Text 15788, 61 rader
Skriven 2011-09-16 11:50:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: vac with G&D 907
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A couple days with the Shipps

I couldn't face going straight back to the house so asked
Gail and Dale if I could camp out in Columbia for a while.
They graciously said that it would be fine.

I was picked up at the airport at dinnertime after an
uneventful flight, the most notable bit of which involved
a couple Bud Lights on the house followed by me studying
the insides of my eyelids for an hour. The agreed-upon
pickup spot, door 14, whose sign says something like "Air
Canada, United, USA3000" despite two of those airlines
actually coming in at the next terminal, was pretty
crowded. I'd suggested this place because in my experience
it has been relatively quiet, so the activity was a bit
of a surprise. As soon as I was loaded up, a van pulled
up next to us and boxed us in for a few minutes, ever so
thoughtful of them. This gave us a chance to catch up a
bit and discuss candidates for dinner. We decided on Anne
Arundel seafood, an eat-in-the-rough place that Dale and Gail
had occasionally enjoyed but that I had not tried, a few miles
east of the airport. It's a combination fish market and short
order cookery, where you get fried stuff on one side and raw,
steamed, or broiled and beer on the other. The tables are,
contrary to expectations, on the fish market side (with more
outside, but it was a little muggy and buggy, so we ate in).

I got half a dozen large but tender cherrystones, all but one
good, sweet, pristinely fresh, the other sort of okay (market
side); and a jumbo crabcake (fryolater side). This latter was
surprisingly devoid of lump meat but packed pretty full of
shredded body meat that was tender, never frozen, and probably
local; it was a bit salty and with rather too much mustard,
but otherwise a pleasing mixture of crab, egg, and crumbs,
fried at a slightly too high temperature so the outside was
crusty brown but the inside was nearly raw - this is mostly
okay with me and certainly beats black with the inside done
(too high temperature, adequate time) or not brown with the
inside done (too low temperature, adequate time). The cake's
jumboness referred to its size (8 oz as opposed to 4 oz)
rather than the lumps. I noticed that it was not described
as having native crab nor as being Maryland style; it was
definitely Maryland style (too much mustard), and, as it turns
out, the Internet says the meat could be native but might be
augmented with Carolina or Florida blue crab.

Gail and Dale ordered one fish and chips and one fish without
chips - this gave them enough fish (cod - I looked up the skin
pattern on the Internet and was surprised, because the texture
to me seemed to be more like hake) for 2 1/2 and enough fries
for 3. I was of course the beneficiary of the surplus - a
sizable chunk of pretty nice, delicate fish in a less nice,
less delicate cornmeal batter, plus some fries that were a little
limp but tasted quite potatoey and were good with malt vinegar.

Beer goes well with this food, and we were thankful that
Yuengling comes on draft.

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