I committed a delicious murder today. My mother and I took a ride to Top Tomato. I had never been to the supermarket before, but quickly fell in love with the variety of foods available and the affordable prices of everything in the store. We passed the seafood counter and saw live lobsters on sale for 4 for $20. We couldn’t pass up such an amazing deal! The man behind the counter grabbed us four lobsters from the tank. I put the brown bag in my cart and became very excited for dinner.
I am not a fan of having to kill my dinner. I don’t like to think about where my dinner came from before it hits my plate. That’s how I became a vegetarian for a year and a half in college (something I don’t think I could do again). But I realized that someone had to prepare our lobsters for dinner. That someone ended up being me. I cracked open a beer and paced back and forth while waiting for my pot of water to “rapidly boil,” as my father instructed.
Finally the time came. I brought my crustacean friends out of the brown bag and put the plastic bag they were in, in the sink. My father said, “Put them in head first. It’ll kill them faster.” The thought of the poor little lobsters boiling to death made me cringe. It’s a horrible way to go! I know that stabbing them in their heads is the humane way to kill them, but I honestly think that would be harder for me to do. Stabbing is killing while boiling is cooking. Yes, there is a difference.
One by one, I took the lobsters in my hand, air kissed them on the head, told them “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and dropped them head first into the pot of scalding hot water. I ran away after throwing the first lobster in. I imagined claws scraping the metal, really nightmarish Freddy Krueger type sounds, coming from the pot.
There was silence as the lobster turned bright red (except for the “lobster killer” mocking coming from my mother and my husband) in the boiling water. I dropped in the last three and silently thanked the lobsters for the meal they would be providing for my family and put them in a big bowl to serve once they were ready. I felt I at least owed it to the little guys to apologize and thank them for their sacrifice.
It was a good meal and a good learning experience – one that I might be able to do again – but one that I’m thankful won’t happen very often as Top Tomato isn’t close and lobsters are generally out of my grocery budget.
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