The Lovely World of Egg Coddlers

I may not have had the time or attention span for crafting in recent weeks, but I can still show off the charming work of others. My friend Christina gave us a pair of china egg coddlers as a wedding gift, and along with it, a beautifully collaged little booklet, part instruction manual, part celebration of the art of egg coddling.

The inspiration ...


... which then becomes Egg Coddlers, the Book. Can a movie adaptation be far behind? I love the way the fruit motif of the paper perfectly echoes the design of the original china, without being an exact copy. How did she do that?


Admire the real wax paper wrapper layer on that stick of butter!


Helpful suggestions to make your coddled egg even tastier.


Bubbly textured white paper bubbles out of a pot of simmering water. I love the way the brown paper works as a background for this project.


Lovely coddled eggs are made even lovelier with the addition of toast and coffee.


The end! Yum.

Lobster Roll Diaries: PJ's Family Restaurant

If you are a restaurateur who wants to serve good seafood, the best place to start might be to name your restaurant PJ's. One of my favorite places to go out for oysters and fish in San Francisco was PJ's Oyster Bed, and one of the best places I've gone for lobster rolls on Cape Cod is PJ's Family Restaurant in Wellfleet. (I am also quite fond of the happy dancing foodstuffs pictured on the back of their official t-shirt, pictured above.)


Unlike a lot of other places, PJ's has both an indoor eat-in area as well as a sheltered picnic table patio outside by the take-out window. While its roadside ambiance doesn't boast any particular charms (I think Cobie's in Brewster is still the best place on the Cape in that category), the lobster roll itself is everything I look for in the genre: buttered and toasted hot dog bun, generous chunks of flavorful lobster, and just the right amount of mayonnaise. My friend and I also ordered a side of fried clams, which were very good, as well.


PJ's also offers ice cream and frappes, which are always nice to have available when one is gorging on fried and mayonnaised summer seafood, even if in reality you end up being too stuffed and ill-feeling when the meal is done to actually be able to contemplate dessert. I think the solution must be to order a frappe along with the meal, before that reality has a chance to sink in.

Let Them Eat Nutella

When I was in San Francisco last week, I met up with a friend one afternoon at Boulange Hayes, the Hayes Valley branch of Bay Bread's lovely boulangeries. Some phrases (usually delivered with a genuine French accent) that have been overheard to describe these bakeries include "just like in France -- there is no difference" and "be very excited." And indeed, the breads and pastries one finds there give one reason to be very, very excited.

I found another reason to be excited upon stepping into Boulange Hayes: up at the condiments counter, along with forks and napkins and bowls of sugar, a big jar of communal Nutella set out from which all customers might liberally slather their bread or croissant. A stroke of brillance.


Of course I had to do just that. My croissant was already sweetened with a cheese filling, but I couldn't say no to the noisette threat.


Many other tasty sweets were also on offer:


Now if these Bay Bread people could just find a reason to open a sister store in Boston, my happiness would be complete. In the absence of that development, Clear Flour Bread in Brookline is very good ... but it would be a lot better if they left an open jar of Nutella on the counter.

Kicking Ass and Taking Cakes

Ah, the cupcake trend has reached sleepy Somerville at last. I stopped in Kickass Cupcakes (open since September - I've been dragging) in Davis Square today and was charmed by the cheery staff and the scent of vanilla frosting permeating the air.



I've always liked cupcakes, but I have to admit I haven't quite gotten all the fuss over them in recent years. Sure, they are cute, and yes, I like cake, but aren't cupcakes just ... small cakes? When Katie Holmes declared that her only pregnancy craving was cupcakes, I thought, Oh please! How precious can you be? You just wanted cake, like any other ravenous, sweet-craving pregnant woman. Calling it "cupcakes" doesn't make you any daintier. (This is just one of many instances in which Katie bugs, of course.)

But stepping into Kickass Cupcakes opened my eyes to something beyond the celebrity cupcake hype. When a cake is shrunk down to munchkin size, it gives both the baker and the cupcake consumer the license to try something different, something that might be too much in a full-sized confection, but is a temptingly sweet diversion when limited to two bites. Kickass Cupcakes embraces this opportunity. Care to sample, for instance ... the Mojito Cupcake, perchance?


