Here are 101 substantial main courses, all of which get you in and out of the kitchen in 10 minutes or less. (…)

12. Boil a lobster. Serve with lemon or melted butter.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

illustration { Nana Rausch }

A part-time lobsterman and waterfront activist who’s running for the City Council found himself in trouble with the law when he put up campaign signs mounted on lobster traps.

On Tuesday, city workers removed about eight of the signs and wooden traps that Bill Linnell had put up at busy thoroughfares and intersections. The city clerk notified him that they were illegal because they could create a public safety and maintenance problem on public rights of way.

“What we don’t want to get into is a case of one-upmanship, where somebody puts signs on lobster traps, so somebody else puts theirs on an inflatable cow,” said Steve Landry, a state Transportation Department public safety engineer. “There’s a safety factor out there.”

The traps on which Linnell displayed his blue-and-white signs were old and ready to be discarded, so he figured it made good environmental sense to recycle them for a different use, he said.

For now, he’s using different signs, some adorned with buoys, to portray himself as an advocate for Portland’s working waterfront. Linnell is one of four candidates for an open council seat.

{ abc13 | Continue reading }

related { Apparently all presidential candidate logos must use red, white, and blue }

Lobstermen in the ’90s and earlier this decade went like gangbusters in August, catching Maine’s signature seafood, making it the number one month to catch lobsters.

But lobstermen now get their biggest hauls in the fall, and October has emerged as the top lobster-catching month. Even catches in November, typically a fraction of those in August, have exceeded August’s in two of the past four years.

The shift in the peak season has created angst among lobstermen, especially those who stand to finish in the red without a strong close to the season.

Lobstermen, dealers, and scientists say a number of factors combine to make the lobster season’s peak a moving target, from water temperatures and ocean currents to more lobstermen using bigger boats to fish farther offshore.

According to an Associated Press analysis of data from the Maine Department of Marine Resources. In the 1960s, October was the top lobster-catching month statewide, and September had the largest monthly catches on average in the 1970s and ’80s.

In the 1990s and earlier this decade, August was the number one month.

But beginning four years ago, the strongest catches started coming later in the year - with October on top the past two years. In 2004 and 2005, catches in November were higher than those in August.

With the slow summer season this year, lobstermen are banking on another strong fall.

{ The Boston Globe | Continue reading }

{ Jeff Koons, Triple Elvis, 2007 | Oil on canvas }

“This is the first time in 25 years my tanks are empty,� Mr. Castelli said. Lobsters have rarely been as scarce or expensive as they have been in the last few weeks, thanks to a confluence of bad weather, extremely cold water and a lack of reserve supply.

The retail price is about $15 a pound for a one-pound lobster, nearly double what it was last spring, and restaurateurs are having difficulty obtaining lobsters, particularly large ones. { NY Times | Continue reading }

+ previously { My Name Is Roll, Lobster Roll }

In colonial times, lobsters were considered “poverty food”. They were picked out of tidal pools and served to children, prisoners, and indentured servants (those immigrants who had exchanged their passage to America for seven years of service to their sponsors). In Massachusetts, some servants finally started a mutiny and had it put into their contracts that they wouldn’t have to eat lobster more than three times a week.

Until the early 19th century, lobsters were gathered by hand along the shoreline. Fifty years later, lobstering as a trap fishery began in Maine–to this day America’s lobster stronghold. In the 1820s, the first Smackmen appeared, named thus after their boats, small sailing vessels with a tank that had holes drilled into it to allow sea water to circulate. The smacks enabled the lobstermen to transport live lobsters over long distances.

One of those lobstermen, who has been fishing the waters off Portland and Cape Elizabeth for ten years, is Chris Robinson. His fascination with lobsters began as a toddler, and he thinks other toddlers and young children will appreciate the “great adventure of lobstering” as well. Together with filmmaker Tim Tonner of Stowe, Vermont, Chris has created a children’s documentary movie, Let’s go Lobstering. { Shannara Johnson }

+ previously { Alexander Calder’s Lobster Trap and Fish Tail }

{ Alexander Calder, Lobster Trap and Fish Tail, 1939 | painted steel wire and sheet aluminum }