, all the fishermen would bring me Sea Bass if they happened to catch one that day. It was my favorite thing about being pregnant! That was 8 years ago; I guess nobody fishes for them anymore, I haven't seen one in a long, long time.

OK, back to knitting  EVIL, ahem, I mean, wicked....

Still frigging around the armpits. I took it off the needles and decided it was too 'short'. Yet another thing to dislike about this stripe pattern. I wanted the sleeves to be dark purple like the collar, but because it's too short, I'll need to do another stripe...making the sleeve fall in the lightest color. It's the color I wanted to leave out in the first place. UGH.

The other alternative is to do the sleeves in the dark purple anyway, and not have them match the stripe on the body of the sweater (which is probably what I'll do, as I really don't like that light color...)

There will be no photographic evidence of this beast until it is completed.

Don't  ask again.

In other news, I cannot find the pattern I used for my first socks. I either left it at the hotel over vacation, or threw it out with the huge stack of mail I went through when we got home. Either way, it sucks. I was so gonna do socks last night, but had to play with Evil.

Maybe it's for the best.

hehe, drool on, Michele!