The Lucky Cupcake plays on the individual serving size of the cupcake, with a paper fortune strip curling out of each frosting top.


The Berry Crumbly isn't really a cupcake at all, but a shrunken-down version of the berry crumble.


And taking cupcake whimsy to new heights, they even offer "petcakes" (my name), with a biscuit-topped carob cupcake for dogs:


and catnip-and-cheese for kitty, topped with a goldfish cracker:


I walked into Kickass Cupcakes feeling cynical. (Yes, cynical about cupcakes. What's my problem?) But true to its sassy name (I was ready to be annoyed by that, too), this little bakery totally won me over with its creativity and sense of humor. I walked out with a sampler of four different cupcake flavors.

The Kickass block of Highland Ave. is turning into a mini baking district, too, with a storefront for the Maine-based sourdough bread bakery When Pigs Fly just two doors down.

Best Breakfast, No. 2

If you can't have the best oatmeal granola in the world, this is a nice substitute: some crunchy cereal flakes, a few dollops of thick Greek yogurt, a sprinkling of sugar (the yogurt is unsweetened), and mango chunks, plus some milk. It helps if you have it in a bright blue latte bowl, on a sunny morning.

The yogurt reminds me of something I ate on my first trip to France, when I was about 20. I actually wasn't even in France yet, but my friend and I were on our way there, flying from London to Paris for New Year's Eve. The time we saved by flying seemed worth the expense, but we had to compensate for our extravagance by eating nothing but bread and cheese once we arrived.

On our way there, however, as short a flight as it was, they served us a beautiful little lunch, and the dessert was a container of this thick, creamy yogurty stuff with a paper straw full of sugar to sprinkle over it. I later learned from my housemate's French girlfriend that it was a kind of fresh cheese called fromage blanc. It was one of the best things I'd ever tasted, in a way only the things you experience in the midst of the exciting and new can be. When the French gentleman sitting in our row observed our ecstasy, he graciously offered us his untouched portion. "You two will clearly appreciate this more than I ever could," his eyes seemed to say.

The associations some foods carry matters almost as much as the way they taste; in this case, it's telling that I prefer to serve this concoction in a French latte bowl, n'est ce pas? The Greek yogurt I use (the brand is Fage, and seems to be cropping up in all our local markets now) isn't exactly the same as that original fromage blanc, but it comes close enough to conjure up the mood of a holiday adventure with my friend, the first sublime taste of a simple new food, and the kindness of a stranger. Which is not too shabby of an accomplishment, for breakfast.

Best Breakfast

We found time for another brief Playa del Carmen escape for a nontraditional Thanksgiving this year, and true to form, the majority of the vacation followed this pattern: breakfast at Cueva del Chango, beach, afternoon guacamole and cocktails. Sometimes the secret to happiness is just finding what you like to do and doing it every single day.

In the past I'd never been able to get past la Cueva's glorious egg dishes on the breakfast menu, but this time a touch of gastric distress inspired me to order what turned out to be the most fascinating oatmeal I've ever eaten. Yes, you heard me right: fascinating oatmeal!

Oatmeal was really the least of it -- on top of that humble base were heaped generous helpings of kiwi, melon, banana, and pineapple, plus a bunch of other fruits I could not identify, then darkly toasted homemade granola, some kind of grain that may have been quinoa -- or maybe millet? -- and finally, the creamiest, most subtly, heavenly sweet yogurt on earth. While it didn't actually end up curing my tummy troubles, in the moments that I was eating it, it felt like it would, and like it might just make any other of life's various problems melt away, as well.

A young woman eating the same thing at a table near us was overheard to say, "I wish I could have this breakfast every day." Me too, sister, me too.

This little friend patrolled the patio during most of our Cueva sessions, but despite appearances, that industrious pink tongue had nothing to do with any hand-outs from us. We had a feeling he might have better luck with the nighttime menu though, which generally featured a nice tuna tostada.

Shiny New Coffee

I stopped by the new cafe Bloc 11 over in Union Square this weekend (just moments before its Grand Opening party, as it happened). This might not be big news in another neighborhood, but in sleepy Union Square it was quite the event. It's also the sister establishment of the very popular Diesel Cafe in Davis Square, which is another reason to be excited.

