Sunday, September 19, 2010

Sociological moment

Recently Jeff and I went to my cousin's very posh wedding on Cape Cod. At the rehearsal dinner, the main course was whole lobsters, antennae and all. Most of us didn't have a clue how to get at the food inside the shell. The bride stood up to demonstrate, holding her lobster tail aloft.

"You grab it like this - and you crack it like this - and then you pull the meat out."

So we poor bumpkins were educated in the haute cuisine of Cape Cod. But of course, lobster is only posh food because we think it is. If we went to a wedding in some other culture and saw the bride cracking crustaceans open with her bare hands, we'd think they were barbarians!

1 comment:

Cass said...

One of the most traumatizing moments of my young life was watching my mother do that to, like, six lobsters in a row while we were in Maine. Not that she ate all of them -- we were at this conference thing, and other people were having trouble. She did end up eating the better part of 3, though, when Cait and I had to be excused after witnessing the carnage.