Crabbiness is next to godliness

I've been putting off writing this post all week, because the task of putting into words culinary perfection is so daunting. But that's just what I experienced last weekend, so I'll give it a shot...

I wonder what it would have been like to live in the Garden of Eden. Can you imagine? Perfection. Perfect love between Adam and Eve. Perfect harmony between all God's creatures. And perfect food just waiting to be eaten. I don't imagine that Adam and Eve spent time trying to build fancy cooking gadgets. They probably didn't marinate their steaks for hours before they grilled them. They just, you know, reached up to a tree and grabbed a piece of perfect fruit. Granted, that method didn't always yield such desirable results, but you get the picture: peaches were hanging there in all their peachy-ness, lemons have never been more lemon-y, and beets were sweet enough to pull out of the ground and bite into, skin and all.

All this to say, that sometimes the best food doesn't need much adornment. When that first ripe tomato of summer comes along, what do you do? Certainly not mash it into a pulp with garlic and spices for spaghetti sauce. Save that for winter. You just eat the tomato. That's it. In this month's issue of Real Simple magazine, one of the features is "3-Ingredient Summer Recipes". In the introduction, the editor comments, "Smart, sophisticated food is not about the number of ingredients involved; it's about finding great elements that work perfectly together."

Well, I'd like to share a little 3-ingredient recipe that just about equals perfection. It's been around for ages, and it goes a little something like this: dump crabs (1) and Old Bay seasoning (2) into boiling water (3). Take crabs out. Eat.

This is what I was blessed enough to experience for hours on end last Saturday at Jimmy Johnson's annual Crab Feast. Jimmy is my mom's cousin, and for the last ten years he's invited carloads of crazy relatives down to his place in Maryland, and tirelessly serves up crabs all day. People go around dumping buckets of crabs on the tables. There's also corn, and plenty of mallets and paper towels to go around. This is simple food. But it's real food, and other than a couple cold beers to wash it down, you don't really need anything else.

But, I would be remiss if I didn't mention one important ingredient, and that's the family. All the wonderful people milling about are what make the day. Hearkening back to the Eden reference, it's a day of perfect love between this big Italian family. And of course that makes everything more delicious. Because no one wants to eat crabs in a room all alone.