Like the Diesel, Bloc 11 has a clean, industrial aesthetic, but the overall atmosphere felt less hipster-edgy: no bright colors on the walls, no pool table, and lots of plants. The building is a former bank, and the cafe even utilizes the old vault as a slightly claustrophobic reading room.

The afternoon was sunny and warm, the front windows were wide open, the tomato bisque soup was tasty, and the staff was friendly. All in all a very pleasant experience.


Though as some have pointed out, the name's similarity to the prison building at Auschwitz I is more than a little unfortunate.

Pizza Chronicles: Lombardi's

After our gastronomically happy experience last winter at Grimaldi's Pizzeria in Brooklyn, we thought we'd try out another old-time coal-fired pizza oven place, this time the Little Italy establishment Lombardi's. It's described in somewhat equivocating fashion as the country's first "full-fledged" pizzeria, and was recommended to me awhile back by a friend and former New Yorker.

On the night we visited, we walked right in and got a table, but we could tell the place is used to dealing with crowds. The hostess greeted us with rapid-fire efficiency, then spoke into a headset like Madonna of the pizza ovens, summoning a runner from the back of the restaurant to guide us through a warren of dining rooms and food staging areas to our properly checker-clothed table in a narrow, brick-walled room. The service continued with swift proficiency, but with so little personality and face-time, it almost felt as though we were ordering food out of thin air.

All this streamlining had me a little worried that the quality of the pizza might be compromised in the name of efficiency, as well, but the simple cheese pie we ordered manifested itself with the same humble honesty of any non-famous old-time pizzeria, and we made it disappear with an efficiency to rival that of Lombardi's staff, though in our case aided by many diminutive glasses of house red.


I was interested to see that Lombardi's, like Grimaldi's, uses fresh mozzarella as its all-purpose cheese base. Maybe that's a common thing for traditional New York pizza, but for me it's a novelty (and one I enjoy). If memory serves I think I liked Grimaldi's a bit better, but Lombardi's crust stood out as particularly crisp and flavorful. If I go back, I'd probably order it with extra mozzarella to maximize the potential of all those lonely patches of sauce. Each one is a lost opportunity!

Pizza Chronicles: Lou Malnati's

The final note on our trip to Chicago has to be about pizza. It wouldn't be a trip to Chicago without deep-dish pizza, and we managed two rounds of it in just four days, a fact to which the straining waistband of my jeans can still testify.

I thought I knew it all about Chicago pizza, but even though its recipe dates back to 1943, somehow I had never heard about Lou Malnati's. Uno's, Due's, Gino's, Giordano's, Leona's, Bacino's, Edwardo's ... yes. Lou Malnati's, no.

So for the first night of our visit, we headed to the Lincoln Park branch for dinner. It was a quiet evening at Lou's ... we waited about ten minutes for a table, yet once we were seated there were only a few other parties in the dining room. The atmosphere of the restaurant was nothing to write home about - it kind of felt like someone's recently renovated rec room, brightly lit with a big sofa and TV screen smack in the middle of the room, but we enjoyed looking at the framed magazine covers of Chicago sports figures decorating the walls, mainly because it was fun to look at the names of various managers and employees on the address labels still stuck to the covers.

We ordered a plain cheese, deep-dish pizza with a butter crust - an option I had not encountered before at a pizza restaurant, but the menu said it was "Lou's favorite," plus I'm never one to argue with butter. It turned out this was our favorite thing about the pizza: crisp, crunchy, lightly butter-flavored. I found the tomato sauce a little bland, but it did taste very fresh. As for the cheese, I'm used to a bit more of it on my Chicago-style pizza, but that's really more the realm of the stuffed pie (my favorite of which would be Giordano's, our choice for Chicago Pizza Night #2).

All in all it was very tasty, but still didn't quite measure up (strike me down for saying so) to the similar style of pizza at San Francisco's Little Star. I don't know, I'll have to try it again next time I'm in the Bay Area and see if it's really as superior as I remember it, or if it had just been so long since I'd had the genuine Chicago article that any version would taste sublime. It's an experiment I will be happy to repeat as many times as necessary.

