I was going to write about the color swatches in the Raytrace map today, but have been distracted and don't think I'll get to it until tomorrow.  What has distracted me is a half dozen Maine lobster bodies that I picked up on a trip to the fish market this morning to get haddock and cod to put in a fish chowder.

John Kelly was in the process of picking the lobster meat from a freshly cooked batch of Maine lobsters, something that needs to be done every day because of the attrition in the lobster tanks overnight.  If the dead lobsters are not taken out of the tank first thing in the morning then they will go bad very quickly and must be thrown away.  If they're cooked right up, however, then the meat is fine and is sold for about $30 a pound.  It's only economically feasible, however, to pick the meat from the clause and the tail, leaving the cooked lobster bodies to be thrown away.

This is where good timing comes in; all you have to do is ask and you can have as many of the bodies is you want.  They threw a half dozen in a bag for me and sent me off with my fish purchase.Eating lobster bodies is something that really needs to be done outdoors as it can be very messy and would leave the house smelling of lobster for days.

The bright red carapace and the eight legs (hence the local nickname "bugs") must be disassembled for the tiny morsels of meat tangled in the thin, semi rigid skeleton of the lobster.  Your first hook your thumb inside the carapace and hinge it forward to break it free.  Usually this brings the "lady" with it, the only inedible part of lobster  besides the shell; it's the lobster's stomach and no telling what might contain as lobsters are bottom scavengers.

You're now presented with a perplexing situation of deciding what to do with the "tamale", the green to somewhat brownish blob of liver.The vast majority of people discard this as quickly as possible, but I find it to be one of the real delicacies of eating lobster and scoop it out with my fingers to put on a cracker or a potato chip.

The next step is to align your thumbs along the inside of the spine and break the body in half lengthwise to get the sections of the meat where the legs connect to the body.  The legs are broken off individually and the meat is cleaned from the knuckles and chewed or sucked from each segment of the legs. This is a delicate operation because the harder you work at it, the less meat you're going to get, and  it's almost better to close your eyes and work the meat out by feeling it rather than seeing it.  It's a very tactile operation.

This is a great way to spend an hour at a very rewarding lunch.  A cold beer is highly recommended for the process, my choice was Grolsch, a crisp refreshing Dutch beer.The beer is fine without the lobster, too!