I ate my first lobster earlier tonight, and I must say it’s a terribly overrated experience. I was far from impressed.
I was invited to this banquet, and the main course was lobster. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but decided to go ahead for the adventure. And now, here I sit, four hours later with my stomach making horrible groaning noises, feeling like it’s right at the back of my throat, ready to launch lobster all over my keyboard. Ugh.
The lobster I ate probably wasn’t the freshest specimen on the planet — I live in South Dakota, so the poor guy was probably been cooped up in a small tank for the last month or so. When he took his final dive, I doubt he was at his best. But you know, the meat itself didn’t taste too bad, but then again it didn’t taste too good either. In fact, there really wasn’t much flavor to it that I recall. What I do recall is the green stuff. When the critters were served and the first one cracked open, someone said, “Don’t eat the green stuff.” No worries there; it looked like something that came out of the wrong end of an alien. And that was probably my biggest problem with the whole experience. Seeing the entrails all boiled to mush and falling on my plate.
I don’t mind the sight of the insides of animals, really I don’t. But in my mind there is this separation between gutting something and eating it. The way it’s supposed to work is you kill the animal, cut it open, take out it’s guts, clean the carcass, then cook it. That I can handle. But combining the gutting with the eating… That’s too much.
Things have settled down considerably now, so I think I’ll make it. Besides, it didn’t taste too great going down the first time, so I would imagine that the return trip would be so very much more unpleasant. I just hope the muscling-past-the-gag-reflex strategy works.
Ugh.