You'd think I would have gotten the Malnati's recommendation from a Chicago friend or relative, but in fact I read about it first on the blog of an L.A.-based Chicago native personally unknown to me, something I found because this blogger is also the brother-in-law of Jeff Tweedy, frontman of Wilco, a favorite band of mine. (The blog itself is quite good beyond its Wilco-related content, though that portion of Danny Miller's posts are very interesting, too, and part of a common, Los Angeles-influenced theme about the everyday lives of public figures.)

After that, I stumbled across an interview in which Jeff Tweedy listed his favorite Chicago eateries, prominently featuring Lou Malnati's (as well as the downtown diner Lou Mitchell's), and after that I was determined we would go. Yes, I like this band (and its singer's extended family) so much, I even had to try their favorite pizza. We also got to see them play on our last night in town at the spectacular Pritzker Pavilion, with the lit-up Chicago skyline all around. The perfect finale to a long weekend enjoying the many simple pleasures, cheese-laden and otherwise, of my favorite hometown.

Lobster Roll Diaries: Best Yet

I went with a friend for a late lunch at Neptune Oyster in the North End the other day, and all I can say is wow. What a great little place.

As you can guess from the marble tabletop and silver cutlery in the picture to the left, Neptune Oyster is no casual seafood shack, but in terms of upscale lobster rolls, this one was sublime. A generous helping of nice, big chunks of fresh, really lobstery-tasting lobster on a toasted brioche roll, which was also quite yummy in its own right. You can order the lobster served hot with butter or cold with mayo, a nice choice to have. We went with mayo, as that's how we both like our rolls in general, and it was a really muggy day so cold seemed best anyway. It wasn't cheap, but if you make a meal of it and start with a few briny Wellfleet oysters apiece (we did), I think you get your money's worth.

We practically had the place to ourselves, so it's hard to judge what the service would be like on a busier day at such a small, popular restaurant, but our waiter couldn't have been nicer, and happily spent lots of time describing his favorite oysters to us, and debating the merits of butter vs. mayonnaise. (Basically, for him it came down to this: "I like mine in butter ... because I like butter!" Well said.)

There's still no substitute for the charm of a ramshackle seafood place, but if I had an out-of-town guest who wanted to go somewhere nice but unpretentious for some fresh lobster and bivalves, I'd take them to Neptune Oyster in a heartbeat.

The North End is also always fun to stroll around, even on a hot, soupy day such as this one. We stopped into some of the little clothing boutiques that have sprung up in the area recently, and while we weren't exactly blown away by the merchandise, it's still nice that they're there. (It was too hot to be trying on clothes, anyway.)

Apparently the neighborhood's become kind of yuppified, and it's obviously very touristy, but I don't know, those old dudes leaning out their windows in undershirts looked pretty authentic to me. I don't think they let yuppies into places like this, either:


Also still going strong is Pizzeria Regina, much better known than our beloved Santarpio's, but still in the same league as the object of fiercely loyal local pizza allegiance. The parents of a friend of ours had their first date there many years ago, and it doesn't seem like it's changed much since.


Perhaps I'll get around to giving the full Regina rundown another day. It is surely deserving. But for now, I only have eyes for lobster. I might have to cook one for myself tonight, now that my seasonal mania has been ignited.

Lobster Roll Diaries: An Inland Lobster Roll

Last week we made our first trip out to Walden Pond; too early to swim yet, but we took some visiting friends on a walk around its perimeter, and bought our annual parking pass in preparation for the summer.

On our way home we stopped at Dairy Joy, an ice cream stand we'd recently noticed in the town of Weston, quite close to Concord and Walden Pond. Along with soft-serve ice cream they also offer hamburgers and hot dogs, and, this being New England, fried clams and lobster rolls. Once I saw the menu I was helpless: there was no question of what I would order.

The lobster salad itself was very good, and the bun was grilled with a touch of butter, which is my favorite style of bun preparation. The portion was perhaps a little small compared to some of the lobster rolls I've had on Cape Cod, and lacking in the whole pieces of claw meat you sometimes get, but all in all, a roll with plenty of reason to feel good about itself.


Our veggie contingent appreciated the presence of a veggie burger on the menu, as well as a grilled cheese made with real sandwich bread (unlike the Ipswich Clam Box, where they use a hamburger bun), though the only available cheese was American, which did not score points.

