Fingers and thumbs.
First the fingers: Stacey and I saw Shawn Phillips (see story below) on Saturday and were, no surprise here, blown away. At 66 you would think he has slowed down, but no. His guitar playing was breathtaking.
As to the thumbs: ABC ran Steve Dolinsky’s TV show on Friday featuring our softshell crabs. Everybody coming in on Saturday ordered them. We ran out. We’ll have more tomorrow but in the meantime we got some ‘regular’ softshells from our local purveyor. They’re too tough to saute so we cut the body in two and make a tempura of it. The watermen of the Chesapeake call them ‘dead man’s thumbs’, a take off of what they call the gills (dead man’s fingers).
These nuggets are very, very special and known only to the crabbers. I’ll bet you a carwash you’ve never seen them in a restaurant.
I was speaking of your tempura crab just the other day – hard to believe it was years ago…