Myette.org

Lobster.

This, my friends, is the story of Lobster Day 2006.

Arriving at dinner on Friday night Erin apologized told us that due to an unexpected lobster donation that had to be attended to dinner would be late. It turns out someone had been caught over-fishing lobster in Trujillo Bay and their consequence was they had to donate the lobster to people who needed it the most. Us.

So Saturday morning Erin, Lindsey and I set out to discover just how much lobster there was. We knew it was a lot (it filled two of the 100 pound sacks our flower comes in) but it wasn’t until we started to sort it we understood we were talking about hundreds of lobster tails.  So we started sorting the bad lobster out (black undersides of tails – bad, pink or clear – good). In the end we counted up around 300 lobster tails.

We sorted it out to all the houses and every person on the farm got two lobster tails each. Then we started bagging it up for neighbors, priests and the nuns in town. So much lobster to go around. We sent kids out to find employees and deliver bags of lobster tails to their homes in the villages. Many of our employees had never seen a lobster let alone eaten one and the kids had no idea the luxury we were talking about. So armed with instructions on how to cook them the houses took their share with a few sceptical looks as we implored them not to waste them.

Then the cooking began. It was my turn to cook dinner so with Erin’s help we threw a full out romantic dinner with table cloth, candles, boiled lobster tails, melted butter and a lime/butter/herb pasta. So good.

Erin will be taking over as our fearless sub-director in a few weeks (second in command on the farm and highest ranking vol) and with our director and current sub-d out of town she was in charge. I remarked that this was a good way to start her leadership of the place and that there was a reason we would be calling her reign a benevolent dictatorship.

As if one lobster dinner wasn’t enough we still had 18 lobster tails in the fridge for the vols, so I conned the dinner chefs for Sunday night into letting me help/commandeer the kitchen to make lobster bisque. So good.

Sometimes things are hard at the finca and this weekend was no exception. We had our share of putting out crisis and struggling with kids who wouldn’t climb down from the tree they had gotten themselves into (literally and figuratively). But sometimes ridiculous things happen. Like someone donates $3000 in lobster tails and we eat lobster two nights in a row.

Buen provecho.

Michael-John