But those details pale in significance when compared to the Dairy Joy's perfect location for a stop after a lazy day of lake-swimming, at a place whose only real disadvantage when compared to the beach, at least for this seafood-loving girl, was the absence of the classic seaside seafood shack. Paradise found.

Happy Easter

Whether or not one is a celebrator of Easter, I like to think the candy eggs and chocolate bunnies are things that can be enjoyed by all.

These sugar eggs came from Target, but one year when I was a kid my cousins and I made our own, with elaborate pastorals inside each sugar eggshell: a little yellow duck floating in a turquoise frosting lake, a big-eyed fawn poised at the edge of an icing meadow, etc.

When the holiday was over I got to bring my egg back home to Chicago where I played with it for many days, peering through the peephole and fervidly imagining the candyland where my little yellow duck lived. Eventually though, I lost my restraint, and nibbled off the dried-out pieces of frosting that decorated the outer shell. When they were gone I started chipping off chunks of the egg itself, gnawing at the pure sugar as I exposed the enclosed duck-pond world to the startling vastness of my bedroom, and finally polishing it off so there was nothing left but the inedible ceramic duck.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure the egg was intended to be eaten, either. But it was made of sugar, and I was seven years old: the outcome was inevitable.

Cave of the Monkey

It's just barely starting to be spring here. I've seen a few crocuses popping up, but otherwise things are still pretty bleak, so I thought I'd post a few pictures from a trip we took to Playa del Carmen, Mexico, a few weeks ago. The vacation was all too short, just a few days, and I keep wishing we were still there.

Parts of the town are a little too touristy for our taste, and condos and hotels are being developed like mad, but there's still enough we love about the area to make it special. (This was our second trip there.) The turquoise-blue ocean and white-sand beach (we head north of town to escape the crowds) are otherworldly, the local people, in our experience, are really nice, and the local recipe for guacamole is divine.

The other thing to love about Playa del Carmen is La Cueva del Chango, a.k.a. Cave of the Monkey, a little open-air restaurant, best known for its breakfast, that specializes in natural food and local Mayan cuisine. It's one of my favorite places in the world. That picture above shows the colored glass bottles set into its concrete ceiling like stained glass. A small stream runs through a channel in the stone floor and out into the open garden patio out back. In the bathroom you wash your hands under a little stone waterfall, presumably channeled from the same underground spring. Fish swim in a little pond in the middle of the restaurant, and a tree grows through a hole in the roof. This sounds a bit like Swiss Family Robinson at Disney Land, but the overall effect is more rustic and natural, and supremely relaxing. And it's not just me; Jacques Pepin comes here, too. What more endorsement do you need?

Coffee is served in simple clay mugs, with brown sugar.

Fresh jugo de piña, por favor. There are all kinds of fresh juices on the menu.


Huevos rancheros à la Chango. That green stuff in the beans is chaya, a leafy Mayan vegetable.


A view from the front door.


The monkey over the entrance gate.


Awesome monkey mural in the bathroom.


La Cueva is excellent in its own right, but I must acknowledge it's hard not to love a place when this is your destination once the meal is done.


I mentioned guacamole among our top four reasons to love Playa, so here's a bonus for any who have read this far. We had an afternoon snack at a place called Palapa Hemingway, which is one of those places with the gimmick of making the guacamole at your table, kind of like a Mexican Benihana. I don't mind the gimmick though, because it means we got to spy on the simple ingredients that went into it, and it was the best guacamole of my life! That might have been due primarily to the freshness of the ingredients (and the two margaritas I'd already polished off), but nevertheless, here's the eye-witness recipe:

1 and 1/2 avocados

1/3 of a fresh lime

1 T each, chopped, of:
- tomato
- cilantro
- jalapeno
- onion

1 T light olive oil

salt

[That oil was the secret ingredient for us. Olive oil? Okay, I don't know if it was olive oil, but it was some kind of oil. Not extra-virgin olive oil, at any rate. A pale yellow kind. I wouldn't think that would be good in guacamole, but it was.]

Scoop the avocado flesh into a bowl with the other ingredients. Squeeze the 1/3 lime and add the juice. Shake salt liberally over everything. Mash everything together, and add more salt to taste.

Another place we like called Las Delicias sprinkles crumbled queso fresco on top. This is also extremely good.

Enjoy, then die of happiness.

