And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... that when I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes nearly 20 years ago, and brought home a list of dietary restrictions, my mother, in her mid-70s, said if I had to eat like that, I would have to do the cooking, since she was too old to learn to cook all over again.
And so, I became the chief cook for the two of us.

She ate what I prepared, but she would make comments, such as “nothing wrong with it that a little salt wouldn’t cure.” Or maybe, “it’s better with a cream sauce.” In fact, sometimes she would set aside a portion of something (peas, cauliflower) and make a cream sauce for her portion.

At any rate, when she died 15 years ago, I was pretty much used to doing the cooking, so only had to adjust to one instead of two.

It is not easy to cook for one. But with the ability to freeze unused portions of most things for another day, I get by with ham chunks and turkey breasts with bone attached.

So, when a local super market advertised whole, pre-cooked lobsters, I had to get one.

I had eaten whole lobsters a couple times 60 years ago, the large Maine lobsters, while stationed in Newport, RI with the navy. My dinner companions were both east coast natives, and knew what to do, so I just blindly followed suit, without paying much attention to what was involved. You know how it is when you have traveled a certain route several times as a passenger, but did not think about it much until you were going to drive that same route solo. Suddenly, it is strange territory.

I tossed the whole lobster into boiling water for the prescribed time, and when it came out, it immediately became a problem of how to get at the meat.

I have fixed lobster tails many times, by oven broiling them. But that’s just the body. No claws. No knees. No head.

From a possibly faulty memory, I seemed to recall the need for a shell cracker. And maybe a short scissors. And a small, two-tined narrow type of fork. Is that right? Did they come with the bib?

Anyway, I improvised, and it came off well.

But then I was reminded that preparing a lobster also creates an unpleasant odor.

The same question I always have with Limburger cheese: How can anything that smells that bad taste that good?