Lobster for your thoughts?

By Bob Surrette (photo by Ken VanTassell)

Residents and visitors alike on the Cape have a summer fling with eating lobsters, whole, mixed in or on a roll. We even have a boat named Lobster Roll, which I have been on when it was rocking and rolling quite vigorously. Many land-based places also have lobster in their name, a not so subtle hint at what you'll find there.

The newspaper even shows us the prices per pound for the little beasts from time to time, current, last week, last year, as they do prices for a gallon of precious gas for our cars or cod for scrod.

Many eateries don't post their prices for lobster. In the price column is the word, "Market." You already know it's expensive sea meat. If you have to ask how much when you see that m-word, does that mean you shouldn't be buying it?

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So, in spite of the price, why do so many of us buy and enjoy so much of it. My theory is that we are in a bit of an expensive mode of living when we are on the Cape in the high season. How else do we justify paying a month's rent for our house back home for a week here in a cottage that is certainly quaint and not at all palatial?

Google tells me about half the tons of lobster we consume around here come from Maine, something I've always suspected in my heart but without any specificity as to percentages in my brain. Many are delivered live to a lobster pot on your stove for their final fling. I remember sitting next to a bloke on a plane out of Logan years ago who had a live one under his seat on its one-way ticket to Virginia. Can you still do that?

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I don't really have a great appreciation for lobster. I do not believe the flavor is worth the work of coaxing the meat out of the shell if I have to do it myself. My preference, if I have to eat it, is to order Lobster Newberg (Newburg?), lobster meat swimming in real butter, heavy cream, a splash of cognac or a shot of sherry or a dash of ground nutmeg to taste, strictly fresh eggs and perhaps just-in-time ground pepper, if you like. But then, am I really tasting the seafood or is its flavor overwhelmed by the other ingredients. What do you think?