My husband and I are planning to have a nice lobster dinner sometime within the next week.  Since I am the chief cook and kitchen boss in this family, I have been assigned the task of preparing this lobster dinner.  As I begin my search for instructions on storing, cooking, and serving lobster, I am experiencing life-threatening heart palpitations.  Apparently, lobster tastes best if you buy it “fresh.”  And apparently “fresh” means “still swimming.”  So I am, apparently, supposed to purchase live lobster, store it, remove it from its storage space while it’s still alive and throw it into a cauldron of scorching, hot water.  I shudder at the thought!

So as I think this through in my head, I kind of skip past the part where I handle and then kill the lobster.  I move on and pretend the lobster is fully cooked.  I guess at this point I should remove it from the pot.  I think I can handle this because the lobster is dead at this point.  But it still has its guts intact!  Apparently, I am to remove its guts and appendages and separate them into “edible”, “inedible”, and “edible but undesirable for dinner” piles.  At this point my stomach is rolling over on itself.

I ask myself, “Is this really worth it?”  I’ve only ever had one bite of lobster.  While that was a tasty piece of meat, I just don’t remember it well enough to know if I really want to put myself through all of this for a little lobster tail and a couple claws.  My husband says that it is definitely worth it, so I’m getting ready to close my eyes, clench my teeth and dive in to the whole experience.  Wish me luck.  I wish I could say the same about those poor lobsters.