Lobster Roll Diaries: J's Oyster

I spent an afternoon in Portland, Maine, this weekend, and fans of J's Oyster will be happy to know my friend and I found time to stop there for lunch.

I was expecting your typical wharf-side seafood shack, so was surprised to find J's feels more like a divey bar, albeit an oyster bar. It was pretty crowded when we were there so we took the available table by the door, but if I went back I think I would choose to sit at the bar and order a beer and a bunch of seafood, as my friend said she'd done on her previous visit.

So what makes J's such a favorite? In addition to its singular salty-dog atmosphere, I would guess it's the portions and freshness. I ordered the lobster roll (naturally) and was very impressed with the generous helping of notably large pieces of lobster meat. The price was much lower than most Boston rolls, too, and at a place with table service! The bun was grilled (yum, even better than toasted), and mayonnaise was served on the side (not sure this is my favorite style, but I can see how some might prefer it).


I have to say I found this roll a little bland, but that could definitely be due to the season, and I was also starting to come down with a cold. I also ordered a half dozen oysters, which weren't very good, but again you couldn't beat the price, and it may have just been a bad oyster day. I would certainly give the place another chance on all counts.

Lobster iconography abounds in Portland:


After lunch we strolled around town a bit, and found it a totally cute and happening place, a small coastal city with lots of interesting shops and good restaurants. I haven't been in much of a shopping mood lately, but I still had trouble keeping my wallet closed. Portland inspired me to give it my money!

One of the places we visited was a little "modern crafts" shop a la Magpie in Somerville called Edith & Edna. I noticed the work of several familiar indie craft names among its wares, and finally tracked down the elusive "sad toast" by My Paper Crane that I've been keeping an eye out for in recent months. Here's a shot of a giant-sized sad toast (sad because it's burnt, of course!) with other, happier, friends in the store's window.

The Other Frankenturkey

Tofurky roast!


It looked more appetizing once it came out of the oven.

Frankenturkey

I will be the only meat eater at our little Thanksgiving dinner this year, but I still would like to have some turkey, so I planned to pick up a few turkey pieces, rather than a whole bird.

The only problem is that, while each store I've gone to has some sort of turkey part, everywhere is either poorly stocked or already picked over. So I have turkey thighs from Savenor's, the very expensive specialty grocery and butcher where Julia Child used to shop, turkey wings from the large Whole Foods on River Street in Cambridge, and tomorrow I hope to add a turkey breast from the mini Whole Foods on Prospect Street in Cambridge to my collection. I saw some there the other day, but who knows, they may be gone by now.

I guess if I buy separate turkey pieces at the same store they're very likely from different birds, too, but if I buy three different types of cuts from three different stores, I'm pretty much guaranteed that the birds have never even met. Is that wrong?

Cooking Your Own

It's no secret that I'm a bit of a lobster addict. Just last week two friends emailed me the same New York Times article within hours of each other. The subject? The best lobster rolls in Maine, of course.

Since we've moved to New England, the knowledge that lobster is so readily available, especially during the summer months, has driven me a little crazy. I find myself constantly scheming how to get my next serving. But despite its ubiquity in Boston, this is not so easy to arrange. For one thing, my No. 1 dinner companion does not eat lobster, nor any other creature of land or sea, and the types of places that serve it tend to specialize in seafood, or, if anything else, perhaps offer a little turf to go with the surf. So that's a problem.

Also, lobster is of course very expensive. Not only do I feel guilty about overindulging in it myself, I'm hesitant to suggest such a pricey meal to friends who might not be as lobster-crazy as myself.

After a week of particularly keen cravings, I decided it was time to take control of the situation. Time both to save a little money and to earn my dinner by doing the dirty work of preparing it myself. In short, time to step up and cook my own lobster.

I suppose the best thing would be to go to some fish market, but I figured this is Boston and none of them come from too far away, so for several days I scoped out our local supermarket's lobster tanks. As of Wednesday there were just a few small ones huddled at the bottom, not moving much and therefore possibly what's known in the trade as "sleepers" (basically, half-dead specimens, and not what you want to be putting in your mouth). But yesterday evening, once I had gathered up the courage to begin the project, the tank was newly filled with several dozen strapping critters madly scrambling over each other's backs.

