Back when I was growing up on our hard scrabble farm on the coast of Maine my father would sometimes exchange beef for lobster with the fishermen. We would always consider that a great treat and wonder why fishermen would be interested in beef.

And, yes, sometimes we would get one of them huge lobsters in trade, big enough to fill the turkey platter, big enough so even the legs were something you had to break open to get at the meat, unless you had the suction power of a shop vac (or a Barry Finn). And, yes, the meat was every bit as tender as the smaller lobsters. Now I'm all for banning the capture of the "big ones," as we currently do in Maine, but I still sometimes hunger for those days gone by.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble