All it took was one bite, and Diane Brown was wary for life.
A blue crab she and her siblings caught earlier that day had escaped. It bit her on the back of her heel and held on for dear life — literally. Brown, who was 9 or 10, began to run in terror hoping to loose the crab’s painful grip. It wasn’t until one of her brothers smashed the small crab with his foot that her biting nightmare was over.
“Ever since then I’ve been afraid,” she said.
Brown is still scared 50 years later. She refuses to touch a live crab, but she enjoys their taste and their significance to her family. She cooks blue crabs at family gatherings. She had one a couple of weeks ago. For many St. Petersburg residents, eating blue crabs is an occasion that involves family and friends. A traditional food for social events among black families, blue crabs are a meal in transition. Once caught by hand, they are now sold in stores. Once the domain of the blue collar, they now transcend class.
Back then, Brown and her siblings would bring the crabs home. That morning they snuck out of their mother’s house and went down to the Pier, carrying empty 5-gallon buckets. Some of Brown’s brothers caught blue crabs with fishing poles and the others with their bare hands. She didn’t like to live as dangerously. She remembers thinking: If you get them from the back, then they can’t get you, and I would have room to run.
They returned home after they filled their buckets. “Sometimes the crabs would save us from a butt whoopin’. Sometimes the crabs wouldn’t.” Either way, the Brown family would have blue crabs for dinner.
Cooking them was as scary as catching them. “Some of them would jump out of the pot after you put them in the hot water.”
That’s what happened the day Brown got bit. As it scurried across the floor, she yelled to her brother. Suddenly, the scurrying crab made its way near Brown. She tried to run, but she wasn’t fast enough. Her brother rescued her.
Her grandmother squeezed Brown’s heel so it would bleed more. She said this would help make sure Brown didn’t have any remaining crab “stuff” in her blood.
“I didn’t eat crabs that day.”
Since then Brown refuses to touch live blue crabs.
“Anything that fights that hard for its life desires to live,” she said recently while working at the Bama Shrimp Company on 28th Street South.
While she won’t catch them, cooking them and eating them is different. She boils her vegetables first. Garlic. Bell pepper. Onion. She takes those out while someone else puts the live blue crabs in the pot. About five minutes later the crabs are done, and she puts the vegetables back in. She cooks them together and allows the vegetables’ flavor to seep into the crabs.
When Brown cooks blue crabs, it’s normally at a family get-together like the one at her younger brother’s house two weeks ago. Nearly 50 people gathered for an afternoon of blue crabs, snow crabs, soft shell crabs, shrimp, shrimp pasta, peach cobbler, banana pudding and an array of additional seafood items. Instead of catching them, now she buys the Bama Shrimp Company where she works.
Blue crabs are a common dish at family barbecues. Some families prepare their blue crabs in pots with potatoes, peppers, sausages and seasonings.
Roland Eva also buys the crabs at the store. He has a more elaborate cooking method. He uses a gallon of water to boil the crabs. He adds red peppers, onion, bell peppers, a dash of vinegar, spaghetti sauce, 4 teaspoons of salt, an egg, chicken, celery, carrots, potatoes and corn.
Meats are often added to a pot of crabs for flavor. Brown added chicken wings, smoked neck bones and shrimp.
Melted butter for dipping is served along side.
Blue crabs’ genus name, Callinectes, means beautiful swimmer and its species name, sapidus, means savory, according Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute Web site. Their savory white meat is in high demand. At Save On Seafood on 49th Street South, it’s one of the most popular items.
“It goes with the neighborhood,” Michelle Mayer, former sales clerk at the seafood store, said. “Seventy percent of our customers are African-American.”
The Bama Shrimp Store only sells them on the weekends because they are not as popular during the week. Last Sunday, the store had sold out of live crabs shortly around 4 p.m. Numerous customers came the store after 4 p.m. hoping to buy blue crabs.
“It was a poor man’s dish,” Brown said, “but now everyone eats them.”
Blue crabs are a staple seafood in Florida, according to 2005 statistics from the Florida Marine Research Institute. In terms of weight, they are the second-most harvested species, at 11.5 million pounds a year. Much of the Florida’s seafood is harvested in Pinellas County. The county is second in the state for its seafood harvest.
Brown started cooking and setting up at 10 that morning. The strong odor of the cooking crabs often drives her out of the kitchen.
But the smell dissipates. And the memories of an afternoon of family and friends linger on.
