Homarus americanus

     Enjoying the lobster pie I ordered at The City Tavern last Saturday brought back happy memories of summer vacations along the coast of Maine.  We would stay in Southwest Harbor and walk to a nearby lobster pound to pick out dinner.  At that time a live lobster right out of the trap would fetch $3.50/lb.  We would take 2 back and dunk them in a pot of boiling water and have a feast for less than ten bucks!
     But lobsters weren't always considered a delicacy.   In colonial America they were considered a food only fit for the poor and some towns went so far as to enact laws forbidding the serving of lobsters to servants more than twice a week.  They were so plentiful that they were often used as fertilizer.
     Lobsters share their crustacean designation with shrimp, crabs, crayfish and barnacles.  They are invertibrates, that is, without a backbone and have a hard exoskeleton which they shed as they grow.  They are also benthic, or bottom dwelling and live their lives on the ocean floor and reach adulthood in 5-8 years but can live as long at 50 to 100 years if they stay out of the waterman's trap!  The lobsters caught off the New England coast are only one of over one hundred species world wide and can be blue, red, yellow, orange or white, although most are the dull greenish color that we see in the fishmonger's tank.  The largest lobster ever caught was trapped off the coast of Nova Scotia and weighed in at 44 lbs.  It takes approximately 6-7 years to reach one pound, the minimum legal weight for commercial harvesting.
     Not all lobsters have claws and "spiny" lobsters are caught mainly for their firm tail meat which freezes better for transport.  If you look carefully you will notice that there is a difference between the two claws.  One is sharp for cutting and the other is bony for crushing.  And lobsters can be either left or right handed.  To avoid capture or when in danger a lobster can lose a claw or leg or anntanae and in time those parts will regenerate.
     And beside all that, they taste good!