Great time had by all

I must receive the "fun meals with small children" question once a week. Were it not for a legion of physicians warning against giving little ones seafood, for reasons of preventing a horrendous allergic reaction, I could recommend a rowdy, messy, crab cracking festival to you.



I am one of those lucky (?) mother's who found Grandma and baby engaged in an allergen summit one afternoon; Nuts, strawberries, and shrimp spread out on her high chair table just daring her to have three types of anaphylaxsis at once. It was the baby allergen trifecta, I thought I would swoon on the spot. But I recovered and thought, well, at least I have those answers now.

Consequently, there is little I cannot feed my year-old, including Maryland steamed crabs.



This meal is an uncultivated barbaric mess. An unpredictable event of creepy undersea things encrusted in curious red gunk ("Old Bay and stuff," in technical parlance), fiercely addressed with mallets, and picked apart to succulent crabby shreds (which will leave you no questions as to why buying crab in the market is so costly). This process takes hours and limitless patience but even in restaurants which serve steamed crabs requires only fearlessness and no cleanliness or real table manners since smashing, sucking, and pitching are all par on this course.





I have two toddlers, I go where the mess takes me. Baltimore steamed crabs. Great time had by all.