This is one of my concept boards for “Dinner for Two: Steamed Blue Crabs” There are a few elements we want to concentrate on, but primarily we’re going for the “counterfeit experience”. We are interested in the use of corian in the creation of a “crab bar” countertop for interactive personal ordering and communication with the kitchen.
One of my favorite meals has as much to do with tradition and family, as it has to do with taste. Steamed Blue Crabs … eating through a pile of steamed, spicy Old bay blue crabs is a favorite.
This was a meal I eat all summer growing up. It was as much a part of my summers as the sun and the beach. My father’s side of the family, the Kellys, stayed in a row of beach houses in Charleston SC . My cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents (both of whom spoke in a strange mix of Irish and Charlestonian) all spent all day at the beach together. We caught the crabs ourselves and cleaned them in the ocean before running them up to the house to cook.
Steaming turns the blue crabs a hot, red-orange color. Mountains of steaming-hot crabs—caked with spices—are served ceremoniously on tables covered with newspapers. Hours are spent cracking and picking the crabs, enjoying every savory morsel.
Getting to the crabmeat is a long process that is also a tradition. The first step involves identifying, locating, and catching the Blue Crabs. Just remember: It’s worth the work.
Here’s a little animatic to demontrate the awesomeness of catching, cooking and eating Steamed Blue Crab.
Various types of Blue Crabs:
All Blue Crabs have aprons on their undersides. The color of the claws and the shape of the apron denote its sex and age.
* A male is called a Jimmy. – The Jimmy has blue-tipped claws and an apron that looks like the Washington Monument.* A mature female is called a Sook. – The Sook has orange-tipped claws and an apron that looks like the U.S. Capitol Building because it is a semi-circular, rounded bell shape.
* An immature female is called a She-Crab or a Sally. – The Sally has an inverted V-shaped apron – more pyramidal than rounded. The females are always thrown back. It’s just not cool to eat the females.
Locating the Blue Crab The Blue Crabs are “bottom dwellers.” They live in the salty waters of the Atlantic Ocean, Chesapeake Bay, and other coastal bays and rivers. The best places to catch crabs in the Ocean City area are on the bay side in areas with grassy or muddy bottoms. Blue Crabs are especially plentiful near piers, docks and bulkheads. The crabs live where they find their food. Thus, they live where they find such dietary delicacies as thin-shelled bivalves (clams, mussels, etc.), small fish, marsh periwinkles, marine worms, sea lettuce, eelgrass, decaying vegetation, and decaying flesh and waste. It is easiest to locate the crabs during the incoming tide or near or just after the high tide. (If you are relying on official tide charts, remember that they are usually based on Atlantic Ocean tides.
Catching Blue Crabs The easiest (and cheapest) way to catch crabs is with a “hand line”—using a string, chicken neck, and dip net. The bait loses its effectiveness after awhile, so replace “tired” bait with a fresh neck and try again! An ambitious crabber could use several lines tied to some nails on a pier, but this requires watching for movement on several lines. Hungry crabbers will devise all sorts of schemes…
o Tie the chicken neck to a piece of string 8-10 feet in length. Add a weight, if available. (Remove extra fat from the chicken to keep it from floating.)
o Have the net handy, or appoint a crabbing buddy to be your “netter.” The ideal dip net has a long pole (3-5 feet in length) and a wire net that looks like a basketball hoop.
o Lower the bait into the water until it is near the bottom.
o The crab will catch the scent of the bait and will bite into it or grab it, often attempting to drag it to its hiding spot.
o When you feel the line pulling, you probably have a crab. Slowly and smoothly pull the bait and crab to the surface.
o When the bait is just about in view, gently slip the net beneath the surface of the water, swooping up the crab attached to the bait – before it jumps off.
o Measure the crab, and if it is legal (5 inches point-to-point), place it in a cooler or a newspaper-lined basket with a lid. Then get ready to catch another crab!
Animation for Final Processing Code
This is a concept animatic for the final construction and programing.
I also wrote some pseudo code to try and get this step by step. I’ll scan that and post it later.Earlier iteration had dinners eating across form on another, like at a picnic table. We moved into the one directional bar style because of the structure of the environment.
Guests sit side by side like at a picnic table.
Table has texture of wood etched
Plate is routed out shape/outline of a crab shell
Catch a crab and drag it to you plate
When the crab is over the plate water will begin to boil
During this, the caught crab will change from blue to red
and the water will slowly fade away
I’m excited to see how this will look in Corian. Our concept is running away from an actual dinner and become this abstract concept of what the dinner means, how it makes you feel, what those accosication invoke. I love the idea of using sound and sent to give the notion of the beach. However, after the last presentation we’re going back to the basic concept of a crab dinner. As much as I would have loved to see a seagull wing made out of Corian, seagulls really are too far away for the original project concept. But here are the sketches anyway …
Concept sketches for the Corain artifact that would be reveled when queued by audio.
Sooo … now back to the table and the code to make it work.
How to make the grey box onto a crab and have that move … hmmmmm …..
void mouseReleased() {
locked = false;
}
The trip to the Corian Studio was very helpful in understanding how this material can be used, It’s also just a beautiful material. Very tactile. I can’t wait to sculpt with Corian for the final.
and this is a great Corian construction I found online …