I marched up to the seafood case and, trying to pretend I do this all the time, told the young man behind the counter, "I'd like to get a lobster." He looked alarmed. "Okay ... just one?" (I knew I might be outing myself as a solo lobster eater by only buying one, and actually had considered cooking two and using the second one for lobster salad, but once I saw these beasts I knew I could only handle one for the first try.) He trawled around in the tank with a three-pronged rake, freaking out a little each time he snagged one and dropping it. Clearly I was not the only one intimidated by the whole live lobster concept. But finally he got one securely under the claws and held it high up in the air, where it flexed and curled its tail, waving its legs around.

"Ooh, that's an ugly one!" he exclaimed. "He is not happy."

A woman walking to the deli cases stopped to admire the lobster flipping on the scale. "That's a big one!" she commented. "He's pretty angry."

"Can we not talk about the lobster's feelings?" I pleaded.

I then confessed I had never cooked a lobster before. "Really???" The woman was amazed, as was the seafood counter guy, despite his trepidation when actually handling the creature. As the woman walked on down the aisle, she tossed out a parting word of advice. "Just remember: Head first!"

The flailing creature was bundled into a plastic bag with a little sticker on it marked "Chicken and Lobster," with its poundage, 1.4 lb. A woman behind the counter pulled out a large knife, and I thought they might have a policy about humanely slaying all seafood rather than allowing customers to plunge them barbarically into pots of boiling water, but instead she used it to carefully punch holes in the plastic bag. Then I popped it in my shopping basket and headed up to the registers.

I chose the most Boston-looking cashier I could find, figuring she would be the least ruffled by my purchase. One of the regular cashiers on duty was a recent immigrant from Kenya, and I didn't know if she was familiar with the custom of consuming angry crustaceans. I picked the line one over from hers.

First I put the inanimate items on the conveyer belt: a vine-ripened tomato, a cardboard tube of Poppin' Fresh crescent rolls. And then, the clear plastic bag containing the brown, writhing thing. I waited until the last minute to put it down, but my cashier still flinched when her eye was caught by the novelty of something on the belt moving on its own volition.

Again I felt the need to confess. "I've never cooked one before." Like the others, she expressed surprise at this, even while she reacted to the lobster in front of her with gleeful horror. I guess this is part of the whole ritual of it? She gave me a wicked look and informed me, "When you put them in the water, they scream!" The elderly Portuguese woman packing the groceries swung the lobster bag gently above her head and called to the Kenyan cashier, who looked stricken and softly shrieked. This was the most fun any of them had had all day. I assume they must sell these things all the time, but you wouldn't guess it.

I'd read you're supposed to store live lobsters in the refrigerator, ideally on "a bed of wet seaweed," but I didn't want to engineer this so I just hurried home and got the pot boiling. My "Joy of Cooking," on the subject of boiling vs. steaming, says, "There is no good reason not to steam the lobster." Well, how about the comfort of believing the lobster will die faster if plunged head-first into a deep pot of boiling water? Nevertheless, I followed instructions and prepared a hot steam bath for my victim.

I then got him out of his bag, already kicking less vigorously than when he first emerged from his tank, grasped him at the base of the foreclaws, and snipped the rubberbands off his claws. This was to give him one last flex, and more practically to avoid the unsavory flavor of rubber in the lobster stock. Then into the pot he went, where he (eek!) clattered around for a few long seconds (I tried to rationalize it as steam making the lid rattle, but then the sound completely stopped). There was, at least, no audible "screaming." I turned the radio off to listen for it - I wanted to fully expose myself to the realities of the process.

Fifteen minutes later (10 minutes per pound), the timer went off and I peeked under the lid. There it sat, bright red and motionless (phew).

I drained off the excess water, let it cool a little, and cracked into a claw. What can I say, it was excellent, as good as any lobster I've had outside the home. Plus there were the added amenities of as much drawn butter as I wanted, and being able to get up every few minutes to wash my hands. I made sure to eat plenty of "sides" (the crescent rolls plus a caprese salad) in between bites so as to finish this lobster dinner, for once, fully satisfied, rather than already plotting my next lobster conquest.

And it worked. By the end of the night I was completely stuffed and worn out from the ordeal, not wanting to think about eating lobster again ... at least for a little while. I'm sure the lobster would be glad to hear it.