PastaLover wrote:
> Gregory Morrow wrote:
>> AL wrote:
>>
>>
>>> But only a little. I was at the Asian grocery store last night and
>>> picked up 2 dungeness crabs at $5 a pound. I boiled one last night
>>> and decided to save the other for today. So I left it in the
>>> plastic bag and put it in the fridge. It was very frisky. This
>>> evening, it was just barely alive.
>>
>>
>>
>> Let's put YOU in a plastic bag overnight and see how "frisky" you
>> feel...
>>
>
> I was thinking the same thing. It probably wasn't the cold (these
> things
> are from the northern Pacific, after all and used to cold), but rather
> the lack of air from being in the plastic bag. According to articles
> I've read, crabs can live for quite some time out of water, but they
> still need to remain wet and have air to breathe.

Any chef knows if you are cooking live crab or lobster you keep them in the
cold (so they don't get ideas and plan escapes) but you don't put them in
plastic bags. The poor thing was probably starving for air. They *do*
breathe.

I remember when they first started selling live lobsters at somewhat fondly
recalled Red Lobster restaurant... they stuck them in the walk-in cooler
with bands on their claws. The line cooks used to scare the heck out of
some of the waitresses by asking them to go back there and get something
from the cooler and the lobsters were just walking around in there. This
was before the lobster tank arrived to put out front... memory fades but
this was around 1982...

Just don't put them in water in your bathtub. They do not live in fresh
water (eh, Nancy? Still can't believe my LLL did the same thing when company
came over and had to buy new lobsters! Go figure.)

If it's not canned or pre-frozen, do not eat dead shellfish.

Jill