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Lobsters in History
Ahhhhh! Just think about forking a succulent bite of fresh lobster meat into your mouth and savoring it all the way down! How could anything taste more sublime? But before you rush out to your nearest Red Lobster and choose your live lobster for a $25.00 lobster dinner, let's spend a little bit of time getting to know something about the critter that you're drooling over.
We all know that the original citizens of America were the Native Americans. There were so few of them back in those days and so many lobsters just lying around in tide pools, that they could have all they wanted. If the truth were told, though, they didn't want any to eat. To them, a lobster was just fertilizer for their fields. They also used the meat as fish bait.
When European settlers started arriving on America's shores, many of them starved to death, but they still wouldn't eat lobster meat. They used it for fertilizer, too, plus they fed it to the people they considered inferior: slaves, indentured servants, the poor, and their own children (children weren't spoiled in those days like they are now!). After word got around that indentured servants were being forced to eat this terrible fare, prospective indentured servants had promises written into their contracts that they wouldn't be made to eat lobster more than three times a week. Imagine that!
Since lobsters could be harvested so easily by hand from the tide pools, there was no need for people to devise more technological methods of trapping them. It wasn't until the 1850s that lobster traps first appeared. The lobsters these early harvesters caught weren't marketed live, either. They were sent to canneries. The early canning methods pretty well eliminated the flavor of the meat leaving the resulting product pretty bland and tasteless. Naturally it failed to catch on with consumers.
When our transportation system developed sufficiently to transport live lobsters, the meat finally caught on with the public. They were shipped to the finest restaurants in America's largest cities where only the well-to-do were able to afford to eat them.
Did you ever choose a live lobster from a tank, watch while restaurant personnel remove him, and then have him appear cooked on your dinner plate? It gives you a weird feeling, doesn't it? Your feelings are only normal. You just have to resign yourself to the fact that the little qualms you feel are all a part of the lobster-eating experience.
My great-grandmother was raised during the Victorian period of the late 19th century. During her formative years, girls were sheltered from the sordid parts of life. She wouldn't have been able to imagine something as terrible as putting a live animal into boiling water. In her later years, she still couldn't bring herself to eat the seafood that was all the rage with everyone else. Her Victorian sensibilities made the thought of seafood repugnant to her.
At least we've finally learned to appreciate the quality of a live lobster dinner. The prices have even come down enough that middle-class citizens can afford to eat them, too. We can buy them in supermarkets or from online merchants and cook them in our own homes. We've come a long way, baby!
About the Author Hopefully you enjoyed this quality information about live lobsters. To learn more, visit Quality Fresh Seafood where some great content pieces are being highlighted. The main focus is on slipper lobster which should be enjoyable to read.
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